Today has not been what you would call great.

I ended up staying in bed all afternoon, mostly sleeping or trying to sleep. But I wasn’t really tired.

I just did not feel like dealing with reality.

I am trying to be cool about that. After all, it is not like there is something I was supposed to do. Odds are, no matter what, I was not going to produce anything this afternoon anyhow.

And the case can certainly be made that getting angry with myself over something so trivial is the epitome of counterproductive. So I got into a grumpy funk and spent an afternoon hiding from reality. So what?

But deep down, I am still mad at myself for doing it. I know it’s unhealthy to think that way, but that is just how it is for now. You feel what you feel, you can’t control it or command it.

The situation is not helped my the fact that I know damned well that if I am feeling sad and frustrated and so on, I know how to fix it. Just get up and move around! Maybe get some fresh air for a change. Go outside and stay outside till the air in my lungs has turned over and I am full of freshness instead of dusty musty staleness.

But that’s just the thing. I always know what to do. Always. I have a very clever and practical mind, and it always generates plenty of ideas as to how to fix my situation. Sensible, practical, doable ideas that seem like ideal solutions.

Except for one thing. I never do them. Like Alice from Alice In Wonderland, I am always giving myself such excellent advice, but I never listen.

Clearly, the advice is not as perfect as it seems, or it would work. I can say that because I am a pragmatist. Theory can be wonderful but results are what counts. And so far, all these brilliant ideas contribute is another reason to feel bad.

I think I am dealing with my problems on too deep a level for intellect to be much help anyhow. I have pierced the subverbal, pre-intellect level of my problems and there is no thinking your way through there. There is only exploration of the true nature of one’s emotional landscape and dealing what one finds there.

This is a purely emotional process. No plans. No clever solutions. No tactics. No cutting the problem down to size with the razor sharp scalpel of intellect.

Just a slow, steady process of thumbing through my thick catalog of unprocessed emotions, looking for the key that will unlock them so I can take them into my conscious self, acknowledge and treasure and validate them, and then put then to rest.

Every emotion you have ever repressed is still within you somewhere. Maybe it’s in your bloodstream, circulating constantly, waiting to finally be expressed and adding to your depression and anxiety while it waits.

Or maybe it is encoded in the brain, sitting there in some massive dead letters office, just another form waiting to be processed by the bloated and negligent office of the mind.

Probably both, honestly.

The truth remains : the only way to deal with things is to deal with them. There is no escaping this emotional task. You can start it or stop it, but you cannot escape. Stopping means being trapped inside it forever, and those unprocessed emotions will just keep stacking up.

The only way out is through. You have to work very hard if you have any hope of cutting down the backlog. And there is no way to do it all at once, so there’s no escaping that way anyhow.

It is a long, dreary trudge and a lot of (but not all of!) those emotions will be unpleasant, so it will be no walk in the park. The journey will not be fun.

But if you stick with it, the benefits are enormous. Clearing out old emotions creates more free space in the mind, and the more free space the mind has in which to operate, the more cleanly and efficiently it can run.

And just like that, problems you have had for years disappear as the various forces at play get a chance to mingle and re-balance and resolve. Tensions are released, poisonous fog is cleared, and you feel ever so much better.

And that is your motivation to keep going. Once you have a taste of that, you want more.

I am truly grateful for whatever manages to key in to my repressed emotions and bring them out. Earlier today, I was listening to a podcast where someone asked about what triggers memory in people, and I thought back to my childhood and a particular moment where I was in my babysitter’s home and the song “Angel In The Morning” by Juice Newton was playing on the radio, and it was a gorgeous sunny day, and everything seemed perfect, welcoming and warm and wonderful.

And that memory unlocked a nice big chunk of indescribable emotion for me to process. It was too powerful and primal and prismatic to be captured in the limited palette of human language. I could not even tell you whether it was a pleasant or unpleasant experience. It was beyond that, transcendent.

It is always healthy for me to reach back to the time before I was ever abused or bullied, when I was a happy gregarious precocious little red headed boy for whom the world was fresh and new and full of wonder.

That was the last time I was entirely healthy, and I can draw upon that time as a source of health and happiness.

I can’t ever be that little redheaded kid again, but he still lives within me, under all that infected scar tissue, and the more I can connect with him, the more he can teach me how to be healthy again.

It’s just you and me, kid. Let’s go look for a way out of here.