In my last post, I talked a good deal about how we handle our emotional vulnerabilities in public. It reminded me of this quote from Mahatma Gandhi:
"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members."
This sentiment can be interpreted in many ways, but as a mental health professional, my mind immediately goes to those who are emotionally sensitive. After all, although emotions can give a lot of power when directed toward a clear purpose, they can also impair our functioning, the extreme of which would be mental illness. I find this a fascinating topic in a world which is still, in many ways, afraid of emotionality. As I mentioned last week, people see emotions as potentially destructive, and because they fear that, they clamp down on emotional expression. However, the avoidance of emotions can cause just as much damage as their careless expression. One of the ways it does this is by weakening the emotional self, to the extent that we may carry wounds we're not even aware of.
As a counselor, I learned about inner child work, which recognizes that even as adults, we carry parts of our younger selves with us. It's really not such a stretch; if you try to remember something from your childhood, you may feel yourself catapulted back into those same feelings, as if you were there all over again. Who we are today is a result of our brain building, layer by layer, over what we experienced as children, and the reinforced habits we learned as children, some of which are embedded more deeply than others. For my clients who had beliefs that they couldn't seem to change, I'd help them go back to when the beliefs were installed, and we would travel through childhood scenes, facing old wounds, adding reassurances to soothe and correct. The process was painful, and we didn't always see it through, but if nothing else, it helped them achieve an important feat: they understood and accepted their most vulnerable places.
It is, after all, the vulnerable places from which we lash out and hurt others. It's the vulnerable places which become too sensitized, get overwhelmed, and cause us to withdraw, missing out on opportunities to connect and be supported, missing opportunities to participate. As a songwriter, I'm all too familiar with this: having begun a campaign to put my music out to the world, I would suddenly feel overwhelmed with the idea of revealing my deepest feelings to strangers; I would withdraw completely, "take a break" from performing, and even stop playing my guitar for months at a time. I often think to myself that I should never give up music, because after all, it's a gift from God, and even if I'm not sharing it, I still have a right to enjoy it for myself. Even when the memories of perceived rejection and hyper-sensitivity get mixed up with playing, I should still play until I've gotten through it, let the music take me back to my soul. And yet, sometimes I don't.
I recently had an interaction with a musician who was putting together a song list for a musical program. As part of the organizing committee, I wrote an email to him that some changes were needed to the songs. He responded to my email saying artistic programming was a sensitive and personal topic and that he would prefer to talk to another committee member about it. Obviously he was offended, and I was offended too, though I wasn't sure why. Beyond all the judgments that spewed from my head, it came down to this: he didn't think I understand artistic sensitivity, when in fact I understood all too well.
Artists, writers, musicians, visionaries, emotional people... we all have a higher dose of emotional sensitivity than average, but it is only a liability as long as we treat it that way. In fact, emotional sensitivity is a kind of power, almost like another sense. As Elaine Aron points out in The Highly Sensitive Person, sensitive people often pick up on things that other people don't. (1997, pp10-11.) But like any sense, it needs to be focused in order to be used. If we let our emotionality run rampant, we could find ourselves reacting to things unworthy of our attention, or neglecting some needs in favor of others; if we repress it, we miss out on the heart-wisdom and gut-wisdom that could bring real satisfaction to our lives. This may sound obvious, but it's occurring at infinite levels in the interaction between life and self, and the process of negotiating with our emotions is a never-ending journey. Everyone has a "weak link" in their personality, from an angry side to a tendency to withdraw or become selfish when challenged. Usually the weak link is what we're LEAST aware of, which overtakes us when we're feeling the worst.
The typical response to the inner weak link, in our society, is to eradicate it. Only completely removing the weak link will produce a feeling of security and confidence in oneself. The problem with this is that it's a negative strategy. By focusing on the problem not being there, you merely increase its power, because 1) you are ignorant of the way it works, and 2) by avoiding it, you increase the fear-based energy it already has. Consider the character "Gollum" in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. When treated with respect and kindness, Gollum's desire to be helpful increases. When treated with suspicion and held at arm's length, he becomes more deceptive and violent. Gollum is a wonderful metaphor for the "shadow side", that part of our inner child which is fear-based, because he never goes away (and neither does the inner child), he is fearful and selfish, and above all he wants to be accepted.
The inner child has positive aspects too, but it's this fearful, vulnerable side that can have the most power if left unattended. This is because the brain views protecting us from threats as more important than seeking positive experiences. Only when we feel safe from threat are we able to access the more positive, creative, forward-thinking, and unselfish sides of ourselves. In other words, by protecting what's vulnerable - being willing to know it, understand it, accept it, and focus it toward something positive - we become strong, supple, and more able to handle whatever life brings.
When I used to teach domestic violence offenders about how to handle conflicts with their wives, it was shocking how often they were totally unaware of what they were feeling during the last argument. It was as if, in times of stress, they became cut off from the feeling parts of themselves, and in retrospect could only recount what they thought about the situation. As they recounted the arguments, it was common that the wife had become more agitated as the argument went along, a fact which was told by the men in an incredulous tone, sort of like, "you see how unreasonable she is?" I helped them to understand that their unrelenting adherence to "logic", which they hoped would win the argument, was the very thing that spiraled it out of control. Then I would teach the basic skills of expressing feelings using "I" statements. Some of the men used these skills with success, but others struggled to put them into practice even after 10 to 15 weeks. Given the simplicity of the skills, it was clear to me there must be an underlying belief system getting in the way. One of those beliefs was: "You can't win an argument with feelings." Another one was, "Feelings make you weak." (Incidentally, these beliefs exist in popular culture aimed toward boys and men, which, according to Jackson Katz, is a major factor in male violence.) This led the men to not only be obsessed with "winning" the argument and appearing superior, but to be habitually unaware of their own feelings, and unable to empathize with their wives. When you think about how difficult life would be if taking these qualities to the extreme, it shows the importance of valuing the "vulnerable" in us as a path to true strength.
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