Don't Look! You Are That
Not only do children feel our emotions more intensely than we do, but they also act them out. If children feel rage, they will bite someone or hurl a plate onto the floor. If they feel depression in the air, they will stop eating or wet their bed. They experience our emotions with their whole organism and often express them vigorously and immediately. We, on the other hand, have learned the fine art of self-protection, of imploding, rationalization, mediation, denial.
Children are frank...
It is embarrassing. There often is, in all of us, a contrast between what we feel inside and how we would like others to see us. We adults manage to conceal and control our most private feelings. But a child will put them on display for us. Why is it that every parent is embarrassed when her child throws a tantrum in public? Not only because at that moment she is the center of attention, or that she fears disturbing others or being judged. It is because she feels exposed, afraid that her most private life is coming out in the open...
There on stage they act out the whole range of our inner states. Their dramas illustrate exactly and ruthlessly our most intimate psychic life.
- Piero Ferrucci, What Our Children Teach Us
We fear for our social status. We hide our brokenness. We need to appear normal.
What do we think is normal?
If our kid throws a tantrum, how brittle are we? How scared are we when our apparently-normal-mask is threatened? How easy is it to become furious at the risk of exposure?
We are brittle and scared. We are split, haunted.
I posted my last essay the Monday after Thanksgiving. Of course people were busy. Still I had expected a bigger audience than what I saw.
In a way, I reacted just like I might when one of my boys threw a tantrum.
In what other ways are we beset by child-tantrum experiences? Where else are the masks and the splits? It's a hard question to write and a harder one to answer.
The enjoyable irony is that my last two essays started to address how we split to protect ourselves from emotional distress.
Cookie Conflict: How Do We Do?
Splitting And Healing Emotional Distress
Cole Bitting
What Our Children Teach Us generates insight upon insight. I feel the thrill of insight and self-recognition. I clipped this quote to share the thrill.
Hard to believe given what I wrote afterward.
Enjoy Ferrucci. Excuse my maudlin tone.
Musings
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Reader Comments (6)
I know what you mean by wanting to have a tantrum when people do not notice your efforts. And I am no better or worse than you are.
Isn't there a way to get past this? To decide that we are whole, whether we are noticed or not?
And I was one of those people who didn't notice - why? Because I have backed off of spending 8 hours on twitter - that's way too much time. So I have been reading, writing, and generally finding other things to do than communicate in tiny 'sound bites'.
Cole, I do appreciate your blog posts. I always learn things. Thank you.
Gayle McCain
www.gaylemccain.com
Cole, I too enjoy your posts and presence of Twitter. Please know that people do notice :)
I wrote this note as a reflection on what I had been writing, posted it, then realized it had an unfortunate accusatory tone. I feel like I trashed a good quote in a way that could anger others.
Thanks for the prompt response. And the kind words.
This post was supposed to ask an interesting question. So to your question, I don't have a good answer. I'm still asking these questions myself. It's the process.
I'm sure you know as a writer, when you thinking you are done writing, you aren't. This post was just me in process. Er.. in the process of writing :)
I think sometimes when a post asks us to think and reassess, it takes us a while to do so - and we don't always come back to say what the results were. Sometimes you have to take your satisfaction from a job well done, and having said what you wanted to say, as a blogger.
That said, I thought the Cookie Conflict was a great post, and I still do. :)
Cole,
I also appreciate your posts and Twitter presence. So many ppl request guest blog posts and look for acknowledgement and comments. Just hard to keep up sometimes. All this twitter connecting and we still feel the disconnect!
Catherine
URL in process
I'm sorry for looking like a kid throwing a tantrum.
And I'm grateful for the kind, generous comments. Thank you Catherine :) Thank you Gayle :) Thank you Madalyn :)
Thanks everyone for reading. And hopefully, looking passed this misdirected post.
One of the things I enjoy doing when I write is to illustrate an explanation with an example. Often I use myself as the example as I did with this post.
I could have pick a more generic example of having an accomplishment ignored. For example, we all remember being kids and having a good test score dismissed by a preoccupied parent.
Ferrucci discusses when our social-mask is threatened. I tried to discuss when our achievement-mask is threatened.