Q&A
The following questions and answers are selected from a more exhaustive list in the book. They address some of the most common issues and challenges regarding emotional connection, as well as its application to other topics.
This whole approach is about breaking through barriers to live your dreams. But I’ve never been able to figure out what my dream is. Does emotional connection help with that?
Almost always, when people don’t have any kind of dream at all, it’s because of numbness. The 2 X 2 process definitely penetrates that numbness, as demonstrated by a thirty-three year old client of mine named Sonia, whose lack of a dream made her feel like a “freak of nature.” Whenever Sonia thought about what she wanted, she came up with nothing and felt nothing. The 2 X 2 process quickly rendered her less numb, but at first this only revealed lots of previously blocked aches and pains. Then the aches and pains receded, and Sonia accessed a chronic, low-grade anxiety.
Sticking with the process, dropping beneath that anxiety, Sonia uncovered a childhood storehouse of helplessness. She was orphaned at an early age, and her adoptive parents overcompensated by sheltering her from the inevitable slings and arrows of life. After a few more sessions, Sonia’s helplessness gave way to a surprising hunger for adventure. While previously a city girl through and through, she started to camp and backpack. Eventually she fell in love with white water rafting, and soon found her passion leading excursions along the Colorado River.
While your own passage through numbness will undoubtedly be unique, virtually all such journeys lead to a newfound sense of purpose. Apart from that, but just as important, they also heighten enthusiasm for everyday life.
My teenagers tune me out. Will emotional connection get them to listen?
Teenagers, and all kids for that matter, are constantly testing the limits of their power and control. Tuning you out is one way to say, “You’re not the boss of me.” The problem is that you still are, at least in many respects. When your teens disobey or ignore you, and you resist the emotions that result, they sense that resistance and respond with more of their own. This is the phenomenon that we first covered in Drop the Rope. While dropping the rope is certainly a good approach to keep tensions between you and your teens from escalating, here’s another possibility.
Schedule a period of alone time to find the flinch, cut to the chase, and weather the storm regarding this communication breakdown. When your teens don’t listen to you, for example, it may bring up a worst-case scenario that you’re a terrible parent, and the feeling involved with that assessment might be total failure. Letting yourself feel that sense of total failure will prevent you from becoming an actual failure. That’s because you’ll no longer need to resist when your teens tune out. Then, in the relative expansion that results, you’ll also be able to assess the best, most appropriate response.
Sometimes, with some kids, the most effective response is to share honestly and vulnerably about the storm you’ve recently weathered. You might say something direct and straightforward, such as “I’ve come to notice that when I get into battles with you it’s because I hate feeling like a bad parent. That’s my issue, not yours. So I decided to stop resisting those emotions and just feel them. I hope that’s going to make me a little less tense around you from now on.”
Offering your teens a candid glimpse like this, into both your vulnerable emotions and a healthy response to them, can elicit a surprising degree of cooperation. For other kids, the best approach is humor. When they can no longer get under your skin like before, and realize that you’re now hip to them, a light and funny touch can far outdo a heavy hand. Either way, no matter how your teens react, at least the previous deadlock will be broken.
You’ve talked about how to determine the best choice of action by using the 2 X 2 process. But what if there’s no good choice, like in most divorces, when people have to decide whether to stay in a hopeless relationship or break up a family?
The role of emotional connection, as we’ve discussed, is to make sure our choices aren’t unduly influenced by resistance. When they are, that’s not wrong or bad. It just means we’ll continue to encounter similar situations in the future. If you stay married out of resistance to the guilt of divorce, for example, you’re still likely to find yourself guilty within the marriage. And if you leave your marriage to stop feeling the desperation it brings up, you’re almost certainly going to attract new, desperation-inducing counterparts.
Emotional connection also helps us think clearly and creatively, which often leads to previously unforeseen choices. Without the stress that comes with resistance, a person facing the end of a marriage might reach breakthrough insights in counseling. Or, suddenly a trial separation might make the most sense.
What emotional connection can’t do, of course, is magically transform a crisis in which all good options have been exhausted. However, it still allows us to make our choices authentically, peacefully, even amid all the pain and hardship. With a harmonized mind we come to see that the whole picture is not available to us yet. A divorce that is initially quite distressing to a child, for instance, may later turn out to have built character. Or, it may have fostered greater closeness with one or even both parents. Realizing that such outcomes are mostly beyond our immediate control frees us to heed the deepest voices within. In my experience, this approach always leads to the most positive results.
