The Challenge of a Family Crisis

I've been thinking a lot about death this past week.  A very good friend of mine took leave of her very frail body Monday, after a six year struggle.  Her funeral is later today.  I've also seen two different couples in the past week who have had the death of a parent recently. 

These events have led me to think about what a crisis time this is for a couple.  The person who has lost a parent is in the process of active grieving.  Their partner then has to shoulder the entire load of family responsibilities and support the grieving partner.  This can get old very fast.  One of the couples I mention above has broken up, in large part because the non-bereaved partner is feeling neglected and ignored.

Emotions are at an all time high during early grief.  Things are often said out of frustration that are not meant, but can't be taken back.  I remember when my father passed, a cousin on my mother's side called and asked me if it was important to my mother that he be there.  He was my mother's favorite relative, and so I told him "yes."  His response, which I'm sure he wished he could take back as soon as it came out of his mouth was, "it's just a very inconvenient time." 

My thought, of course, was, "I'm so sorry my father's death is not convenient for you."  All of this goes to the saying therapists have, "under stress, we regress."  If you, or someone you know, is going through a major life crisis - serious illness, loss of a loved one, loss of job, etc., cut them some slack.  We're all going to be there at one time or another.

You just don't "get it."

In this morning's newspaper, I read an article that quoted actor, Jeff Bridges, on his ideas about relationships.  What he said is thought provoking.  To paraphrase, he said that the only real problem that relationships encounter is that people "just don't get it."  All relationship problems, he posits, are a variation on this.  Then he adds that we'll never "get it," and that love needs to be big enough to allow for this.  What are your thoughts?

Positive Emotions

Today we have a guest post from Nikita Pisani (nikitapisani@hotmail.com) on concepts of emotional intelligence and positive emotions:

Positive emotions can act as a means of influence. They require you however to sincerely feel positive about people, and accepting them for who they really are.

“Emotional intelligence refers to the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships.”

Many of us are likely to be acquainted with Alfred Binet’s fundamental definition of I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient) and how it relates to one's ability to succeed in school and later on, in his or her a career. In 1990, Salovey and Mayer discovered a ‘new’ form of intelligence, known as Emotional Intelligence (abbreviated as E.I.). Emotional Intelligence was consequently applied to the work domain by Goleman, a definition of which has been delineated in the ‘epigraph’ above.

In ‘Introduction: the intelligence of the heart’, Patrizia Lombardo says that within the humanities, the study of emotions is mainly contingent upon the analytic philosophy rather than to literary criticism, whereby a host of seminal works, such as Albert Hirschman’s The Passions and the Interests: political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph, paved the way for the intensive research into the emotions in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Hirschman’s work characteristically considered the role of human passions in the making of the modern market economy, which manifests the role that emotions play in decision-making both in our personal life, as well as in the work industry.

“Emotions”, she continues, “also influence the radical pattern of decision-making”. Moreover, emotions contain an element of rationality that usually comes into play when one is confronted with a type of decision–making, seeing that without them decisions would never be taken, and we would linger within the infinite web of parameters and goals before our minds.
Having positive emotions is a quintessential need.

Marriage is (or rather should be) based upon our relationships with a significant other. It is strengthened by mutual communication and respect for one another. Positive emotions however are also strong in our influential position on others, whether in a peer group, or at the place of work.

To take a literary view, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a realist nineteenth-century fiction that serves as a magnificent social critique on society and significantly, on the double nature of the Victorian society. In this conformist society any form of emotionalism is strictly prohibited. In fact, little or no sort of emotion was allowed to emerge in conversations, or through gestures and other facial expressions. The Victorians were encouraged rather, to use euphemistic terms and to adhere to their conventional life with its great prudishness, avoiding any emotional encounters or display of affection. What had struck me most, and which I thought would be relevant to this article, was Darcy’s emotionally-charged speech, or in a way his ‘confession’ of love to Elizabeth. Indeed, he had been so rapped up in his feelings, which he had kept hidden out of fear that his society would be critical of him, that at one stage, he couldn’t bear any longer, and unleashed all his feelings. Paradoxically (and without him knowing it perhaps), he managed to break away from the ties and restrictions of his society:

“He sat down for a few moments, and then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but said no word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began:
‘In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feeling will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’

Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her immediately followed. He spoke well, but there feeling beside those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. […]”

In the first line of this passage, emotions are mainly revealed through gestures and movements. Darcy gets up and paces around the room, which is illustrative of his state of anxiety; notably, this is further reinforced by the explicit remark made by the narrator regarding his “agitated manner”. In the subsequent paragraph, we get a glimpse of Elizabeth’s feelings, that are mainly conveyed through gestures (“[Elizabeth] stared, coloured, […] was silent”), which hence serve as a ‘cold response’ (which also show her shock) to Darcy’s passionate words. Emotions, therefore, seem to run from Darcy to Elizabeth, and vice versa, whereby the narrator instead of telling the reader directly that Elizabeth was in fact offended – she uses the conjunction “but” in the middle of the following sentence: “He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed…”

Moreover, this extract shows us how necessary it is to adopt the right attitude and positive emotions, and even more than that, the ability to recognize the value and feelings these emotions generate, and the affect they leave upon others. Additionally, it also brings to mind Ronald de Sousa’s essay entitled, ‘Really, what else is there? Emotions value and morality’; here De Sousa identifies emotions as “psychological states”, which are essentially, “correlated with activity in specific regions of the brain”. These are in turn related to our morality, showing therefore that morality is intrinsically embedded and intertwined within our emotional life. However, he moves on to the notion of morality as being subjective, since my “emotional repertoire” and therefore my code of conduct of what is right and what is wrong may be different from yours and vice versa.
I don’t know about you, but like Darcy, I often find it difficult to discharge my feelings and pour my heart out to my family, friends and perhaps that ‘significant other’. In the past, this may have impeded my development of intimate relationships, as – and this has been a frequently recurrent remark – others find me rather secretive and mysterious – although some like it, others will not. With time and closeness however, comes trust. When you trust someone it seems natural to be open with them, to show your feelings, and to stop being afraid of showing who you are, 100%.

Displaying your emotions positively may be similar to – what in the novel we would call the ‘Bildung’ or the epigenesist. This refers to the growth of the artist or of a protagonist in a novel. Here, the ‘Bildung’ would refer to our personal growth, ingrained within a sound recognition of our emotions which will in turn affect our relationships with other people, and especially, with our spouses.

1. In Critical Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 4, Lombardo Patrizia, ‘Introduction: the intelligence of the heart’, p. 1.
2. Ibid.
3. De Sousa, Ronald, ‘Really, what else is there? Emotions, value and morality’, in Critical Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 4, p. 12.


About the author: Nikita Pisani is a freelance writer, proofreader and editor. She is keen on English literature, and sees people, multiculturalism, and communication as one of the greatest things that we can possibly have on our planet. Blog: nikitapisani.com