By: Iyo_Embong

“Openly revealing our feelings establishes credibility”. Gerry Spence.

I learned a long time ago that I try to use in my daily life.  To resolve conflict creatively we need not only to speak the truth in love, but also to listen with our heart. We need to be honest and share our true feelings – not just our surface feelings.

For example, anger is often a defence against feeling our fear. So, to resolve conflict, it’s important not to deny the anger, but to be aware that it is a defence against feeling our deeper feelings. This can be difficult for many of us to do. We either don’t know how to do this, or we use anger to stop the other person from getting close to us.

Or, equally destructive, to avoid conflict we deny our true feelings and pretend to be something we are not. This way conflict never gets faced, let alone resolved, and resentment can fester below the surface for years. And this festering is the cause behind many a broken relationship. We defend our dishonesty (denying and not sharing our true feelings) on the grounds that it may hurt another person. And then, having rationalized our phoniness into nobility, we settle for superficial relationships.

To resolve conflict it is also very important to use “I” messages. That is, instead of saying, “You make me mad or you really hurt my feelings,” say words to the effect, “When you say (or do) things like thus and so, I feel hurt and/or angry, and I need to talk about it.”

Avoid the blame-game at all costs. Many, if not most of us are like the lawyer in the Bible who, “wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ This was when Jesus told him that the greatest commandment was to love God and your neighbour as yourself.

If we don’t love and accept ourself in a healthy sense, conflict can be terribly distressing. We need to realize that nobody can upset us (hurt our feelings or make us angry) without our permission. For instance, if we had a perfect self-concept (which we don’t) it would be very rare that our feelings would ever get hurt. What the other person says or does may or may not be a problem, but how we respond is always our responsibility. And tothe degree we overreact, that is always our problem.

So before we lay the blame at another’s feet, we need to be courageously honest with ourself and know when we are responding responsibly and openly admit when we are overreacting out of proportion to what has happened. Overreactions happen when unresolved issues from the past get triggered. The trigger is not our problem but our overreaction is.

Emotional honesty means expressing our true feelings. To be emotionally honest we must first be emotionally aware. This emotional awareness is related to our emotional intelligence. It is our emotional intelligence, combined with the necessary learning, practice and experience, which gives us the ability to accurately identify our feelings.

Emotional intelligence may also give us the ability to decide when it is in our best interest to be emotionally honest by sharing our real feelings. There are times when it is not healthy or safe for us to be emotionally honest. In general though, I believe we would be better off individually and as a society if we would be more emotionally honest.

If we are more emotionally honest with ourselves we will get to know our “true selves” on a deeper level. This could help us become more self-accepting. It could also helps us make better choices about how to spend out time and who to spend it with. If we are emotionally honest with others, it may encourage them to be more emotionally honest. When we are emotionally honest we are more likely not to be asked or pressured to do things which we do not want to do. We will also find out sooner who respects our feelings.

It takes emotional awareness, self-confidence, even courage to be emotionally honest. This is because, in many ways, society teaches us to ignore, repress, deny and lie about our feelings. For example, when asked how we feel, most of us will reply “fine” or “good,” even if that is not true. Often, people will also say that they are not angry or not defensive, when it is obvious that they are!

Children start out emotionally honest. They express their true feelings freely and spontaneously. But the training to be emotionally dishonest begins at an early age. Parents and teachers frequently encourage or even demand that children speak or act in ways which are inconsistent with the child’s true feelings;

• The child is told to smile when actually she is sad.
• She is told to apologize when she feels no regret.
• She is told to say “thank you,” when she feels no appreciation.
• She is told to “stop complaining” when she feels mistreated.
• She may be told to kiss people good night when she would never do so voluntarily.
• She may be told it is “rude” and “selfish” to protest being forced to act in ways which go against her feelings.

Also, children are told they can’t use certain words to express themselves. I have seen more than one parent tell their child not to use the word “hate,” for example. And of course, the use of profanity to express one’s feelings is often punished, sometimes harshly. In some cases the parent never allows the children to explain why they feel so strongly.

As children become adolescents they begin to think more for themselves. They begin to speak out more, “talk back” more and challenge the adults around them. If these adults feel threatened they are likely to defend themselves by invalidating the adolescent’s feelings and perceptions. There is also peer pressure to conform to the group norms.

Through all of this the child and adolescent learns they can’t be honest with their feelings. They gradually stop being emotionally honest with their parents, their teachers, their friends and even themselves. They learn it just doesn’t pay to express one’s true feelings.

Parents can create an emotionally safe environment, where the child and adolescent is free to be emotionally honest, or they may create just the opposite. The way we were parented is probably the main factor in how emotionally honest we are later in life.

The primary way to create an emotionally safe environment is through emotional validation. When we are accepted and validated emotionally we aren’t afraid of being rejected or punished for expressing any feelings, thoughts, questions or perceptions we might have. We are free to be ourselves, and our parents get to know us as we really are. When we are accepted as we really are, and not just as the image we believe we need toportray, we feel a strong sense of inner security. We can be more emotionally honest with others because we are not as afraid of their rejection. Since we feel secure within ourselves, the acceptance or rejection from others is simply not as important to us. We are more free to be ourselves with everyone. This quality attracts other people who are also secure and can be themselves. Therefore, we are likely to be surrounded by secure, self-confident, emotionally honest people as the years go by.

On the other hand when we, as children, are discouraged from being anything less than fully emotionally honest, the parents don’t see the true “us.” Over time, some children drift further and further away from their parents emotionally. During adolescence this distance often becomes more evident. Then when the adolescent is legally free to leave the home they avoid contact with the parents, or they may stay in contact only out of a feeling of obligation or guilt rather than a desire to share things with them. After all, the parents don’t really know the person who was living under the same roof with them for all those years.

Worse yet, the parents might really believe they do know their children. They may then be confused and frustrated by the things their child or adolescent does. They might say, “I don’t understand how you can do so and so!” But the reason they don’t understand is because they don’t really know their son or daughter due to the many years of discouraging emotional honesty.

We feel most understood when someone understands how we feel. But if we have not been allowed to express our true feelings, then it is impossible for someone else to really understand us. Especially during our adolescent years or early part of a healthy relationship, it is important for us to feel understood. We may believe they understand us “from head to toe,” but they do not feel understood, and this is what matters the most!

By: Iyo_Embong