Surprisingly, when all is said and done, the best choice is often none at all. Many times my clients insist, “I have to make my decision right now!” No matter the topic of their decision, or the reason for their urgency, I usually suggest finding a way to postpone the moment of truth for a month, week, or even day. Inevitably, something happens during that period that turns confusion to certainty. Patience, in such circumstances, makes all the difference.
Patience also plays a part when you know the right decision, but you’re not yet ready to make it. I had one client who took three years to file for divorce. All his friends and relatives were screaming at him to stop putting it off. At times he almost succumbed to their pressure, convinced that his delay was more about paralysis than wisdom. My job, at those times, was to highlight how emotional connection had already changed him profoundly, in ways that his critics weren’t willing or able to see. Finally, when he did file, there was not stress to it at all. The whole thing, in his words, “seemed to happen almost all by itself.”
What am I supposed to do when weathering the storm really does feels like it’ll kill me?
There are two kind of emotional resistance—hard and soft. The hard version occurs when for whatever reason it’s not appropriate to open to your feelings fully. This might happen, for instance, when life demands that you focus elsewhere. Perhaps your child needs attention, or a deadline at work takes priority. Additionally, this hard version happens frequently in cases of serious emotional trauma that must be handled with great caution and professional assistance. In these cases, until your system is strong enough to handle the surges that emotional connection can bring, weathering the whole storm is definitely not advised.
The soft version of emotional resistance occurs when there’s no legitimate reason not to connect, but your fear of the process gets in the way. You decide, “It’ll just be too much,” or, even more emphatically, “It’ll kill me.” When working with soft resistance, it’s important to remember that no one really dies from emotion. Resistance to emotion, on the other hand, does create all kinds of health challenges. In our emotionally avoidant culture we choose the term “stress” to describe this, but most of the time that’s just another word for the internal battle that resistance generates.
Discussing soft resistance always brings to mind a client of mine who was using the 2 X 2 process to quit smoking. Reporting her experience as withdrawal symptoms struck, she told me that her heart was pounding, her palms were sweating, and her stomach was all tied up in knots. I looked at her calmly, compassionately, and wondered if she could just “be with” all of that. She looked back at me, with narrowed eyes, and asked, “For how long?”
Truthfully, there’s only one answer to her question—for just this moment. In other words, when dealing with difficult experiences it’s often a great consolation that we only have to endure them one moment at a time. We never have to concern ourselves with the next week, day, hour, minute, or even second. Emotional connection only requires us to stay present to what’s happening right now.
When frustrated with painful emotion, we often have thoughts such as, “I can’t deal with this heartache for even one more day.” But that kind of thought is about the future, not the present, and instead of having any impact on what will actually happen tomorrow, it only makes it more difficult to connect in this moment. If you find yourself hindered by thoughts about future emotion, approach them in the same way as analyzing, judging, assessing and bargaining. The key is not to fight them, but instead to note their presence dispassionately, and then resume the 2 X 2 process as soon as possible.
Once you understand the difference between hard and soft resistance, the question still remains—without the occurrence of any telltale thoughts, how do I determine which is which? The simple method is to continue your application of the 2 X 2 process for about another minute. If your resistance is hard and therefore necessary, it will persist. At that point, stop the process with a recognition that now’s not the time. If your resistance is soft and therefore unnecessary, it will melt away on its own and allow you to keep going.
Finally, when working with soft resistance to unusually powerful emotions, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re only able to proceed successfully as fast as the slowest part of you can go. If you go too fast, or push too hard, you’ll find yourself in self-opposition (see page xx) and an inevitable pushback will result. Luckily, you already have a number of tools to keep your connections at a sustainable, pushback-free intensity and pace. These include pinpointing, cradling, and aligning yourself with the internal witness as Bryce did in the previous chapter. If employing all these tools still leaves you feeling overwhelmed, then it’s definitely time to work with a skilled counselor.
What if a feeling always brings up hard resistance? Even with a counselor?
