How I confronted the fear behind the memories.
Published in Black Bear
Mar 30, 2024 (Medium.com)
The children were screaming, and their dad was at the top of the stairs waiting to put his boot in my face.
As a police officer, I always seemed to be somewhere I wasn’t wanted, but this was particularly traumatic. The children’s parents were neglecting them, and social services needed our help.
When you remove children from their homes — even when their homes are terrible — they don’t thank you for it. They still love their parents, and you are tearing them away from everything they know.
The children were locked in a bedroom upstairs. Their father guarded the staircase. He promised to kick the first officer who ventured up the stairs in the head. I’d had enough and decided I would be first. He tried to kick me, but I deflected it, and he ended up on the floor in cuffs. I now had to kick down the bedroom door, knowing the children inside would be terrified.
After several kicks, the door opened, and I saw four children sobbing in the corner. The oldest was about five years old. We each picked one up and consoled them as best we could. We handed them over to the social workers and left.
As we left, the neighbors had come out to see what was going on and called us scum.
Despite such an emotional event, I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t rage, and I couldn’t show fear or weakness. The public relies on the police. We have to stay stoic. More calls awaited.
The final straw.
Botting up my emotions came to a head on a night when I attended a double murder and suicide.
A woman and her baby had escaped her abusive husband and were staying in a safe house. After a few weeks, he found them. I saw the woman lying on the bed with her throat cut. Her baby had died from dehydration in the living room. Their killer had died from an overdose in the hallway.
I had to guard the back of the house so journalists couldn’t creep around and get graphic photos of the crime scene. Yes, they are that vile.
I stood there, next to the window, where I could see the woman’s body for 13 hours. I didn’t have a watch, so I used the stopping and starting of the nearby trains as a gauge.
I couldn’t take any more of that. I felt like one more murder or suicide would break me. On my next shift, I confessed my feelings and trauma, and the long process of medical retirement began.
Why ignoring our feelings is so bad.
Bottling up my feelings was the single biggest factor in my suffering from PTSD.
A study from the University of Texas found that not acknowledging your feelings strengthens them. I learned too late that these feelings of pain and anger have to come out somehow. When I didn’t deal with them at the time, they came out when I was doing other things.
I began to feel worried and anxious. Little things would spark a huge reaction, and I would argue with my loved ones. People started to see me as hot-headed, and I grew to love the physical side of policing. Fighting with criminals was a release.
I soon turned to alcohol. I’d drink myself into a stupor to forget my problems, but it never worked. Instead, alcohol became a brand new problem while all my underlying issues persisted.
I later turned to overeating. Food became an emotional trigger for me. I found I could stave off depression temporarily by getting excited about a meal. I’d eat way too much, and then shame would take over. Like alcohol, food never solved my problems. It made me fat as well as miserable.
Bottling up your emotions can also lead to physical stress. My blood pressure was high, my pulse was up in the triple digits, and my cholesterol was unhealthy.
It took me 20 years to learn how to open up about and express my feelings. I want to show you how I did it so that you can achieve the same result in a much shorter time.
The daily check-in.
Labeling feelings makes them less intense.
If we can’t deal with our feelings as they occur, checking in with yourself daily is the next best thing.
Most of the problem with bottling up emotions is that we don’t realize they are there. We may not know we feel resentful, jealous, or scared.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to identify your feelings:
- Is your inner dialogue positive?
- How would you describe your past week in one feeling?
- Do you feel tense?
- Can you relax at the moment?
- What’s on your mind?
- How are your energy levels?
- What’s your most common thought?
Communication.
You have to let emotions out to stop holding them in. You only need one person you can trust to make a difference. I was lucky enough to have two — my mum and my partner. Every evening, I’d walk the dog with my mum, and we’d have a heart-to-heart about anything bothering me. I lived with my partner, so we talked during the day.
You don’t have to share every feeling or do it all at once. Start small and build up. Start unpicking the emotional knots in your head.
Get in the habit of talking so that when something terrible happens in the future, you’re ready to deal with it.
Writing is my greatest therapy.
Writing gives my pain a purpose. It means I didn’t waste 20 years of my life suffering. Instead, I learned lessons I can pass on to others so they don’t suffer like I did. Writing is the vessel I use to achieve this.
Every day, writing eases my pain and loneliness. Hearing that my words have helped people is addictive. It helps me as much.
But you don’t have to pour your heart and soul onto online pages:
- Write a letter to the person who hurt you.
- Write to your parents about how they damaged you as a child.
- Write to your future self.
- Write to your God.
You’ll understand yourself better when you’ve unpicked the knots and reality is staring you in the face.
Acceptance.
My biggest shame was related to fear.
It took me years to admit it, but when I was guarding the bodies of dead teenagers, I felt terrified.
When I found a man who had hung himself and had been decomposing for two weeks, I wanted to cry for my mum.
When a man was trying to stab me with a screwdriver, and I had to hurt him, my legs shook for an hour.
I realize now that feelings aren’t dirty secrets. They aren’t pathetic, and they aren’t stupid. Feelings develop for a reason. They’re legitimate, and we need to treat them as such.
Here are some questions you can ask to understand your feelings:
- What triggered this emotion?
- Why can’t you let it go?
- When did you last feel like this?
- How strong is this feeling?
- Are you projecting this feeling onto others?
Conclusion.
We bottle up our emotions because we’re scared.
- Scared that we’ll look weak.
- Scared people will take advantage.
- Scared we’ll let others down.
- Scared that we won’t survive the pain.
The antidote to fear and suppression is clarity. When you gain clarity, you illuminate the darkness.
Clarity helped me realize my anger was a smokescreen for fear. I realized I missed opportunities to escape the police and save myself the trauma. Yet I didn’t listen because I wanted to be tough and forge ahead no matter what. Gurus say never quit, but sometimes quitting is best for us.
To become the person you want to be, you must understand who you are and what you want. This journey of self-discovery can be long and hard, yet to become our best selves, we have to undertake it anyway. Using the methods in this article will help shorten your journey.
My journey took 20 years, but I still made it, and you can do it, too.
Written by Leon Macfayden
·Writer for Black Bear
Grab my FREE ebook: Mental Illness Myths, Realities and Hope https://leon_macfayden.ck.page/mentalhealthguide