Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [59]
FEEL YOUR FEELINGS
Painful feelings, even the most intense of them, have a tendency to run their course if you let them, so an initial strategy is to make yourself as comfortable as possible and wait. Find your jealous feelings—hurt or anger or whatever—and let them flow through you, like a river. Your mind may be racing with nasty thoughts, angry, blaming, focusing on some detail that you’re absolutely certain those other people did wrong, obsessing on believing that someone is taking advantage of you or riding roughshod over your naked emotions. You hurt a lot, so surely it must be somebody’s fault! But sometimes there is great pain and there is no villain. Allow us to reassure you: we all go through this. Don’t die of shame, just let these thoughts run through you, too.
Feelings, once uncovered, can be better understood by reflecting on them. It is useful to have scripts and strategies for self-exploration. Journal writing, preferably with total disregard for grammar and syntax, can be a good way to vent feelings and learn about yourself at the same time. It is okay to cover pages of your journal with FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK I HATE THIS! in bright red ink; if this feels good to you, we recommend you get an extra-large journal. Try writing down your stream of consciousness, which means whatever you find in your head whether or not it makes sense, and see what you get. Treasures, jewels of self-knowledge, are often found here.
You can get a big drawing pad and a set of oil pastels, which are crayons for grown-ups. These big crayons encourage expression with bright colors and discourage getting hung up on details (they’re too fat to get crabby with). Sometimes you will draw and get squiggles, and that’s great; the smallest thing you can accomplish still helps you hold still for a while and rant in color. Other times, you may surprise yourself with a drawing that is profoundly meaningful to you. Both of us use drawing a lot to vent our strong feelings and discover things about ourselves. Dossie quit smoking this way, and Janet used it as an important tool to get out of suburbia and recover her sluthood, and we assure you that neither of us is a great artist.
Some people like to express their feelings with their bodies and might like to run, or work out at the gym, or clean the kitchen, or dig in the garden. Safety note: if your feelings like intense physical expression, you will need to keep a piece of your mind alert to the fact that you’re heavily adrenalized and feel stronger than you actually are, so give a little attention to what you can do without injury. Dossie once hiked up a big hill in a stressed-out state and felt powerful and wonderful—she remembers thinking about how she must be in much better shape then she thought she was. The next day was agony of the physical kind, with strained muscles and swollen joints.
Try finding music that fits your mood, angry or sad or frantic, and dancing your feelings out. It can be very satisfying to get a cheap plastic tennis racket and beat up your couch. Kneel in front of the couch, raise the racket above your head, and bring it down with all your strength. Keep your eyes open, imagine anything on the couch that you are angry at except yourself, and yell, loudly, how you feel.
When you express yourself, you get to know yourself better and work out some of the most intense stress constructively. The least you could wind up with would be a clean kitchen, and you might actually feel good after a self-indulgent afternoon on the beach.
POOR BABY
Try focusing on the feelings in your body: where do you feel these emotions, in your throat, chest, gut? Turning your attention to the physical sensations can intensify them and might bring up tears, but they will move on through even more readily if you allow yourself to feel them on the physical