Another way to put this question is, “What if there’s an emotion that I just can’t or won’t feel?” As for your unwillingness to feel an emotion, that’s ultimately something that only you can address. When you’re ready, you’re ready, and attempting emotional connection even just one moment sooner will inevitably create pushback. So in this regard patience, along with acceptance of your resistance, provides the best way forward.
As for emotions that you can’t feel, even when applying all our key refinements, that happens most often due to a sense of inundation, meaning that the feeling seems to temporarily overpower your ability to witness it. I say, “seems to” because in actuality that’s an illusion. The best way I can exemplify this illusion is to share the story of Bryce, a forty-two year old from Vancouver, Canada. Bryce participated in an extra-marital affair for three years. When the truth finally came out, it destroyed his family.
When we met, not surprisingly, Bryce was racked with guilt. He carried it with him everywhere, terrified, only able to connect to it in fits and starts. Over a number of sessions, Bryce allowed a little more unfiltered guilt to surge through. During our pivotal session, he reported that the guilt had become all-consuming, and that every part of him was “on fire.” I reminded Bryce that since he was aware of the guilt, witnessing and describing it, at least a thin shred of him remained separate, unembroiled. Grudgingly he confirmed this. Next, Bryce followed my suggestion to let that thin shred of awareness become much more microscopic, and to cradle each and every newly arising sensation. Within a few minutes the guilt finally began to ease. In his mind’s eye Bryce now glimpsed a dim light, and had an inclination that at some point in the distant future he would once again be okay.
What Bryce’s experience highlights is that your witnessing function never disappears, even for a split-second. And as long as you’re able to witness an emotion, you can also feel it. Therefore, whenever confronted by inundating emotions, temporarily pause the 2 X 2 process to re-connect with your inner witness first.
Often, it’s just such inundating emotions that lead the way to our most valuable insights. Another client of mine, Donna, experienced this while on the other side of an affair. At first, when it came out that her husband had been unfaithful through their entire marriage, the feelings connected to this betrayal were too much. All she wanted to do was “shrivel up and disappear” . Gently, I reminded Donna of the courageous African American women at a classic New Orleans funeral. These women trail the casket howling and wailing inconsolably. As a result, however, they heal through their grief faster and fuller than anyone else.
A couple months later, when Donna was ready to take on this emotional assignment, she reconnected to her inner witness and dove in. Her feelings ranged from rage and hatred to abject despair. But these feelings also brought her a fresh, expanded perspective. Without rushing or forcing the issue, Donna grew to recognize all the signs of marital distress that she had long ignored or denied. More important, she also recognized how remaining in an emotionally disconnected marriage had mirrored and served her own need to stay shut down. Without overcoming this emotional inundation, Donna never would have taken responsibility for her part in the relationship’s shortcomings. She would have remained a victim, a questionable role model for her daughter, instead of spending the next year cultivating a hard-won sense of vitality and independence.
I’m in sales, a field in which rejection is a constant source of frustration and burnout. How does emotional connection help when an unpleasant feeling is bound to return again and again?
To reprise an earlier answer, you never actually have to deal with rejection that hasn’t happened yet. That’s true whether the rejection eventually arrives next week, month, or year. You only have to deal with any rejection that may be arising right now, in this moment. Just that realization alone can seriously soften rejection’s sting.
To reprise a main theme of this book, any emotion, rejection included, is a dynamic rather than fixed phenomenon. It’s never the same from moment to moment, or from situation to situation. Emotions only seem that way when approached either from a great distance, or through the prism of resistance. When emotions are experienced with sustained bodily attention, both slow and microscopic, they reveal themselves as a rapidly shifting array of sensations flowing toward release.
Now, what does all that have to do with your job in sales? It means that from now on you no longer have to experience “rejection,” per se. Sometimes you might have a burning feeling in your belly, a clammy flush to your cheeks, an inward pull of your torso, or a myriad of other painful but completely temporary sensations. If you’re willing and able to meet these sensations with the 2 X 2 process, along with its refinements, they will all quickly pass away, leaving you expanded and refreshed for your next client call. And if you meet any associated negative thoughts with the practice of mental detachment, these, too, will depart harmlessly and post haste.
