when you pull back the curtain to expose a view for the first time...
...it seems inevitable that you will see things you've never seen before. and if you've got little or nothing to which you can compare the vista, it may seem enormous, lacking a comparative scale of measure.
one of the things matthew and i are trying to change in our relationship (and by "we", i mostly mean "me", here) in order to avoid nasty emotional supernovas is a clarity of communication, specifically regarding "state of the nation". i am in many ways a quintessential gemini: i lead an extremely rich and vibrant emotional life... in my head. i don't mean in the imaginary sense so much as in the "i experience everything in great depth and detail, but i frequently don't externalize the pertinent details, possibly just the messier subconscious overflow/backflow components". in this relationship, as in every intimate adult relationship i've ever had, i've internalized the vast majority of my own emotional landscape. i feel everything, and i historically react to a lot of what i feel, which has the unfortunate aspect of looking to others like opaque, unpredictable actions that lack a clear provocation. emotional supernovas are those big explosive moments where a situation has built up well past my point of safe internalization, and i lose control.
goleman (Emotional Intelligence) calls this "emotional hijacking"; gottman (Seven Principles) calls it "flooding". in my experience, it really is a blinding-like-staring-into-the-sun explosion; both authors have excellent descriptions of the physiological and neurological experience of the moment of ignition and combustion that i can attest to from my own experience. and in those moments, it's amazing what kinds of behaviours seem like perfectly reasoned and reasonable actions to a person who otherwise wouldn't be likely to commit such emotional atrocities. but in those moments, there is no balance, no grounding centre. there is only chaos in the mind.
gottman talks about communication repairs that couples use to diffuse the tension of a conflicted exchange in order to decrease the build-up to explosion; goleman talks about being mindful of the state, and different ways in which people develop self-calming rituals to talk themselves off the metaphorical ledge, to back away from the brink of catastrophic response. conceptually, both dovetail nicely with pema chodron's idea of "sitting in the moment" and "leaning into the sharp things", giving time and acknowledgement to the emotional content of the moment while accepting that one has the option to NOT act on the responsive impulses.
having on numerous occasions failed to control those responses (which in no way diminishes the increasing number of successes i have in controlling them, but i am human, and i still make mistakes; sometimes they are still spectacular ones, in a "see the smoking wreckage from space" sense), i have made a commitment to matthew to *try* to communicate more of that luscious internal landscape as i become aware of its changing contours and composition. i know what i'm feeling, and i know how it measures in this instance of an experience as a comparison to previous similar experiences. but for matthew, who has rarely been allowed to peek behind the curtain, the sudden exposure to this vast expanse of my emotional state is like being taken in a blindfold to the edge of the Grand Canyon for the first time. it's overwhelming and a little confusing to put into a familiar context, but eventually you find you can grasp things that are at least not totally alien: ah, that's a river down there; those looks like canyon paths; those geological striations are different world epochs, okay, got that.
so matthew is encountering a lot of unfamiliar emotional content markers that he's now having to put into context: context of my previous general behaviours, context of my behaviours when under particular stresses, context of our relationship overall. we had a conversation after he got home from work this evening in which i made it (or tired to make it) very clear that just because i'm emoting in response to a confluence of situational stimuli, it does not require action or change on his part, and what i *really* don't need in the midst of this are arbitrary capitulations from him that may come back to bite us in the ass later as resentments on his part. if things *do* need to be changed, we'll look at underlying needs that current actions are driving to meet, and make a collaborative decision on what's best *for us* in the situation, rather than one side or the other making bitter and arbitrary decisions to capitulate to unclear interpretations of murky or conflicted emotional state data. right now, we're engaging the process we said we would engage: expressing emotional content in an emotional situation as i become aware of it. there is no underlying tag of "...and i expect YOU to change to assuage MY fears/needs/insecurities". quite the opposite, in fact. i am working to communicate externally a more congruent picture of my internal state. it's all about me, at least for the moment.
