Expressing our feelings may be easier said than done.............

In the movie "Cabaret", there is a scene in which Sally (Liza Minnelli) takes Brian (Michael York)

to stand in a tunnel under a railway bridge and just scream at the top of his lungs every time a train crosses the bridge. 

-Why? he asks. 

-Because it feels good, she answers.

For Sally screaming at the top of her lungs was easy, "just open your mouth and let it all out", she urged Brian. For Brian, it was not so easy, because although he wanted to scream there were years of "refined" upbringing holding him back.

"It just isn't something one does, one may perhaps at times feel an urge to scream, but one may not do so whilst in company," Brian told Sally.

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that for many of us expressing our emotions,
our true feelings, feels scary. Scary, because doing so we often experience as becoming vulnerable, and being vulnerable, we open ourselves up to being hurt.  Here's another limb: the dread of being rejected.

Feeling rejected really smarts and is a feeling most of us prefer not to experience.

That rejection really hurts is something we learn early in life as children, but how to come to grips with feeling rejected in a life affirming way, is in my view something that often takes a lifetime.

And yet another limb: there are a few common knee-jerk reactions that many of us have when we feel rejected for example: blame the other > "what a fake/jerk!"....or blame one self > "I should never have told him/her, I'm such an idiot".......or denial > "he/she just didn't get what I was saying".......or making excuses > "he/she was just over-tired. that's all".....etc.etc. 

So, why does rejection hurt so much?
 According to those in the know: "fMRI studies has shown that rejection piggybacks on physical pain pathways in the brain", the same areas in the brain that becomes activated during physical pain become activated when we experience feelings of rejection.

When we feel rejected, our sense of belonging becomes destabilized and we feel disconnected, and this adds emotional pain. 

Other common responses to feeling rejected can be: anger, bitterness and or hostility, and that may lead us down some very dangerous paths of self-destructive behaviors and or destructive behaviors towards others.
 Here comes yet another limb: Connecting the terms "negative" or "positive" to feelings is perhaps not terribly helpful. We feel what we feel but each of us determines and defines whether we would describe those feelings as negative or positive, which in turn affect how we manage those feelings.
Anger, for example is often defined as a "negative" feeling, however, in my view it can also be a "positive" feeling because anger can motivate a person to "stand up" for a varied number of "just causes", as well as at times motivate a person to behave in a threatening or potentially harmful manner.
Fear, is another one, as in it can motivate a person to find positive ways to overcome it or it can render a person crippled with it. Guilt is often described as a negative feeling, but guilt when understood and managed, can be a great motivator for seeking a change of self-defeating behaviour patterns into life-affirming ones.
Human beings feel things all the time, ...what we learn hopefully as we grow is this: how to understand, express and manage our feelings in a way that is the most beneficial and helpful for ourselves and others. so how we express our feelings is important because it plays a big role in how others will respond to us.
(According to those in the know, we are hard wired with a need to share our feelings with others,
because sharing our feelings with others we create a bond, a sense of belonging with them.)
Here's the thing,
in my view different societies have different expectations of what's socially acceptable to share with others and what's not when it comes to feelings.
This I learned the hard way as a Swede living in an Anglo-Saxon culture.
When I was greeted with "How are you?" it was not a question as to how I was feeling or doing, it was just a hello. "What's with the sad face?" was not an invitation to share the reasons for my sad face, it was just an Aussie way of saying "don't wear your heart on your sleeve, it's annoying".
Some time ago while doing a gig(music) in the USA,
one of my closest friends died in a car accident.
The impact of the loss did not hit me until I came back from the US and my friend's body had been flow back to Sweden to be buried. Due to the status of having been my friend's best buddy, seemingly everyone who had loved him needed to share their grief with me. Involved as I was with trying to comfort everyone, I forgot to deal with my own grief. Not until I was choking on my own unexpressed sadness, did I realize that I really had to find a way to deal with it.
My solution? I went and bought two dozen eggs which I launched one by one against the concrete water tank in our back yard, with each egg screaming at the top of my lungs my anger, my sadness, my frustration, my pain.
 Smashing those eggs left an awful mess to clean up, but for the first time in many weeks, that act left me with a modicum of relief.  Some of us find it easier to express our feelings than others, but the verdict is in: it is better to express our feelings than to bottle them up.
When I was training to become a crisis counselor I learned some very helpful things about expressing feelings/emotions:

1) Identifying what the feeling is,..... is it anger, fear, sadness, frustration, guilt, etc.etc.