I hope you’ll take this depiction with a healthy dose of skepticism, yet at the same time remain open enough to experiment. Usually it takes about a week of consistent, diligently applied 2 X 2 for the full benefit to take effect. You have absolutely nothing to lose in the effort, and a major increase in job satisfaction to gain.
Sometimes, when I’m upset, I talk to the hurting part of me with the wiser part of me. I send myself “good parent messages” that everything is going to be okay, and this usually calms me down. Do you agree with this approach? Does it conflict in any way with emotional connection?
When discussing different approaches to well being, my first advice is always “Whatever works.” You mention that you’re able to achieve a calming effect from this practice, and that’s important. You also have first-hand experience of this benefit, which is much better than just believing it because you read about it in a book, whether mine or anyone else’s.
Still, ever so subtly, you may be telling the upset part of yourself that itneeds to calm down, and that therefore there’s something wrong with its current experience. This creates the risk of self-opposition, and the pushback that inevitably results. That’s why I prefer the less dialogue-focused method of cradling. It sends a message to our upsets that is completely spacious and accepting. In light of this I’d suggest that you experiment with cradling during your next few upsets and see what happens. If for whatever reason you decide to return to your previous approach, just keep an eye out for any self-opposition. As long as there’s none present, you have nothing to worry about.
In my circles there’s a strong belief that what you focus on grows. So why would I want to bring what you call “exquisite attention” to my unpleasant feelings. Shouldn’t I focus instead on uplifting emotions?
This view keeps growing in popularity. But unless fully understood, it’s confusing and unhelpful. To focus on uplifting emotions is indeed a great practice for increased happiness and success. This is only true, however, if you’re not already feeling something less pleasant. Attempting to change your feelings because you deem one kind better than another is bound to fail, creating substantial pushback and a high potential for self-sabotage.
Here’s why: unpleasant emotions remain harmfully in your body until felt and released via the 2 X 2 process or something similar. The longer the emotions remain, the more intense they become, requiring greater degrees of resistance to keep them in check, which in turn saps the very positive energy that you’re trying to increase. Therefore, you can’t wish unpleasant emotions away. Nor can you ignore them away. Attempting to transform unpleasant emotions by focusing on their opposite is like building your dream house on a volcano. My advice in this regard is always plain and simple—when unpleasant emotions are present, begin by feeling your way to expansion. Then, and only then, focus your attention on what inspires you. Proceeding in this order ensures that you’ll achieve maximum benefit for your efforts.
I understand the idea that I can’t bypass my bad feelings by trying to feel better ones, but aren’t there just times when enough is enough? What if I’m in a foul mood and thirty minutes on a treadmill is all it would take to set me right? Wouldn’t hanging out in my misery at that point just be a kind of masochism?
For most people, hanging out in their misery involves a self-perpetuating feedback loop between thoughts and feelings. Rather than practicing mental detachment, they either align with their negative thoughts or fight them. This, you’re absolutely correct, keeps the whole painful experience locked unnecessarily in place. Both the unwanted thoughts and feelings just keep on coming, sometimes repeating themselves ad nauseum and other times arriving in new, original variations of the same old torment. It’s possible to remain in this state not just for hours or days, but even a whole lifetime.
Emotional connection, by contrast, clears this cycle at its source. You may recall the way that happened for Tom, Jordan and Barbara in Chapter Four. It will happen for you in the same way, as long as your 2 X 2-ing is accompanied by consistent mental detachment.
On the other hand, it’s important to note that some bad moods aren’t about emotional repression at all. They may be hormonal, or otherwise randomly induced by an imperfectly functioning organism. In these cases—you’re right—all the 2 X 2 in the world isn’t likely to produce more than minimal expansion. Plus, the emotions produced at such times are far less trustworthy than usual.
Therefore, if you become aware that your emotional connection is either abnormally intense or negative, pause momentarily and perform a mood scan. Does everything you consider seem to have a similar cast? Has this been occurring for more than an hour? If so, take the currently arising emotions with a grain of salt. And by all means, as you’ve suggested, shift activities and see what happens. Sometimes vigorous exercise does do the trick, providing a kind of “system reset.” At other times sleep leads to the same result, as well as complete concentration on something outside yourself. Whichever you choose, just make sure you’re also accepting the bad mood in the same way you would an individual emotion. Resisting a bad mood, inevitably, makes it last longer and feel much worse.
