My client Angie is about to get married again. She has two grown children from her previous marriage, which ended over a decade ago. When she met Lou last year, both of them knew they were right for each other; they’re looking forward to moving into a new home together after their wedding.
Angie came to see me for coaching because of pressure she’s feeling from her mother and sister, Sarah. Both of them feel strongly that Angie should keep her house; she wants to sell it. Though she had been sure of her decision to sell, the relentless commentary from her mother and sister created doubt, and now Angie feels unsure of her own mind. She feels stuck.
When we met I asked Angie to give me a thumbnail sketch of her mother and sister, who as it turns out are kryptonite for this otherwise self-possessed woman. Sarah, who is eight years older than Angie, was responsible for much of her younger sister’s care. Dad was out of the picture before Angie could remember and Mother was busy working, leaving Sarah in charge. By the time Mother got home from work she only had the energy to put dinner on the table and fall into bed.
“She didn’t have time for me,” Angie said. “I get it. It must have been impossibly hard for her to raise us on her own. She worked these low-level jobs without any security, she didn’t have a husband around which was a terrible reflection on her back in those days. So she didn’t have time for anything except support and positive reinforcement from Sarah and I. We knew instinctively that we shouldn’t bring her bad moods or any troubles. She just didn’t have the energy or patience to deal with it.” (Kids like Angie and Sarah believe they are responsible for managing a parent’s feelings, e.g. being upset makes Mother angry, when in fact Mother is responsible for her own anger).
“Tell me what happened when you had a bad day as a kid,” I asked.
“I kept it to myself. By the time I was old enough to talk about my feelings, Sarah was a teenager and too self-involved. She had her own craziness going on with boys and clothes. When I tried to talk to my mother about bad moods or a fight I had with Sarah, she would just sigh heavily and say, ‘Oh, not now, Angie!’ If I got a bad grade or got in trouble at school, she never wanted to hear my side of the story. She only wanted to hear happy things or good news; she wanted us to be happy I think so she wouldn’t feel guilty for being too exhausted to deal with our problems. So I just kept all my bad feelings to myself. I’ve always been like that, even into my adulthood. I got married because I got pregnant, and I knew it wasn’t going to work out but I had no idea how to get that idea to the surface.”
Angie is describing a typical LoSEr scenario. When a child’s feelings are minimized, dismissed, or blamed for increased household stress, she learns to minimize or dismiss them herself. Imagine as a young girl or boy you’re trying to work out a complicated feeling: Let’s say you hear an adult demean another adult. Your own inner guidance system would cause you to feel distress, to feel anger at the bully and compassion for the “victim.” You would wonder about the reason for what you heard and the reason for how you were feeling. Ideally you would have an adult who could help you talk about what disturbed you and put it in some sort of context so you could recognize the feeling if it ever emerged again. If you had such an adult to help you process those feelings, the next time you saw someone being bullied you would have the ability to identify what you were seeing and hearing, and trust in your own response to it. The feelings arising in you would be validated and you would know them to be real. It would help to inform your own sense of justice, including accepting what is fair and right for you, personally.
Now imagine you were that same boy or girl and you start to tell the story to Mother when she finally gets home from work. What do you think would happen if the response was, “Not now child!” Or, “Who cares? We have our own problems at home.” Or worse, “Stay out of it, it’s none of your business.” The next time you encounter a similar situation, instead of recognizing and permitting sadness or righteous anger, you might shrug your shoulders and think, “This isn’t important. I can’t bother caring about this.”
Bad enough when the subject is someone else, but what if the subject were your own feelings about yourself? You’d slowly but surely disconnect from your troubling emotions; you’d understand that your feelings had nothing of value to add to the conversation, so you’d naturally dismiss or minimize them.
It was no one’s fault, yet Angie learned as a little girl that her feelings weren’t important and shouldn’t factor into -- and possibly even detracted from -- decision-making.
Angie maintained a good relationship with Sarah and her mother, and had begun to RISE in the years since her divorce. When she met Lou, she knew she was ready to give her heart away once again. But her mother and sister still struggled with LoSE; they projected their own fears onto her. If she sold her house, the one she bought all on her own after her divorce and decorated in her own style; the home where she raised her two sons; if she gave this up “for Lou,” what would happen if it didn’t work out?
