Talking About Feelings When You Can't Talk About Feelings

Oct. 14, 2012 - PRLog -- A truth about talking about emotions: usually one person wants it more than the other. Of course, that’s pretty much true about everything in life, isn’t it? In this article, we’ll talk about how to talk about emotions with someone who doesn’t want to talk about emotions.

We’re going to jump into some stereotypes for a moment. Women tend to want to talk about feelings a lot more than men. We’ll just assume it’s part of the 80/20 rule. It is probably true about 80% of the time that women are more in tune with their emotions than men. It’s probably about 80% true that men don’t much like to talk about their feelings. For purposes of this article, we’ll treat it as though it is true. If it’s reversed for you, just take the lessons the other way!

Let’s suppose you’re the woman wanting to have a heart-to-heart with a man who doesn’t want to talk about feelings. The trick there is to have a discussion about feelings without mentioning feelings.

For this example, we’ll use Fear:

One of the hardest emotions for many men to admit to the lady in his life is that he is afraid. He might use any number of code words: Stressed, concerned, and he might even admit to being worried about something. But afraid? For a lot of men, this is tough.
Modern men often feel weak enough as it is. The world flies by at such speeds, there is so much competition, and men have very few places to themselves in modern life. This can make it difficult to many men to find a “masculine center” in their own lives. On top of that to admit that they are afraid? Many men don’t even want to admit to fear to one another, much less to their lady.

Most women seem very interested in what is going on in the hearts of their men. If he’s afraid, she wants to support and encourage him. She wants to help him. She wants to be there to inspire him and stir up the masculine in her man. Yes, I know I might be making a lot of assumptions here!

Some might ask, “How do you feel?” and get a sort of non-answer. If he does answer, he might use an “approved masculine emotion.” This is almost always something in the Anger family. He might admit to being angry, upset, bugged, a bit miffed, frustrated, annoyed… All he is expressing is that he has a rule that nothing is supposed to make him feel afraid, and when something does, it angers him.

A more blunt question, “Are you scared?” is likely to be met with something along the lines of “Of course not!” Even if he were to admit “Maybe a little” many men shut down the line of discussion after that comment.

Here’s a technique to find out if he feels Fear: Use the Language of Emotions DEFINITIONS rather than the emotional label! Fear means “Something’s Coming; I’m Not Ready.”

Ask some form of “What do you see coming?” You can explore possibilities, too. “What else do you think might happen?” Notice the language is the language of logic. “What do you see?” “What do you think?” To the average man, this sounds like logic. You’re talking about feelings. He’s talking about logic. You learn what you want to know. He gets to talk about things he’s comfortable talking about.

If the answer is “I really don’t know” then you are already beginning to understand. What he sees coming is “the unknown” – and the unknown is always difficult to be ready for!
Once you have some idea about what’s going on, the next set of questions is designed to look at the “I’m Not Ready” part. Remember, the purpose of the conversation is to find out how he feels and where he is in dealing with the emotion.

If you think he might be afraid, you need to give him permission to not know what to do. You can set that up with a statement like “I’m not sure what it would take to be ready for something like that” or “What does someone do about something like that? Does anyone know?” Statements like these set up the sense that it’s okay to not be ready. If you want to know if he really feels afraid, you need to make that okay.

THEN you ask the questions to find out how ready he is to face what’s coming. Tailor these questions to the details you’ve learned about the situation, but keep it questions. Let him tell you. “What are you going to do?” or “What do we need to do?” (if it affects the family). If the answer is “I don’t know” then that’s the rest of the Fear equation. That tells you that there is Fear.

Once you know he someone feels, you can walk through the rest of the Language of Emotions process on Fear without ever mentioning being scared, being afraid, or even being nervous.

Get all the way to an answer, and you can encourage with Identity-Level affirmations. Courage: I Feel Fear; I’m Going Anyway. Even if he hasn’t admitted to the fear, if he has an action plan in the face of what you know if Fear, that’s Courage. If so, affirm his courage, his bravery, his guts, his being a man, being tough, or whatever masculine strength-based trait you know will give him support.

Talking about emotions with someone who doesn’t talk about emotions it a bit of an art. With enough fluency in the Language of Emotions and a little practice, it becomes easy! Give me 24 hours, and I’ll make you an Emotional Genius with Learn the Language of Emotions to develop emotional genius in dramatically more detail in the audio programs Language of Emotions 101a and 101b, or in the book Emotional IQ.

How you have a discussion about your feelings when you hate talking about feelings?
There are all sorts of reasons to not talk about feelings. For many people, it doesn’t seem to matter. Who cares how someone feels? There are things to be done! For other people, emotions are confusing (that’s a feeling), messy things that are hard to discuss.

We’ll go with the stereotype because it does seem to be about 80% true. It’s men that don’t like to talk about feelings. Women can and do talk about feelings. When they talk with other women, there is a sort of mutual shorthand that allows for understanding conversation. Stereotypically, men do not have a similar level of understanding.

Suppose you’re the man. You know your lady wants to talk about feelings, but that’s not something you’re good at. Fortunately for you, Language of Emotions to the rescue!
One of the most powerful ways to use the Language of Emotions is if both of you learn it. If both have listened to Language of Emotions 101a and 101b and both of you have read Emotional IQ, then you’d have a shared vocabulary and shared insight. This would be the most powerful way to talk about feelings whether you’ve ever been able to do so before in your life!

Let’s assume the woman in the discussion has no idea. Here, it’s the man who got the programs and listened to them on his way to and from work. Or maybe he got the book and read it. In this example, she has a stereotypically feminine insight into emotions but no particular training.

Hopelessness means “Exactly what I’m doing, exactly the way I’m doing it, will never produce the outcome I desire.”

For a man to simply say “I feel hopeless” or “It feels hopeless to me” or even “I’m just depressed” can feel like a huge indictment on his masculinity. However, with an understanding of what some of these terms actually MEAN, these ideas can be easier to express.

You can even begin. “I understand what this feeling means. What I’m feeling means that I feel like what I’m doing and how I’m doing it just won’t work. It’s telling me that I need to do something different. So, yeah, I guess I’m feeling a bit hopeless.”

Look at what just happened from a stereotypically feminine perspective. He just admitted to a feeling! He admitted that he felt hopeless! We’re talking about FEELINGS!

Look at it from a stereotypically masculine perspective. I just said that I don’t think what I’m doing is working, and I need a new plan. I’m thinking. I’m leading. I’m analyzing problems and working on solutions. And she’s happy that we’re talking about feelings!

Everyone wins!