How shutting down your feelings can be disastrous to your relationship.

#Emotions #HealthyRelationships #Communication

Research has shown that suppressing your emotions pretty well shuts down communication within that relationship. Let's chat about what the findings from one study might mean for your relationship. James Gross, a scientist who studies emotion, found that when we try to suppress emotion, this is what happens:

• It's very hard to do - basically it doesn't work. We have to work very hard to shut an emotion down once it is up and running, and in the process, we often get more agitated and tense. This is especially true in close relationships when the trigger for the emotion, the other person, is still there giving us signals that get us all
fired up.
• Emotion doesn't stay inside our skin. When we try to shut feelings off, the people we are relating to also get more and more tense.

When we are denying our feelings, our partners probably get tense because our faces register our feelings way faster than the thinking part of the brain can shut them down. So our partner knows there is something going on when we say "Oh, nothing is wrong. I am fine." This partner also knows that we are shutting them out. When partners can't read our cues, they can't predict our behavior. We say one thing but they see another. It makes sense that they get tense. Probably this uncertainty puts everyone off balance and adds to the likelihood that the conversation, or even the whole evening, goes sour.

Emotions are fast. It takes about 100 milliseconds for our brain to react emotionally and about 600 milliseconds for our thinking brain, our cortex, to register this reaction. By the time you decide that it's better not to get mad or to be sad, your face has been expressing it for 500 milliseconds. Too late! The emotional signal has been sent. It's like pressing "send" on your email before you double-check content and email address. Not only that, but when you deny the message, this is puzzling for your partner and makes it harder for them to feel relaxed and safe with you. You are suddenly someone who can shut them out as if they don't matter!

What does all this tell us as lovers and partners? It tells us that the shut down and suppress strategy should be used with care. That it doesn't do what we usually hope it will do, namely calm us down, lower the tenor of a conversation or bypass a fight. Most of the time, we shut down out of habit. We do it because we don't know what else to do. What I see, as a couple therapist, is that it really isn't so dangerous to just say that you are mad, sad, scared, surprised, somehow ashamed or full of joy. This list is about it for the real core universal emotions. When we name our emotions we often feel more grounded, more in control. And we give our partner the chance to respond - to empathize.

And in the end, giving our partner a chance to show us they care, that they can be with us and be there for us, is one of the magic ingredients of a loving relationship.

Comments

How a Group of Gay Male Ballet Dancers Is Rethinking Masculinity

#Queerness #Dancers #Ballet #Masculinity #Dance #LGBTQ #Gay These men are finding new stages on which to express their #queerness, collapsing gender barriers in the world of dance. 1. The Ballerino When I was 15, I met a dancer from Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet . The company had come to Los Angeles to dance in the Olympic Arts Festival , and my parents volunteered to host a post-performance dinner in our backyard. I recall about 200 people — family friends, Olympic officials and maybe 25 dancers — eating curry (is that right?) off paper plates. But that’s not what this is about. No, this is about the ballerino — my word for him — I met and what he represented to a lonely gay kid in Southern California in 1984, a kid who had never before met another gay person. Earlier that evening, I had seen the dancer turn, leap and smile onstage, expressing through the mute language of ballet who he was. Something about his movement told me he was gay, and I felt ...

To Conquer Perfectionism, You Only Have to Fail

#Perfection #Perfectionism #Triple5Light.com #Triple5LightTherapy #AfricanAmericantherapist #Therapist People who struggle with perfectionism can find it impossible to move forward if the prospect of failure looms ahead. Perhaps you’re working on a project and have a certain idea of how you’d like it to turn out. In your head, you know exactly how it should look and perform. However, as you sit down to tackle it, all you can see are the many ways it could deviate from this idealized image. This type of situation may not have serious implications other than being a bit frustrating, but what if this desire to be perfect hampers your ability to get things done in a work or other group setting? People can get fed up with you if you constantly insist on redoing everything they start. Perfectionism’s Perils According to Florida State University’s Sarah Redden and colleagues (2022), “Perfectionism is defined as refusing to accept” anything short of “being flawless,” (p. 1), a definition ...

Overcoming Resentment in Relationships

#resentment #Anger #bitterness #jealousy #Shame #Trauma It’s normal to feel resentment, which involves feelings of anger or bitterness over a slight injustice or a major incident. However, continuing to hold onto these feelings can have negative consequences for your physical and mental health. Some people avoid addressing their feelings and continue to harbor anger at their family members or significant other. For example, maybe your sister started dating your ex after you told her it was okay, but you can’t believe she went ahead and did it. As a result, you avoid seeing her or making snide comments when you’re with her as you are so angry. Others act out because of their resentment. Maybe you said something rude to someone at work because you can’t believe they were chosen over you for a special award. Or after your significant other was unfaithful to you, you lashed out by choosing revenge to cheat to get back at them. This article will discuss the ...

Why We Self-Sabotage

SelfSabotage #Fear #Control #Behavior We all have things we want in our lives—to lose those pesky ten pounds, achieve that promotion, go on a second date with someone we’re interested in, or take that fantasy vacation. We set a goal that is near and dear to our hearts and repeat it to ourselves in our heads and aloud to others more times than we can count. We’ve written this objective on Post-its, to-do lists, calendars, and perhaps even carefully selected an image to place on a vision board, bathroom mirror, or refrigerator to inspire us. We have shared this goal with our friends and family and declared that this is the year we will make it happen. Maybe we even asked one of them to hold us accountable to achieve it. So why do we get in our own way? To understand where self-sabotage comes from, we need to learn some key concepts about human behavior and raise our awareness of what might be running interference in the background. You may be surpr...

Triple5Light Therapy

Search This Blog