Sharing Without Dumping
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A student asks about the difference between vulnerably sharing fears and insecurities with friends and partners, and what the teacher has called the "emotional dump." The conversation moves through hidden neediness, healthy distance in relationship, the precious wound of longing, and how masculine and feminine dynamics shape the way we communicate.
Sharing Without Dumping
A student asks about the difference between vulnerably sharing fears and insecurities with friends and partners, and what the teacher has called the "emotional dump." The conversation moves through hidden neediness, healthy distance in relationship, the precious wound of longing, and how masculine and feminine dynamics shape the way we communicate.
I want to ask about something you pointed out to me recently, if this is the right place for it, because it's what has me confused. You were talking about not doing an "emotional dump" in relationships, with friends, or in certain places. I notice this isn't clear to me at all. I can see now that it's not a good idea with a partner, but especially with friends, I've always considered it a strength to be able to show my emotionality, my fears, my insecurities. When I imagine not sharing that kind of thing, what comes up is a kind of safe solitude. I would feel very alone if I couldn't share it with close friends. Is that clear?
Yes, it's very clear, and this is the right place. This is the art of communication and relationship, so it's very much part of what I call growing up, as opposed to waking up. As I always say, the two are related. This is about what you communicate and how. It's not about not communicating. When I say not to share in that way, I'm not saying don't share at all. It's about the way in which it's communicated.
Loneliness and hidden neediness
As for the loneliness you're describing, it sounds to me like there might be a hidden neediness in it, and you're trying to have that held by somebody else. There is a place where loneliness is appropriate. Relationship needs a balance in which each person holds their own.
Two columns holding a roof
There's a beautiful passage in The Prophet. I'm not sure whether it's in the section on love or on marriage, but it describes two columns holding up a roof. If they're too close together, the structure is unstable. If they're too far apart, there's too much weight in the middle and the roof comes down. The columns need to be firm and at a certain distance: not too close, not too far.
My interpretation is that this describes what I'm talking about. The distance needs to be far enough that you hold your own loneliness and your own neediness, but close enough that there is relationship, sharing, understanding, and communication. If one is unable to be okay with one's own sense of need and tries to get that holding from the other, it's one column trying to lean on the other. Either the other column supports it, and this is what we call codependency, or the whole thing tips over.
This happens a lot. When one person offers neediness, some people take it on because it supports their own need to help. That creates codependency, which is not a healthy or sustainable form of relationship. On the other hand, a relationship with no sharing, no intimacy, and no vulnerability is no relationship at all. So it comes down to the how.
Vulnerability versus the emotional dump
Our fears, our pains, and our insecurities can be shared vulnerably in a way that isn't what I've been calling the emotional dump. The emotional dump is when everything that's happening gets put out there because I can't deal with it myself. There is a place where all of that can be shared in that way, but it's a very specific context: a therapeutic relationship, for example, or a relationship already established for that purpose, where it's explicit that "I'm just going to tell you everything that's going on." It's a matter of context, as opposed to that being the normal way relationships are engaged in daily life.
I'm not sure whether that clears it up. Perhaps someone else here has something to add, if you're okay with that.
Yes, I'm fine with it.
Knowing why you're sharing
Something that helps me clarify this is a communication model where you first separate things out in your own mind. What am I feeling? What am I thinking, interpreting, or judging? And what are the facts, what actually happened? First you establish the facts: okay, we agree X happened. Then you tell the person what you think about it, how you interpreted or judged it, and how it made you feel. But there's one more piece: this is the reason I'm telling you.
Over the years I've found that if I can be really honest with myself about why I'm telling someone something, I often realize I shouldn't say it at all. Or I can be even more direct. When I first started working with this, the reason was so often that I wanted the other person to change. And if I'm asking my partner for a change in behavior, maybe I should just ask for it, and then he can negotiate it with me. For example, we got a new shoe rack, and I want him to put his shoes on it, but they're still on the floor. Instead of saying, "It really upsets me when your shoes are on the floor; it makes me feel really sad," why not just say, "Hey, do you mind putting your shoes on the shoe rack?"
