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Emotional Crowbar

Earlier, I outlined the 9 Primary Emotions We Respond To, which many people have no problems with. Yet, there are many others that are very skilled at suppressing their emotions and have locked them away in a closet. I know my closet was dead-bolted earlier this year.

I was like a boulder thinking that I was moving forward. Instead, life was flowing all around me like a river moving in the opposite direction, where I was fighting an up-stream battle. As a boulder, I preferred to be in a cluster with other boulders as long as we didn’t touch.

Oh, how I wish someone came along earlier in my life with an emotional crowbar, to pry open the door to my closet. The emotional crowbar is fairly simple but it has a very steep requirement. Before you can effectively use one (yeah, yeah, I’ll get to what it is in a minute), you’ll need to gain a solid trust with the person. It may be a bit tougher if that person is yourself. I’ll save that discussion for another article.

Once you have a solid and open trusting relationship with the person, you’ll be ready to put that emotional crowbar to use. How will you know when you have that open trust and are ready? I don’t have an absolute answer for that one. You’re just going to have to take risks and maybe do light testing with the crowbar before really prying.

The magic behind the emotional crowbar, is to simply ask the person, “How do you feel?” I’m sure some of you may be thinking that I’m totally wasting your time with this article. Trust me, this does work and it’s not easy.

From this point forward, you’re going to have to use your best judgment, as there is a high risk with the person just backing away defensively and building a wall the more persistent you get. So, don’t get pushy or demanding. The key here, is to maintain the trust level. The person has to really trust you before they even let you near the door.

I know that if you had approached me with that question a year ago, I would have responded with more of an intelligent response and/or a snap of frustration with the feeling of being disrespected. The only way to help defuse this defensive stance is to acknowledge the person’s frustration and attempt to get beyond the frustration and discover why they’re getting defensive. I used to always mask my emotions with frustration and anger. If you care to reach this person deeply, you need to work with them to get past those feelings and to the source that triggered them.

Keep in mind of the 9 Primary Emotions and focus on those. Other responses will probably deserve a reply something along the lines of, “Ok, that’s what you think, but how do you FEEL?” You see, a thoughtful response isn’t the same as an emotional response. Suppressing my emotions for so many years I alienated myself from even understanding what I’m feeling to a point that I was either happy or frustrated.

In this instance, you may want to help them understand what some of the emotional possibilities even are. So, maybe mentioning something along the lines of, “Do you feel happy, sad, ashamed, or angry?” With emotions suppressed, they’ll be hearing you from a more analytical perspective and attempt to match the definitions of those words with how they may actually be feeling. This will happen even if they are fully defensive, as their subconscious mind will be working through it in order to have an answer once you’ve cooled down.

The emotional crowbar is a very powerful tool to help pry open the emotionally challenged. The level of trust required needs to be strong enough so that the whole discussion is done out of a mutual respect and love for one another. If not, then that other individual could take that crowbar and beat you with it.

Thanks for reading.