people with White Knight Complexes, however, aren't used to being stymied by someone who appears to be in significant distress but who clearly indicates not wanting to be rescued. matthew admits that he's not comfortable with the fact that i still perceive myself as being emotionally volatile, although now at least we both have a clear(er) picture of the degree of distress, where it comes from, how it operates; *NOT* being allowed to make the grand sacrificial capitulatory gestures as a means of decreasing the tension may be making him nutty, i'm not really sure. but this is a habit-breaking, watershed moment for both of us here, in terms of looking at an entire emotional vista and in terms of sitting with it without acting upon it. i am not a problem to be fixed.
this does lead to his perfectly reasonable question of, "If the risk (of supernova) is high and the impact (on all involved parties) is also high, what should I do with this information?" there isn't an easy-to-hear answer to this, because really the only answer is, "nothing". be aware, is all. use the knowledge you have to make informed decisions, both on your own, and in collaboration with me. at last there *is* information now to be applied, whereas historically there have been guesses (often erroneous), assumptions (frequently as erroneous), and interpretations (see previous note). the big win here is increased awareness, in theory, the engagement of a refinement in our relationship process. communicating the emotional state also allows me to acknowledge it consciously, making me aware of its composition, and my reactions (or, more accurately, my options for reactions) to it. historically, there'd be no acknowledgement of the nature and scope of my distress until *after* the abrupt appearance of great smoking black craters made it impossible to deny the presence of potentially lethal emotional content, because my sole subconscious tool for managing critical stress has been to take off and nuke the site from orbit. kick the perceived perpetrators of my metaphysical harm in the metaphorical gonads, as it were, and worry about cleaning up the mess after the fact.
oddly enough, that doesn't work so well when one's personal goal in life is increasing self-awareness.
so i am sitting with my insecure volatility, and matthew is sitting with his discomfort at this new emotional vista. i am moving to fix an issue in myself that stems from internalizing my own emotional experiences, which is new for me, and he is (at my explicit request) NOT moving to fix or change anything just yet out of a capitulatory need to decrease the perceived tension between us. it's awkward and uncomfortable, but different from our historical patterns on both sides of the equation. in this respect, i have hope of teaching a couple of old dogs a new trick or two. it may yet backfire, but at least it will be a *new* mistake.
one of the things matthew and i are trying to change in our relationship (and by "we", i mostly mean "me", here) in order to avoid nasty emotional supernovas is a clarity of communication, specifically regarding "state of the nation". i am in many ways a quintessential gemini: i lead an extremely rich and vibrant emotional life... in my head. i don't mean in the imaginary sense so much as in the "i experience everything in great depth and detail, but i frequently don't externalize the pertinent details, possibly just the messier subconscious overflow/backflow components". in this relationship, as in every intimate adult relationship i've ever had, i've internalized the vast majority of my own emotional landscape. i feel everything, and i historically react to a lot of what i feel, which has the unfortunate aspect of looking to others like opaque, unpredictable actions that lack a clear provocation. emotional supernovas are those big explosive moments where a situation has built up well past my point of safe internalization, and i lose control.
goleman (Emotional Intelligence) calls this "emotional hijacking"; gottman (Seven Principles) calls it "flooding". in my experience, it really is a blinding-like-staring-into-the-sun explosion; both authors have excellent descriptions of the physiological and neurological experience of the moment of ignition and combustion that i can attest to from my own experience. and in those moments, it's amazing what kinds of behaviours seem like perfectly reasoned and reasonable actions to a person who otherwise wouldn't be likely to commit such emotional atrocities. but in those moments, there is no balance, no grounding centre. there is only chaos in the mind.
gottman talks about communication repairs that couples use to diffuse the tension of a conflicted exchange in order to decrease the build-up to explosion; goleman talks about being mindful of the state, and different ways in which people develop self-calming rituals to talk themselves off the metaphorical ledge, to back away from the brink of catastrophic response. conceptually, both dovetail nicely with pema chodron's idea of "sitting in the moment" and "leaning into the sharp things", giving time and acknowledgement to the emotional content of the moment while accepting that one has the option to NOT act on the responsive impulses.
