Most Men Don’t Feel Anger… They Miss What’s Under It
What’s up community, I want to send out a shout out to a group of my guys who who are tapping into the Law of Identity and making positive changes. I love seeing my guys being resilient, understanding they are not broken, they have everything they need. Moving from the brink of relationship collapse to transformation by learning how to speak the language of connection 101 is a reality. Therapist and creator of Relational LIfe Therapy Terry Real says "..in his office, most of his work is with men is giving them what their caregivers did not give them emotionally." This reasonates as I grew up in a home of a matriarch, several aunts and my grandmother. My grandmother was atop of the hierarchy. The issue however, I too did not get what I needed emotionally from my caregivers. No one taught me how to handle my emotions in relationships. *Primary vs Secondary Emotions from a Performance Anxiety Lens. The first tool my client receives is a Feelings Wheel created by Gloria Willcox. if you are unfamiliar with the Feeling Wheel, I encourage you to pause and take the time to get one in front of you. Here’s The First Key: Each of us have a manbox. This box is impacted by things such as culture norms. Our manbox is filled with feeback leaning on our idiosyncrasies annd subjective feedback gained through personal experiences such as our history tied trauma. Those who do tap into their feelings communicates: - Anger - Frustration - “I don’t care” The Second Key: Simple Brain Science -Primary emotion (center of the feeling wheel) = first feeling in the body, fast, survival-based, unconscious - Happens before thinking, we react to the uncomfortable feeling. - Feeling comes from the lower emotional brain - Designed to protect us, adaptive, survival, the thinking brain offline. Examples: - Hurt - Fear - Sadness -Secondary emotion = our reaction to the first feeling, the primary emotion, the center of the wheel: Examples: - Hurt → turns into anger - Fear → turns into control - Sadness → turns into shutdown