David Deangelo has some programs that address handling emotions: “Man Transformation” and “Becoming Mr. Right.”

A lack of emotional expression communicates to women that we can’t be trusted to act on our emotions. They want to know that our emotions will motivate us to fulfill our role in the relationship.

Being an emotional spaz, on the other hand, says that we can’t be trusted to act appropriately when we are strongly emotionally affected.

It sounds like you’re in denial of your emotions. Perhaps You’ve learned to suppress them because you’ve been more towards the spaz end of the spectrum.

Emotional denial, I think, is normal for men. We’re sort of.. emotionally damaged… literally.

I think you’ll have to accept your emotions before you can learn to act appropriately based on them.

The most interest insight I’ve had from that is that you can, with practice, let things run “in parallel”: instead of needing to suppress emotion to remain calm, you can just let it be there, doing its thing, while at the same time you’re functioning in some other way – planning your bid if the turn comes up a spade, or whatever.

I think part of that’s what they mean when they talk about “no-self” in Buddhism: the more I meditate the less it feels like “me” having these experiences, and the more it’s just some experiences kind of doing their thing, like I’m just this bag with a bunch of stuff in it. So I see, oh, planning mind thinking about poker play. Fear’s there, too. Oh, so’s anger, at how that last play went.

I’ve worked with a therapist – psychoanalyst – for around eight years now and credit her with a lot of my views on emotion. Before I went to her – actually the reason I went to her, fundamentally – was that I was really out of touch with my emotions. First, I was really technically smart and into math and science growing up. Second, I was closeted and in denial about being gay for 19 years. The former gave me a good way to experience life without emotion; the latter gave me a reason.

I got lucky with my therapist: rather than the unfortunate stereotype of the psychoanalyst who only digs into history and mommy and daddy, she focuses very much on the present moment, on my relationship with her, what I’m feeling at any moment.

I think G’s post up top is interesting but doesn’t really coincide with my experience. For me, becoming more expressive of emotion (and it’s still an ongoing process) has taken three things:

#1: Practice doing it. At first, just knowing what I was feeling at any given time was like staring into a very dark room and trying to make out shapes. The more I did it, the more my metaphorical eyes adjusted and I could see things more clearly. This one is just raw practice, there’s no deeper component to it.

#2: An understanding of the fear that dissuades me from sharing emotion. It does make you more vulnerable to share this stuff, especially the unflattering emotions, which vary I think for everyone but for me are things like admitting I’m afraid, depressed, frustrated, dejected, or angry. This is the kind of stuff you naturally learn not to overshare in pickup and that’s the right thing. G’s post sounded to me like being emotionally healthy is about being unable to hold your emotions back at any time, but that’s a little silly. You do want to interact intentionally with those around you a lot of the time… the third insight is that eventually, in intimate relationships, you do yourself a disservice if you can’t turn that planning mind off, and so:

#3: The realization that sharing even unpleasant emotions is important to developing an intimate relationship. It took my therapist literally years to get me to blow up at her. I grew up in a family where expression of anger meant something was horribly wrong, and so I was extremely, extremely resistant to showing it, and felt horrible guilt and discomfort if I ever did. Eventually she managed to demonstrate to me that we could get really angry – livid, even – at each other, and nothing bad would happen. It also meant separating expression of anger from saying hurtful things, which I had always tied together in my head, too. Now I find it quite refreshing to be angry. And the key insight was, developing an intimate relationship involves helping the other person get to know you, and your emotional experience of life is a huge part of who you are as a human creature, so if you’re unwilling to share that, you’re holding the other person at arm’s length.

Before working with her my attitude was, why would I want to share unpleasant emotion like anger or sadness? I don’t want to dump that on anyone else. I’ll share it if it’s attached to a big problem that needs solving, but sharing it for no purpose other than to be like, “look, I’m really angry!” didn’t make any sense to me.

Now I get it.

Don’t discount #1, though. A lot of it is just raw practice. Numbness to emotion just takes time and disciplined practice to train away.

The only objection I could come up with is that the example they use to set up the book and to summarize their processes centers on a stressful contract work situation that I would have avoided in the first place or communicated about up front. All in all, that’s not much of an objection, given that it’s also a very common situation.

Keep reading and recommending, Tynan. You have good taste.

The book has some good and important points to make, especially about the dramatic differences in how people view time. I especially agree with his view of addiction as limiting one’s viewpoint to the present. He fails to notice the later stages of addiction, though, when hedonism changes to fatalism, still within the present. Also, they give very little information about the “present holistic” outlook, which is the only one they see as healthy in its own right, not needing to be balanced out by others. If I undestand this work correctly, the “present holistic” view of time is much of what I have acquired via 12-step recovery. All in all, the book is worth spending the time to read. At the very least, it raises one’s awareness of differing viewpoints, potentially leading to the empathy that you (Tynan) mentioned in your original posting.

@Cyd: I don’t know you either, but I feel for you. So many women have told me similar stories. Don’t despair, there are still some evolved cavemen that have not turned into metrosexual PUAs out there.

As far as “G,” I find him difficult to understand. My suspicion is that he uses pomposity to cover up his hostility. It came out at the end though, when he could not resist name calling. I’m a communication major; I know that more and longer words don’t communicate; they hide poor thinking.

I have the feeling that your respondent who claims to be a relationship coach can talk about deep feelings but has yet to discover his own.

..no?