To quote my wonderful Mother when I started going through mental health issues a few years back, “Why don’t you just take a nap or go for a walk? I’m sure that will fix you right up.” Terrible advice that genuinely came from a good place (Don’t blame her, she came from a different time where mental health wasn’t a “thing”). I will be the first to say that I am very proud of how far she and the people around me have come in their understanding of mental health and its implications, but I am disappointed about how many people don’t teach their children their emotions and how to express them. I work with children and I always ask them what emotions they felt/feel during certain activities to help encourage a better understanding of emotions and how to express them. Because I wasn’t taught a better understanding of emotions and how to deal with/express them, it greatly exasperated the issues I was suffering with.
One of the biggest issues is how we often compartmentalize emotions as individuals. When I’m feeling happy I can only be feeling happy, when I’m sad I’m only allowed to be sad. Well, screw that. Sometimes I’m sappy (sad + happy) or scad (scared + mad), and when I was little it was expressed so much that we feel Happy or sad, scared or mad, never both at the same time. And here we come to Reily and her wonderful teen angst, I’m shocked she didn’t dye her hair black and get a fake nose ring. Moving is difficult, especially during such fragile and volatile years. And as we can see from her youth and the behavior of Joy, Reily isn’t emotionally mature enough to understand and understand that two emotions can coexist together.
And not even that, often we tell children that they should be happy and jovial, but don’t express to them that it’s okay to be mad, it’s okay to be sad as long as they channel those emotions into something productive. All emotions are normal and valid as long as they are expressed in the correct manner. No emotion should be invalidated like we see Sadness usually is in Reily’s brain. Obviously being too much of one emotion, like sadness, usually doesn’t mean good things, but that can be handled with some therapy and maybe some meds. We need to stop vilifying natural and common emotions that are inherently negative. We all feel them, and damn it, I wanna express them in an emotionally cognitive and valid way! Is that too much to ask???
And the issue with expression and coping mechanisms is amplified to a billion when we look at Ambassador Ves in Star Trek. Ohhhhhh boy, talk about issues with expressing emotions. He is so unwilling to learn how to express his emotions and thusly he physically projects his emotions onto others. He tosses all his negative emotions like anger, impatience, violence, pain, worry, and stress onto an unwilling host. And all those emotions he’s pushing onto others, he is unable to fully break down and understand these issues. But what I don’t think is fair is that these emotions are seen as corrosive and negative as putting a person into extreme old age and death.
Obviously, the build-up of emotions in which as not handled correctly or in a productive manner is bound to cause some major issues, but those emotions themselves are not bad or villainous. Yet unchecked emotion, especially years and years of unbridled emotion like anger and sadness and pain pushed upon someone has got to have some major stress attached to it. It’s already difficult for us to break down and express our emotions, let alone doing it for someone else.
This breakdown of the body due to a lack of emotional compartmentalization is just a slight over-exaggeration compared to real life. Trust me the breakdowns I’ve seen from not only me but my friends from emotions that were unwanted and unchecked are unbelievable. Teach your children how to deal with emotions people, it’s not that hard. Emotions that are left to fester and rot in our minds are extremely detrimental to our bodies. Our minds and what we are dealing with at the moment absolutely have an effect on our bodies just like stress. Just shoving emotions aside will only lead to a pile of them stacked on top of one another until it topples over like an unbalanced pile of dirty laundry. And trust me, you don’t wanna be under that mountain when it knocks over. There’s no cute Bernese mountain dog with a barrel of whiskey around its neck coming to save you, no matter how many times you’ve seen it on Loony Toons.
Emotions are important for every facet of our lives. It helps us as humans to better understand our minds and the mind of others. But unfair prejudice against certain emotions and a major lack of understanding/breakdown of said emotions can lead to huge issues down the line. So please, check in with yourselves and try and understand the emotions behind your actions and how you can thoroughly and productively break them down. Trust me it reveals a lot more than you think. Until next time dear reader, grab some popcorn, put on your favorite B-movie comedy or rom-com, and know that all the emotions you feel are completely valid and universal.
3 thoughts on “Analysis #4 – My Therapist Told Me That I Have a Problem Verbalizing My Emotions, Can’t Say I’m Surprised”
Hi Steph,
I love that you start your blog by thinking about how we teach children emotions. They is a key aspect of the Theory of Constructed Emotions. The idea is that we use our emotions concepts to make sense of our bodily sensations within particular cultural, social, and physical environments. But we need to have those concepts first, before we can use them to make sense of how and what we are feeling.
As you note, it is important for us to learn how to deal with our emotions—which is something that both Riley and Aklar struggle with. One of the really cool aspects of Barrett’s theory of constructed emotions is that it allows us to see ourselves in control of our emotions rather than something happening to us, outside of our control. This seems like a really healthy way to help kids (and some adults—looking at you Aklar) learn how to experience their different emotions.
And in terms of teen angst, Riley is only a pre-teen. But considering she already has Vampire Romance Island, give her a few years, and I’m sure she will be dying her black, getting a nose ring, and listening to My Chemical Romance. (As someone who read all of the Twilight books during the last two years and is going to see MCR in less than a month (Eeeeeee! So excited), I am perfectly within my rights to make fun of all those things.)
Jessica Hautsch
As we studied in the lecture portion It is true that some can feel mixed emotions and it is not so black and white. I think society is learning that you can be angry but happy. If you’re sad and happy does not mean you are necessarily depressed. The good thing about it that people today are more open to discuss mental health issues. You can be free to express these without being institutionalized. I enjoyed inside out so much, giving us a perspective on the human mind. To incorporate something into a kids film in genius. I think children should learn at a young age about emotions, likes, dislikes. I think it is okay for them to feel that they do not have to be perfectly happy all the time. Along the line of Barrett’s theory of constructed emotions.. she recently explained that ” came to the general conclusion that part of the problem is scientists begin with common sense categories [of emotion], and then they search for that distinctiveness in biology — in the brain, the body, genes. I think a better approach is to start with the structure of the brain and nervous system, and try to understand, what kind of emotions could a nervous system like this produce — and how would it do that?” As I can agree with both ways. Science will forever change and i love that!
ellryan
Hello, Stephanie.
I’m glad someone mentioned how certain emotions are shied away from. What’s insane to me is that emotional conditions such as depression are still very poorly researched, and their treatments are not an easy or even a permanent “fix”. I think, like you mentioned, ignorance towards mental health is a big problem in America.
It depends on the culture and environment, too. I’m glad you have a will to healthily express all types of emotions, and to get it across to people that it’s perfectly natural to have these emotions and that ignoring them will not lead you to an answer which reveals why you’re having them. Not a lot of people have that mentality, especially not where I’m from. In Greece, the culture is very different. Luckily, my mother managed to teach me how to address each emotion, and to examine why I’m feeling them.
Great post; I could really connect to a lot of what you shared!
gkhidasheli