Emotional Goosebumps and Spiritual Reassurance in Both the Absence of Exchange Words
The Power of Implementing Coping Skills and Finding Solace in Spiritual Observance
I haven’t written a word at all this month, but not because of unrestrained emotional reverberations or mental setbacks. I am growing and strengthening my capabilities to manage the emotional overload that consumes me and disassociates me from existence at times.
Summer becomes busy in my life. Time has simply elapsed in the hustle and bustle of freewheeling movement and an endurance run of other engagements. I find myself feeling grateful for a quiet day to reflect on the moments that have passed and my ability to have stayed present during most of them.
Thoughts are always with me, with inspiration for written expression, even if they don’t always make their way to transcription. Silence doesn't erase my awareness or the perceptibility of my senses, which still feel everything around me intensely.
As I return to the page today, red from the blistering sun, exhausted and sore from manual work, bloated from concession stand food, and drained from the recent, excessive heat, I can look back with a positive mindset, self-worth, and pride in my ability to utilize coping skills that I have learned over the last year. Up to this point, I wasn’t sure that I was being successful with therapy. Progress is sometimes elusive.
As my mind evolves and emotional healing continues, I am learning how to find the positive in life's comings and goings, something I had completely lost the ability to do as I drifted into the darkness of existing. This capability is something that DBT has helped guide me towards again. I now mindfully observe, finding at least one positive in every experience of being alive, while once again looking for the hidden meanings in the undercurrents of the cascade of life.
I am able to identify my emotions based on the feelings that arise in me when faced with situations that trigger emotional reactions, another skill learned that has broadened my ability to understand myself on a deeper level. Feelings and emotions are not one and the same; feelings are a response to an emotion, which often remains unspecified under the surface and indiscernible to the emotionally dysregulated mind. Feelings cannot always be trusted in the confines of this instability, and it is important to be consciously aware that at the epicenter of what we are feeling are explicitly identifiable emotions.
Honestly, I think everyone should learn this skill to better control their emotional reactions. There is a deficit of emotional intelligence within society that is not just appropriated to those with trauma, personality disorders, or similar mood disorders.
Within this process of discovery and discernment comes the acknowledgement that not all emotions are bad or negative. For someone like me, healing from psychological trauma after years of emotional abuse, the recognition of love and happiness, also present within us, is ours to feel, despite being conditioned to believe that we are not worthy of it.
In the essence of uncovering the positives in existence that had once come so easily to me, I find that I am letting love and happiness in again without it taking much effort, realizing that it was always there. I have always been one to erupt in goosebumps when feeling the positive emotional sensations of others. It is true that I also sense and absorb the negative emotional energies emitted by others, but recently, I have noticed an upsurge in the outbreak of implicit emotional goosebumps. Initially, they caused me to feel embarrassed by such an ardent physical reaction, but now I let it be shown and even point it out sometimes, expressing how I can feel the buoyant and pleasing feelings of effervescent emotions, dissolving the negative cloud that lingers overhead.
My stepdaughter's softball team executed a flawless double play during a tournament a couple of weeks ago, proof of their advancement as a team and the determination of expanding their talents on the field. Their excitement saturated me with an outburst of tingling goosebumps. It had been a long, chilly, rainy day, and my husband asked me if I was cold, to which I replied no. He further asked, “Are you just excited for them?” Yes, I was. I felt their exhilaration as if it were my own. He smiled, observing the happiness that had seemed to elude me for so long.
A surprise party had been in the planning stage for months. It was my in-laws' 40th wedding anniversary, and my mother-in-law was being surprised with a celebration and a renewal of their wedding vows. My husband’s sisters and their kids were coming up from Florida, a normal summertime visit as far as their mom was concerned. Family was being invited from both sides, long-time friends, and the pastor who had been my husband’s spiritual mentor in his childhood years.
My in-laws found themselves pregnant with my husband right out of high school and married young. Still together 40 years later was certainly a reason to celebrate. We don’t hear of any nuptials surviving that long anymore, especially between high school sweethearts. As all marriages do, they had good times of comfortable love and hard times that threatened to splinter their connection. I found the whole idea endearing and felt excitement for the surprise that my mother-in-law was going to receive. We share a similar need for reassurance and affection, and I knew her heart would sing.
In the middle of a heat advisory, we gathered together, awaiting her arrival. The renewal of vows would take place under a gazebo that my husband and I had decorated in silvers and golds earlier that day. We made two human lines, one on each side, creating an aisle for her to walk down. Much like I cried on my brother’s wedding day as he waited for his bride to make her entrance, I felt the gentle thrill of love.
Still trembling from the tender romanticism, the pastor began to speak of their unification. He delivered an inspiring sermon, filled with reflective wisdom, devotion to his belief in God’s predetermined plans for all of us, and the conviction that those who find true love were destined to find each other for reasons unknown to us.
He spoke of the significance of 40 years throughout the Bible. Lent lasts for 40 days. God flooded the earth for 40 days and nights. Jesus fasted for 40 days, wandered the wilderness for 40 days, and the Israelites spent 40 years in the desert before entering the Promised Land. It is a number associated with trials, sacrifices, and the hardships one must endure to become more spiritually aware.
The goosebumps came and wouldn’t wane. I am not a religious person or a devout follower of God as the Almighty, but I do hold the belief that there is something bigger and more transcendent than us at play in the universe. Regardless of not being a disciple of the Christian faith, scriptures come with enlightenment, lessons on how to live a dignified life, and a testament to the divination intertwined with existence.
He awakened something in me, an epiphany of sorts, a reminder that my suffering is my healing, and that everything happens for a reason. I felt assured that the perils of my life were simply a part of my journey to the advancement of my spiritual fulfillment.
I pray not for an easy life, but the strength to endure a difficult one.
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