I had a conversation not long ago in which I revealed a not-monumental, but at the same time, not nonexistent frustration. The person I was talking to expressed some surprise. “Why did I not know this?”
Probably, I could have answered, “Because some carpets hide whales better than others.”
I did not. But I could have. And the other person probably would have understood.
Claire Trévien has crafted a poem, titled Whales, in which she writes
Whales lived under our house
making the hinges rock, splitting cups and cheeks.
Stray socks melted in their comb-mouths
their fins sliced through conversations,
we found bones in our cups of tea.
In the kind of work I do, I have had occasion to be under a house. I’ve seen a good many things in those tight, damp, altogether unpleasant places. But never a whale. Not even a small one.
There’s just no room.
The poem goes on to suggest the same:
No one believed me, of course,
the carpet looked too smooth to hide a mammal.
The image of whales taking up residence under the house, swimming to and fro under the imported rug, has a boisterous ring of absurdity to it. And yet, it’s the very thing we do when we attempt to pretend that our unflapped demeanor, our straight face, is smooth enough to hide our feelings. The authors of Difficult Conversations suggest as much, noting that “Feelings are too powerful to remain peacefully bottled. They will be heard one way or another, whether in leaks or bursts.”
Just like sometimes we need to have the “What Happened?” Conversation, in some cases we need to have the Feelings Conversation—the one in which we put our feelings out on the table, despite the risk, understanding that we “can’t have an effective conversation without talking about the primary issues at stake,” and in those cases, “feelings are at the heart of what’s wrong.”
Too many times, though, we’re not sure we want to take the risk, and so we attempt to “frame feelings out of the problem.” The authors explain that it is a common pattern to “frame the problem exclusively as a substantive disagreement and believe that if only we were more skilled at problem-solving, we’d be able to lick the thing. Solving problems seems easier than talking about emotions.” But because the true problem is neglected in these situations, it’s not addressed and “emotions have an uncanny knack for finding their way back into the conversation, usually in not very helpful ways.”
Like finding bones in your cups of tea.
One suggestion the authors offer for avoiding these whales under the house is to learn where our feelings hide. “Feelings are very good at disguising themselves. Feelings we are uncomfortable with disguise themselves as emotions we are better able to handle; bundles of contradictory feelings masquerade as a single emotion; and most important, feelings transform themselves into judgments, accusations, and attributions.” Part of identifying these emotions is to explore our “emotional footprint,” exploring the range of feelings we have long believed are acceptable and those which are not.
Once we have a better understanding of what those feelings are, we can begin to engage in what the authors refer to as negotiating with our feelings. Because our feelings are “formed in response to our thoughts,” the authors note we can often change our feelings by changing our thoughts. They give an example of this process:
Imagine that while scuba diving, you suddenly see a shark glide into view. Your heart starts to pound and your anxiety skyrockets. You’re terrified, which is a perfectly rational and understandable feeling.
Now imagine that your marine biology training enables you to identify it as a Reef Shark, which you know doesn’t prey on anything as large as you. Your anxiety disappears. Instead you feel excited and curious to observe the shark’s behavior. It isn’t the shark that’s changed; it’s the story you tell yourself about what’s happening. In any given situation our feelings follow our thoughts.
I’ve watched the way a person can shrink into themselves for lack of willingness to acknowledge their feelings, or when they do acknowledge them, for a lack of ability to effectively negotiate them by way of a better story. I’ve been known to say in the observance of such a life that denial kills. As Trévien’s Whales closes, the whales have been circling the house, playing a game we used to call Ding-Dong Ditch when I was a kid, ringing the bell and running off. She says…
I’d sometimes forget then trip
over the carcass of one beached
in the gutter.
Emotions always come to call. Best to negotiate before they wreak a quiet or a raucous havoc.
***
We’re reading Difficult Conversations together this month as part of the Friendship Project. Are you reading along? What was most interesting to you as you read this week’s chapters? Were you able to think of a Feelings Conversation that you’ve had that? How have you been able to shift your stance in the past? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
Reading Schedule:
October 11: Chapters 1-4 The “What Happened?” Conversation
October 18: Chapter 5 The Feelings Conversation
October 25: Chapter 6 The Identity Conversation
November 1: Chapters 7-12 Create a Learning Conversation
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Photo by Paul Hudson, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by LW Willingham.
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L.L. Barkat says
I love how this post opens with humor—a much underutilized element (perhaps because it’s hard to do well) in dealing with our feelings.
The hard part about feelings, I think, is that we’re not always taught…
1. to value them
2. to express them frankly but without accusation and aggression or, conversely, taking on a victim role
3. to understand the role of timing (taking the time to first negotiate them, for instance)
So, there’s a lot to deal with when deciding to grow as a person who can successfully, even beautifully, handle the Feelings Conversation.
But I really like the idea of considering the emotional footprint, although I was thinking it might be cool to call it our “Emotional Handbook.” Because a footprint implies being stepped on or stepping on, in a way that feels indelible. But a handbook, though it is passed down, can be updated.
My own Emotional Handbook has been updated many times, as I’ve discovered new ways to think and be in the world over time. Anger? It had a huge entry in the Handbook that said, “RUN AWAY!” but now it says, “Listen. Question. Learn. Then decide how to proceed.” The Handbook also now says, “No need to quash others’ anger. But no need to absorb it, either. And no need to sit eternally in its presence if that’s the only way a particular person in your life ever chooses to engage.”
In the Handbook under Anger, in the “How to Recognize” section it also now says, “Watch for camouflages. Judgements, accusations, attributions—especially use of the word ‘You’ as a starting place, and especially rhetorical setups.” (Anger can be notoriously hard to diagnose when it’s coming from another person who is quite elaborate or creative in their constructions or eloquent in how they fold it into something else.)