My own sensitivity isn’t about experiencing other people’s passing emotions. Instead, I feel like I’ve been taken over by my father’s entire emotional make-up. I literally feel his responses inside me more powerfully than my own. Whenever I try to relax, for example, his voice booms in my mind, “You can play when you finish your work, and your work is never done.” So I’m wondering, is there a way to perform an emotional exorcism?
Your question is about the emotional legacy that parents hand down to children, which we first explored in Chapter 13. It reminds me of a client from many years ago, Carrie, who was bright, beautiful and psychologically savvy, but at thirty-three had never been in a long-term relationship. Here’s how she described it: “The introject of my mother is overpowering. It’s convinced that I don’t deserve to be happy and am always wrong. As a result I never stand up for myself, pick the most messed up guys, and find a way to sabotage even bad relationships.” The tone in Carrie’s voice made it clear—she was fighting an internal civil war and losing badly. Such a civil war thrives upon an either/or orientation. To keep it going we must remain deeply contracted, with only enough room at any time for just one side to hold the “battlefield.” So I worked with Carrie on a both/and approach, which in this case meant meeting the introject of her mother with absolutely no resistance. It meant, instead, connecting with the emotions that had split off into this mother persona and were fueling Carrie’s entire conflict.
It took many false starts and about a half-hour for Carrie to 2 X 2 with her avowed enemy, but once in full flow she unleashed a flood of unworthiness. This unworthiness had been passed from one generation to the next. Fair or not, it belonged to Carrie now. To end both the war and the legacy, in an ironic twist, Carrie needed to cradle her own mother. It took a few additional sessions and a lot of repeating as necessary on her own, but within about a year Carrie felt mostly at peace. Within another year came a healthy, durable relationship.
What’s required in your case, rather than an “exorcism,” is an internal reunion similar to the one Carrie experienced. This means embracing the emotional reality of your father, as it lives within you, fully enough to feel all that he couldn’t. The resulting healing will free you from your emotional possession, reconnect you with your own authentic inner voice, and ensure that you pass on a healthier legacy.
Your focus is on the way we resist our own emotions. But what I resist most is the emotions of others. And especially their judgments. I devise elaborate strategies to make people love and appreciate me, and to avoid their criticism and rebuke. How can I stop doing that?
The only reason you ever need other people to feel a certain way about you is to change the way you feel about you. When you strategize so much to win their love, it’s a reflection of how unloved and/or unlovable you actually feel. It’s even more reflective of your resistance to those feelings. If the feelings weren’t intolerable to you, there would be no reason to seek their opposite. The same is true about strategies to avoid criticism.
Remember: most of the time we’re either running toward a feeling or away from one. It’s probably even more accurate to say that we’re doing both at the same time. In your case this is certainly true. But so far you’ve placed the majority of your attention on the role others play in that process. This can work, but of course only to a point, since the people in our lives have an uncanny knack for not following the script! So I suggest that you experiment with cutting out the middleman and going straight to the source of your greatest influence and impact—yourself. Use the 2 X 2 process to release your resistance and weather the storm of those difficult feelings that you’ve been forever desperate to avoid. Once the storm clears, you’ll feel expanded and free no matter what anyone else has to say about it.
There are lots of things in life that are worthy of condemnation—like child abuse, for example—and if remaining brittle and tense is the price I have to pay to sustain my condemnation, so be it. I’m not so interested in my own happiness if it means letting evil people off the hook.
Your question contains a common either/or scenario, assuming that to hold onto your condemnation of evil you must feel bad. I invite you to consider the both/and scenario that you can fight for a just world andfeel uplifted by your efforts. In fact, I maintain that you’ll become a much more effective activist for change if you approach the issues involved from an expansive, discerning orientation. The evils of the world, no doubt, will follow their own course completely independent of how open or closed you feel. When holding onto your resistant judgments of other people, it’s you who pays the price for their actions, not them.
You’ve mentioned a few times that emotional resistance takes place not just with individuals and groups but even at the national level. Can you be more specific about that?
The most illustrative answer to this question involves patriotic pride, the idea that one’s own country is better than all the others. In America this view is quite prevalent. Many people who have never even set foot on foreign soil are convinced that every other nation is less creative, less free, and an overall worse place to live. What’s of interest to us here is not whether that’s actually true, or can even be measured, but rather the way people cling to this viewpoint reflexively and become uninterested in debate or new information.
