the biggest lesson I learned during the pandemic and why I hate psychologists now

I never would have thought that these two things could ever be related. And I understand that hate’s a strong word - I’m just feeling out loud. Not all psychologists! Can you hear me rolling my eyes?

Speaking of feeling out loud - what does it mean to feel?

I grew up believing that feeling was the opposite of all things logical. Like it was something weak people did. I was applauded and respected when I would act in a stoic manner. Or if I was of service - coming up with solutions for problems that weren’t my own. Life makes a lot of sense when you ponder about what you were praised for when you were younger.

Maybe it was the increased time alone I’d spend thinking, during lockdown, away from everyone. Or maybe it was some kind of divine intervention. But it became painfully obvious to me that the world had fooled me in to believing that I did not deserve to have time for myself.

I think it began with people losing their jobs and the government being a little too slow and a little too clueless on how to help everyone out. We’ll be generous and say that no one expected any of this. Sure.

Then the much needed brutal fight against racial injustice. It’s harder to look away when you’ve got nothing to do. Even harder to keep looking away when you see how much empathy you’ve lacked to do something until now. I think I understood for the first time. The systemic racism that was programmed to keep the privileged happily clueless and the oppressed silent. The narratives that were built ages ago that encouraged hate and dehumanized and antagonized Black people. 

Then you start noticing it everywhere. The way LGBTQ+ people are portrayed in the media. The way misogyny seeps in to your skin and makes you question your own existence. The way the patriarchy makes it easy for criminals to keep being criminals. It makes you question those in power. How did you get there? 

It makes me question the moral integrity of the world we live in. Once so fragile and broken, now it looks cold and conniving. I don’t understand what I wanted before any of this happened anymore. To no longer comprehend my own ambitions, I felt lost. Like I had just witnessed my own death.

I looked around my own world and saw that I was surrounded by goals and dreams of successes that would make me feel like I belonged to a system that I no longer believed in. I looked at my relationship to myself and saw one that resembled a checklist. That a scientist would have to a robot. Or a bomb to a timer. What was I waiting for?

A long preface for a simple lesson that would bring me back to myself again. That lesson being how important it is to know yourself. To know what you believe in, to know your value, to know what it feels like when you’re happy so you stop chasing things that will only make you want more. To value your emotional fulfillment. It took seeing how the world didn’t value me or any other human being to recognize the same devaluation I had towards myself.

I believe to feel is to be patient and open-minded. To feel is to listen to yourself without judgement or criticism. Things I never had time for. Feelings aren’t always rational - that’s why they’re feelings. And while it requires a level of self-awareness to realize that not all of your feelings should be acted on because feelings are temporary, the only way to truly understand them is to express them.

Whether that’s through journaling, or bitching to a good friend, or dancing with your roommates in the kitchen. Maybe it’s screaming out the car window as you hit the highway with Frank Ocean playing the background. 

And feelings and certain situations will come back as you realize new things in your life so that they can be viewed through a brand new perspective. Welcome them with open arms - you aren’t the same person who faced these feelings the last time.

Sometimes feelings feel conflicting and ugly. And when those times come up, I wish you an infinite supply of self-compassion. And I hope that you will analyze your feelings as you would analyze a dream. As if they are telling a bigger story than they might appear to be. Where situations are filled with symbols and grant you access to a greater understanding of your inner world.

Are you angry? Do things that never used to bother you all of a sudden make you want to bitch forever? Are you changing? Do you feel appreciated for who you are? Do you fear who you are becoming? Have you grieved yet? For who you used to be? You deserve to question yourself and to believe you have all the answers. Or at least most of them.

It feels and sounds like a lot - to deal with feelings. But it’s more than necessary to find your own way through yourself. Which is why it pisses me off to see so many psychologists and even healers claim that they have all the answers for you. How they can quickly and effectively fix you. As if there was something wrong with you in the first place. 

Granted, an understanding of yourself is valuable - but I think a society that relies on others to give them a standardized, scientific - an overly complicated explanation for why you are the way you are, robs you of a chance to get to know yourself authentically. It only offers us an insight in to why we aren’t productive and why we aren’t able to serve the capitalist agenda, rather than why we aren’t feeling like we belong in our own bodies and lives.

There is a lack of empathy in the psychology and psychiatry industry. There is a lack of the ability to simply hold space and time for one another. There is too much arrogance in that community of professionals who act like it’s a race to make you all better and ready to be your best self. Here’s a spoiler for you: your best self isn’t anyone specific. It’s whoever you are in the moment when you choose to cherish yourself. Your psychologist should help you become more you - and you know who that is deep down - not turn you in to someone who will be productive enough to work and be able to feed their next pay check.

In a world where mental health care is available only for those who are privileged enough to either afford it out of pocket, or have secured a job that allows them access to insurance plans, we are creating unfair narratives for those who are less fortunate. It says, “we will only help you if you’re contributing wealth to our society.” We need more accessibility. We need more trauma informed professionals. We need more empathy from everyone so no person hears the words “you should just get over it” ever again. Or “haven’t we heard enough of this problem?” I don’t believe in tough love - the world is tough as it is already.

With all of that being said, I asked myself again, what does it mean to feel? To feel is to be human. And to feel is to be logical - if emotions are a natural part of us, does it not make sense to take time to feel them in order to process them? Rather than act like we’re above it?

So it’s nice to hear that you can get me back on my feet so quickly, doctor, but I’m afraid you will have to use empathy and emotional intelligence to help me. Do you think you could do that?