The Emotional Experiences of the Marginalized
I was invited as a guest on to the Clearly Clinical podcast.
Though this episode is primarily geared towards helping professionals, there are a lot of goodies in here that are good for everyone to know, especially those who are in any vulnerable or marginalized groups. Some topics are:
What is emotional privilege?
What role does anger play in justice and healing?
Have a listen!
Elizabeth: My goodness, I'm looking forward to this interview today. I am joined again by our wonderful guest, Joanne Kim, licensed marriage and family therapist. Joanne had previously joined us for a conversation about kind of the cultural framework of the Enneagram. And she's come back today for a conversation about the emotional experiences of people who are marginalized.
And that topic is a big one covering how we feel and identify our own emotions and also how we relate to them and describe them or not describe them at all. Thank you so much for joining us again We are delighted to have you Joanne.
Joanne: I'm super excited to be here for a second time.
Elizabeth: So why don't you tell our listeners about yourself and your background and how you became so familiar with this particular topic.
Joanne: It's been my lifelong dream in being a dream activator., And if you look at my resume, I've kind of bounced around in different fields, different industries, but the common thread has been to get to know people, to get to know myself, to get to know other individuals, know different communities. And to draw out the flow state in each group.
And at the current moment, I'm operating as a therapist, specifically an Enneagram and brainspotting therapist. But I'm also working alongside other helping professionals and being able to help them build their dream businesses in supporting their life instead of they're life supporting their practices.
And throughout this whole journey, I've noticed that my own emotional experiences were playing out because as an entrepreneur, there is no set path. We're creating our own, forging our own directions. And I found that a lot of my own emotional habits of being very numb, being very turbulent on the inside, but very stoic on the outside.
That was interacting with my relationships with the way that I pursue different endeavors. And so I accidentally stumbled across what came to be a framework of how feelings work. And I've been sharing it with my clients and they've, I think the most common response I get is like, how come no one else taught me about this like early on? Like, why didn't anyone tell me about this in school? And so, I took that as a summons. I've been fighting this calling, if you will, to put together something. Put together a school for feelings, if you will. I've been resisting it for about five years, and now I'm like, I think I just need to do the thing.
And so, fast forward a couple years, I've started creating this school that talks about emotions at different angles, and I'm still learning a lot about myself, and my own habits, my own blind spots, and it's been a very personally rewarding process, and it's an extra bonus that other people seem to be finding it helpful too.
Elizabeth: Thank you. Thank you for joining us for this topic. It's interesting. I mean, given that we're clinicians, one would think that we are in the business of emotions, and this is something that we talk about a lot, and we receive intense training in. And then the recent conversation that I had with Dr. Sue Johnson, she pointed out the evolution of psychotherapy in the Western world. And that there have been like these little like blips with emotion, but otherwise we just kind of have skipped around to all these other domains, like what's going on somatically, what's going on cognitively, what do we do behaviorally, like these different kind of touch points. But that emotions, interestingly, rarely take the forefront.
So I'm glad to have this conversation because it's obviously what's coming up on our couches. So with that, why don't we start by discussing what emotions even are? Let's start with that definition and then our human relationship to emotions and go from there.
The Purpose of Emotions
Joanne: Probably the easiest way of understanding emotions are that they're like traffic lights.
We all have them. We have different lights. They tell us a lot of important information about how we're doing. And oftentimes they can tell us what to do next. In the word emotion is the root “motion” in Latin means to move or to be moved. And so in a sense, our emotions are ways to demonstrate that we're alive, that we're not inanimate objects, that we have a soul, we have our own sense of self. Because two people can be watching the same movie but having very different emotional reactions to it, and that reveals each person's uniqueness.
Our emotions reveal what matters the most to us, our values. In that for one person, like, they might be valuing more connections and another person might be considering more justice as the most important thing, but our emotions are just reflections of that. So, like, with traffic lights or, like, gauges on a tank, our emotions tell us what the state of that tank is, how empty or full is it.
And these tanks would be the legitimate, universal human needs that we all have. Some of those needs being practical like food, water, shelter, safety, money. Some tanks being emotional, like for humor, clarity, inspiration. Some of those tanks are relational, like for connection, intimacy, support. And my favorite tanks tend to be the more existential ones around justice, purpose, sense of meaning.
We all have these tanks. Not all tanks are treated equally. Some are full, some are empty, some have been bone dry for forever. And our emotions tell us whether or not those tanks are adequately filled. So our emotional habits are just things to have to deal with on the surface. But if we consider them like messengers, are we avoiding the messengers like in Harry Potter, where the mail system kind of starts chasing after us?
Or are we allowing ourselves to receive the memo so that we can do according to what it says? So it is imperative for us to reconnect with that very central part of ourselves. I think, especially in the Western world, we prefer things that are more visible and explainable, because we are control junkies and we can't sit with the possibility that some things are beyond immediate comprehension.