Reflexive viewpoints are a reliable sign of resistance, both at the personal and social level. Here, there seems to be a need for Americans to feel that they are the “best” . This points to the inability to feel inferior, or even just equal to the other nations of the world. Like all types of emotional resistance, it comes at great cost. Both citizens and officials alike routinely resist international surveys that rank America low on indexes for things like academic achievement and quality of life. Just this week, as I’ve been mulling over our unconscious resistance in this regard, UNICEF released a study that ranks the US at the bottom of 21 wealthy countries in overall child welfare. Whenever something like this happens, pundits are quick to either attack a study’s conclusions or sound a panicky state of alarm.
If freed from resistance to feelings of equality and inferiority, we’d probably chart a middle course, welcoming such a study as an opportunity to take a good look at ourselves. We might still evaluate the study for accuracy, but also immediately address whatever bona fide shortcomings in our society it reveals. Further, we might organize missions of inquiry to the highest-ranking countries to discover successful strategies of theirs that can be replicated here. Some of these responses do occur in academic institutions, but overall we tend to be allergic to them. Imagine the outcry if the President of the United States went on television and said that we have a lot to learn from The Czech Republic or the Scandinavian countries. What if he invited the leaders in child welfare from these countries to come to America, study our weaknesses, and offer advice for improvement? Almost for certain, that President’s approval rating would instantly plummet.
To be clear, my point is not about the relative merits of countries or studies. Instead, I want to draw attention to the way any population’s unwillingness to feel humble and vulnerable about itself will severely limit opportunities for growth and improvement. This principle also works in reverse. Populations that are unwilling to feel positive and powerful about themselves will also limit their potential for growth and improvement. Therefore, only a nation that does not need to feel or deny any particular emotion is completely free to chart its own expansive destiny.
When telling Kenneth’s story, you described how the 2 X 2 process helps reveal the degree to which physical complaints are actually somatized emotion. I’m wondering if the 2 X 2 process can help alleviate pain period, regardless of its source?
When viewed slowly and microscopically, pain of any type, just like emotion, is a series of rapidly changing sensations. We applied this recognition a few questions ago when looking at my client’s withdrawal symptoms, but now let’s broaden our consideration. Take a “headache,” for example. Technically, there’s no such thing. During the 2 X 2 process, a headache might express itself as pulsing at the temples, then a gripping sensation at the back of the neck, then pressure along the top of the scalp, then no sensation at all for a split second, and then pulsing once again. Approaching a headache with this kind of attention creates a gentle, spacious internal environment. Often, this is just what a headache needs to lessen considerably, and even disappear.
The same is true for any type of chronic pain. Speaking as someone who’s lived with a debilitating ailment for two decades, I can attest that the word “chronic” is more conceptual than experiential. Even my most persistent symptoms arrive in new and different form with every passing moment. And whenever I greet these symptoms are with 2 X 2, the actual pain always decreases. Plus, in those rare instances when I choose to take medication for my condition, the dulled symptoms that follow still respond best to this approach.
I’ve been experimenting with a both/and orientation to my inner conflicts and it’s not pretty. Almost every time I have to do something—like study, go to work, exercise—there’s another part of me that rears up and says “No! I don’t wanna!” How am I supposed to handle that?
Inside most of us there’s a “terrible two-year-old” just like the one you describe. Of course I don’t mean this literally, but much of our everyday resistance definitely bears a whiny, babyish tone. The problem only starts, however, when we decide that there’s something wrong with this response. It’s then that the test of wills begins, and as any parent knows, a two-year-old can take you to the mat. Yet while our whiny resistance seems to stand in the way of necessary activities, what it usually wants is just to stomp around and complain. If we let it, the resistance soon settles and we’re able to go about our business.
Personally, I experience such an “I don’t wanna!” response before each and every speech on my schedule. It arrives without fail the night before, when suddenly all I can think about is room service and bad TV. Sometimes I indulge those desires in moderation, and sometimes I don’t. No matter what, though, I offer my stompy resistance a genuinely warm welcome. I hear and acknowledge its contrary desires without condescending or editorializing. I’ve seen time and again how it’s my acceptance, more than any backtalk or indulgence, which unfailingly silences the whine.
