I hear "I'm sorry" in my office quite often. Which would be cool if my clients had reason to apologize to me. But usually, they don't. They are apologizing to me for crying, for being mad, for being sad, for showing any emotion other than happy, other than "fine." And that's sad. It's sad that we, as people, have learned that it is not quite right to show emotions in front of someone else, that to do so is burdensome. And, probably on a related note, it seems we, as people, have not necessarily learned how to respond when someone does show emotions. I don't know which is the chicken and which is the egg, but I feel pretty confident the two phenomena are likely related.
A linked idea is that of labeling feeling, or expressing emotions, as being "dramatic," or the like. Ask yourself, how often do you see someone showing emotion, and brush them off as being dramatic. How often do you think that versus say it out loud. Now, I live with a teenager, so I most certainly know that sometimes, someone showing emotion is, in fact, being dramatic. But, I also see that we, as a society, default to the "drama" label when really it is that we are having a hard time accepting/dealing with how the other person feels.
Almost without fail, when a client first starts to tear up, they quickly say, "I'm sorry," often with, "I don't know why I'm acting like this," or something of the like. And often, they label themselves as "stupid," or "dramatic." And yet, it never bothers me when people show emotion. In fact, I feel pretty confident that feeling is what makes us human, rather than robots.
So, how do we get to the point where we are no longer showing emotion? I am hesitant to say this next bit, because the last thing I would want to do is come across as the therapists of old, who seemed to default to the "easy answer" of "it's the parents' fault." It's most often nobody's "fault." Things are passed down intergenerationally, and so many different experiences can lead a person to shut down emotions. But, it is true that having parents that are not comfortable with emotion indirectly teaches kids to not be comfortable with emotion. It's generally not the intent, but instead, the fallout.
Certainly, there are some parents that might be very direct about it. They might directly tell their kids, and others in their lives, to stop feeling the way they do, or at least stop showing that they feel that way. They may respond with anger or maybe it is shame that leads them to tell others to "stop it." But the vast majority of the time, it's way more subtle. And it is likely that the parent doesn't even realize that he/she is uncomfortable with emotion, and thereby is teaching their child to be uncomfortable with emotion.
Kids learn to deal with emotion by having role models that show them how to handle them. And, oh my, there are all those memes out there now, from all the child therapy people, that illustrate perfect responses to your child's emotions. Those things make me shudder as the expectation is SO HIGH! I don't personally think the average person can have those perfect responses when his/her 3yo, or 16yo, is having a meltdown of epic proportions. So, please don't hear me as saying you should have those perfect responses. (And, you may respond in shock or dismay in the moment, but you can always go back and "fix it.") But, outside of those epic meltdown moments, your child will learn how to handle emotion as you prove that YOU can handle their emotion. If you are uncomfortable with your own sadness, then you likely will communicate to your child, by accident, that you are uncomfortable with their sadness. That might sound like trying to talk them out of how they feel, just as you try to talk yourself out of how you feel. It might sound like, "Oh, it's not that bad! Look at how lucky we are. There are people who have it way worse." It might sound like, "Oh, don't over-react." It might sound like, "I'll give you something to cry about." And, it might sound like dead silence. I'd say that, a lot of the time, it sounds like trying to talk someone (or yourself) out of the emotion that has arisen. I talk about this in therapy as using the brain to override the heart.
Now, where it gets tricky is that it's not an either/or, so I'm not saying we should never use our brains to manage our emotions. But, I would say that cognitive part, that rationalizing and talking ourself through it, often comes AFTER experiencing the emotion. Not as a means for avoiding experiencing it. The goal is to have both...both the ability to feel, and also the ability to soothe ourselves when our feelings might a little bit off. Anxiety, for example. Anxiety tells us all sorts of lies; we may have fear about things that might really happen, and often we have fears about things very unlikely to happen. So, in those moments, the goal is to feel the fear, not suppress it, but also be able to reassure ourselves of how unlikely our fear is. Same with talking to kids. Your goal is to listen to their fears, so you can truly understand where they are coming from, and THEN help them to see how unlikely their fear is to happen. Those who are blocked from dealing with emotion will go straight to the rational argument, skipping the emotion that is present.
This is feeling hard to explain, for some reason, so I really hope it is coming across in an understandable way. The one thing I will say about "being dramatic" is this...because some of you who put this label on yourself need to hear it...in my experience, those who actually are "being dramatic," do not see themselves as dramatic. Yet, those who label themselves as dramatic, rarely are.
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