Written by Melissa Buckley of Learning to Thrive

In my article last month I talked about how the Rising Strong process can be beneficial for navigating marital conflict. Today we are going to explore common roadblocks to reckoning with emotions.

To reckon is “to narrate or to make an account.” We need to be able to talk about our feelings. That requires acknowledging them. This is typically more difficult for men, but it is by no means reserved for one gender. All of us can resort to poor coping when dealing with difficult emotions. But with the Rising Strong Process, if we deny our stories and our feelings, “they don’t go away; instead, they own us, and they define us.” (Brown, 2015) If we continue to deny the story, we cannot defy the ending.

How it affects marriage

The way most people respond to difficult emotions is to avoid them. Some offload, turning “I failed” into “I am a failure,” causing them to feel shame and disengage further. Others steamroll, choosing to be upset with their spouse, rather than owning a mistake that caused hurt or embarrassment. Silence, brooding and resentment, is an effort to escape criticism and can become withdrawal, both emotional and physical. Withdrawal can quickly turn into stonewalling — one of John Gottman’s Four Horsemen of Divorce. Rather than engage in the difficult emotions, we disengage, leave the room, and refuse to deal with it. This is a more common reaction for men (Gottman, 1999). 

It can be easy to assume that when a spouse disengages or withdraws from you it’s because they do not care. But in reality, it is often a cue that they are unable to reckon with their emotions. 

Emotional Curiosity

The first part of reckoning is acknowledgment. The second is curiosity. Curiosity can be the most difficult part. “Curiosity is the feeling of deprivation we experience when we identify and focus on a gap in our knowledge (Brown, 2015).” It can help us to connect two separate experiences or ideas. But the important part is to realize that, “we have to have some level of knowledge or awareness before we can get curious.” 

In my opinion, this can be one of the largest stumbling blocks for engaging in the reckoning. Many of us were taught to not place value in emotions, only logic. We were told emotions or crying are signs of weakness. Or we were never taught to deal with or even talk about our emotions, much less connect how they affect thoughts and behaviors. These are all keys to emotional curiosity. (Brown, 2015)

Fear is the number one reason we do not act. Feeling emotions can be uncomfortable or awkward. We worry what others will think. Vulnerability is new and uncertainty is scary. We don’t know what we might find if we dive deeper. So “we self-protect—choosing certainty over curiosity, armor over vulnerability, and knowing over learning.” (Brown, 2015) Instead of facing the emotion, we off-load.

Common ways we off-load emotions: 

• Avoidance: A new study worries that the popular “trigger warning” on college campuses actually fosters a culture of avoidance (Flaherty, 2019), communicates to students that they are fragile and unable to cope (Sanson, 2019) and that we can actually increase our suffering by avoiding it. (Platek, 2018)

• Not acknowledging vulnerability: Studies have shown that our ability to recognize a vulnerability to a diagnosis, or acceptance of one, greatly increases our chances of adhering to a positive health regime. (Aiken, et al., 2012)

• Teapot emotions: We stuff them down, and one day they reach a boiling point and everyone knows it (Brown, 2015).

• Stockpiling hurt: We force it down so much that it begins to affect our bodies. Sleep issues, anxiety, or depression can be the first symptoms of emotions manifesting in the body (van der Kolk, 2015)

• The fear of high-centering: You recognize the emotions but don’t walk into them for fear of it dislodging something and affecting you in a way you don’t like. 

• Anger: Road rage and sports are socially acceptable ways to deal with pain, especially for men.

• Bouncing hurt: “Whatever, I don’t care.” It’s easier to bounce it off ourselves. We become stoic or deflect with humor and cynicism (Brown, 2015).

• Numbing hurt: Rather than lean into pain, we numb with alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, shopping, planning, perfectionism, food, Netflix, or even staying busy. We hide the hurt so that our feelings can’t catch up with us. This can numb the good in the process (Brown, 2015).

Miriam Greenspan, Psychotherapist, and author of Healing through Dark Emotions, addresses a societal issue:

“Despite our fear, [we want] to feel these emotional energies, because they are the juice of life. When we suppress or diminish our emotions, we feel deprived. So we watch horror movies, and so-called reality shows like Fear Factor. We seek out emotional intensity vicariously, because when we are emotionally numb, we need a great deal of stimulation to feel something, anything. So emotional pornography provides the stimulation, but it only ersatz emotion—it doesn’t teach us anything about ourselves or the world.” (Brown, 2015)

She explains the positive benefits of all emotions:

“People don’t mind feeling joy and happiness. The dark emotions are much harder. Fear, grief, and despair are uncomfortable and are seen as signs of personal failure. In our culture, we call them “negative” and think of them as “bad.” I prefer to call these emotions “dark,” because I like the image of a rich, fertile, dark soil from which something unexpected can bloom. Also we keep them “in the dark” and tend not to speak about them. We privatize them and don’t see the ways in which they are connected to the world. But the dark emotions are inevitable. They are part of the universal human experience and are certainly worthy of our attention. They bring us important information about ourselves and the world and can be vehicles of profound transformation.” (Platek, 2018)

One of the biggest reasons that uncertainty in emotion is so hard is because it often means we have to change. Something in our life or in our relationship needs shifting and transforming. This is a big part of the Rising Strong process — change coming as a result of something difficult or uncomfortable. And that is often the hardest part. Sitting in our emotions can be hard, but moving past them to be better is very difficult, too.

