monagustafsonaffinito   CHATS AND RANTS — PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

No, it doesn’t mean to restrain your feelings and thoughts like captives in your own private prison. It means having a thorough understanding of yourself and willingness to be open with others given appropriate methods and situations. And I’m about to expose you to my private example.

I think being raised Swedish had something to do with it, but I thought that the Scandinavian brand of stoicism was heroic. Looking back, I think it led others in public school to think I was “stuck up.” I know it must have frustrated my parents when my response to being sent to my room in punishment was a toss of the head and a gesture indicating that I loved being alone in my room. I guess it’s supposed to make one seem superior as one who is insensitive to pain. 

At any rate, the effort to train me to experience myself was begun by a friend in the Masters Program at Boston University who pointed out – basically nagged me about — the automatic gate that shut somewhere around the throat level preventing a head and body connection. I’ve told the story in other places of my excitement in teaching a course sometime later at the University of Vermont when I felt myself blushing in a lecture about masturbation. 

But there are other stories, liking meeting a very attractive, well-organized therapist who admitted she tried to teach her clients to be like her. I came away from that meeting hoping never to run into her again. No vibes. Her emotional life seemed to be locked away far inside where one couldn’t access it. 

On the other hand, there’s the experience in the neighborhood where Lou and I raised our two children. It was a suburban setting where many back yards came together essentially providing one large playground where we could feel safe about letting our kids enjoy their own creative games. One woman, I’ll call her Mrs.X, lived directly behind us, and we enjoyed coffee together on occasion. As a matter of fact, she’s the one who taught me to clean the toilet tank on a fairly regular basis. Her little boy was about my Lisa’s age and part of the playgroup that gathered on sunny days. 

Then came the day, several months after the birth of Mrs X’s daughter, that I was hanging a load of laundry on my pully line. (I loved my pully line) when I noticed the ladies in the neighborhood sitting in her yard, chairs situated so they were all facing me. I waved, and they waved back, calling me after they returned home to ask why I wasn’t there – I hadn’t been invited. Just a sign of things to come. But what did get to me with a huge gush of pain was when she bought exciting toys for her yard which had attracted the children in the neighborhood. When my Lisa, about four-years-old, ran over happily to join them, she was told to go home. She wasn’t allowed to play in Mrs. X’s yard. Of course, my Lisa cried in hurt and wondered what she had done wrong to cause the rejection. I wondered too.

I still believed that any problem could be solved by talking about it, but Mrs. X would have none of it. Lisa (and apparently I, also) was banned from her attractive playground of a yard. All I can do when I think about it is imagine how it was for little black kids rejected because of their color and grieve for the sad experience it was for Lisa.

I can’t remember for sure, but I think Lisa’s big brother and the neighbor kids made a point of including Lisa away from Mrs X’s yard, but the rejection and sadness went on until one day – and this is the point of the story – I blew my calm, cool, collected (?) stack and stood on my porch shouting every insulting obscenity I could come up with. Mrs. X just calmly looked at me like I had gone crazy. Well, maybe I had. Maybe it teaches something about how situations can drive one to otherwise unacceptable behavior. But the victory came when my two kids came running to me and I realized how important it was to them that I had stood up for them. Yes, that disconnect between emotion and action had been weakened.

I don’t recommend frequent such tantrums. 

The situation with Mrs. X and Lisa, however, didn’t change. I thought we would have to sell and move, but unfortunately the town had allowed our lots to be approved even though they were basically red rock. Truth was, everyone in the neighborhood had a septic problem. Some overflowed into yards, or others, like ours, backed up into the basement. (We threw the dishwater and bathtub water out the back door, practiced minimal flushing, and let the washing machine water out through a hose running down the driveway.) In other words, we couldn’t in good conscience try to sell the house. I remember the feeling of being stressed and trapped. (Sound like any other more unfortunate neighborhoods one may talk about?) 

There is a happy ending to this story, though I think my Lisa is still affected by the trauma. The town finally put in an appropriate sewage system and Mr. X was transferred out of town. Four of my very favorite people moved in, with one for each of us – Mr. V for Lou, Mrs V for me, a son (still friends) for my Doug and a daughter Lisa’s age.

All this to say that self-control doesn’t mean denying one’s emotions by sealing them away in one’s own dark, closed closet.

And, for heaven’s sake, I hope you don’t think I’m advocating temper tantrums! 

By the way, in reference to conditioned responses, we still feel a certain nostalgia when driving through neighborhoods with certain familiar distinctive smells.