It would be fun to create actual emotional handbooks, as either a journal exercise or something you do with a trusted friend. Could be a fruitful way to engage in discovery and, ultimately, helpful change.
Love the whales. Thank you for including them. Such a marvelous image to keep in mind. And with just the right amount of both caution and comic relief.
L.L. Barkat says
Oh, and I should add that RUN AWAY, as advice for any given emotion in the handbook, is a recipe for us to become the person who folds certain feelings into other things, because it makes us afraid to have the emotions ourselves, just as much as it makes it hard for us to encounter them in others. 🙂 I seem to have learned this best when I became a mom. For which I am now grateful.
Sandra Heska King says
I really hate confrontation. It stirs up all kinds of feelings I’d rather hand over to my whales. You’ve been teaching me how to work at updating my own emotional handbook. I’ve been learning how to enter into the feelings of others but not to be absorbed by them or consumed by drama. 🙂
Megan Willome says
I absolutely love that poem, LW! I often find that humor and a bit of absurdity go a long way toward getting to the heart of a thing.
L.L., your idea of an emotional handbook is interesting. I like the way you interrogate emotions.
One thing I have learned in my difficult conversations is that doing my own work is no guarantee that the other person has done theirs. It still might all go very badly. I can then move forward with regret at the outcome but not with myself.
L.L. Barkat says
🙂 Well, maybe a little more like taking the emotions to tea and asking them to converse gently. 😉
Oh, wow. Yes and yes and yes again. This is probably part of what makes us shy from handling our emotions, too. We want a guarantee of “success.” Perhaps we have to redefine what success looks like? I really like your redefinition as a starting point.
L.L. Barkat says
And, I’m thinking about LW’s mention of how feelings disguise themselves, paired with your note about questioning our emotions and it made me think how we can play a little game with ourselves… a game of 20 questions, where we try to identify the actual emotions that are behind it all.
Or, a game of “masquerade ball,” where we mentally dance a bit with the presenting emotion and then, by being very attentive to the dance, see if we can guess what’s behind the mask (and, maybe, there will be multiple masks… contempt seems to mask anger, which seems to mask sorrow, which sometimes masks loneliness or disappointment or fear).
All towards the possibility of discovery, which can guide our thoughts and our emotional expressions and maybe even point the way to solutions.
Sandra Heska King says
I think fear is behind a lot of feelings.
L.L. Barkat says
I think so, too, Sandra. I really, really do. And behind fear might be…not another feeling but rather Identity. Which is the topic of our next discussion in this book club: The Identity Conversation.
I wonder what it takes to update our Identity handbook? Maybe we can consider that in the next post’s comment box. 🙂
Will Willingham says
This is, I think, one of the hardest things. That the other person had not yet done their work. And may not ever.
We can look at that and say, “Well, then I don’t have to do mine.” But the results of such a stance do not only affect that other person. That affects us, profoundly, of course, but also others around us. It’s messy, to be sure, and often unsatisfying (very). But as you suggest, this is a way to move forward, even if not the ideal.
Sandra Heska King says
I get all excited when I know I’ve read a poem before. I love how you’ve woven it into this post. Those whales are magical. They can make themselves very small and morph into monsters on a moment’s notice. Ripping up floorboards and daring to enter those dark damp corners is hard and scary work. I’d most days rather sip bone tea.
Bethany R. says
It is scary work. We need each other to get through it, don’t we?
Will Willingham says
I do love this poem. The absurdity of it, as Megan noted, allows it to be very poignant (and on point). There’s no question what is going on here, even though we would never see such a thing as these whales under the rug.
Glynn says
A career in corporate America can provide untold examples of the whale under the carpet.
The year 1988 – 30 years ago – was a watershed in my own career. For those of us old to remember, it was the year that global warming burst on to the world scene, syringes were washing up on the beaches of New Jersey, and Time Magazine name a beleaguered plant Earth as person of the year. It was also the year that a new federal law was being implemented – requiring the public disclosure of all toxic materials discharged into the environment.
The key phrase was public disclosure – it was all legal and permitted, but it was also not available publicly. The EPA was as terrified as chemical companies, steel companies, public utilities, all other manufacturers, and even the people who published newspapers (emissions from the printing process). Hundreds of billions of pounds would be reported and the annual summaries then published by the EPA.
My company was looking at reporting really big numbers. The initial focus, guided by company experts, was on “how to educate the public” that there was no public health threat. The little band of communications people I was part of — three strong — hired an expert in risk communication, and asked him to help us. The eventual solution – don’t wait for the EPA; publish it yourself, and then explain what you were doing about it.
Four months of difficult conversations ensued inside the company. What we proposed sparked outrage, behind-our-backs attacks, and full-blown efforts to stop us. Fear reigned. The problem all the internal experts and managers had to deal with was that the information would be public anyway, no matter what communication strategy we pursued.
Our proposal kept bubbling its way upward. I can’t tell you how many meetings and presentations we went through, the anger that was openly directed at us, people using their titles to humiliate us, allies sitting quietly and saying nothing out of fear. But logic and an approaching deadline were on our side.
Finally, it reached the CEO. After hearing the presentation and the proposal, and all the objections, he looked around the room and said, “We’ll announce it ourselves, take responsibility for it, and announce how we’re starting with reducing emissions to air — and our first goal is to cut 90 percent of them in four years.”
In a few short minutes, my team was transformed from internal tree-hugging communists to corporate visionaries and heroes. But it came after four months of agonized and difficult conversations.
The program, by the way, changed the entire chemical industry forever.
Megan Willome says
Wow, Glynn.
Who says business is boring?
Will Willingham says
Judgement, attribution, characterization and in the end, problem-solving. This story has it all. 🙂