Month: March 2018

There seems to be some very profound and important information missing from our handbook on life. For whatever reason, understanding has been overlooked or omitted of one imperative element that we all need to learn about for a balanced and healthy life. By example and education, much has been passed down from one generation to the next. However, throughout the generations some vital information has been left somewhere on the cutting room floor of this amazing movie called life.

The area I’m addressing is our emotional world and its healthy expression. Without emotional health life can be, and is, experienced by many to be disjointed to say the least.

Being highly potent and potentially fatal, I find it amazing that this learning has been left out of our education. It seems we have all been left to muddle our way through. With much trial and tribulation we strive to understand, in the same way that those who raised were left by those who raised to sort it out themselves.

Many aspects of life are cultivated, supported and often highly acclaimed; while education about emotions is not even deemed important enough to be given a mention. Intellectual and physical prowess has always been greatly hailed, with the scholar returning from university with a first, or the athlete bringing home a gold medal. But there is much more to who we are!

Although, in recent times, some have started to touch upon what they refer to as Emotional Intelligence, it is being viewed through the eyes of intellect. They say Emotional Intelligence is the ability to identify and manage our emotions and apply them. This is a very intellectual, cognitive approach and is as far from the nature and need of our Emotional self, as the sun is from the earth.

So let’s dispel some accepted wisdom:

1. There is no such thing as negative emotions; only negative ways to express them. So let’s not blame the emotion. In the appropriate responsible context every feeling and emotion has its place.
2. We don’t need to rise above our emotions; they are an expression of a part of us. “Mummy I’m sad” is as important and valuable to voice and be heard as “Mummy I need a wee”
3. Saying that emotions don’t make sense, is like trying to measure steam with a ruler. Sense is a way of defining and understanding logic. If you want to understand, you need to understand the language of emotion.
4. You cannot be too sensitive. You are as sensitive as you are. More often than not when faced with such criticism, people are actually saying, “I don’t know how to deal with you or relate to what you’re feeling” or else they are just trying to control you.
5. No one else can equate what and how much you should feel regarding any situation, like being told “you really should be over that by now.”
6. You cannot help what you feel; it’s just what you feel.

If someone has control or influence over you and tries to stop you feeling what you’re feeling, it won’t actually work. All that will happen is that the external expression is silenced but the internal feeling and emotion sits within and with no ability to express leads to untold problems, with the damage being potentially fatal.

However different our upbringing, most were taught by default how not to feel, rather than how to feel and express in a healthy way. By the age of five or six years old we knew that it was not OK to feel angry, sad or frightened. So in order to be loved and approved of we learnt to suppress and there began the slippery slope. Over time we learnt which feelings were acceptable and which were most definitely not.  Preverbal, children give voice to feelings and emotions and their expressions are met with mixed reception. Ironically the more we are taught to express through the spoken word, the less permission there seems to be to express through the language of emotion.

There are several reasons why another would want to control our emotional world. Emotions are harder to control than intellect. Intellect can be structured and filed into good, bad, right and wrong, and once configured we control ourselves based on their criteria, with guilt often being the weapon of choice. Emotion is such a powerful force and a person championed by their emotions is unstoppable. If feeling emotion was encouraged and cultivated from an early age we would probably never hear of crimes of passion or the damage caused by someone flying into a blind rage or worse.

In acoustics there is a phenomenon called sympathetic resonance. Take two tuning forks of the same frequency and strike one to make it sound, if in close enough proximity the other fork will also start to sound. This same phenomenon happens with emotion. The screams of a child can resonate with the suppressed feelings within another, waking up the buried emotions in the adult. Lacking understanding and awareness of what the adult is feeling, they try to control the child’s emotional expression, in an unconscious attempt to keep their own emotions suppressed and buried. Each emotionally suppressed child grows up to unconsciously suppress the next generation, perpetuating the cycle of abuse.

As we start to unveil our history we see the damage caused by those who knew no better: “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”, a phrase heard by many from parents, including myself. Even as the five year old I remember thinking that she already had, which was why I was crying. In order though to be loved and accepted I just sucked it up and wiped away the tears. Unfortunately these feelings don’t go away but literally get swallowed up, locked inside, along with all the other feelings that were judged, criticised and forbidden as a child.

If only we understood the impact of suppressing our own or another’s emotional expression. Eventually we get to a point where our level of suppression becomes too great to hold and there is major damage that is, in some cases, fatal. Imagine if we could press the reset button on life and start again from a place where all parts of us were equally honoured and expressed?

In over thirty years of helping people I can honestly say that no one has ever died from having a feeling but I believe many have died from suppressing them. Our natural emotional vocabulary is perfect in its unhampered state, with an emotion perfectly formed to match every situation that may occur. Unfortunately judgement and interference has left us scared and damaged and we have to start to unlearn and untangle the criticism directed to our emotional self, a process that takes large servings of self-love and acceptance.

From a young age I explored many avenues to find answers regarding my mental, emotional, physical and even spiritual well-being. Knocking on many doors, I sought help from a wide range of people offering varied approaches. While others took a more traditional route, it was my nature to look outside of the main stream, to find solutions to life’s many quandaries.

