The Case of Feeling Homesick: Act I
A series exploring the enigma of my homesickness, "hiraeth", or other term for the elusive emotion I'm experiencing.
I would like to use this platform to explore an experience of mine in real time. I have been the witness to an emotion in my body that has left me wondering what it is and why it reoccurs. I will be applying all my experiential knowledge and tools together in the following weeks to navigate this mystery in hopes to gain a better understanding of the feeling and offer my experience to someone looking for some answers regarding the same phenomenon.
Description of Feeling:
An emotional ache, a weight in my heart similar to homesickness and heartbreak, detached from external factors, with fleeting waves that come and go, yet the tears never find their release. It's discomfort at its mildest, but an internal torment at its most insidious. The symptoms may echo melancholy or depressive disorder but remain erratic and transient.
Words are pretty limiting to describing this feeling, but I’m doing my best here! 😅
For the purposes of this case study, I'll refer to this feeling as "Homesickness."
Earliest memory:
Driving home from a week’s stay at my grandma’s house in my younger years, leading me to believe it was similar to being homesick.
In my quest for answers, I stumbled upon the term "Hiraeth," a Welsh word signifying a deep longing, especially for one's home. However, the feeling I experienced did not align precisely with homesickness, since occurring seemingly at random, becoming more frequent towards 2023 and onward.
I took note of every time the sensation came to me, leading me to a pattern of instances:
Upon waking
Stepping out of the shower
In solitude or when feeling alone
When fatigued, often in late afternoon
Contemplating something I long for
During pregnancy, increasing as it progressed, sometimes multiple times daily
When feeling the baby move or feeling my belly
In the third trimester of pregnancy is when these occurrences intensified, prompting a deeper exploration into this subject.
Coping Mechanisms:
Sleeping
Eating
Time
At this point, I considered potential theories resulting in this recurring emotion:
1) Escape Shadow Work
The need for a nap to cope might be because there is a deep shadow that is too painful to address, even leading to dissociation, therefore avoiding the emotion entirely.
2) Spiritual Yearning
Homesickness could be on a spiritual level, not tied to Earth but possibly another lifetime, celestial location, or within myself.
3) Duality
What’s getting me through the emotional pain is trusting that things worsen before getting better. Duality! Ha! So the increase of occurrences and intensity could indicate a potential phase conclusion or nearing the root cause.
4) Hormonal Amplification
Hormonal changes during pregnancy might be to blame for amplifying psychological shifts related to becoming a mother.
5) Generational Trauma
The emotion could be a manifestation of recent generational trauma still being released before the baby’s arrival, suggesting time as the only healer.
6) Dissonance of Life and Death
The triggers relating to feeling the baby could be linked to the theme of life and death.
Contemplating this homesickness plunges me into a sense of hopelessness, evoking thoughts of despair. With the impending birth of the baby representing life, there could be a conflicting alignment within this entanglement.
This potential conflict becomes clearer when viewed through the lens of relativity, as outlined in my notes below (“time on earth clock” representing life and “time in head clock” representing death). By fixating on my emotional pain, I inadvertently amplify the severity of depressive symptoms. If there exists a connection between the life of the baby and my subconscious associations with death, redirecting my focus toward positive thoughts or engaging in activities I cherish may serve to realign my emotional state.
This theory could also mirror the tension of my thoughts and beliefs with my behaviour, a cognitive dissonance in action. Illustrated the same way in the chart below - “time on earth clock” representing action and “time in head clock” representing thoughts and beliefs… I’ll be exploring this more in the future.
Additional Observation:
The intensity of this sensation started to leave a look of disgust on my face, reflecting resistance. Disgust, as per Robert Plutchik's Emotion Wheel, suggests the opposite emotion is trust.
I sense this puzzle piece fits somewhere, as it could just be a sign to trust that the feeling will pass in divine timing.
Explore the interactive Emotion Wheel here.
Needless to say, this has been very challenging to overcome so far and consumes me every day. I am only just beginning to dive deeper into the realm of emotions as I’ve never had as much awareness of my emotions as I do now.
Truthfully though, navigating and (dare I say) psychoanalyzing my experience brings me great excitement, because if I couldn’t find any purpose to what I’m going through, I don't know how I would make it another day like this. - Ha! There I go again, alleviating the tension in my own internal cognitive dissonance. 😆
Will all the potential theories play a role in feeling homesick? If so, how will it all come together? The interplay between these ideas and their resonance with my own truth is still uncertain. I'll update you on what I find in the next post.
If you have any personal experiences you’d like to share or thoughts you’d like to add, feel free to drop it in the comments for discussion! Thanks for joining me!
The Case of Feeling Homesick: Act II
This is the unfolding case of a sensation I’ve been feeling, rare at first but has progressed stronger and more frequent over the course of my pregnancy. I call it “homesick” but only because I don’t have a clear understanding of what I’m feeling yet.