Communication Matters: The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep.

By Jeyanthy Siva (Column on NVC published on “The Nation”, an English newspaper in Sri Lanka)

For last two weeks in this column on Nonviolent Communication (NVC), also known as compassionate communication, we have been discussing feelings, how to distinguish feelings from thoughts and evaluations, what is the purpose of feelings and how they are connected to needs. If you will bear with me, I want to continue the topic of feelings today with the question of what to do with feelings, esp. the uncomfortable and not so pleasant ones that we would rather avoid than feel.

When I work with clients in private sessions or do role plays with participants in workshops, I find that many people would rather avoid feelings altogether instead of experiencing them. Especially if the feelings are strong or uncomfortable feelings, what we often call “negative” feelings. I put this in quotes because if, as we discussed last week, the purpose of feelings is to give us information about our needs, than what is negative about feelings such as sadness, emotional pain or even hurt? Well, it feels uncomfortable of course. And of course we would want to avoid uncomfortable feelings: if we didn’t know that the emotional pain contains necessary information to us about some needs of ours which are not met; if we were not taught how to identify the needs which are unmet which are causing the feelings; if we didn’t learn that when we are aware of our needs, we can more effectively find ways to meet them. Under these circumstances, its perfectly understandable that we would want to avoid feeling that discomfort and those painful emotions.

So most of us, when we don’t know what to do with uncomfortable feelings, we try to repress it, suppress it, cover it up, put distance between self and it, hide it or if all else fails, just try to pretend it doesn’t exist.

This is also what many of us were taught: that uncomfortable feelings are to be avoided at all costs. How many of us were simply held or told, when we cried as a child: “It’s okay. Crying is good release, let it all come out.” From what I have heard from the hundreds of people I have worked with over the years, this is the rare case. Most of us are given a message that sad feelings were not “good”. Sometimes this is done directly with words like “don’t cry” and sometimes its done indirectly by attempts to “cheer” us up or make us laugh. Sometimes it was by seeing that the mother felt guilt or was blamed by others when the child cried which again implied that there was something wrong with sadness and crying. In some cases, the adults might even threaten or punish or use physical violence to stop the child crying. All this teaches children to think that there is something wrong with crying and sad feelings.

Thus we learn to not show our sadness or hurt feelings through tears and eventually to not to feel them even in our hearts. Instead we learn to repress or suppress our authentic experience and expression of feelings. As we grow, society often reinforces in us a belief that this is a good thing to do. For instance, the person who cries is considered to be “weak” while the one who learns to suppress his/her emotions is called “strong”. While this is true for both genders, its quite harsh for boys and men. In many cultures, boys are teased, taunted or humiliated for showing “weakness” of tears. A man who feels and shows feelings of sadness or grief is often accused of “being like a woman” and loses respect from society. I put the “weak” in quotes because in my experience, there is nothing weak about being able to feel or show our feelings – in fact, it can take a lot of courage to do so. Yet, that is not the story we tell about it.

As adults, we carry these early internalized believes into how we respond when strong feelings, especially uncomfortable ones arise in us.

Consequences of suppressing feelings:

Is there any unwanted consequences when we systematically suppress our feelings? The title of this week’s column is a quote by a 19^th century doctor. I take this quote seriously. There is reason to believe that people get sick when we don’t have a way to deal with emotional pain and instead suppress our emotions. From mild psychosomatic illness (psychological causes of physical illness such as headaches, back pain, irritable bowl syndrome) to major illness such as tumors and even cancer are potential personal health consequences of suppressing emotions instead of allowing ourselves to experience them and let them go through their natural healing process.

In my opinion, there is an even bigger dimension than the personal health consequences. I take this quote as a metaphor for the larger social ills we face – when there is no acceptance of the natural and healing process of grieving and no capacity developed in people to be present with our uncomfortable emotions, then the “organs” that weep are not only from the individual human body but also from the body politic (in the sense of social order of society). There can be unwanted social consequences to not having it be acceptable to feel and show painful emotions.

For instance, when the natural process of grieving is blocked, the suppressed grief can come out in harmful behavior such as revenge seeking to hurt those believed to be responsible for one’s loss or ridiculing or humiliating someone else who is weaker & powerless to defend themselves in order to vent the frustration and to seek relief. And many other forms of harmful behavior which are twisted expressions of suppressed emotions such as grief or hurt. This is tragic when we realize that this painful & twisted expression was initially a natural life serving emotion which when allowed to experienced the way it was meant to be, can function to connect us more deeply with ourselves and others.

In the NVC way of thinking, since our feelings are caused by our needs, than it means, we are created in such a way that our bodies give us information about weather our needs are met or not met via feelings. So that we can go about finding ways to meet those needs (if unmet) or celebrate them (if met). When we have been taught to cut off  this connection to our feelings, we are deaf to the message (about our needs). This is another reason why its crucial that we learn to embrace our feelings rather than distant ourselves from them. Note, I’m not advocating swimming in emotions and getting lost there. Remember that feelings are valuable in that they are messengers, so the purpose of learning to connect (or reconnect in the case of many of us) to our feelings is so that we can receive the message – about our needs. Not to spend years dancing with the messenger (the feelings). But we do need to learn to allow the natural process of feelings to manifest so that we can connect to the needs underneath.

(For information on NVC trainings in Sri Lanka, visit www.sandhi.org. Since each week’s column is building on the previous week, if you would like to read previous ones or to post comments or questions about the content of the columns, go to the blog set up for this purpose: http://sandhisl.wordpress.com/)

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