What Are You Unwilling to Feel?
An Ode to the Nails in Our Head
There is a popular You Tube video about a woman in pain wanting some empathy and understanding from her male partner. If you don’t know the video I suggest you watch it here before reading further or it will spoil the reveal… not to mention it’s pretty damn funny.
The premise of the video akin to Men Are From Mars / Women Are From Venus is that men tend to want to solve problems whereas women want to be understood and listened to not “fixed”. I don’t like male / female stereotypes because quite frankly I often don’t relate.
I’d like to suggest that it is more accurate to acknowledge that there are internal processors and external processors. Me - internal processor - I can perseverate for days and days on my problems all by my lonesome. If and when I bring them to someone it’s because I can’t figure it out myself and I’d like their ideas on a solution.
Other people I know can’t seem to get to their truth unless they talk it out to someone else. It’s almost like they need to verbalise it as part of the process of working through it - weird, right? Who knew? Just kidding, I love all you verbal processors in my life.
A lot of energy in therapeutic circles goes towards helping the internal processor of the couple be more empathetic and present. I, for example, am now getting much better at saying “Gee, that sounds really hard” instead of offering solutions. What doesn’t get addressed however (probably because therapists get paid to listen) is why people prefer to stay with a nail in their head rather than take steps to pull it out. Afterall, sometimes it is about the nail, isn’t it?
I’ve spent some time thinking about this (yes, to myself, thank you very much) and believe that it comes down to “default uncomfortable feeling modes”. Let me explain.
No one likes uncomfortable feelings. We’d all prefer to feel happy, connected, at ease all the time if we could. However, there are certain uncomfortable feelings that we’re good at and others that scare the shit out of us.
For example, take dating. Me - I am good at loneliness. Chalk it up to way too much time being sent to my room as a kid but I am a loneliness champ. Do I like when this feeling comes up? No, but I know how to handle it. Now contrast this with the anxiety that comes up for me when I need to engage in small talk with someone I don’t know - awful - seriously run for the hills. So, if I was telling someone I feel lonely and they suggested going out and meeting new people - well let’s just say that nail might stay in my head for a very long time.
It’s not that I want to stay lonely as much as I have well honed coping mechanisms for loneliness but not so many for anxiety.
We all have them - the feelings that shall not be named. Maybe you can’t tolerate feeling out of control, or like a fool; criticised or like a failure.
Tara Brach, the Buddhist teacher, suggests we ask ourselves: “what are you unwilling to feel?” as a spiritual practice. I’d propose that often, when we are stuck in life it comes from this place of not wanting to feel something. We build situational walls around the feelings that scare. These walls become the nails in our heads that even if they hurt us or impinge on our life are serving a purpose. Our excuses are really just defence mechanisms trying to keep us safe from our feelings.
The truth is we secretly love our nails, but freedom - real freedom - comes from knowing that there is no feeling you cannot handle.
No nail worth keeping in your head.
We can go to the places that scare us and worst case if it ever gets to be too much you can always go find a trusty hammer.
I’d love to hear from you in the comments below… what are you afraid to feel?
For me, it's not so much "afraid to feel" as much as "needing to learn to find comfort in feeling" vulnerability. Men, or at least me, were raised to feel like we're the protectors, the providers, the anchor/rock in the relationships. As such, it means we can't show weakness or vulnerabilities, fear or the like. Rather, we just learn to keep those suppressed and it slowly eats away at us, and eventually, ironically, our relationships that we are protecting. It's a basic tenant of communication, that outward expression of care, concern, compassion and sharing our hopes, dreams and fears with others...and yet it also can be so daunting for some of us.
And I envy you on some level with your comfort in loneliness. It's a skill I am having to learn, or re-learn, in real time right now...and I can't say that I am a fan of it. I am wired to be social, to be connected to people around me. So my time in isolation is quite the learning experience for me. Wait, is that a second for me??
Wait - what? Are you telling me there might not be a trophy or a cape?!? But seriously good point that it is often out need to fix and attend to our discomfort with someone else’s feelings that leads to advice giving. That said I do think it’s an interesting question - why do people stay stuck in situations that are clearly making them unhappy (nail in head)? Is it more compassionate to listen and empathize or to tell them - yo - you have a nail in your head? #askingforafriend