from "The Healthy Emotion Expression Handbook."
Preface
“Healthy Emotional Expression.”
What a wholesome sounding phrase!
We would all want what is healthy for us, of course,
and yet embedded in the idea that there is a “healthy” way to express our
emotions is also the suggestion that there is also an “unhealthy” way to
express them as well.
I imagine that way is something that we’re all very
familiar with. We have all been exposed to unhealthy emotional expression at
some point, and most of us have been guilty of it ourselves. Shouting, berating
others, blaming them for how we feel, making judgments of them, calling them
names, being vicious or even violent. These are all tragic ways we try to
express hurt feelings in order to encourage others to change their ways, and
yet more often than not they do more to harm than to help.
These approaches to self-expression erode the good
will within our relationships, and make it less likely for other people to
willingly help us meet our goals. Even if we can convince others to do what we
want in these ways they are unlikely to do so happily. They may help
grudgingly, with lingering feelings of resentment - and resentment is
relationship carcinoma.
If we would all want what is healthy for us why
would we continue to express ourselves in these unhealthy ways?
For all too many of us these are the only types of
emotional expression we have the chance to bear witness to as children, and if
we don’t replicate the model for self-expression we inherited we are as likely
to: “If that’s what expressing feelings looks like then expressing feelings is
not something I want to have any part of at all!”
Some refuse to express their emotions because they
perceive it as a weak thing to do! (Nothing could be further from the truth –
sometimes it takes extreme strength to express oneself honestly when it seems
dreadfully scary to do so!)
Others don’t like expressing themselves honestly
because they feel vulnerable, are afraid of intimacy, or within their history
expressing how they felt in the ways they knew how scared potential partners or
friends away.
In other cases our feelings were invalidated as
children. “Don’t get angry.” “Life’s like that, you take the good with the bad,
keep your chin up.” Or, “Stop crying, don’t be a baby” (which is the biological
equivalent of telling a child not to urinate, because tears clear impurities
out of the system.)
Or perhaps the feelings of our primary caregivers
took precedence over our own, and our needs were seen as an inconvenience, and
so we quickly learned not to feel anything at all!
How then may we have learned to identify what was
going on inside us so we could express our preferences in ways which would help
others to help us to meet our goals? How could we effectively offer others our
willingness to help them meet their goals too, and develop the kind of
fulfilling relationships that arise out of reciprocity, mutual trust and
respect?
In the worst of circumstances, it holds true that in
an abusive situation it is often safer not to feel anything at all than to feel
all the effects of our abuse there and then. This is the mind’s defense against
hopelessness. It learns to master the emotions by turning them off, and in
doing so ensures its safety in the short term.
Sadly though, when we grow older and have the
ability to remove ourselves from abusive situations these defense mechanisms do
not always deactivate themselves lightly.
It seems all too true that if we were not shown a
model of healthy emotional expression to follow then it is something we need to
learn of our own volition, as adults, in the same way that were we not exposed
to French as children it is something we would need to take it upon ourselves
to learn.
Often our feelings are there to keep us safe, to
teach us what we want out of life and about the way we think, to warn us away
from those who might harm us, and draw us towards those who are nurturing and
make our lives wonderful.
We are better not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
This book forms a concise guide on how to use your emotions rather than let
them use you.
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