Crappy at Defining Emotions?
One of the areas that can get me consistently off-track and in my head seem to happen when there is a feeling of uneasy, or perhaps it’s anxious, or maybe boredom, or perhaps irritation, or maybe it’s slight anger??? What I’m trying to say is that I have no doubt that these emotions that I’m feeling periodically are designed to initiate some form of movement or action or learning on my part but sometimes I’m really unclear on what I’m supposed to learn or take away and what makes these feelings and emotions even worse is that I’m married and have to try and articulate something to my wife when I don’t even understand them myself. I’m not saying that this happens all of the time, there are many times when I’m well aware of why I’ve been triggered or why I’m upset. Perhaps one of our children continue to leave dirty dishes all over the place expecting others to pick them up… Maybe my wife and I disagree on some aspect of discipline or accountability for one of our children….maybe I have a great deal of work to get done in a short amount of time causing some irritation, but I’m talking about the times when we have a negative emotion that is affecting my state and I don’t have clarity on where it is coming from.
As a married man with children, there are times when I’m feeling “Something” or an emotion that is unsettling and causes me to become reserved and quiet, spending time inside my own head trying to work through what the hell is happening and to try and understand why? Well this change in behavior is typically recognized by those around me and most obvious is my wife. Her typical reaction is one of inquiry initially, but so often it is with the context of what “she” has done to get me upset or bothered and what is interesting about my lack of clarity is that there are times when I just don’t know…. and therefore can’t give her the answers that she seeks. The next phase of this cycle is that she then chooses to be distant and closed off, and now we have a situation that has the tendency to escalate and become an undesired cycle that is unhealthy for everyone.
So what is the solution??? I have no idea, but I’m going to attempt to pull myself out of this situation and look at it from an outsiders perspective. The first thing that I’d suggest to this man is that even though he may not be fully CLEAR on what the source of some of these negative emotions are, he is responsible for articulating exactly that to the ones closest to him with truth and transparency so that his loved ones are not left guessing. My second suggestion would be to the lovely Wife…. injecting more love and understanding can help facilitate the opening up and sharing as the initial assumption that something is WRONG or that perhaps coming with a story that he is being a JERK will tend to cause additional reservations and will limit the sharing.
We shall see how this works….TBD. The real important thing here is that we work to remove unhealthy cycles from our relationships. These negative cycles can manifest themselves in many ways and tend to stem from our past experiences of hurt, or pain, or our belief systems on what a healthy relationship is. What types of relationships were we exposed to growing up? How were disputes resolved? Are you actively listening or just waiting to get your perspective heard to WIN? The EGO wants to WIN, but the heart wants to love and be loved. Even as I write this article, the answer of more TRUTH and more kindness and LOVE tends to float to the top as I seek to understand.
We have been married for 20 years and have 3 beautiful children, but we are also flawed human beings and imperfectly perfect and will always have things to improve upon and get better at, but we are committed to learning and growing and sharing so others know that they are not ALONE with these challenges!