But then there are times when I don't think he understands how I'm really feeling about something. I can't know for sure. It's important, it has an impact on me, and he doesn't know about it because each of us is in our own world. So I might say, "I'm so heartbroken that I haven't seen you much." And then I'm telling him because I need to feel connected to him. I wouldn't feel connected if he didn't know this.
Sharing deep feeling, not the emotional storm
To add to that: what she's saying is what I was saying to you. Vulnerability is usually an expression of deep feeling, not of all the emotional storm happening around it. It's an authentic, direct, clear sharing of what's really happening at the level of the heart. "Heartbroken," the word she just used, is very different from...
From complaining about your shoes.
Even about the same situation, there could be an expression very far from "I'm heartbroken because I'm missing you." That one is an expression of love. It says, "I'm longing for closeness and intimacy, and it's painful." That's very vulnerable and very deep.
It's also very owned, right?
Exactly. You're holding it. It's yours.
It's very tempting to say, "You're doing this, you don't care, you're never around," instead of "I'm feeling this way."
Or to express a whole emotional narrative that's trying to get the other person to be around more, without ever saying, "I'm longing; I'm hurting." The direct version is an expression of open-hearted love.
"I would love to talk with you more. I want to spend more time with you."
And what isn't the deepest feeling, is that what you were calling the neediness?
The neediness is for you to check within yourself. When I said I suspected there might be neediness, I couldn't tell you for sure. It was mostly an intuition.
Oh, yes, there is.
I see. The emotionality, then, is an indirect sharing that replaces sharing what's really there, because what's really there is more vulnerable. So it isn't about sharing the neediness, but sharing what lies below it. Still, I'm not sure an abstract example is helpful in a moment like this.
Longing that cannot be satisfied
I have something that might help. Say I want to be with him, but he's exhausted after a hard day, and I know that. I was with him yesterday. Partly for his sake, I don't want to put that pressure on him; I can tell he needs a break. But I still have this feeling. This really happened the other day, and it was amazing. When I went closer into the feeling, I realized it's something that can't be satisfied. There's no satisfaction in life, and it certainly won't come from him. It wasn't even about being with the feeling. It was about being okay that there's no satisfaction. That was so unbelievably freeing. The experience of freedom was far more important than satisfying this wanting.
Nice.
Is that similar to something I once heard a teacher say: that there's a place where he knew he would always be alone, that the other will never see him one hundred percent? And he owned that place?
I can't speak to what he meant by that. Maybe someone else has something.
It's really sad as well, but...
Why don't you go first?
Aloneness as a doorway
I don't know what he meant, but for me, aloneness is a doorway. The idea comes from someone else, but it's also my experience. It seems as though you're about to go through a door, and on the other side you'll be alone in this pain for eternity. But when you actually go through the doorway of aloneness, on the other side you're so free. You could even say it isn't alone at all, but then it just becomes paradox.
The precious wound in the heart
For me there are two aspects. The first is that there is a deep longing, which I think is very much human nature. There's a Tibetan Buddhist teaching about it, with a specific meditation. The perspective is that there's a pain in the heart that shouldn't be resolved. It should be allowed to be, almost as something permanent.
Tonglen.
I think that's it, Tonglen. Do you remember it? I have only a vague memory.
You breathe in all the pain and suffering of another. You can start with one person and then expand to breathe in the pain and suffering of the whole world. Then you breathe out loving-kindness, I think, some kind of heart offering.
What you give away.
In that there is this quality of pain. I was reading about it in the writings of a Tibetan Buddhist monk. My memory is vague, but he described it as a kind of wound in the heart that is precious and divine and shouldn't be tampered with. That, at least, is the impression I got.
From there, I see two ways of relating to it. The first is to undo the interpretation that it's a problem to be solved. The mind relates to it as "Something's wrong. Something's wrong with me, and it needs to be fixed." All the suffering gets built on that interpretation. For me this was first an experience, and only about a year ago did I read it in his writings: this heartfelt sense of wounding is, in a sense, love itself. It's the human aspect of love, and it's very precious. Any feeling that can be interpreted as something wrong that needs to change, such as fear or pain, is actually quite precious.