2) Finding a person to share those feelings with who cares about us, or someone who we view as a good listener.

3) Being mindful of the language and tone we use when we express ourselves.

4) Taking responsibility for our feelings as in: nobody makes us feel the way we do, how we feel is our own response to our beliefs and expectations.    

5) Being mindful of the time and place when to express our feelings. 

    Sometimes it can be helpful to give ourselves a little time to reflect before we share.

6) How we feel is linked to our thinking, change the thinking and the feelings change.

"Managing your emotions doesn't mean you don't express yourself; it means you stop short of hurting others and sabotaging yourself." (Sue Fitzmaurice)

On feeling invisible.......

Helplessly I watched as my computer screen coughed up random digits and then just went black.

Now what? What was it this time? I tried to turn it on. No luck. I unplugged it, then tried to turn it on...no, nothing. The worst of it was that it happened as I was in the process of doing a back-up.

What about all my photos? Was years of photos gone for ever?

Panicked, I phoned my computer whizz.  

The diagnosis was dire, but my guy was going to see if he could retrieve as much as he possible off the hard drive.

Off he went with my computer and left was a big empty space where the computer used to be.

I felt lost, because I spent most of my free time fooling around with editing photos in Photoshop.

On telling my son how lost I felt at not being able to use the computer, he looked at me and said: "Paint, paint instead."

"Paint? I don't know how to paint." 

"Do it anyway" he told me.

So I did, and much to my surprise, I loved it.  

More amazing still, people wanted to buy my paintings.

On this blog I have posted many of my paintings, inks, sketches etc. but last night I thought perhaps some of my photos could be used as well.  So, first thing this morning I dug through one of my boxes of CD's and found a few of my Photoshopped images.

The above image is one of those.

I know, a long preamble, so let me get to the topic of this post: on feeling invisible.

In conversation with people who are brave enough to say out loud that they feel lonely, often along with feeling lonely they say comes feeling invisible.

Whether we like it or not, belonging is a basic human need, although it varies from person to person just how much of it we may need. (Watching a serious documentary on what happens to inmates who spend huge amounts of time in solitary confinement made it clear to me just how important it is for us to connect, interact, and belong.)

But strangely, it seems it is quite possible to belong to a family, a group of friends, an organisation, an interest group, a class, etc.etc. and yet still feel invisible.

Stranger still perhaps, is that many mothers often seem to go through periods of time when they feel invisible. (One may ponder, with kids around, why would a mother feel invisible?) 

 Sara, a mother of three children: "It's like I am this invisible entity who cooks, cleans, picks up kids from school, drop kids at school, packs lunches for everyone, holds the hair back when someone is sick and vomits, puts band-aids on scrubbed knees, irons clothes, you name it, I do it, only ......I wonder sometimes .... do they really need me or just a housekeeper?"

Pastor Smith, the head pastor of a large church: "I know it may seem strange to you, but you have no idea how lonely it can be to be a pastor."  When Pastor Smith told me this, I didn't quite know how to respond, so I said nothing, I just listened. For over an hour he allowed himself to open his heart and let it all out, to just be Adam Smith, the man. Getting ready to leave, he stretched out his hand and said: "Thanks, for listening, even a pastor needs a good friend."  I was bewildered as to why Pastor Smith decided to open up to me but I treasured his trust and hoped that maybe he felt that somehow I saw him, Adam Smith, which allowed him to be fully visible rather than his job description.

For some of us, feeling lonely and or invisible can be a temporary state of mind, but for some of us it can be a constant struggle.  Some research shows that a lack of validation in childhood can contribute to us feeling invisible, as in the way our parents treated us as children may become the way we treat ourselves as adults. If a child comes to a parent with a problem and is told over and over that the parent is "too busy", the child may take that to mean that he/she is not relevant to the parent and that he/she needs to handle it (whatever it may be) on his/her own, which the child may interpret as "my feelings don't matter".

