Emotions versus Culture

In my first post I said this blog was called ‘emo blog’ because it’s going to be about the emotional side of things. I just realized that there’s another reason: I’m writing about the topics I feel strongly about. Makes sense, doesn’t it? After all feelings are our guidelines no matter what we do and often times we have no clue whatsoever that this is happening. I’ll tell you what I mean.

A few days ago I had a thought-provoking encounter with culture. I’m not talking about museums or classical concerts, but the part of culture that we don’t think about so much – our belief system, the way we think and do things, see and even express ourselves. All this is influenced by the cultural climate we live in. I talked to a friend of mine who goes to Afghanistan regularly as part of her Ph.D. research project. It consists of training locals in offering psychosocial counselling to their fellow-countrymen to help them cope with the trauma of war and political instability. Of course you can’t just transplant Western psychology to Afghanistan. People there usually don’t talk about feelings let alone their unconscious. However this doesn’t mean that they don’t have them, quite the contrary. People react to traumatic experiences in pretty much the same way, no matter in which part of the world. (Or any other experience for that matter.) At least emotionally. But then the conscious mind comes in – and with it culture in the form of norms, rules of behaviour, beliefs and so on – and decides what to do with these feelings. As showing or talking about them isn’t part of Afghan culture they either find a different way to “get out” (i.e. as a headache) or they are banished to a dark corner of the mind where they fester and grow until they can be vented. Unfortunately this often leads to violence and aggression towards others.

At first glance this might seem far from our reality here in the Western world, but is it really? Not being capable of handling one’s emotional responses is a widespread phenomenon. This inability comes in a variety of forms such as eating disorders, obsessions and the most common of all: maladaptive social behaviour. There has been a lot of liberation and opening up in the past 100 years – the amply filled self-help/spiritual guidance shelves in bookstores and libraries are one of the more visible signs – but for a lot of people their emotions remain uncharted territory. They pull them out of the drawer when it’s convenient for them, but deftly avoid them otherwise. On so they are left alone on their journey (still talking about emotions) through the mind. And as they like to hold on to something tangible, they take what they can find. A chocolate bar for example. Or cleaning. Anything that restores control even if it doesn’t look like it.

It made me think: What if children were already taught at school how to make sense of their own emotional reactions? How to express and channel them in a healthy, useful way? For example through art? I strongly believe that this is one of the main functions of music, painting, storytelling and dancing: get out or even simply feel and acknowledge your emotions. Instead of stacking them under the bed. Governments would probably save quite a bit of money. Because these children wouldn’t end up on the couches of Freud’s successors as adults or stop working at the age of 45 due to burn-out or some mysterious physical ailment. At least most of them. Wouldn’t that be worth a try?