How To Be Self-Expressed And Not Drip Emotions All Over The Other Person
Cathy: When you’re trying to be self-expressed, how do you not drip your emotions all over the other person? This is Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com/
Reid: Cathy Vartuli from the http://www.IntimacyDojo.com/ Explain your terms.
Cathy: So we talk often about being self-expressed and have your emotions and being able to share like hey I’m disappointed, or hey that was sad for me rather than just pretending things are okay but there’s also times when we someone says no and we feel very disappointed that we kind of like there’s this like this rain of disappointment or there’s all this emotion coming across that can help can make some people feel pressured into doing that things that they said no to or they can feel guilty you can feel like they’re having to take care of the person as opposed to just the person is just being with their emotions and sharing, hey I’m disappointed. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Reid: I do, I do. I’m trying to think how to responsibly answer respond to this question, what do you do? Coming up with fart and allergies, that’s probably not useful for most people.
Cathy: Are you in 3rd Grade?
Reid: No, but maybe going to 3rd grade for some advice would be useful.
Cathy: Yeah, it’s challenging sometimes.
Reid: Yeah.
Cathy: Because if we are very disappointed it’s we don’t want to, it’s not it’s important not to stifle it, but it’s not about the other person fixing it so being with our own emotions, feeling them and acknowledging them is useful, some people that handle it better or worse like some there’s some people I can say, hey, I’m really disappointed about that, and they’re like wow thanks for sharing, you need any like is there anything I can support you with and some people will be very impacted just by you saying hey I feel disappointed so like even if you’re really being clean about it and then acknowledging your own feelings, it may not be as as comfortable for that other person to hear that, depending on where they’re coming from but it is hard sometimes not to, especially when we’re learning we’re clumsy when we first learning to be self-expressed.
Reid: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it’s tricky, it’s gain I can’t get rid of the fart analogy in my head.
Cathy: Then you should share it.
Reid: So I think, there’s couple of things right? I’m big self-expression person so I’m moving towards being more self-expressed, I think is what is generally useful in life if you being yourself causes other people to leave you I can get a better use of your time and then you can work on grief rather than stifling yourself and then living a life where you’re stifling yourself so that people won’t leave you.
Cathy: Right.
Reid: And then there’s a learning curve of oh, I’m feeling my disappointment and like you saying it’s raining down on people so generally speaking, I’m trying to really try to get away from farts right now if you have a water hose, a garden hose and you’re watering your plants, you’re trying to emotionally gain enough control to not spray the people around you who don’t want to be sprayed.
Cathy: Right.
Reid: Like that’s generally kind to not emotionally spray people, where you could argue but I want to be self-expressed and you just point it straight up in the air and just spray everywhere.
Cathy: Whoever is there, yeah.
Reid: So if we’re saying that not getting your emotions on people who haven’t asked is being kinder, being nicer as a person being cleaner, maybe clean, not that if you if you know get people wet, you’re dirty but like generally speaking having a little bit more control of how you express yourself would be useful. So now we have we’re going with farts, I’m sorry so if I’m feeling really gassy and I know that my friends are very sensitive to smell then I might want to take my fart of disappointment, I might one like, please excuse me, I’ll be right back, get up go outside, let it rip and then come back which again like maybe this is the 3rd grade thing where it’s like, oh you know Billy, you want to have a tantrum? Awesome! Like go in the other room let it loose, have your thing and then come on back because we’re we’re doing art.
Cathy: Yeah. I think it’s important not to stifle or shut down what you’re feeling but build up the skills and the muscles to feel what you’re feeling and also being able to take care of yourself. There’s a bunch of grounding exercises that I that Rick Wilkes and I do at http://www.thrivingnow.com/ the links are below it’s http://www.thrivingnow.com/grounding-exercises/ those can be really helpful too just getting present with yourself right now because a lot of the problem we have with disappointment is, we’re not just feeling the disappointment right now that this person said no, we’re feeling all the disappointment we never got to feel or learn how to deal with when we were a kid, so someone saying no, I don’t want to go to the movies with you is like, oh my god my world is ending, this is just like when I was 3 and dad left or grandpa wouldn’t give me the [Inaudible 00:05:19].
Reid: So rather than the fire hose, you open up the fire hydrant.
Cathy: Yes. So if.
Reid: Watering hose not fire hose. Did I say fire hose, whatever.
Cathy: Either way
Reid: Back to the hose you open up a fire hydrant and spraying everywhere. Got it.
Cathy: Yeah, so grounding exercises can help you clear that up like keep that present now and then getting a therapist or coach or doing some tapping, clearing out some of the old disappointments, so when you feel a current disappointment, it’s not so big, is really really helpful.
Reid: Yeah.
Cathy: And then talking to people you’re with like if you spend a lot of time with them, like hey, I’m feeling disappointed last time I shared with you, you seem really upset about that you like you reacted strongly, is it okay for me to share my disappointments with you? Or is it better for me to go with the other room just not let you know about it so I…
Reid: Yeah. I don’t think it’s like you don’t need to I’m sure there are some people like I don’t need to know that you’re gassy today, why do you keep telling me that you’re going to the other room to fart and I think for the most part you can be like you know, hang on I’ll be right and then you come back and then everything everything’s may be better.
Cathy: Yeah.
Reid: What do you think? These are complex situations but some people are really sensitive to other people’s energies and you know how do you create some sort of coordination and then I don’t know, how do you handle it if you have the fart of disappointment? Well, I couldn’t stop myself, I’m sorry.
Cathy: I’m so sorry.
Reid: I’m so sorry, leave some comments.