Mark is crying. We’ve been talking about grief. The loss of his mother, his distant relationship between he and his father, the evidence of both that surfaces in his relationships with his own wife and children.
Mark has come to see me because his wife is leaving him. Gently, I ask if he knows what he’s feeling. “Pissed,” he tells me as the tears continue to stream down his face. He bats them away angrily. His wife is tired of being married to such an angry man. He’s angry instead of disappointed. He’s angry instead of guilty. He’s angry instead of sad.
Mark’s wife has experienced his angry responses to a wide range of experiences. She would be genuinely surprised to know that when she told him she wanted to leave him, his actual responses--on the inside, not the outside--were shame, hurt, and fear. These emotions feel vulnerable and uncomfortable, so rather than continuing to experience them he turned them into something that feels more powerful … anger.
Picture Mark as a young boy. Imagine him at four on the playground running happily until he trips, landing sprawled over a pile of rocks, bloody kneed. He runs to his father crying and his father halts him in his tracks, “Don’t be a baby!” he commands. “Stop crying!” Mark’s father isn’t trying to be cruel. He’s trying to raise a child who can survive in a world that crushes softness in boys. Mark takes a shuddering breath and stops his tears.
Source: Istiaque Emon/Unsplash
There are a thousand moments like this for Mark. The times other kids tease him for being a girl or purposefully bump hard into him in the hallway or in his neighborhood, or when his parents fight and he’s afraid. It’s never okay to cry or to look scared, but anger is safe. Mark develops a glare, and a habit of taking up space. If someone hurts him, he hurts them back. His body grows and his voice deepens and eventually he can’t recall that anger is only his surface self. By the time his mother dies during his teenage years, he no longer has the capacity to cry. That year he gets into a lot of fights at school and on the street. Mark isn’t sad anymore, he’s angry.
One way of describing what happened to Mark is to think about primary and secondary feelings. Primary feelings tend to be the uncomfortable ones, the ones that make us squirm with discomfort, that wake us in the middle of the night. When Mark’s wife tells him that she’s leaving, he’s devastated and terrified.
Anger on the other hand feels powerful. Mark would rather feel anger then shame at how much he’s hurt this woman he promised to love and cherish. He’d rather be enraged with her than feel the fear and anxiety of losing his family and not being there for his kids on a day to day basis. Mark would far rather think of his wife as a terrible person for breaking up their family. He’d rather be filled with righteous indignation at her for leaving him instead of staying to work on their problems.
Anger is almost always a secondary emotion. It’s the emotion we feel in reaction to other. That means there are other, more primary feelings, beneath the experience of anger and these feelings reflect deeper truths. This doesn’t mean that anger isn’t sometimes a useful feeling. But for people who over-identify with anger, it is important to develop the capacity to recognize and give voice to more vulnerable feeling states.
At Menergy, when we talk about identifying and expressing feelings, we are simply talking about describing something that is already true inside of us.
When Mark came to see us, he was already sad and scared and ashamed. Until the moment that we started talking about those emotions, though, he thought he was just angry that his wife was leaving him. He was identifying the secondary emotion with no real awareness that there was more underneath.
If Mark wants to start to develop a basic emotional intelligence there are a few initial steps:
1. Mark should have a few emotion words ready: anxious, sad, guilty, embarrassed, worried, scared, and disappointed
Why these words in particular? These are the feelings that tend to be most uncomfortable to acknowledge because they are associated with powerlessness. Because these feelings are so uncomfortable, many people learn to defend against them.
2. Develop a practice of paying attention to his emotional life.
People who aren’t paying close attention to their emotional lives tend to notice only their most extreme states. Mark should start to check in with himself throughout the day about what he’s feeling.
In the beginning, it might be useful to be noticing what’s happening in his body. Does he have butterflies in his stomach? Is it hard to breathe? Does his jaw feel tight? Over time, Mark may start to notice that butterflies mean he’s anxious. Or that difficulty breathing means sadness.
3. Increase his comfort level with talking about his emotions by practicing
Mark should expect that talking about his feelings may initially feel uncomfortable. None of us are skilled at things we haven’t practiced. We’re going to encourage him to begin doing it despite his discomfort, so that he can learn how to do it with greater ease and comfort.
Mistaking secondary emotions for primary emotions is one common error. We’re going to also push Mark to avoid five other emotion pitfalls:
1. Using overly broad language - “Bad” or “Good” are not emotions! Or rather, they are words that can be used to described feelings, but not specifically enough. Bad can mean too many things, as can good. To communicate a feeling in a way that’s useful to someone else, we need to use words that are clearer and more specific.
2. Mistaking cognitions for emotions “I feel confused.” Confusion indicates a lack of understanding, not an emotional state. “I feel like…” or “I feel as if…” If you add the words “like” or “as if” to “I feel,” what you are going to say next will be a thought, not a feeling.
3. Mistaking judgments for emotions. “I feel betrayed.” “I feel set up.” Betrayal, abandonment, ridicule are all examples of judgments of another person’s intent rather than feelings. “If I think that you betrayed me, I feel….”
4. Failing to own the experience. “You feel worried” rather than “I feel worried”
5. Mistaking an accusation for emotions- “I feel like you don’t listen to me”
As Mark leaves my office, he apologizes for crying in front of me. We see so many angry men here in our program, men who hold themselves apart, who fail to cry or who hold their fear close and their shame in silence. Mark imagines that his sadness will be met with disdain or revulsion, that if his wife could see how sad he was, she’d think less of him. Being angry will keep him feeling safe and strong, but if what he wants is connection and intimacy, then sadness is what will truly save him.
from Psychology Today - Relationships http://ift.tt/1P1joE7
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