 Later, this may result in that as an adult feelings are pushed down and aside as to not bother anyone. Connection with others may be sought, yet somehow something always seems to be missing, 

Some say that there are perhaps different kinds of feeling invisible: when we speak and no one seems to hear us, being at social or family gatherings and no one seems to notice us, when we express our opinions and no one takes them seriously, to mention a few.

Sometimes we may not even be aware of that we are struggling with feeling invisible, and notice only that we have a small ball of sadness in the pit of our stomachs that we can't seem to get rid of.

After I had had my second panic attack, my doctor recommended that I see a psychologist. 

I took the recommendation and it changed my life. During my forth visit, the psychologist looked at me and asked: "Why are you making yourself invisible?"

Huh? What do you mean? I asked. 

"You are hiding your feelings and intelligence, you are trying to make your true self invisible," answered the psychologist.

I was stumped.

"Think about it until we see each other again," I was told.

I thought about it, light-bulbs went off all over the place, and my understanding of who I am was irrevocably changed.

What I learnt was that in order to become truly visible to others I had to become visible to myself first. Uncomfortable as it was, it began with me asking myself some difficult questions:

As a child was I listened to?  Did something happen when I was a child that made me decide that it was safer to hide my feelings than to express them?  Am I an introvert?  If I want to become more visible, what can I change about me?

 Caring for ourselves by accepting and valuing ourselves is a helpful thing to do, but so is remembering that how we experience something, we always do through our very subjective and individual interpretations of those experiences.

"If we want to become visible to others, we must begin by first becoming visible to ourselves."

(Citizen Z)

Betrayal.....one of mankind's worst attributes

What makes someone betray a friend?

What makes someone idly stand by and watch as his/her friend 

is being verbally and physically abused?

What makes someone publicly belittle his/her friend, 

yet still spend a lot of time in secret with that friend?

(Insert here any of the very many and elaborate different ways human beings use to betray each.. other............)

Betrayal is a very common subject matter in much literature, plays, movies, operas, etc. and I guess it is so because it is such a common experience for many of us.

Betrayal can perhaps be defined as "the violation of an established bond of mutual trust".

Trust, as I view it, is an essential ingredient in establishing relationships, whether they be with our partners, friends, siblings, parents, work mates, health professionals, etc.etc. 

So, how do we establish trust?

I believe it begins with authenticity. Our own as well as others.

Just like we may need to know that someone else is genuine, 

someone else may need to know that we are too. 

To gain trust and vice versa, there are some things we can do:

We can keep our word, do what we say we are going to do, and live in accordance with our professed moral codes and ethics.  

Someone who consistently keep their word, follow through on fulfilling their commitments, and  communicate openly and honestly, may well be what some of us may need as "proof" in order for us to trust that someone. 

In my view, establishing trust is a process and this takes time, and as time passes, often we invest more and more of our emotions into that process, more often than not until we feel that we "know" that someone, aka we have established a bond of mutual trust.

We are no longer in a "protect" mode, we feel secure.

Enter one of mankind's many complexities: expectations.

More often than not, we assume that those we call our friends, lovers, mates, buddies, etc.etc. share our expectations of what to expect from those relationships. 

Examples: A friend/buddy/mate/lover has your back no matter what, a friend/buddy/mate/lover never says bad things about you behind your back, a friend/buddy/mate/lover doesn't keep secrets, a friend/buddy/mate/lover doesn't lie, etc.etc.

Enter another of mankind's many complexities: perception/point of view.

"What do you mean, betray you? I didn't betray you, I just didn't tell you what soandso said about you because I knew that that would hurt you."

"What do you mean? How did I betray you when I told soandso that you may have a drinking problem? You drink every night and I am really worried about you, I just wanted someone else's opinion."

"What do you mean? How did I betray you when I didn't tell you about bumping in to my ex the other day? I simply forgot, you know how busy I have been for weeks now."

It's a quagmire, what one person may view as deceit, another may view as an act of protection, so, in my view it comes down to intent and motivation.

An act of betrayal, in my view, occurs when someone deliberately violates a mutual bond of trust that he/she/they have with someone without any regard for the harm or suffering it may cause the other/s.

