Why we all need the art of humble self-expression: Losing Strategy #3

In this third post about the 5 Losing Strategies, I’m focusing on Unbridled Self-Expression.

This is the 3rd losing strategy and it's my favourite, if only because I am so familiar with it – having been on the receiving end of it as well as indulging in it myself.

Unbridled self-expression is something children do. We call it throwing a tantrum and for the most part we don’t like it when children do it. So it seems a bit strange that we would find it acceptable in ourselves.

In case you’ve not read my previous posts about the losing strategies, there are five of them and they were identified by couples therapist, Terry Real.

If you would like a quick guide to the five losing strategies, you can download a pdf here.

Like the other losing strategies, unbridled self-expression is characteristic of couples who are on the road to divorce. It’s not that telling someone how you feel is a bad thing. It’s the manner in which you do it.

Placing limits on our emotional expression

Unbridled self-expression is a sign of poor boundaries. There are two kinds of boundary. The type that may be familiar to you is the protective boundary that we use to keep others out of our space (head space as well physical space).

The other type is the boundary we put in place to protect others from our unmitigated emotional outbursts. This boundary places limits on our behaviour so that we don’t cause unnecessary suffering to people we love. It stops us shouting, screaming & ranting and putting down the people we love.

The idea that we can and probably should limit our expression of emotion runs counter to the prevailing notion that we should be open and honest and express ourselves fully. The trouble with this is that it’s just not very relational.

When I screamed and raged at my ex (all three of them, in fact), I pushed them away and I had no idea how to repair the rift, apart from tears and an apology. But I thought that I was being authentic and speaking my truth.

I remember, as a psychology student in the 1970s, learning about the importance of getting all that pent-up emotion out. We were encouraged to vent, as if we were all pressure cookers with the valve blocked.

From the perspective of the 2020s it looks a bit naive. First of all we are not pressure cookers. The notion that we have a build-up of emotions such as rage that needs to be released is just a bit old-hat.

From today’s perspective, that so-called build-up can be seen as a well-trodden neural pathway. After all, if you practise something enough you get very good at it. So that rage which I kept feeling (and often expressing) towards my ex was being fed by my repeated expressions of it.

And the truth is I had learned it from my mother who was also given to explosive bouts of rage. Like all of the losing strategies, I learned this one in the bosom of my family.

It’s not about the broken china or the weekend ‘jollies’

Probably more important, though, is the understanding that we get triggered into rage or panic or despair, not by what just happened (such as the porcelain rolling pin that got broken when he used it as a hammer – I still can’t let that one go). But because of an implicit memory that acts as a sort of template.

Implicit memories are old memories from our childhood, which we don’t necessarily have full access to. They can be things which happened to us when we were very young and therefore unable to lay down in story form. And they can be things which we forgot because it made sense not to keep recalling the pain. But they are still there inside us, ready to be triggered when something similar happens now in adulthood.

As an example, let’s take a fictitious couple, Kate and Jerri. They have two young children and Kate has gone back to work after a couple of years of maternity leave. Her job requires her to be away at weekends now and again. She expects Jerri to find it hard at first, being on his own with the children, but that he will learn to cope. After all his mother is just up the road and she is more than happy to help.

But Jerri doesn’t learn to cope. It gets harder. After a year of this he’s raging. He shouts at her that she doesn’t care about him, that she puts herself first, that she doesn’t even care about the kids. He tells her he feels betrayed and that any other man would not put up with this. He tells her she’s hard-minded and cold.

The shouting and raging does not have the desired effect of forcing Kate to back down. She just digs in her heels and tells him to grow up. Kate’s response to Jerri’s unbridled self-expression isn’t relational either – she’s engaging in retaliation, the 4th losing strategy (in this case somewhat passive-aggressive).

But why is Jerri not coping? After all his mother is close by and happy to help out on the weekends when Kate is away.

The fact is Jerri’s mother was not always there for him. She’s a reformed alcoholic who was very much not around when he was growing up. And her presence now isn’t compensating for that earlier absence.

So Jerri’s unbridled self-expression – of his anger, the sense of betrayal and abandonment – is not a reaction to Kate’s work ‘jollies’. Rather it’s about the pain of not being loved enough by his mother when he was a boy. And Kate’s weekend disappearances simply act as a reminder of that absence of maternal love during his childhood.

Unbridled self-expression and implicit memory

These implicit memories may or may not be obvious enough that we can identify why we’re being triggered. Sometimes we can figure out what those childhood memories are, and sometimes we can’t.

But in a way it doesn’t matter.

When you know that outbursts of rage are unlikely to be just a reaction to what is in front of you, you can acknowledge that there is probably a memory which is being reactivated.

It’s ok to say to your other half that you’ve been triggered by something they said or did. Apologise if you flew off the handle. And practise the gentle art of humble self-expression. It looks something like this:

“Darling when you head out that door on Saturday morning and I know I won’t see you till Sunday evening, I feel really sad and angry as if you are abandoning me and the kids. I know you aren’t and I’m sorry if I got really angry. I think there must be something that is linked to this from my childhood; I’m just not sure what it is.”

And then ask for whatever you need to help you feel safe and held. A heart-to-heart hug or being listened to while you speak calmly about what it is you have been feeling.

If like me, you have caught yourself engaging in unbridled self-expression, I’d love to hear from you. I’ve helped many other clients move from unbridled self-expression to connected, respectful communication of their needs. And I’d love to help you. Book a complimentary Clarity Call and we’ll take it from there.