A Mes­sage from Wayne C. Allen

Good after­noon!

Let me note a few things for you today:

1) Into the Cen­tre is going to shift over to “blog only” as of today. This doesn’t really affect any­thing, as the link in the e-mail already points there. The prob­lem is that search engines like Google do not like dupli­cate pages or con­tent, so hav­ing the arti­cles on the blog and also as a sep­a­rate Into the Cen­tre page is discouraged.

2) I’m try­ing dif­fer­ent deliv­ery sys­tems for Into the Cen­tre, as well as com­mit­ting to writ­ing more on the blog. If you want to know when I write a new blog arti­cle (espe­cially those that are NOT in Into the Cen­tre,) just sub­scribe to the feed’s Feed­blitz. You’ll get the new post by e-mail.

Bless­ings and warmth from
Wayne and Dar­bella

This Week’s Arti­cle:
Have your feel­ings. Act respon­si­bly in spite of them.

“Have your feel­ings” is a Ben ‘n Jock–ism, and a com­mon expres­sion at The Haven. It is an inter­est­ing con­cept, and one that many peo­ple miss.

Emo­tions are expe­ri­enced pretty much from birth, as any­one who has seen a red-faced infant scream­ing at the top of her lungs can attest. As we have noted, how­ever, the infant’s emo­tion lacks any sense of def­i­n­i­tion. It also hap­pens with­out permission.

Let me try to explain that one, before I do away with it com­pletely. As I have noted, the chief aim of the first 14 years of life (or so) is social­iza­tion. This sim­ply means that the tribe and cul­ture of the child teaches the child what things mean. Let me has­ten to add that this is not about what is ‘true.’ This is about what the tribe holds to be legit­i­mate. Thus, some groups think ‘a’ is accept­able, while another group adamantly rejects ‘a.’ (See the arti­cle directly below this one, or go to ‘The 3^rd Chakra and Self-Knowing.’)

Emo­tions arrive unbid­den. Infants / chil­dren expe­ri­ence them with­out the fil­ters later applied to them. Soon, the tribal ‘take’ on each emo­tional state is force fed to the child. “Big boys don’t cry.” “Sugar and spice and every­thing nice…” “What have you to be angry about?” or “I’ll give you some­thing to be angry about.” “If you keep pout­ing your face will freeze that way.”

Now, you may think that this is unim­por­tant, but I can guar­an­tee that you have a whole list of inter­nal and not-thought-through ‘rules’ about emo­tions. Some emo­tions, (happy, gig­gly, con­tent, per­haps moody – what most peo­ple would think of as the ‘pos­i­tive’ emo­tions) are con­sid­ered ‘express­ible’ in most cir­cum­stances. Anger, grief, and emo­tions thought to be ‘neg­a­tive’ almost always come with pro­scrip­tions against their expression.

Let me be clear: I am not mak­ing ‘social­iza­tion by tribe’ a bad thing. It’s required. Oth­er­wise, we’d all be lay­ing around scream­ing and poop­ing our dia­pers. (Or act­ing like Paris Hilton…) I’m sim­ply sug­gest­ing that emo­tional express­ing comes with bag­gage, and the bag­gage is all about repress­ing the ‘bad’ ones while demand­ing the ‘good’ ones.

I often encour­age my clients to act out their anger by smack­ing their bed or couch, while yelling in colour­ful lan­guage. I also encour­age my clients to make noise dur­ing Body­work. This can be quite dis­con­cert­ing for many of them. They report hear­ing mom’s or dad’s voice, let­ting them know that expres­sions of anger or sad­ness or grief is def­i­nitely not OK.

Now, the rea­son it’s not OK is that such emo­tions made mom and dad uncom­fort­able, so they did what they could to get their kid to repress and dis­trust noisy emo­tions. They were uncom­fort­able because of what their par­ents told them, and on and on.

All adults have a built-in cri­tiquing sys­tem regard­ing both their emo­tions and the emo­tions of oth­ers. It’s inter­est­ing to watch peo­ple see­ing Body­work for the first time, when it’s done in a group. The per­son receiv­ing may, for exam­ple, start shout­ing and pound­ing the mat. Some peo­ple phys­i­cally back up. Oth­ers get pale and look stricken. The vocal ones demand that the recip­i­ent stop yelling, either from an “I can’t stand that” per­spec­tive, or from a more new-agey, lame, “That is vio­lat­ing my per­sonal space.” The mes­sage is the same: I have no tol­er­ance for the neg­a­tive emo­tions of others.

I repeat, we have learned this behav­iour at the knees of our tribes. To which I respond, “So what?”

Emo­tions need to be expressed. Period. Safely, cleanly, and under some time con­straint, but expressed none-the-less. Stuff­ing emo­tions does no good—from a Body­work per­spec­tive, all that hap­pens is that the blocked emo­tions finds another way out.

The arti­cle title sug­gests the con­cept of respon­si­ble behav­iour. When I teach this approach to clients, the first thing I work toward con­vinc­ing them of is the idea that emo­tions are things one has.

Emo­tions are not caused by externals.

In other words, keep­ing with our anger model, no one ‘makes’ me angry. Peo­ple do what­ever they do, and I anger myself (or sad­den myself, or amuse myself…)

Once you begin to get this, you can do the respon­si­ble thing, and ‘own’ your anger. From there, you can choose to safely and cleanly express it. To do so, you will have to rec­og­nize that your upbring­ing will have taught you to stuff this expres­sion, so you ’ll have to ‘do it anyway.’

The other part of being respon­si­ble is ‘aim­ing’ the emo­tion at an inan­i­mate object. I there­fore do not yell at Dar­bella, for exam­ple. I invite her to be a wit­ness as I yell at a chair, a tree (we used to own property—I’d stand in the hot tub and yell at the trees in the woods—a sight to behold!). Per­haps I may also want to pound a heavy bag or the bed, or the seat of a chair.

The idea is to ‘have’ the emo­tion. Not jus­tify the emo­tion, explain the emo­tion or blame some­one for the emo­tion. Have it. Express it. Move through the emotion.

Back to peo­ple in groups watch­ing this work. In almost all cases, one time of see­ing some­one get really angry at a chair or a pad, and see­ing that the sky did not fall, is enough to con­vince the observer that express­ing anger in this way is safe and OK.

This applies, of course, to all emo­tions. When sad, one cries. When in need of sup­port, one asks for a hug.

All of the prob­lems with emo­tions go away when I accept respon­si­bil­ity for my emo­tions. They are mine, I cre­ate them, and I ask for space to express them.

Look at what you are stuff­ing, repress­ing, and deny­ing as far as your emo­tions go. Have a chat with your near­est and dear­est, and work out a mutual “have your emo­tions” pact. Find respon­si­ble, hon­est ways to own and express your emo­tions.
Your body, mind, and spirit will thank you!