ECOTRAIN'S QOTW - How open are you with your emotions to other people?

All of the emotions become like bottled soda with a whole pack of Mentos thrown in.

Your pride and ego have caused the weapons of mass self destruction to break its seal and there is nothing to feel. Nothing to try. It doesn't feel like fear, because we are numb. It doesn't feel like thrill, because implosions cause chronic shock that sets us back for years and years.

When you're open about your emotions to others, you've decided to allow yourself to be vulnerable

The firewall has been secured and there's nothing protecting you from the reaction the person you've placed your faith in will have. Maybe you're releasing shame and guilt in the presence of a stranger because it's gotten to the point where your demons have destroyed all the friendship and family support you've had. Even worse, maybe you've decided that you'd play chess all by yourself and the games typically end in the same pattern.

I've been observing my narratives as I switched therapists from time to time.

The old sailor me was always the honor, courage, and commitment type. Not to people, but to my job. I broke this when I fell in love. She became someone worth fighting the fight for. Someone became more worthy to live for than my career.

I went underwater, and she found it was too difficult to wait for me. We fed each other drama and couldn't lighten up or recover. We consumed pain and suffering together and it made us horrible human beings to the people around us. My dream was coming undone. My reality was setting in, and my heartbreak combined with nuclear engineering workstress on an old crusty boat was too much for my tiny boyish heart.

My suicidal mother inside my childhood memories came to rise during my period of suffering. I remember how she dealt with her pain that suddenly feels so familiar in this instance. I didn't know how to heal. It was never introduced to me earlier in my life. The way to deal with pain in my mother's experience was to abuse drugs and alcohol and break things until she decided she was the last thing on the list. So like mother like son, the family legacy must continue.

I went down a terrible binge on drugs, alcohol, and floppy pickle antidepressant-like sex with girls I met on the internet. All women became an object for sex. Like Alex the Lion in Madagascar, all I wanted was meat and the hunger could never be satisfied. I didn't know what I needed. All I knew was I wanted a quick fix to my everlasting numbness.

I think I've told this story to hundreds of people while I backpacked solo through SE Asia. I wanted people to pity me. To nuture me with encouragement. I wanted the world to end with people knowing that I suffered.

I had nothing to lose when the world was my audience.

I felt confident that I would probably never see the same person again anyway, so it was easy to go full throttle on people.

Not everyone pitied me. Not everyone nutured me with their pampers. My story became developed the more I told it. People had asked so many questions that the story became a book in my mind that I could finally close because it wasn't so compelling to keep open for people to give me what I thought I needed.

I fell in love with people

And sometimes even traveled with them for months. I needed relationships because it closed my pity book and allowed me to experience the person I was currently with. People went full throttle with me in return and I read their pity book. I felt their emotions because it was awfully familiar. And then the miracle happens.

When you share your open heart and they share theirs in return, a powerful moment of love occurs.

The power of vulnerability is the magic that happens after we tell our stories.

We will often start witnessing what behaviors link up to the pity party we keep throwing. How it affects our environment and the people we love. When you've been beaten and destroyed by the shame and guilt of all your past decisions, being open to yourself is the beginning of a transformation.

Openness is an act of courage amongst people and with your inner being. It is a lifelong practice of being able to be a reliable peer-to-peer service that both receives constructive criticism and sends constructive feedback.

I feel as if I am open and transparent to all those who wish to have an experience with me. Although I am working on being more outreaching and have initiative on putting out my hand first.

There is a limit, however, to how open I am now.

Since I've had many experiences with being vulnerable with others, I will gauge through time and exposure on how well we transmit with each other. If the toxic nature of drama becomes all consuming, I've developed a skillset for walking away from those interactions.

There will be people that are worthy of your open space as well as those who haven't developed theirs enough with adequate alone adventure time to listen with their heart without reciting a programmed automated response. We never know in the beginning until we try to listen to each other.

Every encounter can be healing if your intentions are set for it to happen.