I’m not more sensitive than the next person, but I do tend to take things very personally. If the gas station attendant scowls at me, for example I can’t get it out of my head for hours. Intellectually I know it’s not about me. I mean, he’s probably just having a bad day or something. But that doesn’t keep me from obsessing about it. Can anything?
The simple way not to take things personally is to recognize that emotions are mostly spontaneous, unavoidable responses to your surrounding environment. A sunset might make you feel peaceful, a storm might make you feel afraid, and a rude clerk might make you feel irritated. It seems like the clerk is doing something to you, but in essence he’s just another part of the landscape. If you take his scowl personally, it’s because analyzing and judging have blocked your emotional flow. Instead of just registering the arising emotion and allowing it to pass away, you get stuck wondering why this experience has happened, and determining all the things that are wrong with it.
When analyzing and judging continue obsessively, it’s because your reasoning brain (neo cortex) and your feeling brain (limbic system) are locked in a stalemate. Your reasoning brain thinks that if it can solve the current “problem,” or accurately assign blame, then all will be well. In the heat of the moment it forgets our motto—“Feel first, think later.” Out of order and misdirected, it’s blind to its own true motive—get rid of the emotion. The more it attempts to banish the emotion, the stronger the emotion fights back. This stalemate inevitably persists, growing ever more painful, until you become aware of what’s happening and intervene.
Here’s how: As soon as you notice that anything from your external environment has provoked a personal response, begin 2 X 2 immediately. Keep surfing, letting all analysis and judgment drift through you like internal clouds. Soon the clouds will clear, and so will the previously blocked emotions. The why of it all won’t matter in the same way, and neither will blame. And if there is indeed something about the situation that bears non-resistant examination, you’ll now truly be up to the task.
In case this seems too easy, consider the example of my client, Jerry. A high school track coach, Jerry worked daily with unappreciative, disrespectful kids. Their insolence got under his skin to the point that he considered quitting. He just couldn’t understand why today’s kids are so entitled (analyzing), and he really thought it was his job to set them straight (judging). During a brief round of 2 X 2, Jerry broke through his fierce resistance and encountered a profound sense of disappointment. This disappointment sat in the center of his chest and burned like hot coal. After a few minutes, though, the coal disintegrated into ash.
In the much cooler aftermath, Jerry saw how his resistance had rendered him as unappreciative and disrespectful of the kids as they were of him. If he led by example, Jerry realized, the whole enterprise would have a different flavor. This realization set off a frenzied round of brainstorming, and within another ten minutes he had a brand new coaching strategy. The strategy worked. The team’s behavior, morale and performance all improved considerably. Better yet, whenever the kids reverted to their old ways, Jerry no longer took it personally. He was now able to respond to each transgression quickly and creatively, taking the unique needs of each student into full account.
Whenever you talk about emotions, it’s as if they’re all equal, and all good. But some of them are plain inaccurate, even unhealthy, and not just because of conditioning either. Don’t you agree that for the purpose of spiritual growth we often need to rise above certain emotions?
I’m grateful for your invitation to address these issues, and will take them one at a time. First, you are absolutely right about emotions sometimes being flat-out wrong without previous conditioning as the cause. But it’s my experience that this doesn’t happen very often. And to determine if it is happening, we have no other option than to give questionable emotions a full hearing. Usually our verdicts in such cases come much too soon, cut us off from valuable evidence, and end up more about resistance than clear-sighted evaluation. This is akin to punishing a child for misbehavior without learning whether the offense actually occurred. I use the analogy of a child because emotions and children share a tendency toward murky, jumbled communication. It might be nice if emotions were always swift, clear and to the point, but they aren’t.
Second, when you mention that some emotions are unhealthy, I would refine your statement to read, “Prolonged resistance is unhealthy.” Unless accompanied by resistance, no emotion appears long enough, or frequently enough, to cause real harm. When we refer to people in need of “anger management,” for instance, it’s their resistance to anger that’s the actual problem. Such people usually need to stop trying to manage the experience of anger and instead, finally, just let it happen. Once they can feel their anger fully, without having to act it out upon others, it almost always passes quicker, easier, and minus any social cost. Plus, this process creates a direct through line to any core emotion that might lie beneath anger’s protective blast
Third, you suggest that some emotions are better, or more spiritual than others. My own view is that there’s a time and place for all of them, but what’s more important is that most emotions arise whether we approve of them or not. Therefore, the true test of our virtue is what we do afterward. I maintain that the greatest teachers, leaders, healers and visionaries share an exceptional ability to harmonize with their emotions rather than shoehorn them into a prescribed ideal. Whenever emotions are ranked or denigrated, pushback reigns.
