Emotional illiteracy

The story of Tommy on the playground

One of the collective blocks of our culture is widespread emotional illiteracy.

Everybody thinks  they know what they feel. Unfortunately it is in many cases just a result of a thinking process. The person has an opinion about a certain situation based on his set of belief systems and comes to a conclusion that this is how they feel. When people are feeling  in this way, they will go to great lengths to defend and justify their feelings. This is because they are actually opinions and they need to be right. 

For example someone invites you to share your feelings and you say: “I am having a shit day”. This is actually not an emotion but an opinion. Perhaps a valid opinion from an objective standard, but nevertheless an opinion. Someone can go into discussion about it and conclude that you are not having such a bad day and you should focus more on the positive things that are happening. The result is that you will feel unseen, unheard or disrespected in your experience and emotions even though you didn’t communicate one.

When you notice: “I am having a shit day” rolling out from your mouth try to identify the feeling that sits under that conclusion, for example: defeat, disappointment, anger, sadness, tired etc.

Emotional illiteracy is found all throughout the world. It is found in more men than women as it is strongly related to qualities that in our society are linked to masculinity like power, domination, being right, intellect and so on.

It begins with an arrested development around two years of age. The child encounters resistance outside himself/herself for the first time. She pursues something and is being thwarted. This leads to frustration. Most parents do not soothe their children when they have just forbid them to put their heads in the oven. This is actually rather strange. The child is authentically frustrated, sad and angry that it cannot have this experience. The parent does not feel the need for soothing because they judge their action as correct because otherwise the child would have burned its head. Their mind thinks they are right and therefore concludes that the emotions of the child are nonsense and not need to be considered. That is how it all starts.

The story of Tommy:

Tommy was 3 years old and in kindergarten. They were playing outside in the park with all the other children and the teachers. Tommy had found a stick and was waving it in front of his face. Then he walked up to Rebecca and started to wave the stick in her face. “Don’t do that Tommy!” The teacher called out, “that is dangerous!”

Tommy shrank a little and stopped. As soon as the teacher turned around, Tommy started to wave the stick in Rebecca’s face again. The teacher noticed and proceeded to walk up to Tommy to take away the stick. 

A teacher that had had training in emotional literacy intervened and said: “Why do you want to do that Tommy?”

Tommy froze on the spot and stared at his stick. You could see the thousands of thoughts exploding in his head. The teacher had just caused his brain to make connections it had never made before. He kept staring at the stick and the teacher observed him carefully. Then, very slowly he started to wave the stick in front of him. The teacher commented: “That is nice, right, observing the stick move, it is very nice.”

Tommy stopped moving the stick and retracted into thought. After ten seconds of complete stillness he went to stand next to Rebecca and started to wave the stick, arm outstretched, in front of both of them.

The teacher commented: “That is great! Like this you can share watching the stick together with Rebecca.”

Tommy, motivated to think about his intention (observing the stick, sharing the experience) came up all by himself with the solution to his problem (waving a stick in somebody’s face is dangerous). By concentrating on the emotions and motivations that fuelled his behaviour he was motivated to find a solution to the obstacle pointed out to him (the safety of someone else).

Let me repeat because many find this hard to get: by validating his desire to pursue his desired experience he opened up to finding a solution that would work for all. When all he would receive is a reprimand he will just emotionally shut down and try to get his desires met elsewhere were he is not being stopped. 

Eventually this opportunity comes for all children in elementary school where there is usually no longer the same level of monitoring and control and they can go waving sticks into faces of children around the corner, out of sight. There are individuals with a very strong motivation to search out their desired experiences and if they have not been emotionally educated will not respect or consider the emotions of others in their pursuit. This is how bullies are created.

At this moment in development the emotional landscape has already been repainted with reasons and opinions. To the question: “Why do you want to bully this child?” the fully emotionally illiterate child responds: “Because he is stupid”

The child than analyses his own internal motivations as something stemming from, and completely depending on, an outer perception, with no awareness of the internal processes that lead to his behaviour. 

In this age of elementary school we already need more sophisticated education techniques to repair the damage done. But at least, since he is still a child, we can oblige him to receive emotional education. Imagine the adult that is completely unaware of the emotional impulses that fuel their behaviour, only being able to identify an outer cause for their personal actions… Why would this adult search for help to work on emotional illiteracy? His wellbeing is based on how “right” his point of view and opinion is and therefore any challenge of the value or truth of his “feelings” is a direct attack.

This is why emotional illiteracy is so persistent. There is often little awareness or motivation about the problem and it is being passed on through generations.

Tommy made the step of enjoying “having an experience” to “sharing an experience”. This is a key step around three years but will be skipped if the phase of having (my car, my doll, my daddy, my sister, my foot, my stick) does not evolve into a phase of sharing, the joy of experiencing together.

The maturity of having defines who I am through what I have, the experience of sharing expands the awareness of self to include an experience of a world that is separate from the self but can be experienced and enjoyed without the necessity to own it. So the maturity at three years old is the awareness to experience enjoyable feelings through something that is outside of myself. The next step would be the step of collaboration but most emotional illiterates never get that far. The result is that other people and the experiences that we may have with them remain things to have/own. (my wife, my sex life, my friends, my family, my football club, my party). And the individuals sharing our experiences merely become puppets in our “having” instead of equals to share a feeling with.

If you follow this reasoning you can see where many of our societal problems stem from: objectification, entitlement etc.

It is an affliction that is not easy to heal as the identification of the person with his or her mind is so strong that they are not aware something is missing or wrong. They have a strong need to defend their opinion and point of view and the “emotions” that result from that because the pain that is hidden under this shell feels very vulnerable and hurt. These parts of the person are still very young and have never learned how to be with, recognise and handle emotions.

Some people start with spiritual work because they are interested in or sensitive to the energetic, paranormal or magical aspect of it. If they are emotional illiterate, even only to an extend, this needs to be overcome in order to learn to live in the higher dimensions. Emotional literacy is important for things like, inner peace, cleaning out our blocks in an easy way, communicating with our bodies, higher selves and other entities. 

Healing Emotional Illiteracy

Being with emotions

The person needs to learn to be with emotions without doing anything. This is usually a very difficult step. The person is used to “act” on his “emotions” by trying to get away from uncomfortable feelings. First of all by being right and distancing him or herself from the situation. “this situation is not me”. Also when the person states: “I cannot do anything about it but it is unfair!”. They are already distancing themselves from the experience of the emotion.

Instead the person needs to learn to be with the energy, the sensations and the wave in the body and energy body.

Recognising emotions

Naming emotions is a good tool to start recognising them. When people become more proficient in emotions it is important to teach that emotions are just frequencies and that we can often choose how we want to experience those frequencies. Some emotions that we think we recognise can become something different altogether the moment we accept them fully. Fear may change into excitement when we breath into it. Feeling dull can change into peaceful relaxation the moment we let go of our need to be active. And so on.

But when people are still very identified with their mind they need to dig deep within themselves to find out what their authentic emotions are that are hidden below their opinion. 

Copyright Maartje Kreuzen 2017