I wrap emotions in the cool embrace of jargon to soften sharp edges, take the sting out of ones I feel to keenly. It's why I got into this field. It's why I studied what I did. Of course I care for my patients, and of course I live what I do, but my reason for being here, for being a psychologist, is a simple insatiable need to explain away my emotions.
I've talked about it with my therapist at length - we all have them, therapist-therapists, and you should never trust a therapist who does not. We talk about my need to hide behind words as a way of reducing my vulnerability. They become armor, when taken in this sense.
There's a tension, then, between these two explanations: to put it the way I did at the beginning is to allow words to be a useful tool to define the edges of my emotions and perhaps make them easier to digest and understand in the process.
To here Jeremy's suggestion, though, my words are a means by which I might reduce my responsibility to actually feel the emotions I try to define.
Thus me, sitting here on my lunch break, writing journal entries on my phone.
