Friends, I have been thinking a lot recently about who is and isn’t allowed to express their true emotions, in what sorts of situations, and in what sorts of environments. Over the course of my thirty years of socialization, I have learned that certain emotions are sanctioned only if they are borne from certain interactions and communicated in certain ways by certain people under certain circumstances. After all, society must have rules and it must have order! It doesn’t matter where the rules come from or whom the order truly benefits, we must hew to what we’ve been told is right and acceptable without question. We cannot be expressing our thoughts and emotions willy-nilly. That would be the downfall of civilization. If things have always been done a certain way, there must be a good reason. Best not to think about it too much, dear.
Of course, if you’re a person from a privileged background with a wealth of social capital, sitting in a position of power – forget everything I’ve just said. Congratulations, you have carte blanche! Feel free to not only do, say, and feel everything you want to feel, but make sure to inflict it upon anyone and everyone who is around you, especially those who are beneath you. If you are this sort of person, there is no need to have any consideration of kindness, compassion, or understanding (aka the only considerations that truly matter when evaluating the validity as well as how and when one must express their emotions). Oh no, don’t worry about any of that. Want to have an outburst or two? That’s your goddamn right! Your ancestors didn’t hand down all those resources, knowledge, access, and power just so you’d waste your time being an empathetic human being. Oh no, no, no, darling. Express yourself any old time of day. It isn’t healthy keeping that sort of thing in.
Perhaps by this point, you’re feeling a little uncomfortable and I can tell you precisely why: because as I’m writing this particular post, I am feeling quite a lot of anger, a socially unacceptable amount of anger for a woman of color. The discomfort, it’s because anger is an emotion that, for the most part, is only tolerated when expressed by individuals in power. But guess what? Anger is a completely normal and important emotion that all humans feel and have the right to express, regardless of where they sit in hierarchy, as long as these expressions center kindness, compassion, and understanding. Aggressive anger begets aggressive anger. Besides, we don’t like bullies.
While the big picture goal is to minimize occasions for anger to arise and stop the cycling, in the imperfect world we live in today, there are plenty of situations where anger is a justifiable, valid, and healthy response: when you witness injustice, when someone does not listen as you share something vulnerable, when you see another person being taken advantage of, when an entire system has convinced you that the problem isn’t them – it’s you. But while those at the top are free to feel and express whatever they’d like, people from marginalized backgrounds are taught to be very careful in expressing anger in public. This often results in that emotion being unleashed in private spaces, either within the home or within the individual. Depression, they say, is anger turned inward. And my friends, I’ve had plenty of depression.
It’s incredibly unhealthy to hold anger in your body, to swallow your emotions. It not only hurts, it can lead you to dangerous places. The problem is that it’s very hard to find healthy ways to release anger in this restricted world. I’m fond of screaming into my pillow, but that only takes you so far. My therapist recently suggested I start communicating boundaries and express how I really feel when people push too far. “You have the right to your emotions just as anyone else,” she said.
But ah! Even the thought of speaking up in such a way strikes such fear in my heart, fear that society has so insidiously instilled in me since I was three years old, growing up in central New Jersey, desperate to make friends, the only brown kid in a class of white kids, realizing I had to keep my real feelings to myself and become someone else entirely to fit in. My heart races and I start sweating when I picture actually telling people I am angry with them.
And I’m not even talking about expressing capital-A Anger. I’m talking little baby-a anger like when someone close to you jumps to many conclusions and fails to give you the benefit of the doubt, not through any malicious intent, but because they have a certain narrative of what’s right and what’s wrong and simply don’t have the capacity to realize their base assumptions dismiss all the hard work you’ve put in over the past three years and your commitment to making rational, ethical decisions. Ok. Maybe I’m feeling a bit capital-A Anger about that particular situation, but you get what I mean.
The point is, I’m afraid to express my anger because I am afraid that people will not want to be friends with me, that such expression will lead to avoidance, exclusion, and isolation. You see, I have internalized the message that my feelings are an imposition on others, that I have to do everything in my power to minimize them so that I don’t bother anyone. Doesn’t that sentence make you sad? It certainly makes me sad. In any case, despite the fear, I have decided to take on this impossible mission – and this little article is my first step.
One last point I’d like to make. It’s funny that when I write down my emotions, they become more acceptable and palatable. I suppose in the end, they are just words on a page. You are not confronted by the person, the human being behind them. I am only an abstract concept in your mind as you read this. Perhaps, people find safety in that. But that’s not what’s funny. What’s funny is that the second I voice the same exact words, out loud, to the individual(s) they are directed to, I am deemed confrontational, reckless, stupid, out of control, and dangerous.
This makes no sense to me. I am a short, Indian woman from a middle-class background and a family that has little social capital either in the US or in Kerala. The idea that I pose any real threat to the world order, whether in professional or personal settings, is laughable. In the grand scheme of things, I hold no power. And yet, for speaking my mind, for speaking what is on my heart, I have faced backlash in all spheres of life from those who are close to me to those with whom I have little connection. I have been told I am selfish. I have been told I am unprofessional. I have been told I am delusional. I have been told I do not understand reality, that I have misinterpreted situations, that I did not think through the ramifications of speaking my mind properly enough. I have been told to calm down, sit down, shut up, and be quiet.
Excellent.
The comforting thing about all of this is I am waking up to the fact that I am none of these things, that I have an extremely firm grasp on reality, that I interpret the situations I find myself in quite accurately, that I know exactly the kinds of consequences I face in sharing my emotions, and that it is not my problem if people are uncomfortable with the fact that I am more comfortable with risk.
I am also waking up to the fact that very few people know who they truly are. Very few people know how to regulate and express their emotions in healthy ways. Very few people truly empathize with others in a non-judgmental way and give those around them the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, the logical conclusion of this reality is that the numbers are stacked against me and that expressing my true emotions will be a terribly lonely journey in some places and in some relationships. This is because most others do not understand the importance of what it is that I do.
But those very few, they do.
Music Corner: I mean, these are the obvious ones, right?
Originally posted on LinkedIn.
