We all dress-rehearse tragedy, right? Like if imagining the worst and conjuring tears and pain will somehow prepare you for the real thing. Except it doesn’t, of course.
Like imagining the death of someone you love. But no nightmare you walk yourself through will ever spare you the pain when it happens.
And often we do this in moments of joy when we are experiencing or imagining something good first. Brené Brown taught me this.
Why do we insist on dress-rehearsing tragedy in moments of deep joy? Because joy is the most vulnerable emotion we feel. And that’s saying something, given that I study fear and shame. When we feel joy, it is a place of incredible vulnerability—it’s beauty and fragility and deep gratitude and impermanence all wrapped up in.
Brené Brown
I’ve been doing a lot of dress rehearsing lately. Or rather, doing a lot of trying to prevent myself from dress rehearsing. I’ve never prioritized distraction so highly before.
But I catch myself walking through the emotions, tearing up, creating whole dialogues around something that hasn’t happened yet. That I hope won’t happen. I did it earlier this evening for a minute — it’s like walking to the mirror in a trance, I don’t even know how I got there red-eyed and acting out a play that I don’t want to see.
Then I said aloud, “It won’t make it hurt any less” and walked away. To then watch birth story videos on YouTube because that is the person I am now.
With Love,
Natalie