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.
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.
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:
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)
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