Tough Guy

Published by

Clarissa

July 31, 2017

On the playground, a tiny little tot fell and started crying. His father picked him up with the obligatory “Don’t cry! Aren’t you a tough guy? You need to be tough!”

The tough guy was maybe 2,5 years old, if that. He will grow into an adult whose only interaction with his own emotions will be to repress them and will die 6 years earlier than his time as a result (it would be 12 years earlier in my part of the world). And in between, he will saddle some hapless woman with the task of explaining his emotions for him and managing his emotional states. Because the only way to get really tough – as opposed to an emotionally stunted mental wreck – is to accept one’s feelings as fully legitimate.

By the way, teaching children to process and express their own emotions is one of the main tasks of parenting. And this task doesn’t get cancelled out by the child’s having a penis and not a vagina.

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6 responses to “Tough Guy”

Emmagale

July 31, 2017

On the brighter side, I’ve been impressed with how much more prevalent the idea of identifying, processing, and expressing your feelings is in children’s books/shows than when I was a child (in the U.S.)!

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 31, 2017
  
  Yes, it’s true. I’m loving the books that teach emotional expression. And Klara adores them.
  
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Crystallizing chaos

July 31, 2017

What is the best way to express emotions within a relationship as an adult.

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1. xykademiqz
  
  July 31, 2017
  
  Verbally.
  But you have to be free to feel an emotion, identify what it is, and ideally what caused it in order to be able to express that emotion to another person.
  
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2. Clarissa
  
  July 31, 2017
  
  It depends on the recipient. Some people are verbal, some visual, them others are tactile oriented. And there are two other types I don’t remember right now.
  
  There’s always a difficulty where people of different emotional type try to establish contact. Because what’s expressive to one is not so much to another.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    August 1, 2017
    
    “There’s always a difficulty where people of different emotional type try to establish contact.”
    
    I don’t think these are different emotional types but different sensory preferences (different models have different numbers but visual, hearing and touch/kinesthetic are the main three)
    
    Saying “I hear you” to a visual person does not reassure them the same way that “I see what you mean” does (and vice versa).
    
    Knowing your own preference can be tremendously useful. Many years ago when I supplemented my income with private lessons the first thing I would do was assess the student’s preffered sensory mode – indirectly, it’s often not immediately obvious. I once had a student with a smell preference (which is pretty rare and it was not easy to get anything done because of that).
    
    My own mode is kinesthetic (more precisely body memory) I always enjoy learning more when I’m pysically doing something and can tie the contents to given physical activities. Hearing is in second place and visual is third.
    
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