On one of these numerous occasions, I found myself being asked a seemingly simple question.

“So Phil how do you feel?”

“Well a part of me feels……………” After giving my answer I realised that it was only part of how I felt.

“On the other hand another part of me feels…………” Once again this comment was true but far from the complete picture.

“There again another part does not care and I’m not sure that I even want to be here.”

“Yes Phil but how do YOU feel?” I was asked again.

I had no definitive answer and at that point realised this approach was not for me. At the end of the session I left the room, angry that I had not been heard.

When I got home, I began pondering the experience that I had just had. Curious about what I had said in the session, I started to map out those different expressions and feelings on paper. As I wrote, even more aspects of me seemed to show up, quite different from the one before but easily identifiable as a fundamental part of who I had become.

Some weeks later while having coffee with a friend, I started to share my new findings and theory. It seemed to me that we are made up of many aspects, many facets. In the past I would often find myself in the midst of an internal battle, stuck between opposing feelings, opinions or desires concerning the same situation, all vying for acceptance and to be my chosen plan of action, now I knew why.

It brought to mind the lyrics of a song I had penned as a fifteen year old. Words that tried to give voice to the torment that the adolescent who had no other way to express.

“Please will the real Mr Me please stand up.

Could it possibly be that both of you are me.

I wonder who I am and where I’m to be found.

I feel I’m in the middle, of a somewhat confused land.”

 

Grabbing a paper napkin and pen I started to map out and label each of these aspects best I could.

“Carl Jung says the same thing” my friend said, when I had almost finished, “He calls them sub-personalities”. To me this title sounded too theoretical, too clinical. From what I had experienced these were in fact real parts of me, not some theoretical model. Continuing to draw out my map I tried to separate my findings from her comparison, by pointing out that there was in fact seven parts of me. At this point my friend confirmed that Jung had stated the same. Her comparison was now starting to help me, allowing me to feel that maybe my insights were not so crazy as I had thought and hearing this helped validate my experience.

With this newfound awareness, I was able to start to learn more about myself. Awareness and acceptance seem to go hand in hand and the more I was aware, the more I had to cultivate acceptance. Conversely the more acceptance I had the easier it became to take a closer look at myself and not fear what I may find. Inviting each part that surfaced, to find a voice and a healthy integrated place in my life. I came to learn that there were some threads that ran throughout all aspects of self while others were unique to a particular aspect. All needing acknowledgement and acceptance but not all needed external expression.

When sharing this idea with my clients I often create an image of a boardroom. Seven seats around a big table and I invite all parts of who I’m supporting to turn up and take their seat, giving each an opportunity to openly voice how they feel. Some say that they think about this stuff a lot, so what good would it do to say it out loud?  It might seem strange, but only when we actually hear ourselves say it, does the true impact get received by all other aspects of self.

I realise now years later that maybe in a “Healthy Balanced Human Being” there may be no separate aspects of self, all are one and one is all. They seamlessly transition from one aspect of themselves to another. For many though, trauma of one sort or another, emotional or physical, can cause a person to freeze and fracture. Each part starts to become isolated, no longer fluid. Like the ice cube in the glass of water, part but not integrated. One of the life skills needed for a trauma survivor before finding this way to integrate, seems to be making sure that the appropriate aspect is in the driving seat depending on the particular journey of life one is taking. How often have you been faced with a person having a temper tantrum more fitting for a two year old that the forty two year old facing you? Or the sulking rebellious teenager talking through your middle aged colleague? Prime examples where the wrong aspect is in the driver’s seat.

Many people over the years told me they had a happy childhood without trauma, but the issues they bring seem to tell a very different story. When we look back from the adult we are now, many things don’t seem that traumatic but for the young child that we were the perspective can be very different.

As a young child I often came face to face with vicious dogs and was always visibly frightened. I would be told not to be frightened that it won’t hurt you. It was easy for them to say that, way up there at a safe distance, but from down here with this dog baring his teeth right into my face, it was a very different story.

In starting to dialogue with each part of myself I realised many things. When out walking with a bunch of children you can only go as fast as the smallest child. In the same way the “inner child” needs to be taken care of first. Many people try to find someone else to look after that “inner child” but this can never be a healthy solution. I once heard a mother say “I have five children, unfortunately one of them happens to be my husband”. For whatever reason her husband never got the parenting he needed to allow him to grow up integrated. So like many he adopted his wife as his mother and for some, it is easier to be his mother than just his wife. Although a woman is more than capable to be both mother and wife it’s never good to be both to the same person.

When one is able to define, name and invite each aspect to be included, integration can begin.  Voicing their feelings, needs, desires and aspirations allows each to be heard and given the opportunity to unite. The process of resolving and healing the pain and trauma of the past allows each ice cube to slowly melt and become integrated into the whole.

If we could learn to live harmoniously and intergrated on the inside we might find it easier to help facilitate those around us.

How can we hope for world peace, when there is a lack of peace within?