"How can anyone not know what they feel"? my Sweetie said to me, looking up from a book he was reading.
I have no idea what occasioned that remark but I jumped right in. "Easy. Many people have been told from birth that they don't feel what they are feeling or must be feeling something else. "Don't cry, that didn't hurt." "You don't want another toy, you have so many." "Big boys aren't afraid." "But you LOVE your little brother!"
It doesn't stop with childhood. It's lifelong. "You can't be in love. You're too young." "Did I hurt your feelings? You know I was only joking." "What do you have to be sad about? You have everything a person could want." "You can't possibly be happy with HIM. He's a real loser."
The casual comments intimates make negating a person's feelings are occasional, one hopes, and inadvertent. The advertising industry does the rest by telling you over and over that this product will make you happy. ("Oh, it didn't? Well, maybe the new improved model will.") "You'll feel more like a woman with this ‘must have ‘ item." You didn't know you were less than a woman or didn't realize your lack? Silly you.
I remember as a young girl bursting into tears of fury and frustration during an argument. I don't remember what the argument was but I do remember I couldn't understand my own tears. I thought tears always meant sorrow which was not what I thought I was feeling.
Sometimes it takes a certain amount of maturity to unlearn all the mistaken messages of a lifetime and to recognize what your body is saying. Is your stomach hurting? Maybe, brave as you are, that's fear your body is signaling to you. Are you grinding your teeth at night? Perhaps you are angrier that you thought.
When I was first studying psychology I had a mentor who spoke of the basic emotions like the basic box of four or five Crayola crayons. Some people graduated to the super duper box with 6 rows of crayons in 48 varying shades and even more. But we all started out with the basic red, blue, green and yellow until we learned all the possible variations. My mentor's mnemonic for the basic emotions were Mad, Sad, Glad, Sexy and Scared. You could be mad at yourself, another person, or the world, You could be insulted, argumentative, holding a grudge, pissed off, or furious. Mad has many gradations and variations, shadings and nuances, and it could be combined with Sad in disappointment or with Scared in a fight with a strong opponent. Mad was still fundamentally Mad though, and not the same as Scared.
Many of us were taught explicitly or implicitly that certain emotions are manly, like anger or sexuality, and the softer emotions were womanly. So if a man felt fear or sadness they were unmanly emotions he ought not to feel, and often not to express even to himself. A real man, when faced with a challenge, could fight it or fuck, manly options both. A woman could feel sad or scared but if she felt angry or sexual, she was a bitch or a slut. Those were not nice emotions for a woman. Neither sex was allowed a full set of emotional crayons. As a result both were crippled by societal expectations into not feeling what was not gender appropriate. Mad and sexy was for men; sad and scared were for women. Either sex was allowed to feel glad if he or she could manage it on the allotted half a box of emotional crayons.
On my professional brochure I have a listed a template on how to be a healthy person and/or part of a happy and healthy couple. It is based on the work of Virginia Satir:
1. See and hear what is here now instead of what should be, was or will be.
2. Feel what you do feel instead of what you think you ought to be feeling.
3. Say what you feel and think instead of what you imagine is expected of you.
4. Ask for what you want instead of hoping it will be offered.
5. Take risks in your own behalf instead of settling for the status quo.
6. Say no directly and clearly.
Feeling (and recognizing) what you feel is an important skill that we all need to learn if we never did and to remember to sharpen on a regular basis.
