In our latest blog post, Chris Yeomans reflects on her experience of a family conflict and how being still can transform a tense situation, giving us a helpful perspective on how feelings arise and how to deal with them.
For the last year and a half, I have been involved in a long – well I don’t know what to call it really. I don’t think it’s a row if I haven’t responded in kind, so ‘trouble’ from my husband’s family is perhaps the only word. I have never experienced anything so unpleasant and with it the whole range of emotions and feelings: deep hurt, grief, loss and bereavement, rage, a sense of injustice, despair.
Eventually, after a drawn-out and careful negotiation, during which my husband’s family called all the terms and I worked very hard at ‘letting go’, we met up for what they called ‘peace and reconciliation’, although I couldn’t see quite how this might happen if any mention of what had gone on before was expressly forbidden. So it was very unlikely there would be any resolution, it seemed to me. But I tried to let go of that ‘opinion’ too.
But, for my husband’s sake, who felt he was losing or likely to lose his family, I found I could agree to almost anything and we met for dinner. It was a surreal experience, sitting chatting and exchanging pleasantries, whilst all the time unable to blank out, completely, the way I had been treated and the things that had been said and written. These were people whom I had genuinely loved and trusted and whose support I had greatly valued. They had devastated me, but finally I found I felt nothing for them and I left the restaurant feeling a free woman. Which led me to explore the whole business of feelings and emotions and maybe relationships.
I read a bit and searched on the internet, finally coming across this, which I more or less agree with ‘Emotions come first, followed by feelings. Emotions are the body’s initial reactions to a stimulus, like a sudden rush of adrenaline or a physical sensation. Feelings, on the other hand, are the subjective experiences we have after interpreting these bodily reactions and thinking about them.’
I remember a monk once saying that the feelings of excitement and fear are almost indistinguishable, physiologically. It just depends on you knowing what you are expecting to be experiencing and then giving them a label.
And in that situation, I found I didn’t really feel anything very much. It was socially not difficult. But the relationships which we had, and which I had treasured, had been destroyed and there was simply nothing there. So what does a relationship need to ‘work’? It was so odd to be in the presence of people about whom I had once cared deeply and to feel absolutely nothing.
It seems to me that every genuine relationship is based, if not on love, at least on trust. If there is no trust, it is impossible to have a relationship. And also, following that old ‘I’m OK, you’re OK” theory, you need to know that the other person does at least have some positive regard for you. That they ‘like’ you and interactions with them leave you with a good feeling. I had none of that with these people. I suspected they strongly disliked me, they certainly had expressed distrust of me, and they had treated me in a way I would not have thought possible.
So I was left that evening with this rather odd feeling of being on a film set, where nothing was real. I was just glad to escape unscathed, though I think they’ve lost their appetite for a fight.
Being able, even in the toughest times, to know how to be still with the situation is invaluable. And not to hit back, particularly when you know that the person attacking you is likely to lose control, be abusive or storm out of the house.
I have not so far had a lot of success in feeling genuine compassion for them. Nor have I been able to bow to them as Buddhas. Work in progress I suppose. But for the moment I am enjoying the peace of being free from so much emotion. I am transformed (people tell me!) and energised. I don’t think I realised quite what a toll this was taking on me. I was a broken woman, but I am healed. To be relieved of such a burden is a truly wonderful thing.