I had a bit of a laugh listening to how Piers Morgan got upset after being confronted about his attitude to Meghan Markle on the the Good Morning Britain show last week. His little walk out was aired on a show which discusses all things media and entertainment related here in Australia called Stop Everything. It made me think of times I have had to walk away when I feel upset and how at times that was not the most mature or emotionally intelligent response.. It happened earlier today. I told someone I don’t want to speak to them again as talking to them hurt, they also approached me when I was tired and needed more rest. Looking back it was a bit of an extreme thing to say. Lately I just draw so much comfort from the silence, but do I want to withdraw from human beings and human relationships all together?
The short answer is No but when we feel we lack the tools to cope or the hurt we seem to be carrying seems all too large, it may seem as if it is the only response we are capable of is to cut off or walk out (one solution is just to say to the person we need and are taking time out!) My ex used to do this to me all of the time.. He would just walk out if he was angry and then I would get a letter or talk after about 4 days of no contact or ‘the silent treatment’ about how ‘wrong’ what I was doing was.. If it may have been an emotional outburst or expression of grief I got told had to change.. While I can understand that at times the depth of sadness I felt that got triggered was hard for him and possibly as a man he felt it may have been a sign of failure on his part that he could not ‘fix’ it, I learned in that relationship I need more.. It is also one of the major reasons I have had to have so much therapy over the years, as I shared earlier this week, often my emotions just burst out of me and recently I read an article on eight signs we are bottling our emotions and I related to a lot of them.. Difficulty with confrontation being a big one.
Sometimes it can be hard to open our ears and our heart to what others are trying to tell us.. For someone like Piers Morgan he has an entrenched belief about Meghan that is not going to change any time soon… But he was not even open to hearing there may be another way to view the situation… The fact that it made me laugh also made me ask myself “where is there a little bit of Piers Morgan in some of your reactions Deborah?”
It was also interesting on the program as Beverly Wang, in discussing some of the negative reactions to Meghan asked that people try to examine what it is about her behavior that triggers them so. When I had coffee on Tuesday with a family friend she was saying how wrong she thought it was for her to walk away from the ‘family duty’, this is the person who has shamed and judged me before and only lately understood what went down in terms of trauma behind the scenes of our own family…
The truth is everyone has their own perspective. And when we have wounding or have not seen conflict and differences of opinion handled well and resolved amicably in our own family it can be hard to know how to deal with it and so we may just retreat, withdraw or disconnect… We may also come from families where one member was treated badly, such as in my family, with another part of the family deciding to have nothing to do with them.. I read a while back in a book on family systems therapy that such cut offs can often lead to the incidence of mental illness in a younger family member.. This actually happened with my niece she became mentally broken down at the exact same age my older sister had her cerebral bleed and this was the sister my sister in law said she wanted no where close to my niece..
Learning ways to stay open and heal emotional cut offs may not be easy.. It may involve us having to confront shadow aspects of ourselves we may be splitting off from… and investigating buried fears and anxieties or unhealed emotional wounds..For myself I apologised to the person later and tried to explain why I had told them I do not want to speak to them again… that was not the truth, I just did not know how to deal with our earlier conflict.. Being able to admit this at least opened the door and may also be a positive sign that I am finally trying hard to confront some of my own emotional blind spots or fears. I hope so.
Emerging From The Dark Night 