Written by Yosef Michael on April 9, 2025.

I was doing a DBT exercise on describing my emotions. I was finally able to cry for more than 1 second. I cried intensely for about 30 seconds before I cut it off. A minute or two later, I cried another 10 seconds before I cut it off.

It might now seem like much, but for me, it was a breakthrough of tremendous importance.

The DBT exercise had five steps.

I focused on the event that occurred when I was 14 years old. I had just beaten the school bully and went home to tell my father, but he wasn’t home, and he came home drunk, and the second night, he was intoxicated and almost killed me, and I had to move away to live with my mother. I wrote about that. Click the link if you want to read it. [https://yosefmichael.com/2024/06/20/the-conclusion-dont-enter-a-ring-with-a-man-twice-your-size/].

I’m a man who knows little about emotions. The exercise gave a list of positive and negative emotions to choose from. I chose Insecurity.

The next step was to draw a picture representing Insecurity. I’m not sure if I will post the drawing. I drew a picture of me with both arms in the air, my hands wide, my fingertips a little lower than the top of my head like a large W, and two tears rolling down from each eye.

I will leave out what I wrote about which action I wanted to take due to that event.

I rated the level of intensity on a scale from 1 to 10 as 10. It was very intense!

Here is the thing: I realized I wasn’t merely feeling one emotion but many. I had felt overpowered by many intense emotions simultaneously! 

I summarized my emotions of that experience: I felt many different emotions simultaneously. If each emotion were a different type of fruit, I would have felt like a bowl of fruit cocktail at that time!

Insecurity, Fear, Anger, Sadness, Betrayal, I felt like I just lost my father forever, and I was confused. Until that event happened, I loved my father, but from then on, I hated him!

I did lose him because he died before we made peace. However, about 15 years ago, give or take, my father visited me in a dream, and we finally made peace, but it has taken me 45 years to deal with my emotions over how I lost him.

I wish I would have begun writing about my traumatic experiences years ago! I started writing about them in January 2023; today is April 9, 2025. I’m feeling much better now. I feel like I cast off a great weight, and for the first time, I feel light.

ברוך השם! (Bless G-d!)

Be well,

Yosef