When feelings aren’t validated in the past, they’re hard to rely on in the present, so even though Angie knew what she wanted and was willing to take a chance on love again, the unrelenting pressure from her mother and Sarah (who only wanted what was “best for” her) triggered the old LoSEr habit of minimizing her own feelings.
During the course of our first session, Angie gave me dozens of reasons why keeping her house was a good idea, yet she frequently interrupted herself in a voice almost like an aside: “But I don’t really want to keep it.” This went on for several minutes: all the logical reasons to keep it, followed by a whispered, halfhearted-sounding declaration of her real desire to sell it.
Finally I stopped her and said, “‘I feel like it’ is a good enough reason. You don’t have to justify that to me or to anyone. Even if after laying out all the logical reasons for keeping it, you still feel like selling it... that’s enough!”
Most people tend to be guided in the right course of action for themselves if they listen to their inner mind, where feelings and intuition reside. LoSErs haven’t had the chance to base any trust or value in the inner mind, so coaxing out input that has always been dismissed before can feel quite challenging. LoSErs tend to rely heavily on the data-gathering function of the outer or conscious mind, giving that input much more weight.
But anything can be argued for or against. Any number of reasons for (Pro) can be matched by any number of reasons against (Con). If you were ever part of a debate club in school, you’ll remember learning about rhetoric and how to argue for a position you might not personally agree with. Statistics -- pure data exclusive of emotion or intuition -- can be interpreted differently by different people.
It’s the conscious mind’s job to take a position and argue for or against it. And if we only use the conscious mind because we don’t have confidence that our own feelings add value to the conversation, then we can go around in circles. We flip-flop between the Pro and Con columns as defined by the rational, conscious mind. The conscious mind is like a laser: it points at one thing, then another, then back to the first. But the subconscious mind is completely different; the laser-like focus diffuses into a web of connected ideas, memories, feelings, emotions, and inspirations.
Do you believe your feelings are reason enough? If you’re struggling with LoSE, you may not. Maybe you rely more heavily on logic or you’re routinely talked into doing something you really don’t want to do. Maybe you have a growing resentment about a person or situation. If so, these are hallmarks of discounting your feelings, which by adulthood may be such a natural habit that you don’t even notice you’re doing it.
Why not begin introducing feelings into your conversation by simply talking out loud to an imaginary listener, as I had Angie do during our first session, or by enlisting a non-judgmental friend. I made notes as I listened to Angie, but if you’re doing this alone you might want to record it on your smart phone or a digital recorder so you can listen objectively later.
First, pick a side -- Pro or Con -- and argue it; for example, I asked Angie to tell me all the reasons why selling her house was a good idea (Pro), which was her original preference. I wrote down each reason she gave me to sell it, and I also made a note every time she naturally and unconsciously let her feelings against the idea leak through (Con). It looked like this:
“I should sell my house because...”
| Number of Logical Reasons (Pro) | Number of Feelings Comments (Con) |
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We took a break and then I asked her to argue the other side, why keeping her house was a good (albeit not her) idea. Again, I took down her reasons to keep it and also noted whenever she unconsciously undermined her own argument.
“I should keep my house because...”
| Number of Logical Reasons (Pro) | Number of Feelings Comments (Con) |
|
|
As you can see, Angie could argue equally for and against the decision to sell her house, but her natural expressions against keeping her house emerged in her speech. She was amazed when I showed her these columns because she truly had no idea she was actually expressing her subconscious desire to sell, even while arguing to keep. That’s a byproduct of years of minimizing feelings.
Try it yourself if you’re struggling with a decision, with resentment, or with finding yourself in a position yet again of doing something you don’t want to be doing. Be sure to let yourself ramble as you argue for and against. This is not an exercise to do logically, such as writing down the Pros and Cons. Let your free-form subconscious mind guide your arguments without censoring or editing as you go, as though you were free-associating. If you do record it, you might also notice how the energy of your voice expands as you argue for the side you truly want, and contracts as you argue against it.
With coaching and self-hypnosis, Angie found the courage to say, “I want to sell my house because I feel like it!” Even in the face of her mother’s and sister’s disapproval, she is RISE-ing. Her house is now on the market and she and Lou are shopping for a place to begin their lives together.
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