Do you have any additional advice about how best to express emotion?
My main advice, to paraphrase one of our earlier mottoes, is “Feel first, speak later.” Generally, it’s not a good idea to talk about feelings while you’re having them, unless with a therapist or similar supporter. As first discussed in Containment doing so tends to decrease connection, increase resistance, and promote inaccurate communication. When you talk about an emotion prior to or during 2 X 2, especially with the parties involved, it’s easy to slip into unhelpful criticism, blame, or other forms of accusation. Only when expanded do you have the greatest possibility of saying what you really mean, and getting it across in the most fruitful way.
Among the many teachings on effective communication, I’m aware of two that stress emotional connection. The first is Nonviolent Communication, created by Marshall Rosenberg. This material helps us see the link between our emotions and the needs that engender them, which in turn allows us to formulate skillful spoken requests for our counterparts. The second framework for emotionally connected expression is the Imago Therapy Dialogue, created by Harville Hendrix. Here, emphasis is placed upon listening to a counterpart’s emotional experience, then validating it fully before otherwise responding.
Still, since there are plenty of times when we don’t always have the luxury or ability to wait for expansion before communicating our feelings, it’s necessary to have strategies for them, too. One such strategy is to describe only the actual physical sensations you’re experiencing. For example, instead of saying something like, “I’m devastated that you forgot my birthday and it makes me question our relationship,” you might say, “I’m feeling sad that you forgot my birthday. My heart is heavy and my throat is tight. Let me have a few minutes to feel all this before we talk about it.”
Another strategy for sharing feelings while having them is sticking to one syllable. This is especially helpful for strong emotions that may otherwise lead to regrettable words, and for children or teenagers with little patience for speeches. Sometimes just a simple “Owwww!” or “Arrrgh!” is all that’s necessary to make sure our emotions are recognized and taken seriously. Plus, if nothing truly serious has occurred, such exclamations can often break the tension and provoke surprising, expansion-inducing amusement.
Often, when I’m 2 x 2-ing about one subject, lots of thoughts and feelings show up about other subjects. Am I doing it right or wrong?
This question highlights how emotions are state-dependent, meaning that they often surface in bunches that match the mood of the moment. An angry frame of mind brought about by one situation is likely produce additional, similar emotions about entirely different subjects. That’s because emotions, like life, are messy. If we expect them to follow an orderly or consistent path, via 2 X 2 or otherwise, we’ll always be disappointed. But when we do opt for 2 X 2, and encounter a flurry of topics, there’s no need to alter our process in any way. For sure this sometimes creates choppy and challenging waters, but they can still be skillfully surfed. Each new topic requires nothing more than a moment of recognition, followed by a resumption of attention on the emotions’ physical manifestation.
I come from a long line of people who don’t like to feel. It makes us uncomfortable to be so exposed, to ourselves and others. I’ve experimented with the 2 X 2 process but don’t get very far. Do you think that’s because I’m doing it wrong, or is it possible that some people just aren’t wired for deep feeling?
People are indeed wired differently. Even if gender, environment, and socialization didn’t play a role in the different ways we experience emotion, personality still would. Styles of feeling are as varied as people themselves. The goal of emotional connection, therefore, isn’t at all about uniformity. Rather, it’s about moving from unconscious habits to free choice, and from self-opposition to self-mastery. This is equally true whether one’s lineage is emotionally unbridled, reserved, or somewhere in between.
That said, most of us have a considerable amount of emotional resistance to work through. As a result, the 2 X 2 process does lead us to more feeling, not less. So whenever people define themselves as not particularly emotional, even after a workshop or two, I suggest that they temporarily set aside that self-characterization and seek out a counselor for fine-tuning. Almost always, after putting in that extra effort, they happily revise their original assessment.