having on numerous occasions failed to control those responses (which in no way diminishes the increasing number of successes i have in controlling them, but i am human, and i still make mistakes; sometimes they are still spectacular ones, in a "see the smoking wreckage from space" sense), i have made a commitment to matthew to *try* to communicate more of that luscious internal landscape as i become aware of its changing contours and composition. i know what i'm feeling, and i know how it measures in this instance of an experience as a comparison to previous similar experiences. but for matthew, who has rarely been allowed to peek behind the curtain, the sudden exposure to this vast expanse of my emotional state is like being taken in a blindfold to the edge of the Grand Canyon for the first time. it's overwhelming and a little confusing to put into a familiar context, but eventually you find you can grasp things that are at least not totally alien: ah, that's a river down there; those looks like canyon paths; those geological striations are different world epochs, okay, got that.
so matthew is encountering a lot of unfamiliar emotional content markers that he's now having to put into context: context of my previous general behaviours, context of my behaviours when under particular stresses, context of our relationship overall. we had a conversation after he got home from work this evening in which i made it (or tired to make it) very clear that just because i'm emoting in response to a confluence of situational stimuli, it does not require action or change on his part, and what i *really* don't need in the midst of this are arbitrary capitulations from him that may come back to bite us in the ass later as resentments on his part. if things *do* need to be changed, we'll look at underlying needs that current actions are driving to meet, and make a collaborative decision on what's best *for us* in the situation, rather than one side or the other making bitter and arbitrary decisions to capitulate to unclear interpretations of murky or conflicted emotional state data. right now, we're engaging the process we said we would engage: expressing emotional content in an emotional situation as i become aware of it. there is no underlying tag of "...and i expect YOU to change to assuage MY fears/needs/insecurities". quite the opposite, in fact. i am working to communicate externally a more congruent picture of my internal state. it's all about me, at least for the moment.
people with White Knight Complexes, however, aren't used to being stymied by someone who appears to be in significant distress but who clearly indicates not wanting to be rescued. matthew admits that he's not comfortable with the fact that i still perceive myself as being emotionally volatile, although now at least we both have a clear(er) picture of the degree of distress, where it comes from, how it operates; *NOT* being allowed to make the grand sacrificial capitulatory gestures as a means of decreasing the tension may be making him nutty, i'm not really sure. but this is a habit-breaking, watershed moment for both of us here, in terms of looking at an entire emotional vista and in terms of sitting with it without acting upon it. i am not a problem to be fixed.
this does lead to his perfectly reasonable question of, "If the risk (of supernova) is high and the impact (on all involved parties) is also high, what should I do with this information?" there isn't an easy-to-hear answer to this, because really the only answer is, "nothing". be aware, is all. use the knowledge you have to make informed decisions, both on your own, and in collaboration with me. at last there *is* information now to be applied, whereas historically there have been guesses (often erroneous), assumptions (frequently as erroneous), and interpretations (see previous note). the big win here is increased awareness, in theory, the engagement of a refinement in our relationship process. communicating the emotional state also allows me to acknowledge it consciously, making me aware of its composition, and my reactions (or, more accurately, my options for reactions) to it. historically, there'd be no acknowledgement of the nature and scope of my distress until *after* the abrupt appearance of great smoking black craters made it impossible to deny the presence of potentially lethal emotional content, because my sole subconscious tool for managing critical stress has been to take off and nuke the site from orbit. kick the perceived perpetrators of my metaphysical harm in the metaphorical gonads, as it were, and worry about cleaning up the mess after the fact.
oddly enough, that doesn't work so well when one's personal goal in life is increasing self-awareness.
so i am sitting with my insecure volatility, and matthew is sitting with his discomfort at this new emotional vista. i am moving to fix an issue in myself that stems from internalizing my own emotional experiences, which is new for me, and he is (at my explicit request) NOT moving to fix or change anything just yet out of a capitulatory need to decrease the perceived tension between us. it's awkward and uncomfortable, but different from our historical patterns on both sides of the equation. in this respect, i have hope of teaching a couple of old dogs a new trick or two. it may yet backfire, but at least it will be a *new* mistake.