The Art of Empathy (22 page)

Although Sher suggests finding a complaining partner (we'll do that in
Chapter 8
), I modified the practice because there are very few people in this world who can deal with the amount of complaining I can produce. Most people are so uncomfortable in their own skins that they can't let me be uncomfortable in mine; they want to stop me, fix me, or help me see the world in a peppier light (which is just a form of repression if I'm in a foul mood). So I created a solitary practice for complaining, which has been a real lifesaver. Now, every time I lose all faith or come up against impossible obstacles, I can whine, moan, kvetch, and reinvigorate myself with the grim truth of what I'm experiencing. When I'm done, I'm not depressed—instead, I'm often able to get right back to work, because I know exactly what the problems are and just how hard life can be. This practice doesn't bring me down; it lifts me up, because it clears all the complaints out of my system, helps me be emotionally honest, and restores my grounding, my focus, and my sense of humor.

What Conscious Complaining Will Do for You.
This intrapersonal skill addresses the first three aspects of empathy so that you can clear the decks and become more able to empathize skillfully:

Emotion Contagion—you can verbally identify and work your way through any situation of emotional overwhelm, which increases your Empathic Accuracy and helps you create some distance from situations or emotions that destabilize you

Emotion Regulation—complaining consciously and intentionally is an excellent way to regulate your emotions while you listen to, honor, and explore them

In regard to the six dimensions of your emotional style, this safe and private expressive practice addresses your Resilience in both directions by helping you slow down and focus on troubling situations so that you can recover more quickly. This practice also helps improve your Outlook in both directions, because you really need a safe way to focus on your allegedly negative emotions so that you can develop full-scale emotional intelligence. Conscious Complaining also helps increase your Self-awareness by helping you become
more honest about how you truly feel, and it helps with your Attention levels in both directions as you learn to focus intently on your internal state, resolve the issue, and then move into a soft focus that allows you to be gently aware of multiple environmental inputs.

HOW TO COMPLAIN CONSCIOUSLY

Ready? You can be grounded or not, inside your strong boundary or not—it doesn't matter. All that matters is that you're in a foul mood and you have some privacy. Start your complaining with some sort of phrase, like “I'm complaining now!” If you're inside, you can complain to the walls or furniture, to a mirror, or to whatever strikes your fancy. If you're outside, you can complain to plants and trees, animals, nature, the sky, the ground, or your God. If you're a strong complainer, like I am, you might want to create a complaining shrine for yourself (maybe on top of a dresser or an out-of-theway table), with supportive pictures of grumpy cats, bratty kids, barking dogs, political cartoons, and whatever else calls to your complaining nature.

When you've found your perfect complaining site, let yourself go and give a voice to your dejected, hopeless, sarcastic, nasty, bratty self. Bring dark humor out of the shadows and really whine and swear about the frustrations, stupidities, impossibilities, and absurdities of your situation. Complain for as long as you like (you'll be surprised at how quickly this works). When you run out of things to say, thank whatever you've been whining or yelling at. Thank the furniture, the walls, the ground, the trees, your complaining shrine, or your God for listening, and then end your complaining session by bowing, shaking off, and doing something really fun. That's it!

People who try this practice are astonished to find that complaining doesn't pull them further down into the doldrums. In fact, most people find that they start laughing during these complaining sessions, because they can finally break through stagnation and repression and tell it like it is—without repercussions. It's an amazingly freeing practice in which you restore your flow again, you tell the truth again, you clear the decks, and you get an important time-out. And because this is a solitary practice, there's no danger of losing face or hurting someone else's feelings—instead, it's like a quick lube for your soul. Afterward, you'll find that you can revisit your struggles
with renewed vigor and vision. Conscious Complaining is especially helpful in a life of striving, empathic good works, and personal growth, where complaining is often considered less than saintly (which is a shame, because all by itself, a prohibition on complaining can trigger unresolving, repetitive mood states like worry, situational depression, and apathy).

When you don't pay attention to the difficulties of trying to live a conscious, empathic life in a sea of distractions and emotional illiteracy, the conscious life becomes less and less appealing, and the distractions start calling to you and shimmering seductively. If you only make time for work, and you never make time for play and rest
or
for kvetching, grumbling, whining, and complaining, your emotional flow will evaporate, you'll deteriorate into perfectionism, and you'll have no fun at all. Conscious Complaining gives a voice to your struggles, and in so doing, it restores your flow, your energy, your emotional honesty, your sense of humor, and your hope. It may sound contradictory, but you just can't be happy unless you complain.

COMPLAINING VERSUS POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS

Positive thinking and affirmations are the opposite of Conscious Complaining. They're also a function of valencing, since many (most?) positive-thinking programs valence the hell out of emotions. The idea behind positive thinking is that you hold on to thoughts and emotions that may get in the way of your health and well-being. Thoughts like “I'm unlovable” or “No one can be truly successful” or “Life is too hard” can really slow down your forward progress. Positive-thinking techniques teach you to unearth and then replace those thoughts with more helpful affirmations, such as “I have love around me all the time” or “Success belongs to me” or “Life is absolutely wonderful.” Seems like a good idea, right?

