Translator: Cynthia Evenden Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
How are you,
honestly?
How often do we get asked this question?
And how many times do we honestly answer it?
I'd like to ask you all to take a moment right now,
close your eyes, and ask yourself,
How am I truly feeling?
Now, with your eyes closed,
I would like to ask you all to think of one person
that you would like to share this feeling with,
and imagine sharing it with them in just one word.
Thank you!
As a psychologist, you have just done
one of the hardest things that I ask my clients to do:
to share your emotional life.
We're not often taught to express our emotions.
In fact, from a very young age, we're taught to suppress our emotions.
We tell toddlers to "Stop crying!"
and (Burmese) "မငိုနဲ့!"
And the message of this echoes into our adult lives.
Now, in cultures like Myanmar,
some might even say that we are experts in burying our emotions.
Often, people only reach out for help during periods of crisis.
But if we share how we are feeling
before we reach the crisis point,
then we have a greater chance to heal.
You see, sharing our emotional life
provides us with a path
to alleviate the symptoms of pent-up repression.
So what happens when we open up the doors
and share our emotions
versus ignoring them and slamming the door shut?
As part of my role as a clinical psychologist,
one of my jobs is to help people learn how to deal with their emotions.
I'm also half Myanmar,
from a country that has had its door shut under the rule of a military dictatorship
for over half a century.
And although today,
Myanmar is more connected than it has ever has been
in both technology and government,
for many, emotions are still held tight.
And since I've returned over four years ago,
I've seen the dangers of ignoring and repressing these emotions.
Not only does a generation of parents and leaders suffer
but also the next generation of children and teens.
So I'd like to take a step together
to think about the importance of being open with our emotions,
moving away from emotional repression
towards the doors of emotional openness.
Now, I first learnt
the absolute destruction of living under power
at a personal level.
I was eight.
I was lying in my bed, fast asleep, when the light suddenly came on.
My mother told me to get up and come downstairs.
Her touch was gentle,
but her voice was firm.
I could tell that somehow she was afraid.
Now, when I got downstairs,
there were two men sitting at the dining room table.
The innocent eight-year-old in me expected friendly visitors,
but
they turned out to be military police invading the safety of our home.
And from that moment forward, a shutdown took place in my family.
No one ever spoke of the strange men that came that night.
My mother told me to lock my bedroom door every time when I went to sleep.
This was my introduction to a dictatorship.
For others, it was arbitrary arrest,
repressed critics, and lives spent in exile.
So what happens when you live under a dictatorship?
What happens emotionally when we live in a society
where the walls have ears and the doors have eyes?
Well, when you fear that someone is watching your every move
and listening to every phone call,
then your guard goes up and feelings go and shut down.
We padlock our gates and our mistrust grows,
and this is when we stop connecting.
Now, in the long term, this is not healthy.
You see, multiple studies show us that when we repress how we feel,
we sacrifice both our physical and our mental health.
We're more likely to have a heart attack
and we're at greater risk of developing depression
when we ignore these feelings.
In the short term, yes;
when we bury how we feel, we are protected from hurt.
But in the long term,
we sacrifice both our physical and our mental health.
Now, this is an all-too-common scenario in my work.
I'd like to tell you a story about May.
Her real name I'd like to protect.
Now, May was a client of mine who grew up under a dictatorship
and came to my office.
She sat down in the chair,
and her body was tight.
With her hands on her lap, she had her bag in her knees,
and she was hunched over like she was hiding something.
It was almost as if her emotional repression
had physically manifested itself.
May sat in silence, and then she cried.
And the only three words that she said that day:
"I feel sad."
I couldn't believe it.
May only had three words to express how she was feeling:
good, sad and angry.
You see, May had grown up being told
that when she experienced difficult emotion,
to push them away.
When she was sad, she was told,
(Burmese) "စိတ်ထဲမှာ မထားနဲ့,"
"Don't worry about it."
She was also told,
(Burmese) "မစဉ်းစားနဲ့,"
"Don't think about it."
It was messages like this that could only help to ensure
that May buried and repressed how she was feeling.
So May felt that the only option she had was to ignore things.
But over the months,
May started to tell me about the time that the military came to her home.
She told me about her mother's fear.
They took her father, they took her security and they took her voice.
The only way that May had to express how she was feeling
was to cry on her own, alone at night.
You see, May didn't have the words or a place to express how she was feeling.
This created a deep sadness, anxiety and loneliness.
Like my mother,
no one spoke to May
about the strange men that came to her home.
May's father disappeared for six weeks,
and she was told not to ask questions.
Burying her emotions led to a severe depression.
And if there's one thing that we can learn from May's story,
it's that burying and repressing our feelings is damaging.
Now, we all do it.
We can all bury our emotions.
Even if we don't grow up under a dictatorship.
You may believe, as May thought,
that when you bury your emotions and hold them deep inside,
that you're in control of these emotions.
But in reality, they control us.
You see, painful emotions always break free,
and when they do, it affects those around us.
It affects our family, it affects our friends
and it affects our neighbors.
For May, there was no longer a point
where she was able to hold these feelings in.
They came out in deep pain and deep anger,
and they continued to come out when she got married and had her children.
You see, for May,
her emotional repression
led to this obsessive need to control her family,
needing to know where they were and when they would be home,
and this was damaging.
Now I realized
it was my job to help May to develop a vocabulary of emotions
to help her to express how she was feeling
and to help her communicate this to her family
so that she would be able to heal these relationships.
So what happened
when May moved away from the closed doors of emotional repression
towards the doors of emotional openness?
Well, May started to have dinner with her mother every week,
and inch by inch,
she would open up to her about how she'd been feeling.
She also spoke with her children about their worries and their fears.
And although she hasn't just yet been able to speak to her father
about how she's been feeling,
that's okay.
Because it's a journey that she's taking step by step,
and it's a journey that you can also take step by step.
Opening up about our emotion
can be scary.
It can hurt.
But opening up to emotion opens up possibilities:
the possibility of love, intimacy and connection.
Now, May, now more than ever, has a close relationship with her children
and an intimate connection with her mother.
So what does emotional openness look like in practice?
Well, most importantly,
when you experience difficult emotions like jealousy or envy,
don't hide from them -
no matter how hard.
Emotions are our gift.
Take the gift,
open it up
and look deeply inside.
Ask yourself some questions.
What makes this feeling better?
What makes this feeling worse?
And when you feel comfortable,
take the gift, turn it around
and share it.
Now, I don't mean sharing it
with all of your Facebook friends or with everybody here today.
Instead, share it with those that you trust,
the people that you trust to look after these emotions.
The doors of oppression have been closed for over 50 years,
and emotions have been held tight.
But as the doors to democracy have opened,
so too should the doors to emotion.
Bring emotions to the center of your relationships.
Emotions are our gift.
Open up to them,
explore them
and then share them.
So the next time that somebody asks you,
"How are you?"
What will you share?
Thank you.
(Applause)