There are two situations in life when words fail me. The first is when I’m attracted to someone – doesn’t happen often, but when it does you can guarantee that my ability to converse like a person with a brain suddenly disappears.

The second is when I’m overwhelmed. Some years ago, I had such a terrible job that when people asked me about work, I just replied ‘yeah it’s fine’ because I didn’t have the energy to express what was really going on and how it was making me feel.

It turns out there’s a third occasion and I only found out about it very recently when someone I’m currently coaching identified it for me. It’s actually quite funny because they were able to articulate something they said can’t be articulated! They explained that when it comes to our values they are so connected to how we feel, it can be difficult to explain why they’re important to us and how we feel when someone stomps all over them. (or words to that effect).

Such a simple concept but one that explained everything I’d been feeling but have been unable to articulate for ages.

M.I.A

You may not have noticed but having been quite consistent with blogging (I try to publish something at least once a month) I’ve posted nothing since February. This wasn’t the plan. I was actually working on something that was going to take a while to pull together because I asked for contributions from a few people (all of whom delivered, thank you!) and also because it was going to be a series based on a single topic so I would be writing 3 pieces at least.

I’ve attempted to get on with it since March, and I wrote something but it was garbage.

In my defence, I haven’t been very well. I had a pretty nasty cold that’s still lingering, I was having daily headaches and nausea, and I ended up back at A&E again with chest pains and shortness of breath (not another blood clot this time thank God!) so I was a little distracted.

On the occasions when I did sit down to write it, as I said, what I was writing was garbage. I decided maybe I needed to write about something else then go back to the other pieces, but the ‘something else’ was also garbage. I couldn’t get my thoughts together.

I’m very clear about what I want to say but I just couldn’t articulate it in a way that didn’t sound like absolute shit. Naturally, I was thinking about why this was happening and decided that maybe I just needed to take a break for a while. Then I thought about writers who say you should just push through when you get writer’s block so, feeling like a failure for taking a break, I started writing, but I was just producing more garbage. The garbage made me sad, so I stopped writing. Not writing made me feel like a lazy failure so I forced myself to write again, but I just produced more garbage, and on, and on…

Then I had the session with the aforementioned coachee who managed to explain the inexplicable and now, I think I understand what might be happening.

Word soup

I have a coach, two mentors and a close friend who I go to for support. (because it takes a lot of people to keep me functioning!) Each person provides support for the different areas in my life, but I’ve realised that in all instances I’ve not been articulating my needs and thoughts very well. I thought this was because I wasn’t clear about what my needs are in the sense that something is wrong, or something needs to change but I don’t know what or how. 

Turns out this wasn’t correct. Upon reflection, I’ve been thinking my life is just full of problems, when the truth is there’s one big problem and it’s effecting different aspects of my life.

The problem?

The problem is that many key aspects of my life at the moment are not aligning with my values. This is hard to communicate because while some values can be verbalised, why they’re important to you and how you feel when you’re not aligned with them is often really hard to put into words, just like the coachee said.

I’m going to be very honest. The levels of disrespect, disappointment and frustration in various forms I’ve experienced recently have been soul destroying. Being disrespected, disappointed and frustrated is not new to me at all, but this time around I will admit, I’ve found it harder to ‘bounce back’ from it like I always do. Add to this not being able to verbalise how I’m feeling and the result is me developing huge waves of anxiety, something that, until now had always been situational, temporary and manageable. Why can’t I verbalise it? Because it sounds so basic and almost childish when said out loud and it sounds this way because I can’t verbalise how these (to others) seemingly small issues are actually hurting me.

It’s like someone saying: ‘I’m starving’. Most of us think that person is just really hungry, but if that person has a brain tumour in a particular part of the brain, despite the fact that they may have eaten less than an hour ago, they may literally feel like they’re starving. And if they don’t know they have a brain tumour, they genuinely can’t explain why they desperately need to eat something, despite having just eaten, so the best they can do is say ‘I’m starving’ and everyone just thinks they’re greedy.

Deadly silence

For various reasons, I’m very good at not saying what’s on my mind. I have, and do hold a lot in. In fairness to myself, I’m better than I used to be but not as good as I should be. It’s a work in progress, but clearly I’m not progressing fast enough because last year I was diagnosed with an autoimmune illness and if you’re familiar with conversations about and research into autoimmune illnesses in women, like the ones mentioned in this article, you’ll know that some instances may be linked to emotional suppression.

If this is true, it makes sense. A few years ago, I was overcome with a deep and all-consuming rage I didn’t even know I was capable of, and it terrified me. I kept it all in until it got to the point where I just knew I would end up hurting myself or someone else, and at that point I saw a counsellor. I had kept everything in because although I could explain what had upset me, I couldn’t find the words to express how what had happened had made me feel without it sounding (in my mind at least) ridiculous, even though I knew it wasn’t.

Of course, the irony is that I tell people all the time and genuinely believe that: ‘if it’s important to you then it’s important’.

In hindsight, I think there may be two strands to this issue. One is not having the words (or the words not existing) to describe some feelings and their impact. The other is not feeling allowed to feel how I was (and am) feeling.  In the past I’ve been yelled at for expressing my feelings (calmly and respectfully I might add), being dismissed as being ‘too sensitive’, and often feeling the need to ‘be strong’ in all situations because even the slightest weakness on my part, especially professionally, will make women, black people, people with albinism, and people with impairments look bad (yeah, absolute nonsense I know, but I am aware that I do carry that for some reason!), it does sometimes feel like I should just keep quiet. Other times I feel overcome with rage and it’s rare that anything positive comes from speaking in anger so, when I’m feeling like that, silence seems like the best option. When I do speak up, I’m often misunderstood – usually on purpose because it’s easier than making amends.

Garbage

The pieces I’ve been trying to write since March are centred around leadership so nothing emotional or deeply jarring, just some musings along with some input from someone with years of leadership experience, and others with years of work experience in non-leadership positions. But I wasn’t able to write it properly. I thought it was because maybe I don’t care enough about the topic, but that’s not true. Quite the opposite in fact. I came up with the idea based on some dark shit people were telling me which made me think of things I’ve witnessed and experienced in my working life and I was pissed. That’s why I wanted to write about it, to contribute to the discussion about leadership (albeit in a small way) from the POV of people who are often excluded from these discussions.

But I couldn’t make it make sense. I knew what I wanted to say but the words weren’t cooperating. And now I think I understand why. I said the topic wasn’t jarring but it is. It’s jarring for me because I kept seeing, through what people had told me about their experiences, from what I’ve experienced myself, and from the statistics and reports I read while researching, that poor leadership is more prevalent that I thought, and its ramifications are awful for the people subjected to it but no one seems to care. All kinds of excuses are made, and the onus is always on those being poorly led to make the necessary changes, because God forbid the people that get paid (a lot more than the people they manage I might add) exercise some common sense and decency as part of their leadership styles! It’s so friggin’ unfair.

And fairness is one of my values.

The solution

So, regarding the article, the fog has now cleared thanks to my coachee and I’ve written the main part, albeit framing it differently to what I had in mind initially. It’ll be up soon.

Regarding my ability to articulate the inarticulatable (!) I’ll keep trying. Shakespeare contributed to the evolution of the English language without meaning to, so maybe I can too!

As for being ‘allowed’ to feel and articulate my feelings, I know I don’t need permission, I’ve known this for a while. This is more about breaking old thought patterns that tend to re-emerge when I’m stressed out.

And my misaligned values? That’s a whole new topic that I’ll write about later! 😊