Feeling in Journal

The feeling I get when I have sadness, grief, anger, or any “negative” emotion is to become anxious and worried about how it will affect those around me.
It is an immediate response. Oh no- I’m sad! Who’s around? Am I safe to cry? Do I have to be somewhere soon? Can I indulge in feeling this sadness?
It’s an automatic response. Totally conditioned. Totally impervious to my will.
If there are people around, anyone really, I stop feeling. I simply get rid of it in some way. I have a large box of tricks to do this.

And. That’s not good for me. Obviously. This is really bad for me. Suppressing emotion is a sure fire way to be completely and utterly miserable. It’s like ignoring that engine light on your dash. Hey, there’s something wrong with your car! it says. I glance around to see who I’m about to inconvenience by admitting there might be an issue. No one? Great. Investigate. Become curious and take a look around until I bump into the problem, which is inevitably something that is dangerous or harmful to me. It’s someone acting like I don’t matter. It’s someone telling me I don’t have feelings. It’s someone calling me names. It’s a family member who should care about me completely ignoring my distress and my hurt.
Yeah. My feelings always tell me that something is hurting. Something is wrong. Something is going to harm me if I don’t do something about it.
And yet, my inner response to my problems, as soon as they reveal that I might inconvenience someone around me, is to shut that process down.
Because, deep in my bones, I know that they can’t deal with it. I know that I will be rejected for having a problem. I know that I will be attacked. I know that my place in the family is heavily dependent on my compliance to have no problems with it.

Because… a relationship is there for disagreements.
It has to be.
What is it when people always agree? It’s simply a sort of directionality- a mutual convenience. Yet when we hit a fork in the road, and a disagreement arises, if the only commonality is convenience then it is entirely easy to separate and go our own way. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s just not a relationship.
Now if we hit a fork and one party depends on the other, they need the other to go with them along their path. They have a plan. They have a preferred outcome. And so they manipulate and will and force the other to go their way. This also is not a relationship, because the first does not relate to the other’s choices. It merely relates to it’s own need for the other’s presence.
In the case that there is a true relationship, each party is open and honest about their position. “I prefer this route, and you prefer that route.” This is merely a statement of fact. A basic disagreement is had. However, the parties are relating to each other’s choice to prefer a path. They are disagreeing, and they have a relationship because they are disagreeing. Respect for the other’s choice is all that is required.
The relationship endures because of respect of choice. One cannot manipulate, force, coerce, or bribe if they respect the other’s choice. True negotiation is the only way to settle a disagreement when a relationship is present. Because we discover the value of the other’s choice when we negotiate. “I’ll do this if you do that” is a statement of how much you value your choice, and also how much you respect your partner’s choice. Each party is valued by the other’s respect for their choice.

And if I were to apply this basic definition of a relationship to my life. I have only a handful of them. There is DH.
Well..
I have DH.

Last updated July 29, 2020