So learning about our emotions, I think it gives us plenty of opportunities to cultivate humility. And the phrase, I don't know, is actually a very valid one.
Elizabeth: Education is continually changing in terms of what we teach children in mainstream schools. I don't know if there was ever a day in my upbringing that I received education about feelings, mindfulness, self soothing, coping.
That was not a thing. And then to look at the curriculum of some school systems now that there are dedicated modules about feelings identification and feelings expression and things like that. Certainly we can see how these things are evolving over time. Tell me about the concept of emotional privilege and why some of us may have an easier time identifying certain emotions and even expressing them than others.
What is Emotional Privilege?
Joanne: It's especially a relevant topic for helping and healing professionals. For Dr. Johnson to come up and talk about the history, the evolution of, you know, emotions and psychology. The nature of privilege is that people have freedom, power, choice, options. And those experiences allow for them to establish frameworks that often are benefiting them, sometimes at other people's expense.
So even what we learn in our therapy, psychology trainings, they're based off of theories that have been built by people who've had the opportunity and the privilege to be able to write these things down on paper. Whereas other people are struggling with things that are more immediate, like food insecurities or financial instability and things like that.
So when it comes to emotional privilege, simply put, it's having the opportunity to experience and express emotions freely, especially without the fear of negative consequence.
In a sense, allowing, even having a chance to sit down and check in with our own emotions is itself a privilege.
And I have my best friend who is the mom of a very spirited six year old, who is very active in a lot of ways, and she rarely has a chance to just, like, talk to me. Sit down and check in with herself. So sometimes that privilege can come with life circumstances or stages of life sometimes that can come with just different aspects of our identity.
I happen to be a firstborn daughter of a Korean immigrant family who immigrated to the United States when like in the 80s, late 80s. And I have a lot more emotional privilege than people who immigrated here like 10, 20 years ago. And so, like, there are lots of ways that I don't have to think about choosing between certain limited options, because I already have those options available.
And so we take the lens of privilege, because that's kind of been the buzzword these days. Right? Who has access, who has power, who has opportunities and apply that to the emotional landscape.
It's how much freedom do we have in accessing the full range of emotions where we don't have to pick and choose. And we don't have to think about whether or not the other person is going to get upset, or react with judgment or criticism, or sometimes that there are even practical consequences.
You know, like someone who's, I live in the Silicon Valley. So the nature of what comes up in my therapy sessions with a lot of my clients are like, I'm having such a hard time with my boss who is so insensitive, but I can't really do anything. I can't really say anything because I don't want to lose my job, you know?
And so there's a lot of emotional stuffing that happens. Not because the emotions are invalid, but because our environments aren't always ones that are readily accepting and welcoming of them. So usually, you know, people who have a hard time at work, if there isn't an adequate space to be able to work with our feelings, it usually gets redirected elsewhere.
It gets buried underground and it comes up in the black market where someone gets chewed out by their boss at work. They're so frustrated, but they can't do anything. They come home and they kick the dog. The dog had nothing to do with it, but this is kind of how having a lack of opportunities to be able to work with our emotions actually creates more problems.
And this is kind of what I call the Emotional Vortex, where for various reasons, We have to pick and choose certain emotions to be good or bad. And when we label some as bad and we shove them aside, they go underground, like a beach ball underwater, it's only going to be a matter of time until they burst back out and create some extra, extra drama, extra difficulties, extra problems.
The Social Context Matters
Elizabeth: You so clearly described such complex aspects, and I want to go back to something you said about essentially, the individual experience and the context. So, you know, as you said, the beach ball example, I think, is a beautiful visual. Like, it doesn't go away. We don't pop it. The air doesn't disappear. And even then, the air wouldn't disappear. It just goes into other air. But the fact that it's going to sublimate and kind of pop up someplace else. Thinking about well known stereotypes among specific groups of people. Let's use the work example. I'd say in the majority of occupational environments, if anybody cries, particularly in the context of a formal meeting, like a conference table, kind of thing.
Oh, my! What's interesting is like, I'm even thinking about that with a CEO, if a CEO cried, it would still have impact that would arguably, could arguably meet this definition of a lack of emotional privilege. It seems that what you're saying is that this is so nuanced. To really every specific person and every specific context.
So one person over here, if we're at the grocery store, and there is a straight older white male interacting with a cashier in a customer service position, there's an automatic power dynamic. Well, actually, there are multiple power dynamics that are happening there. And then, you know the expression of emotion in that context. is it okay for this person to be upset that they didn't get 2 dollars of their change back from the cashier, let's say, and how invited they are in that circumstance to express themselves, well, to feel what they're feeling and then to further express it.
And then what rules are applied to that. I think the rules are going to be a lot different if we're talking about a straight, older white male. Okay. And many other factors, like there are lots of other factors that we can apply to that. And then, let's say petite woman of color, we're going to have a very different interpretation of exactly the same actions.
Can you speak a little bit more about that and kind of expand on this idea of it's not just, hey, this group is viewed this way. It's like this group in this context for this person. Every moment to moment.