For more strategies from Miriam Greenspan for working through emotions, see the full article here. This recent HHP article has similar sentiments. This is also a great one about emotional range.

So, what’s next?

Vulnerability in marriage creates opportunity for bonding, but it can also create hurt. It takes courage.  When we can create a safe place for our spouse to bloom from those dark emotions, we can transform our marriages. 

We just need to change the way we deal with them. 

In the same way we need to own our stories while in conflict as I addressed in my first article, we need to give ourselves and our spouses space for the difficult emotions as we experience the reckoning. If your spouse is dealing with deep emotions, take a step back and realize that shame can change people’s actions, and that it is their story, not yours. 

We naturally want to connect with others, but “when we feel shame … we are more likely to engage in self-destructive behaviors, to attack or humiliate others.” (Brown, 2007)

While feeling shame, we are actually desperate for belonging. That is exactly the time that you need to show your spouse you still love them, that you are staying put and you are strong enough to deal with their dark emotions. The antidotes to shame are compassion and connection. (Brown, 2007)

Be patient. Express love, encourage and appreciate them. The key is to create a safe space where they are allowed to explore those feelings without fear. Give them space if needed. Empathy is also crucial. I will be exploring empathy more in my final article.

There are some great resources available to help.

See this emotion wheel for ideas of more emotive words.

See this encouraging video for men at @manuptvseries.

See this video about Permission slips, a strategy to allow emotions in.

Learn about tactile breathing, a method soldiers use in tense situations to calm and center themselves (Brown, 2015). 

Conclusion

The Reckoning can often be the hardest part of the Rising Strong Process. Leaning into emotions is far more difficult than avoiding them. Brené uses the term reckoning for this process because “in navigation, the term reckoning, as in dead reckoning, is the process of calculating where you are. To do that, you have to know where you’ve been and what factors influenced how you got to where you are now. Without reckoning, you can’t chart a future course.” (Brown, 2015)

Just as Miriam Greenspan encourages, when we can deal with our dark emotions, suffering can lead to deeper connection, more compassion, and foster resilience and transformation (Platek, 2018). We can allow suffering to expand our minds to make room for rebirth. We can gain power because of emotions— to heal and to change our endings. We can be powerful and courageous— in our lives and in our marriages. 

This week, consciously make time to practice identifying your own emotions. Set an alarm on your phone every day to remind you to pause, notice how you are feeling, and name the emotions you are experiencing.

References

Aiken, L. S., Gerend, M. A., Jackson, K. M., & Ranby, K. W. (2012). Subjective risk and health-protective behavior: Prevention and early detection. In A. Baum, T. A. Revenson, & J. Singer (Eds.), Handbook of health psychology (pp. 113-145). New York, NY, US: Psychology Press.

Buckley, M. (2019, August) Owning Your Own Story within Marital Conflict, Healthy Humans Project.

Brown, B. (2007). I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t). New York: Gotham Books.

Brown, B. (2015). Rising Strong. New York: Random House.

Flaherty, C. (2019, March 21). Death Knell for Trigger Warnings? Retrieved from Inside Higher ED: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/03/21/new-study-says-trigger-warnings-are-useless-does-mean-they-should-be-abandoned

Gottman, J. (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. New York: Random House.

Gordon, R. (2018, July) Don’t Worry, Be Happy (and Sad, and Made, and Scared…), Healthy Humans Project.

Gordon, R. (2018, June) 4 Habits That Are Proven to Kill Your Relationship, Healthy Humans Project.

Kolk, B. V. (2015). The Body Keeps the Score. New York: Penguin Books.

Platek, B. (2018, Jan). Through A Glass Darkly. Retrieved September 7, 2019, from The Sun Interview: https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/385/through-a-glass-darkly

Sanson, M. (2019, March 19). Trigger Warnings do Little to Reduce People’s Distress, Research shows.
Retrieved from Association for Psychological Science:
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/trigger-warnings-distress.html

Strong, M. (2019, Nov.) How Tragedy Can Bring Us Together, Healthy Humans Project.

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Melissa discovered her talent for writing in her freshman writing class at BYU. She graduated with a degree in Family Life and then attended Le Cordon Bleu to pursue her dream of baking wedding cakes. After three years of professional baking, she hung up her apron to be a stay at home mom. She lives in Las Vegas with her husband and twin toddlers. She has since rekindled her love of writing and finds time to write while caring for her children.

Melissa has a passion for sharing her knowledge and experiences with other women, to empower them to be their best selves. She writes about faith, family, love and relationships with the occasional baking metaphor.