The Visa Diaries

Lately, I have been really into “feeling my feelings.” Those of you who know me, know that I have a bit of a soft-spot for things leaning toward the “self-help” genre of things (only good quality self-help, to be fair). Feeling my feelings came from reading “Families and How to Survive Them” by Robin Skynner, a classic about family therapy, as well as “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle, a rather extreme neo-spiritual book about living in the here and now. Skynnard explains that as children we learn from our families that certain types of feelings are unacceptable, such as jealously, or failure, or anger, and then whenever we start to feel those things we have to repress them, leading to various sorts of problems. Tolle simply thinks that the doorway to all the aliveness and excitement that we are seeking by striving toward the future, actually lies in the here and now.

So anyway, psycho-woo-woo-ness aside, this feeling my feelings has been really working for me, and I have gotten so sanctimonious about it that I have even recently lectured two of my good friends to give up their avoidance and deflection techniques and just sit with their uncomfortable feelings. Under this new way of thinking, shopping would constitute just such an avoidance technique.

For example, imagine that it is a somewhat drippy, gray Sunday in London. I’ve had a nice lie-in, and don’t have much planned for the day. I spend some time surfing the net, have a nice breakfast, and then start to feel a bit glum, the Sunday blues kicking in. The thing to do would be to sit there with those blues, make a bit more room for melancholy in my life, not panic and resist it when it starts to show up, but instead get a little curious about it and just think, well, maybe this time is about being a little glum, and that’s ok.

The thing that I would *not* want to do, if I were trying to feel my feelings, would be to go shopping, because that buzz of a new purchase, the little fantasy (”oh the places I will go in these shoes?” “oh how chic will I look in this top!”) that goes along with it, would be covering up, distracting me from my underlying feeling. Then, as soon as the “purchase high” wears off, I’d be left right back where I started, except a bit poorer and perhaps with a new pair of shoes, rather than having gone through the feeling and being left with the deeper pleasure of having expanded my emotional range and comfort zone.

Or, in this case, I’d be left with some new skin care products, such as, hypothetically speaking, say a rosewater facial toner… errr, to be specific. I really didn’t mean to. I really was still feeling sanctimonious and ocnvinced about my new method. I just decided I would pop out and get a coffee, because, after all, one can certainly sip coffee and feel melancholy at the same time. But once on Portobello Road, the consumerist wonderland just sort of takes over. And I did need some new toner, because London tap water is so hard on the skin. So I stopped by Neal’s Yard – what could be the harm in that? Its all natural, apothecary-esque, full of herbs and essential oils. Neal’s Yard has been into that natural shit since long before Gwynnie or Madonna made it boho hip.

Anyway, I emerged the proud new owner of a rosewater facial toner, and with a slight buzz. Melancholy completely forgotten. So, I fell off the wagon… Does that mean I have to call my friends and come clean?