#58 - Express Yourself
How many times do we really answer truthfully when someone asks ‘How are you?’ And actually how many times does the person asking REALLY want to know the truth? Why do we find it so difficult to express our true feelings? I can think of a few reasons:
Fear of showing our vulnerable side as that may lead to hurt
Fear of being judged as weak or over-emotional
Fear of saying out loud what we are bottling up inside as it makes it more real
Fear of being a burden to others who have got enough on their plate
It’s also interesting how when we express how we are feeling, we tend to use the same predictable go-to words. I am ‘fine’ or ‘good’ or ‘ok’. Or even a lazy 3 letter word ‘Meh’ which can say so much without saying anything at all.
The English language has so many fantastic words at our disposal but we use a small fraction or our vocabulary. As a lover of words, I bought a book recently by Susie Dent ‘An Emotional Dictionary’ dedicated to providing interesting words to describe how you feel. So I have picked out some of my favourites and am going to make an effort to use some of them to express how I am feeling.
BETWEENITY - a state of in-betweenness or indecisiveness
CLINOMANIA - the overwhelming desire to lie down
CROOCHIE-PROOCHLES - a Scots expression to describe an uncomfortable feeling of restlessness
CROTCHETY - irritable and peevish (bent out of shape like a hook)
DISCOMBOBULATED - state of being unsettled and unnerved (interestingly there isn’t an opposite ‘combobulated’
DUMFUNGLED - utterly exhausted and spent
EBULLIENT - cheerful and full of energy
LACKADAISICAL - Lethargic and indifferent
LALOCHEZIA - Now this one I can relate to - the relief of stress and pain through swearing!!! (a bout of extreme effing and jeffing apparently helps us more than we think as long as you are in safe company)
LETABUND - full of joy
PANGLOSSIAN - unreasonably optimistic (quite like the derivation of this - Dr Plangloss was a character in Voltaire’s satire Candide who is almost hanged, nearly dissected, imprisond and ravaged by syphilis and yet is still cheery and is convinced that everything happens for a reason)
PANURGIC - ready for anything
PIGRITIOUS - extreme laziness
QUIDDLING - to waste time on unimportant things
THROBLESS - hard-hearted and devoid of emotion
SUBTRIST - a little bit sad - a low-level sadness that never quite takes over but is debilitating
So next time you ask the question ‘how are you?’ make sure you really mean it. And next time someone asks how you are - get creative with the words you use to express yourself.