Aka, the motivation for the act solely founded on personal gain and or gratification.

A few suggestions of acts that I consider as betrayal: lying, cheating, embezzling, stealing, blaming, cowardice, abuse whether mental or physical, verbal, or sexual, malicious slandering, entrapment, bullying, killing, breaking promises and agreements, parents ignoring the cries of their children, etc.etc.

"Betrayal, can be experienced as having
been stabbed in the heart with a poisoned dagger.
Physically we may heal, but the
 poison so easily in the heart remains.

Yet, no matter how powerful the poison
devastating and potent the potion,
it can be overcome, indeed it will succumb,
to the transformative powers ...of love."
(Citizen Z)

(about the painting: best friends, sheltering together in the middle of pouring rain.
Painting this painting reminded me of an incident in my son's life. At 12 he was betrayed in a most horrible way by his best friend. The friend together with a number of other boys staged a set-up which resulted in my son taking a severe beating while his so called friend stood by and did nothing.)

Don't ignore your pain, it's telling you something....

None of us like pain and would probably prefer to have to deal with as little of it as possible.

But alas, painful as pain is, it is unfortunately a price that comes with being alive.

Pain is not only painful however, it can also be helpful. It signals to us that there is something we need to attend to.

A toothache sends us to the dentist to fix our teeth, a stomach ache sends us to a doctor to fix our stomach ache, persistent anxiousness sends us to a mental health professional to fix our mental state, etc.etc. On offer in these technologically enlightened days are many varieties of pain management methods, which in my view is good considering how differently many of us experience pain.

When it gets tricky, is when we experience pain that is hard to define exactly where it hurts, as for instance with existential/emotional pain as in: what is my purpose in life, or the pain of a broken heart, or the pain of loneliness, or the pain of an enduring sense of hopelessness.

How does one explain, and to whom exactly does one explain, that one's "soul" hurts?

(Pain that we don't know how to define yet experience as very real can at times (in my view) affect our lives and well being on par with a persistent and severe headache.)

If pain is a signal for us to pay attention to something, what happens if we ignore it?

Physical pain more often than not gets our attention quite quickly, after all, our lives may depend on it, when it comes to emotional/spiritual/existential pain however, we often do not see that kind of pain as a threat to our continued existence therefore we often use different procrastination techniques: ignore it, numb it, drug it, mask it, play it down, pretend it's not there, make ourselves so busy we can't feel it, etc.etc.

However, ignoring or not acknowledging emotional pain when it rears its head can often have a snowball effect......in the end rolling right over us and so big we can no longer differentiate between what is what.

Physical pain tells us we need to attend to our bodies, emotional pain tells us we need to attend to our emotionss, "existential/soul" (what's the point of my life, what's my moral code) pain tells us we need to attend to our souls.

(We do of course have the choice to ignore all pain regardless of the cause of it: painkiller for the body, drug of choice for the emotional and existential pain and some of us do choose this, but as a coping strategy, there are better ones in my view.)

When it comes to emotional pain it can be helpful in my view to dissect it: what are some of the underlying reasons for the pain: rejection, guilt, regrets, rumination over past failures and mistakes, feeling left out, feeling misunderstood?, to mention a few. Also, go and see a health professional who you think may help you to find a healthy way to deal with your pain.

When it comes to physical pain, don't ignore it and hope it will just go away, go and see a doctor.

When it comes to existential/soul pain, ask yourself the big questions: why do I feel lonely, what do I want to do with my life, what is my moral code, what motivates me, what do I expect out of life,, etc.

Also, go and see a health professional who you think may help you to find a healthy way to deal with your pain.

 All of us go through painful experiences along our journey through life, pain as I view it, is just one aspect of what it is to be alive. Pain can be managed, understood and at times even be a teacher teaching us humility, compassion and tolerance.

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." (Kahlil Gibran)

(In case you are wondering with what authority I speak of these things: Pain, in all it "flavours" has been my companion as far back as I can remember, )

The above image is an illustration of how some of us expect life to fix our pain, top row, and how some of us lessen our pain by making our lives "bigger", bottom row.