For many years the classes I have taught at a large university all involved social/emotional education (SE). They worked best with a discussion format, rather than lectures, in seminars of about 20 students. Until recently the topic of these courses has been Communicating, role-playing difficult conversations that the students report. My present courses concern The World of Pop Songs. In this course we examine the emotional/relational elements in pop lyrics and in the students own lives.
The biggest problem in all of the SE classes has been getting men enrolled and keeping them involved in the class once enrolled. I have no objection to teaching only women, but the women themselves object to classes with few or no men. After much trial and error, I learned how to attract men to the classes and to keep them involved.
The assignments that have worked best in the SE classes are four exercises. In the second week they get the first exercise, to write a list of what I call Best Moments.The students briefly list moments of deep contentment and/or a secure bond with another person or a sense of community with a group. They are told to explore each memory at length, to the point that they feel pride and/or joy.
This step, when it works, provides a powerful incentive for further explorations. Some of the men find that they can learn to cry in this way. (Think of the photos of all three Olympic athletes crying on their pedestals after they received their medals.) Some women students find that the exercise increases the number of good cries, and/or decreased the number of bad cries.
To illustrate what seems to be a new idea, here is an example from my own list of best moments: At the age of 14, I joined the Boy Scouts. The scoutmaster, his wife, and the other scouts accepted me as a full equal. My moment occurred when I realized I was no longer an outsider.
In the fourth week, I ask students to write Gratitude Letters, writing to all those persons, alive and dead, to whom they feel especially grateful (Martin Seligman's idea.) This exercise, in conjunction with Best Moments, also helps men to learn to cry.
The assignment for the sixth week is to form an empathic emotional union with another person, by hook or crook, no matter the content. They are to avoid TOPIC talk, trying for RELATIONSHIP talk. Anything that is not happening in the moment is topic talk. An example of relationship talk is "I didn't understand what you just said. Could you repeat it?" or "You seem sad," "I am proud of you," and so on. Relationship talk is about what is happening in the moment, to either person, or between them. Most people find it difficult to avoid topic talk.
In the 8th week, when the students have a confidante, or feel secure enough to do memory exercises alone, they are to try to remember and re-experience unresolved grief, fear, anger and shame to the point of acknowledgment. That means remembering an emotion state accompanied by the actual experience of that emotion. That is, the memory should be more than just cognitive.
The students initially find this assignment problematic. Most often, they can remember the episode, but can't tap the associated feelings. Or, less often, they find the feelings all too readily, and promptly get lost in them. The first type is overdistanced, too far from the feelings, in terms of my theory of drama (Catharsis in Healing, Ritual and Drama, 1979). The second difficulty is underdistanced, they are so close to the unresolved moment that they end up merely repeating, rather than resolving it.
The goal that I set for the students is to experience the feelings at optimal distance, moving rapidly back and forth between the past feelings and their present safety.
Peter Levine (Waking the Tiger, 1997) writes of pendulation in a similar way, moving back and forth between the past feelings and the present safety. At the right distance, students are able to experience and resolve feelings that had hitherto been unresolved. This idea helps explain why students like horror films and rollercoaster rides: they experience strong emotions in a context that they know to be safe.
Most students start this process with grief, since it often goes unresolved in our society. I recently overheard heard a woman at a party saying that she stays on anti-depressants because she gets "weepy" when she goes off them. Perhaps she, like most of us, needs to cry, in spite of the current favorite pop song, Big Girls Don't Cry.
Everyone, not just my students, needs time and the confidence to cry, resolve their fears, acknowledge their shame, and deal with their other emotions. For this purpose, they also need a secure bond, perhaps first with a therapist or teacher, then with a friend or relative. Since the four exercises described here have worked well for me and a majority of my students for the last 40 years, they might also be helpful for others.
