Steve Colori reflects on healing emotional scars while dealing with his diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder.
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Throughout my time growing up, I had a difficult time communicating my emotions and feelings to other people. I also struggled to admit them to myself. I grew up in a household where my Dad also had difficulty expressing his emotions and I adopted the same behaviors from having looked up to and been around him so often. Whenever I tried communicating emotions and feelings, I was told that I needed to toughen up and to be tough. This caused me to fall into a habit of simply ignoring my emotional problems whenever I had any.
When I went to school and spent time playing sports with my friends this same culture also transcended from my household into my interactions with other people. In my mind it was a badge of honor to have problems I didn’t know how to fix but to be tough and to just move on without addressing them and this was the culture between my friends and I. My internal depiction of being a man was someone who never expressed any problems, who was tough, and who never complained or expressed dissatisfaction with anything.
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A big part of the problem with communicating feelings was that my friends didn’t understand my situation–and I never wanted to be seen as weak and we figured having emotional intelligence was a sign of weakness. We grew up playing sports and watching action movies. I was never really exposed to a male role model that had high emotional intelligence and was in a position to show me how that could be used to great effect. I was also under the impression that I had to be perfect and to admit that I had a weakness would have completely opposed this vision of myself and I believe many of my friends felt the same way. My belief that I had to perfect was motivation for me to bottle up my feelings and emotions.
0After a difficult middle school experience where I was depressed to the point where I nearly committed suicide I still was unwilling to express my feelings and emotions. At this juncture the experiences dwelling in my subconscious were far too emotionally salient to bare and I was afraid to face them. There was a knot of conflicting emotions and it lead to awkward social interactions throughout high school and into college. Although I still did have friends I struggled in group social situations.
My difficulties with socializing growing up were mostly a result of not being able to face my middle school experiences and sort through them. I was young and I don’t think anyone of that age would have been able to face issues of this magnitude alone. When I was offered help I immediately declined having any sort of discussion or therapy. The experiences were simply too painful and too salient for me to face at this age and my fear of enduring adverse emotions disinclined me to even slightly broach the subject. This unwillingness to face and address my problems later lead to a great deal of mental rigidity. Combined with other factors I later developed schizophrenia and I spiraled into my first episode and later had a second episode.
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Following my second episode I was forced to participate in talk therapy in order to improve my mental health and also because I wasn’t allowed to have any medication without talk therapy. During these sessions I was initially extremely reserved but my doctor eventually cracked the shell. I developed more emotional courage and I have found that it is many times far more difficult to turn inward than it is to look outward simply because of the pain involved in facing personal issues. Emotional pain is many times far more difficult to endure than physical pain.
Facing personal issues meant I had to admit that I had faults and there were things I could have done differently and that was initially a difficult burden to bare. Until I finally learned that this is the case for everyone and that none of us are perfect. From having a male role model who had a great deal of emotional intelligence I also adopted that same way of being. My doctor was still a very tough human being but he showed me how to put emotional intelligence to good use to alleviate a great deal of burden.
Eventually, I learned that it takes far more courage to face an emotional problem and eliminate it than to ignore one. However, I also learned that it’s far easier to face it because once it’s resolved it has brought a great deal of alleviation to my emotional disposition and my psyche. Over several years of talk therapy I have developed a great deal of emotional intelligence and having this intelligence has been one of the most useful tools in my recovery from schizoaffective disorder. Emotional Intelligence has been an invaluable resource that has helped me to understand and get along with almost everyone and it has given me insight into my mind that I otherwise would have never had.
I have learned that having emotional intelligence is not necessarily a question of masculinity, rather, it’s a question of intelligence. I learned in order to be truly happy I needed to have a good understanding of my emotions and feelings and through hard work in talk therapy, that was something that came to fruition.
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