Under the rug
The power of conversations that sting
Is it possible to work with what you have inside you — fears, emotions, desires, old habits — if you have never been brought up to consciously name them?
I find myself chewing on this question as I see a lot of people, in my larger family and outside of it, struggle to make sense of themselves, of their lives and their place in the world.
If you’ve followed some of my writing here, you’ll know by now that my approach to all that murmurs within us and to all that moves in the world around us — to everything, basically — is one of conscious awareness. Language is my particular tool to shape what I perceive into some sort of story that makes sense to me, and hopefully to others, too. But even if I hadn’t become a writer I would still benefit greatly from the upbringing I had.
In my childhood family, we put great stock in verbal communication. In that sense we were perhaps an exception. We definitely did not resemble families where things were felt deeply but never spoken out loud. And I believe there were — and still are — many of those.
Our kitchen was the place, and our family meals the setting, where literally everything could come on the table. From sensitive confessions over emotional analysis to sex advice: we didn’t shy away from any of it. I learned from a very early age that everything was open for debate, if only you learned to phrase your thoughts respectfully. I also learned that verbal sparring was a way to get an emotion out into the open, vent a frustration, clarify a position, and eventually clear the air.
In times of confrontation, a lot of (or most?) people usually prefer silence. Silence allows us to pretend things are fine. Words only seem to bring conflict and disruption of the ‘peace’.
But a discussion in our home was not a conflict, let alone a war. Yes, sometimes our conversations stung, but their effect was actually pretty similar to an antiseptic on a wound. They would expose things to the light of day which otherwise risked being swept under a rug to fester and rot in the dark.
And eventually everyone was the better for it. We learned you didn’t have to fear words, and that they were excellent bridge-builders between people, or cement for emotions.
Of course not every conversation or discussion went flawlessly, and sometimes people did get hurt. But being raised in a nest where you were in every way encouraged to verbally take your place also meant that a conversation could ever be reopened.
So it’s with a complicated mixture of pity, disbelief, and a genuine lack of comprehension that I witness so many people around me slowly drowning in their grief, choking on their frustrations or sliding into a depression without ever really knowing what is happening to them or how they can find a way out.
I don’t want to judge, I’m not pointing fingers. I am just genuinely wondering: can you work with an emotion that is gnawing at you (let’s say: anger, fear or grief) if you’ve never learned to name it for what it is, let alone express it? Is there a way to reach an understanding about it for yourself and start working with it constructively in the world? Or will it be this unfathomable feeling you can’t quite pinpoint but that will subconsciously drive your vehicle and steer you in directions you never really mean to go?
Talking about this with my husband, he told me: if someone who’s depressed hasn’t learned to voice his feelings, you can’t help him by asking him to learn how to do that before taking on the depression. That would be like learning a new language on top of tackling a problem he can’t oversee as it is. You have to find other, non-verbal ways of reaching him.
I think he is right — unfortunately. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to teach our children — and ourselves — to work with the verbal aspect of understanding and communication. You’re only walking on one leg if you don’t.
I feel entitled to say this, for I have had the same experience, be it the other way around. As a side-effect of our very verbal upbringing, my family and I were not very versed in the art of non-verbal communication. Our family motto rang something like: ‘If you don’t tell me, how can I know what’s going on for you?’
Needless to say I ran into some pretty unforgiving walls in the course of my life, since most people did in fact not want to tell me what was going on for them, and I hadn’t exactly learned to pick up the more subtle, unspoken clues. In some circles it earned me the reputation of being callous, unfeeling and rude.
It rattled my self-confidence. If you asked a person whether you could help out in the kitchen and she said ‘no’, how were you supposed to know she actually meant ‘yes’? I also didn’t understand why the temperature in the room suddenly seemed to drop by several degrees, either. And no one ever explained.
I have come a long way in acquiring non-verbal speak, learning that lesson the hard way, and I have mastered it to some extent now. I will never be as fluent as a ‘native speaker’, but I don’t mind. I still cherish verbal communication above all other forms, especially in times of conflict. And I feel it would be at least as beneficient for a vast number of people to learn how to put words to their feelings as it was for me to learn how not to.