Well, although it can be quite healing to ferret out interior statements that crush your well-being, positive thinking tends to be too much of a quick fix (and it tends to be emotionally repressive). If you look at the practice empathically, you'll understand the problem. Positive affirmations look at issues—for instance, a lack of love or an eating disorder—and apply a kind of reverse psychology. Instead of helping you sit with the issues and honor the emotions that are trying to arise, positive affirmations teach you to override the real situation with enforced statements that erase the true-but-uncomfortable emotions. Affirmations such as “I am surrounded
by kind and loving people” or “Food is healing and slenderizing for me”
do
provide a more pleasant inner dialogue, but they don't tell the truth or honor the truth that's trying to come forward with the help of your emotions. These affirmations don't speak to the myriad issues behind your eating problem, nor do they heal or address your broken and weary heart—and your emotions know it. Most positive affirmations elevate verbal–intellectual statements above emotional realities. In essence, you're
telling
yourself how to feel instead of
feeling
the way you feel.

Empathically speaking, I haven't seen or experienced deep or lasting change with positive affirmations. I've seen people deal with the surface of their issues, and I've seen them get some of the things they wish for, but I haven't seen them deepen or mature empathically. Look at it this way: If you place a conflicting or overriding verbal command in the midst of strong emotions, you'll set up warring factions within yourself. Each of your affirmations will deny or repress the truth of the situation, which means that your emotions will have to intensify in order to get you to wake up and take effective, emotionally coherent action. Positive affirmations attempt to deal with deep emotional issues in incomplete and repressive ways.

Conscious Complaining is healing because it speaks to your real issues from within your actual emotive sense of things—it addresses your actual concerns, and it welcomes your real emotions and gives them a voice. When you can complain consciously, you don't sugarcoat or attempt to transform anything; you simply tell it like it is. When you allow yourself to be yourself, and when you allow your emotions to tell the truth
without valencing them,
no one gets hurt. When you can stand up and complain in a conscious way (rather than just griping to people without any purpose), your vision and your focus return, your emotions flow, you release your stored-up tensions, and you get to have the fun of translating everything you feel into choice words and phrases. And then it's done—and you move on.

If we have to valence thoughts and ideas, then let's look at them intelligently and empathically: “positive” thinking is helpful when it's true, just as “negative” thinking is helpful when it's true. If the phrase “I'm wonderful and marvelous!” comes barreling out of you, it's a sign of contentment moving through you in its own way and its own time. Embrace it! It's true! You
are
wonderful and marvelous! Similarly, if the phrase “I can't go on this way!” comes out of you, it's a sign of sadness, fatigue, or situational depression moving through you in its own way and its own time. Embrace it! It's true!
You
can't
go on this way—so don't try! Use your skills, bring your emotions forward, and deal with the truth of whatever you're feeling—whatever that truth may be. Dance with your marvelousness in its time, and complain, cry, whine, and burn contracts with your situational depression in
its
time. Then, move on to your next emotion, your next idea, or your next task. Your Empathic Accuracy and Emotion Regulation skills aren't supposed to create an unmoving and unchangeable sense of slaphappiness in you; their purpose is to help you clearly identify your emotions and respond uniquely to each of them in turn.

Conscious Complaining will help you develop your emotional vocabulary and your emotional awareness in safety and privacy and it will help you restore flow to repressed emotions or emotions that are stuck in a feedback loop. It will also help you refocus yourself and release ideas and behaviors that aren't working anyway, which is naturally grounding. Conscious Complaining is a silly practice, but it has a serious purpose—to connect you to your real emotions in a safe, lighthearted way.

REJUVENATING YOURSELF

Our fifth empathic mindfulness skill is a rejuvenation practice that you can use whenever you need to, wherever you are. This empathic rejuvenation practice is very simple and takes almost no time at all; however, you can turn it into a long and luxurious practice when you have the time.

What Rejuvenating Yourself Will Do for You.
This self-rejuvenation skill addresses the following aspects of empathy:

Emotion Contagion—you can fill your body and your personal space with the precise emotional and sensual feelings that make you feel wonderful

Emotion Regulation—this soothing practice helps you restore yourself to equilibrium and can even be used in the middle of a conflict or when you lose your focus, your grounding, and your emotional skills

Concern for Others—this rejuvenation practice creates a compassionate and loving internal environment that helps you feel compassion for others, which increases your capacity for Perceptive Engagement

In regard to your emotional styles, this simple rejuvenation practice increases your Resilience; it refreshes your Outlook; it makes Self-awareness delicious; it increases your Sensitivity to Context in a safe way by helping you learn how to tune in to relaxation and delight; and it helps you learn to soften your Attention intentionally as you rejuvenate yourself.