Knowing how you feel gives you clarity of mind and empowers you to go forth and make good decisions for yourself. Especially for people that have been abused it is difficult to pinpoint how they are actually feeling. The often-heard advice is to get quiet this yourself and meditate. And that’s what I did but since having been brain washed into believing that living in fear is normal, being abused is love and being human is disgusting, I couldn’t label the things properly that came up during my meditations. However, I found a scientific way to bypass my family’s manipulation and reconnect with what I am feeling.
Charles Darwin (1) was the first to propose the concept basic emotions that are the same in all humans. To this day scientists are arguing if this is true or not. For the sake of our abused brains however let’s keep is simple and try to assign what we are feeling to one of the basic emotions: happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, disgust or fear.
To study human emotions, it is assumed that each has a corresponding facial expression that has been described in precise detail (2). Here too it is argued that these facial expressions are not universal, so you might have to culturally adapt them for yourself, but in the list below you find an overview on that facial expression each emotion has.
So let me tell you how I reverse engineer this thing to find out how I feel: It took me about a year to fully except the fact that I have never had loving parents. They say during that time you go through the stages of mourning. At the end of my meditations at the time I always sat there with the corners of my mouth pulled down. I thought that it was sadness, that I was moaning. However, I seemed unable to overcome the sadness, I was stuck, the sadness never reached my eyes, that I could cry and overcome this. The pulled down corners of my mouth were the only thing that felt real. Then I remembered the science and exaggerated my facial expression and then I realized: I felt DISGUST think about my parents. Putting these things rightfully together my parents’ behavior = disgust was crucial for me to move along my healing journey. It was a reconciliation between my body and mine that can’t be overestimated. It might sound silly to someone who didn’t have to go through abuse but finally knowing how you feel is such bliss like a harmony playing after decades of squeaking noises.
Anyway, since this realization I have lost all desire to stay in touch with my parents. I don’t love them; I am disgusted by their behavior – how can you treat people like this – how can you treat children like this. Why on earth would I want to hang out with people that I find disgusting?
(1) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) Charles Darwin
(2) Facial action coding system: Investigator’s guide (1978) Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V.
