Have your emotions. Act responsibly in spite of them.

“Have your emo­tions” 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. The infan­t’s emo­tion lacks mean­ing. It also “just happens.”

Let me try to explain how this works.

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.’

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.”

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. (Like the orange TACO.) 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 encouraged my clients to act out their anger by smacking their bed or couch, while yelling in colourful language. I also encouraged 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.

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.

And 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 taught this approach to clients, the first thing I worked toward con­vinc­ing them of was the idea that emo­tions are things one has.

Emotions are not caused by externals.

So, no one ‘makes’ me angry (or any­thing else.) Peo­ple do what­ev­er they do, and I anger myself (or sad­den myself, or amuse myself…)

Once you 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 naked 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!

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