To be alive is to have feelings. We probably all experience a number of them on any given day. Some people wear their feelings such that it is obvious what they are feeling. It might be someone ranting, and so we can make an educated guess they are feeling angry. Or, a child might have a hang dog experience on her face and we can guess that something has happened to make the child feel sad.
I tend to label many feelings in the 'upset' category. My hairdresser was upset yesterday, taking a long time to do my hair so that we could talk. This was very obvious to me. Her husband is exhibiting some very controlling behaviors and she doesn't know what to do about it. She was in therapy earlier in her life after being in an abusive relationship so she knows various strategies. When she is not happy with something that has gone on between them she knows to say, 'I feel...' rather than 'you......'. She tries to negotiate and discuss matters but she has so little autonomy. He was angry with her when she hung the curtains her parents had paid for in the baby's room. He really does want control over every little thing.
Specifically, she wanted to know how she could get him to go to therapy. The short answer was and is that she is wasting her time trying. He is feeling much too much threat at having his vulnerabilities and feelings exposed to ever agree to do that. Even if he does agree, to get her off his back, he won't follow through. A lovely young man, sensitive and caring, there are bullying issues in his past and he has abandonment issues, so he's locked into controlling his world to shield himself from his most vulnerable and painful feelings, and that's that.
We can reasonably refer to these traits as 'narcissistic' or 'borderline', but I think it is far more common to be unaware of some of our more uncomfortable feelings, or to not expose them, than to label them as just belonging to certain personality types.
I can certainly speak to some of my more uncomfortable feelings. I could tell you about them here, but in the moment, when I am feeling those feelings, deeply hurt, I can't utter a single word.
Partly, this is training; training myself. If I try to express my feelings and it turns into a negative or circular conversation, or a controlling situation, I stop talking immediately.
But, putting that aside, if my feelings are very hurt, I ride the situation out and taking my feelings away with me to process. I in no way encourage this strategy or behavior. I am only saying that this is what happens for me.
Perhaps it is embarrassment. Perhaps it is hopes dashed. Perhaps it is a feeling of being insignificant, or unimportant to the other person.
The thing about being human is that something happens earlier in our life where we felt something - perhaps that we were not as important to the other person as we would like to be, not as important to him or her as he or she was to us. Let's call this feeling sadness. I give this example as one that I have experienced myself.
Then, many years later, along comes an opportunity to meet with someone you've come to know quite well in an electronic sense. You're excited about it but there's ambivalence on the other side. You don't understand it, assure the person that there's no need to meet if he doesn't want to. He says he does, but still, there's doubt in your mind.
So you do meet, it's kinda fine. If you were a third person looking in, you'd think it was fine. But, inside me there was a whole lot of distress going down. Adept at holding my feelings in, I was struggling.
I've asked myself many times since then, 'well, what were you hoping for?' and also 'why couldn't you say what you were feeling?'
It's easy to answer the second question. To expose my feelings of hurt is an extremely vulnerable thing. To say, 'I feel unimportant to you' is almost impossible to me. I'd rather go off and cry alone, and I mean that most sincerely.
What was I hoping for? Well, of course, to feel a connection; for him to have made a bit of a fuss; to have carved out time for me; to have found a little quiet restaurant where we could speak from the soul. I wanted to walk away feeling nourished; a tender memory to hold dear to my heart.
My point is we are all subject to feeling too vulnerable to expose our more difficult feelings at times.
Intimacy can only occur when we do. And so, I work on it.
I tend to label many feelings in the 'upset' category. My hairdresser was upset yesterday, taking a long time to do my hair so that we could talk. This was very obvious to me. Her husband is exhibiting some very controlling behaviors and she doesn't know what to do about it. She was in therapy earlier in her life after being in an abusive relationship so she knows various strategies. When she is not happy with something that has gone on between them she knows to say, 'I feel...' rather than 'you......'. She tries to negotiate and discuss matters but she has so little autonomy. He was angry with her when she hung the curtains her parents had paid for in the baby's room. He really does want control over every little thing.
Specifically, she wanted to know how she could get him to go to therapy. The short answer was and is that she is wasting her time trying. He is feeling much too much threat at having his vulnerabilities and feelings exposed to ever agree to do that. Even if he does agree, to get her off his back, he won't follow through. A lovely young man, sensitive and caring, there are bullying issues in his past and he has abandonment issues, so he's locked into controlling his world to shield himself from his most vulnerable and painful feelings, and that's that.
We can reasonably refer to these traits as 'narcissistic' or 'borderline', but I think it is far more common to be unaware of some of our more uncomfortable feelings, or to not expose them, than to label them as just belonging to certain personality types.
I can certainly speak to some of my more uncomfortable feelings. I could tell you about them here, but in the moment, when I am feeling those feelings, deeply hurt, I can't utter a single word.
Partly, this is training; training myself. If I try to express my feelings and it turns into a negative or circular conversation, or a controlling situation, I stop talking immediately.
But, putting that aside, if my feelings are very hurt, I ride the situation out and taking my feelings away with me to process. I in no way encourage this strategy or behavior. I am only saying that this is what happens for me.
Perhaps it is embarrassment. Perhaps it is hopes dashed. Perhaps it is a feeling of being insignificant, or unimportant to the other person.
The thing about being human is that something happens earlier in our life where we felt something - perhaps that we were not as important to the other person as we would like to be, not as important to him or her as he or she was to us. Let's call this feeling sadness. I give this example as one that I have experienced myself.
Then, many years later, along comes an opportunity to meet with someone you've come to know quite well in an electronic sense. You're excited about it but there's ambivalence on the other side. You don't understand it, assure the person that there's no need to meet if he doesn't want to. He says he does, but still, there's doubt in your mind.
So you do meet, it's kinda fine. If you were a third person looking in, you'd think it was fine. But, inside me there was a whole lot of distress going down. Adept at holding my feelings in, I was struggling.
I've asked myself many times since then, 'well, what were you hoping for?' and also 'why couldn't you say what you were feeling?'
It's easy to answer the second question. To expose my feelings of hurt is an extremely vulnerable thing. To say, 'I feel unimportant to you' is almost impossible to me. I'd rather go off and cry alone, and I mean that most sincerely.
What was I hoping for? Well, of course, to feel a connection; for him to have made a bit of a fuss; to have carved out time for me; to have found a little quiet restaurant where we could speak from the soul. I wanted to walk away feeling nourished; a tender memory to hold dear to my heart.
My point is we are all subject to feeling too vulnerable to expose our more difficult feelings at times.
Intimacy can only occur when we do. And so, I work on it.
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