So when longing appears, it can immediately be interpreted as "This is a longing for something, and I need to get it in order to be okay. If I don't get what I'm longing for, I'm not okay," and so on. Or the longing is simply appearing, and the longing is divine. It's perfect as it is. It will come and go on its own. There's nothing wrong with it. It's the wave appearing in this moment: longing, loneliness, sadness, heartbreak, or joy, all the aspects of feeling. Nothing needs to be done with it. And yet, in the freedom of not having to do anything with it, there's a creative aspect. It can be shared, or there can be a movement that arises from it.
Longing for something deeper
The second aspect is that there's a longing for something very deep and profound, and we misinterpret what the longing is for. I think that's what was touched on just now: the realization that this is not something I can get from another person, even in a very deep, close, intimate, loving relationship. Even there, it won't be satisfied. Then it becomes less about others. In a sense it becomes about myself, but it also starts to become a relationship with God, with the universe, with what is. I sense that this is where freedom is. It brings one into a deeper relationship with oneself and with what is, and in a sense into relationship with creation, with divinity.
This is where it gets difficult to talk about, but it reaches the root of the sense of separation: I and world, I and God, I and other. This goes quite far from what you brought up, but it has to do with that seed. There's a need, and if that need is allowed to be and to mature, it becomes the need for a relationship with the divine. That relationship can mature into unity, and unity can mature into deeper realization, which is non-duality: there is no other, there is no divine, there is no I and other.
It's a relational path.
Yes, I was just going to say that. It's a path of bhakti, of love, of the heart.
Some people seem more predisposed to that path, right?
Different paths, one journey
Yes. There are different ways of living this journey. As you say, some people are more inclined toward one path, or one works better for them. But often they aren't completely separate. They're closely connected. For part of the journey it may be more one kind of path, and then another, and they complement each other. I see my own journey as very mixed. At first it was very bhakti, very relational, and then it became more of a jnana path, the path of truth.
It's helpful, but I'm still confused. I don't know.
Learning through practice and mirroring
It's a practice, right? It gets clarified through experimentation and reflection, and in relationship as well. If you're sharing and communicating in a relationship where this is understood, there will be mirroring and reflection. You'll learn more and more: "Ah, this is what happens when I communicate in this way. Here I wasn't actually being direct. There was more neediness, or codependence, or subtle manipulation."
Masculine and feminine centers
Another thing you seemed to say is that this matters even more for the masculine in a relationship than for whoever plays the feminine role, for the sake of attraction or something like that.
Let me lay out a bit of a framework. We can consider all human beings as having masculine and feminine energies and qualities. Everyone has both. Some people have a more natural ground or center in one or the other, but it's fluid. In some it's much more mixed or balanced, and in others it's much more masculine or feminine. Someone who is more masculine-centered is usually attracted to beings who are more feminine-centered, and vice versa. This is all general.
Speaking to you, knowing you as a more masculine-centered being, in a dynamic where a masculine-centered being communicates with a feminine-centered being: I was saying that communicating in the way you described, the more emotional way I've been calling the emotional dump, is more problematic. It's not that it matters more for a man. It's that in that particular context and dynamic, it's a less healthy way of communicating and relating. The situation calls for communicating from a masculine center, and instead the communication comes from what, in Jungian terms, is called a negative anima. "Negative" here means a shadow side, not something bad.
Would you like to add something?
This is a guess, an intuitive one, I hope. I wonder whether what you really want is simply to pour out your heart, which would be completely beautiful and appropriate. If it were to a close friend, maybe it would just be telling him how much you love him and how grateful you are for him. That would be beautiful, not needy at all, and lovely to receive. Or if it's to a woman, maybe it's simply that you find her so beautiful. It's still very connected, and I think you could feel truly seen and not alone in it. It's like Tonglen: it turns things around. It becomes about what you want to give.
Emotionality versus the truth of the heart
Yes, that's the distinction between sharing emotionality and sharing what's true at the level of the heart. She described it as sharing from the masculine: saying to a woman, "I find you so beautiful and attractive, and I always feel drawn to you," as opposed to something more confused and emotional...
About yourself.
About oneself and one's own insecurity. If approaching a woman is about my insecurity and fear, rather than sharing what's actually true, "I'm drawn to your beauty," then what she receives is somebody who arrives with all the insecurities surrounding the moment. That isn't the kind of vulnerability that is grounded.
And the direct way is so courageous, right?
Yes. Thank you. That resonated a lot.