Speak the Feelings That Haunt You in the Quiet Moments

I was 21 when I discovered the power of telling people how I felt.

I’d always felt trapped by my feelings for someone because I was too afraid to express them. But after a date gone wrong, the floodgates broke.

I suddenly felt like I had nothing to lose, and I told this guy exactly how I’d felt about him and how his rejection made me feel.

I was unaware of the people who walked past us as we stood next to a tree in the middle of campus. I just knew I needed to express my feelings.

Vocalizing a fear weakens its hold on you.

Psychologists say that verbally expressing a fear or phobia helps “curb negative responses to what we fear.”In an experiment with arachnophobia, psychologists discovered that people who verbalized their fear of spiders with sentences like, “I feel anxious the disgusting tarantula will jump on me,” had decreased negative responses to what they fear, according to an article from Psychology Today. Likewise, students who spent ten minutes writing about their exam fears before a big exam ended up with higher test scores.

“Ironically, when we label our fears, they are less likely to pop up in mind at a later date and lead us astray. Verbalizing our anxieties seems to help us manage our behavior. This is true whether we are trying to get over our fear of eight-legged creatures or ace a high-stakes test,” wrote Sian Beilock Ph.D. in her article “The Power of Expressing Yourself.”

While these studies didn’t deal with relationships, I would say the same is true for expressing your feelings to others—especially when it comes to break-ups or unrequited love.

I used to hold onto things long after they were over.

I’ve always tended to hold onto to feelings for someone long after the relationship was dead and in the ground. I’d never known how to cut my losses and move on, but it was different with this guy. We’d gone on a date, he had changed his mind about how he felt, and I’d said my piece. I had never moved on so fully or healthily. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I believe it was that final conversation about the lost possibility of “us” that allowed me to move on and continue to be his friend.

The power of expressing my feelings came crashing home again a year later. As is my tendency, I’d fallen hard and fast for another guy who didn’t want me. He’d led me on to distract himself from the things in his own life that he didn’t want to face. After he’d told me he didn’t want to date me because he didn’t want to date anyone but his ex and then started dating another girl a few weeks later, I was decimated. During our brief fling, he’d built me up, and his rejection brought me lower than I’d ever been. I had to rebuild myself from the ground up as I battled with depression and fatigue.

Telling him how I felt immediately set me free.

Six months later, I thought I was fine. I’d moved on, and my life was good. But I still held onto feelings for him.

Sometimes I wondered if things could ever be different—if maybe he’d change his mind. The combination of resentment and lingering attraction took up my energy and made it difficult to be in the same room with him. One day, our friends were late for dinner, and it ended up being just us at a restaurant. This boy who had broken my heart began to ask my advice on the girl he was dating, telling me that he wanted to marry her someday and asking if he should tell her that.

All of my feelings began to rise in my throat. He was well aware that I’d had feelings for him—that much I’d told him months earlier as I cried on the phone. He was well aware that he’d broken my heart—our mutual friends had undoubtedly told him that. But here he was asking me for advice on his relationship.

Suddenly, the words were flying out of my mouth: “You used me. You used me.”

He didn’t deny it. Instead, he replied, “It sounds like you’ve wanted to say for a long time.”

“I guess I did,” I replied.

After that conversation, I walked away without baggage.

I walked away from that restaurant lighter. I’d left behind the baggage of our relationship. He still wasn’t my favorite person, and I’d be lying if I said I walked away with my heart unbruised. But still, I left behind the weight of wanting him and of wanting a future with him. Today, I have no feelings for this boy who once had so much power to both send my heart soaring and send me into the depths of despair.

It was at that moment that I realized it was the feeling of being used that had kept me holding on. It colored our relationship, and it colored how I viewed my relationships with other guys. When I put a name on the feeling and vocalized it to him, I ceased to be defined by how he’d treated me. I’ve used the same technique since with varying degrees of success. It’s not a cure-all, but it saves me from the debilitating weight of wondering “what if.”