We are transforming

I just listened to a very interesting interview on emotions in the work place and how important it is that they be allowed a form of expression and that staff not only feel forced into expressing so called ‘appropriate’ emotions. I remember back in 1999 when I had a huge emotional breakthrough in therapy how I broke down at work and was so surprised to be shown so much empathy and be so emotionally received. As I look back on it now I got very defensive a short while later and resigned my position which saddens me now though at the time one of the managers was trying to press me to take medication and that and another few incidents were the triggers that sent me home to Australia.

It filled me with hope to realise that perhaps in modern times emotions may begin to be more recognised and received positively. One of the interviewers was speaking of how when we repress painful or feared emotions such as anger or grief we also repress our potential to feel more so called ‘positive’ ones such as joy, happiness and love. They were also saying that staff or employee efficiency improved when emotions were allowed a supportive place of understanding, acceptance and expression and at work.

In the book I am currently reading on letting go, letting emotions be and overcoming repression and suppression the author equates a state of apathy or depression with repression of and fear of feelings, he categorises the charge and vibration of differing emotional states and in apathy or depression there is not much charge at all that is why at times anger is to be welcomed when we feel it as it often contains repressed life energy which, if it can be channelled in the right direction and used to understand the complex interface with other feelings marks a sign we are starting to come back to life out of frozen states of fear, depression and apathy.

I was thinking while listening to the radio interview this morning of how stoic my parents generation had to be about emotions and emotional realities. Both my Mum and Dad were born during the 1920s. Both lost parents when young, both lived through the consequences of the First World War, the depression and then the Second World War which actually enabled them to meet. I think of my brother (a baby boomer born in 1944 when Dad was away at war) who tends to rationalise a lot and shut down emotions and of how sad it is that my response to him has been anger instead of understanding or deeper empathy a lot of the time (and yet even that anger is understandable as an expression of my own grief and frustration over certain realities in our family).

My father never expressed much emotion but I know he was a sensitive man. He had to deal with a lot of my mother’s fire storms and perfectionism, so often driven by fear and insecurity and sadly he tended to come down hard on things and he didn’t show the necessary emotional attunement to me my own life I needed especially during a very awkward adolescence. It took me a long time in recovery from addiction with feeling my own emotions to know I had been emotionally abuse through lack of attunement and emotional neglect. I seemed to come from a very good home in so many ways but it was deeply lonely and my parents failed to attune to me at all, I was left alone a lot and as many of you know I turned to substances to cope in this situation, learning only to repress my true needs and feelings.

Reading the book Running On Empty a few years ago helped me to understand more what one therapist of mine called ‘benign neglect’, in it I saw myself and I highly recommend the book I will try later to link to some of the blogs I shared from about CEN (childhood emotional neglect) later on.

It helps me now to realise that we can all grow in awareness. I hope for a world in which emotions are understood and children are taught ways to cope or understand what their emotions are for. I am looking forward to reading more of Dawkins book on letting go as in the later part he talks a lot about how much our culture is ruled by unconscious emotions of guilt, shame and blame and where these dominate us it is impossible to see real roots and causes and motivations in both ourselves and others with any degree of insight, empathy, understanding or clarity.

I love the work of Marianne Williamson too as she concentrates on how these emotions work so often in tandem with fear which is often the opposite to qualities of faith, trust, confidence and love. For sure there are reasons to be fearful in this life, but understanding the roots of deeper emotions as well as the part emotional repression has played in making depression and states of apathy so wide spread can surely only be a good thing.