I embarked on my project of emotional integration in the late nineties, when I noticed, for the first time, that I was highly unaware of my underlying attitudes about my history and my past. This set me at an extreme disadvantage in relation to those who could claim to know more about my history than I knew. These people -- who also had a political ax to grind -- seemed not to have essential bits of information missing from their emotional repertoires in the way I did. Of course, they were often wrong about their ideas concerning my past experiences in Rhodesia and later Zimbabwe, but because I didn't trust my emotions, I had no way of setting them right.
I had all sorts of reasons for repressing emotion. My father used to punish any emotional self-expression, as he thought it implied disruption and disintegration of the family. I learned that "the family" could not withstand honesty, but had to end it to persist. The nature of the war, which was culturally viewed as being primarily a male issue, also meant I was out of touch with the political events taking place. Children were not to know those things adults did, and women were also kept from knowing a great deal of it. These were some of the contributing factors, leading to my emotionally repressed state. There were more.
For instance, my father also emphasized to me that we were refugees fleeing Africa, and that we were at the mercy of our new "hosts", whom we had to please and appease to fit in. This was also why I didn't look too deeply for my roots or attempt to process the past and its meaning. One had to look forward, as an imperative. It didn't matter if one lost one's identity by looking forward to fit in. One had to simply contrive to fit in, and everything else would be taken care of, by the Good Lord Above.
I contrived to "fit in" by following this recipe -- only the recipe didn't work out. Emotional repression is like that. When everything one does has an underlying imperative -- simply to gain approval and fit in -- one's inner life is stifled. Also, that we had left a situation where everything was meted out in terms of life and death, a fifteen year civil war, meant that the new cultural context gained this aura, too. Any sign of not conforming or not "fitting in" was severely reprimanded by my father. As time went on, extra demands were made. Questioning Christianity made my father think I was "going off the rails".
This explains why I was emotionally repressed (my authoritarian upbringing and the implicit terror of civil war and war in the home), why I desperately endeavored to "fit in" (I had to do so under pain of death), and why ultimately, I couldn't fit in at all (I couldn't process my emotions enough to understand the meaning of my own sensations, which meant any effort to conform was at best mechanical, and ultimately ineffectual).
People who were in tune with their feelings and thus "sensitive" ultimately seemed very appealing to me, but this was not until I had already achieved a primary level of emotional self-training, on my own. I made a huge amount of advance in emotional integration through studying Nietzsche, especially Human All Too Human and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche had a similar, repressed mental state to my own, but had broken through that to something different. I needed to do that, too, because the years of repression were taking a toll on my health, and I was suffering from allergies of all sorts and a broken down immune system (both of which, of course, made my father very angry with me -- to him, they were a sign of a failure.)
I eventually broke through, to a tremendous degree, such that I have a man I've married who is one hundred percent compatible with me. I live the lifestyle I want, and I take pleasure in expressing myself through writing.
There's a remaining issue, though, and that is the limit to my adaptability. I've expended so much energy, just coming this far, that it enough for several lifetimes. I've integrated my own emotions but I don't always inevitably understand the attitudes of others especially when they speak in a complaining way.
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