There are 2 signs that you will recover from a tragic situation, loss, abuse, etc:
1. If you manage to cry about it.
2. If you manage to laugh about it.
Until you do both these things, you can’t say you have entered the recovery stage. That’s fine, too, because grief takes as long as it needs to take.
When you are experiencing something tragic, it’s a good idea to seek out people who are good at managing the emotions of others, bringing them easily from tears to laughter and back and then back over again.
After Eric died, I started seeking out the few Hispanic people I know in this area and bringing them to my place because Hispanics are so incredibly good at managing the emotions of others. An hour with a Hispanic is like a very intense therapy session.
Russian-speakers are bizarrely bad at compassion and verbalizing anything but anger and blame.
English-speakers are great at compassion. They are kind and will always descend into the depths of your depression with you. The problem is that they don’t know how to come back out of it. I have the best, kindest, most wonderful Anglo friends but after the endless, “This is horrible, you will never get over this, you will never be happy again, your life is over” I started avoiding the subject with them altogether. I felt like I was supposed to console them, and I wasn’t really up to it.
The only exception is my BFF who is an English-speaker yet is an absolute genius at managing people’s emotions. Of course, she has a bunch of degrees in Spanish, and I’m sure it’s not a coincidence she’s so good at getting the Spanish language and the Hispanic culture.
I originally went into Hispanic Studies because I couldn’t process my emotions worth a damn and was mesmerized with people who do it so effortlessly. I’ve made great strides but I’m still too prone to the Iron Lady act, and that’s not good.
As for managing other people’s emotions, I’m quite bad at it. I tend to rationalize and interrogate people with “But what exactly are you feeling and why? Let’s find a cause and remove it and you’ll be as good as new.” And that isn’t extremely helpful to most.
These are just some musings as I wait for my Internet finally to be fixed.
Clarissa's Blog 
Australians are a lot like Russians. Don’t talk about anything, but if something gets bad enough regress to a bully mentality and start to take it out on others.
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This is very interesting! I wonder what caused this similarity.
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I was just talking to my colleague and good friend who is a Spanish professor at HU, and she said, “Why does everyone come to me with their problems?” (Not that she minded. She was sort of proud of it, actually.) I said, “I think it’s because you are compassionate and you don’t judge people. She said, “You’re right about not judging. Who am I to judge?” She also really helps to bring people back from despair. I haven’t known tons of Hispanics, but if this is a general trait they share, it certainly is a good one to have! I’m glad that you’re getting the support you need.
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Rationalize and interrogate and try and fix things… that sounds very very familiar. It totally helps me with my own issues. It totally does NOT help when I try and do the same thing to my husband’s issues. Do you think there is a particular culture where this more analytical treatment of emotions is common? I want to figure out where I learned it from.
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I think it’s more about personal coping mechanisms than culture. And this is a good coping mechanism to have.
My husband balked at first but now he understood that he needs to accept this model and even try to derive some enjoyment from it. 🙂
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Oh, this is interesting. As frequently happens, all your posts are coming together for me. I find the Hispanic approach to emotions exhausting. I prefer to keep mine to myself (see: Introversion). As such, I feel horrendously intruded upon whenever I talk to a native Spanish speaker. Which is a huge problem, as my in-laws are all Hispanic! On my next trip out of country I’ll keep this in mind, and see if it helps me open up with them a bit.
Somewhat unrelated: are you familiar with the concept of high-context and low-context cultures? If so, I’d be interested in hearing your explanations, as I’m too slow to understand what I’ve read of it so far. Just out of curiosity 🙂
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