When I met Anger on that fateful day in the department store I knew my life had dramatically changed. In that moment, there was simply no way for me to understand its impact but I could sense its threat and it terrified me. My body had felt the commotion when Anger unpacked, moved in and made himself at home and my spirit was repulsed by his unbridled presence.
Since I didn’t want Anger to have any voice or presence on my stage, I hate to admit it, but I bargained with him. I told Anger that in no uncertain terms that he was not to speak. He was not to be heard – not one syllable – not one breath. Well, as you might have suspected, we argued. I can’t recall the exact conversation but we came to an agreement. Anger would only be permitted to be on the outside of my body.
But he was determined to have a strong presence and insisted on a prominent stage. So I relented and told him that he could be a “chip” on my shoulder as that seemed the safest route and besides that was how I had learned to deal with him by observing my mom handle him in that manner. Although I can’t be for sure, I suspect that she had had the same conversation with Anger and came to a similar agreement. In fact, my mom and my dad, for that matter, seldom talked about any feelings and I know it was due to the way that they were raised as feelings were rarely, if ever, discussed in my mother’s or father’s childhood homes.
My parents divorced when I was 18. At this time in our society, divorce was uncommon. Shame took pride in this and used it against me frequently. But at the time, I did not know his name. I could only feel his presence.
So when he showed up at the department store, I recognized him. He seemed overly enthusiastic to be in my presence. The only thing that Happy thought to do was to frequently challenge Shame to games of Hide and Seek. Shame was sneaky though. He knew Happy’s motives and outplayed her. Shame could not and would not be reckoned with.
Growing up, I often felt a disconnection at home and believed many times that I had a miserable, rotten life. Fortunately, intuitively or on some level I knew to seek out other people who had strong, family connections and am so grateful for them. Also, I was blessed to have neighbors take me to their church and became a member of it at age 12 and although I seldom go now, I still consider David’s United Church of Christ to be my church family.
The other place I felt like I belonged was at Fairmont West High School and still feel a special connection with all my classmates because of the sense of belonging that I experienced at that time. Even today, when I am in the company of any of them, or attend a class reunion or connect through Facebook, I can recapture that same feeling. I am so grateful to have had these two places where I felt like I belonged as they filled the void that was missing within my own family.
But in defense of my own family; my mom, dad, brother and myself, we all did the very best with what we knew. It was only in 1990 that the term ‘Emotional Intelligence’ was coined by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer describing it as “a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action”.
So in closing, and in case you did not read yesterday’s blog, I want to share again my discovery of Saarni’s Theory of Emotional Competency and am doing so in a more specific manner:
- Awareness of one’s emotional state, including the possibility that one is experiencing multiple emotions, and at even more mature levels, awareness that one might also not be consciously aware of one’s feelings due to unconscious dynamics or selective inattention.
- Ability to discern others’ emotions, based on situational and expressive cues that have some degree of cultural consensus as to their emotional meaning.
- Ability to use the vocabulary of emotion and expression terms commonly available in one’s (sub-culture) and at more mature levels to acquire cultural scripts that link emotion with social roles.
- Capacity for empathic and sympathetic involvement in others’ emotional experiences.
- Ability to realize that inner emotional state need not correspond to outer expression, both in oneself and in others, and at more mature levels the ability to understand that one’s emotional expressive behavior may impact on another and to take this into account in one’s self-presentation strategies.
- Capacity for adaptive coping with aversive or distressing emotions by using self-regulatory strategies that ameliorate the intensity or temporal duration of such emotional states (e.g., “stress hardiness”).
- Awareness that the structure or nature of relationships is in part defined by both the degree of emotional immediacy or genuineness of expressive display and by the degree of reciprocity or symmetry within the relationship; e.g., mature intimacy is in part defined by mutual or reciprocal sharing of genuine emotions, whereas a parent-child relationship may have asymmetric sharing of genuine emotions.
- Capacity for emotional self-efficacy; The individual views her or himself as feeling, overall, the way he or she wants to feel. That is, emotional self-efficacy means that one accepts one’s emotional experience, whether unique and eccentric or culturally conventional, and this acceptance is in alignment with the individual’s beliefs about what constitutes desirable emotional “balance.” In essence, one is living in accord with one’s personal theory of emotion when one demonstrates emotional self-efficacy that is integrated with one’s moral sense.
Now with my new discovery, I have a roadmap to help me navigate Anger, Mortified, Shame, Sad, Happy along with all of my other emotions that I have. Emotions are not to be Feared, they are to be embraced, experienced and expressed for it is then and only then can our life be a truly fulfilling one. And just as importantly for me, as I believe this is my soul’s purpose, I can share this with the children and the families that I serve.
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