Page 47 - Mindfulness Meets Emotional Awareness Sample Book

P. 47

Others can be completely immersed in the underlying
emotion with no connection to the anger that they need to fuel
them into taking an action that could result in a solution or
healthy negotiation.

What I am describing is not gender specific, we can all
experience these different states of being, however in my
therapeutic practice I have met proportionally more men who
are needing to be encouraged to look more deeply at the
feelings beneath their anger, and proportionally more women
who are very much in touch with their underlying feelings,
often of hurt and sadness, but desperately need to learn to
embrace their anger positively in order to develop their
qualities of assertiveness. They have yet to discover the lioness
within them.

To a very great extent this is a result of historical social
conditioning. I have met many deeply sensitive men who
have never learned how to identify any individual emotions
beyond that of anger and have been brought up to believe that
showing their feelings is an unacceptable sign of weakness
and many women who have been brought up to believe that
assertiveness is both unattractive and undesirable in a woman.

Regardless of our gender, our nationality and our cultural or
social upbringing, one of the greatest challenges we face with
this core emotional component is how to develop a healthy
form of expression that results in assertive and responsible,
considered actions, and in this I am no exception to the rule.
This has been an area of particular challenge within my own
life.

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