Joanne: Right. I think especially in the Western world, we like to oversimplify things and not create room for nuance and mystery.
And that we prioritize things that are readily explainable. As if like a certain type of person has a certain kind of emotional, emotional habit or experience. And it's like, well, if only that were the case.
I'm thinking about the cashier as you're describing it in that example and what might be going through their head depending on their own individual experience, but also based on the immediate context. Is working in a job in the middle of the week, interacting with this guy who has the privilege to come during the middle of the week to be able to like, have this experience. Well, I, if I were in that position with my own identities. The main things that we thinking about is partially about this guy who didn't get his 2 and change, but I'm also thinking about like, oh, crap, like who else is watching and do I have to, does this need to be report to my boss? Like, what is, how's this going to affect my job? Like, and if I, if my job is at risk, like, how's that going to affect my family and all the people that I need to take care of? And like, there's like a whole ripple effect of things that are weighing on this cashier. That this guy who didn't get his 2 bucks doesn't have to think about right.
If we think about it through the lens of our nervous systems, like there's so much that's weighing on that one person who needs to make an immediate decision in the moment because this customer is still standing in front of her. And there's very little margin of error and a huge range of possible negative consequences that can also have its own ripple effects.
And so, a lot of people who are in very underprivileged or marginalized positions, what is the best option for the nervous system to do? It's to shut down. It's to collapse. It's to completely numb out and rely on the emotion of numbness to contain everything, but to the detriment of a lot of other areas of their lives.
Like I think it was Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. She did like a TED talk or something about Adverse Childhood Experiences, the ACE score and also about the myelin sheath on our brain cells. And about how having so much stress in our system, so much cortisol, it wears out that sheath. And that having a high ACE score correlates with a ton of medical issues because the nervous system is so fried already and that shuts down like the immune system or things start going out of whack. And so that again is yet another layer that an already marginalized population needs to deal with. With all the financial implications or all the relationship troubles and things like that.
So all of that is contained within one cashier at the store.
Elizabeth: Yeah, and I think that's an important point about it is this context because it's not as though anybody is immune to it. So I'm taking that same older straight white male that in a lot of ways would check a lot of boxes about privilege and then I put that person in a different context and their pet is injured and they're probably feeling very sad, devastated.
But then society is looking at that person saying, “Don’t cry. Don't be ‘weak’”. And it's, as you've said, really nuanced.
Joanne: And I would even say. I mean, in addition to the expectations for that individual to be strong, put together, masculine, whatever. It's like, well, nowadays there's kind of a backlash in the sense of like, you know, you're already so privileged. Like, oh no, like your dog is not doing well, like, who cares? Like, there's kind of this like, extra very validly angry response in that it's a way that even those who are in positions of privilege can also have anti-privilege too. And all in all, if we zoom out, it's like, no one's doing well. None of us are able to have ready access to the full range of emotions.
Emotional Privilege and Anger
But the main difference between those who are readily privileged and those who are not is, I think, around the emotion of anger. Anger being what I like to think about the BIG 5 Feelings — MAD, SAD, GLAD, SCARED, NUMB. Obviously, there are more emotions than just these five, but just for simplicity's sake.
Of those options, anger is the one emotion that is most directly correlated to power. Power, choice, agency, will. Namely, those who have the emotional privilege of connecting with and also expressing anger can at least do something about their circumstances. They have options to, if they don't like something or if something terrible has happened, at least they have more of an ability than those who don't have ready access to anger. To actually do something about it, change their situation, change the context, change the outcomes, whatever.
So I would say that would probably be the main emotion to follow when we're thinking about emotional privilege. Because frankly, a lot of us helping professionals, like that's the, probably the main emotion that we locked up. Like we could access anger on behalf of other people as a way of being a “good person”, like in being caring, compassionate, helping, whatever.
But when it comes to us accessing our own anger on behalf of ourselves, like, no, we don't do that.
Don't rock the boat
Don't cause trouble
Don't be bad
Don't hurt other people
And so if there's one emotion I would recommend that all of us pay closer attention to, it'd probably be of anger.
How does it get considered? How does it get wielded? What do we do with our own anger? Around what kinds of topics? How do we deal with anger when it has to do with a stupid printer that doesn't seem to print? That seems more palatable, and lots of people can resonate with that. It's a more widely acceptable kind of experience than getting angry at a person or about what another person did or angry at ourselves.
Sometimes that becomes guilt. You know, and sometimes when guilt settles for a long time, it festers into shame. And, you know, when there's a lot of shame, then a person's walking around trying to not cause more harm or negative negativity, etc. And that brings up anxiety. So there's like a cluster, like a domino effect emotionally, when we lock up anger.
Elizabeth: I felt so singled out when you were talking.
Joanne: With which part?
Elizabeth: Of emotion. Come on! I'm looking at my printer right now. I'm getting mad at you.
Joanne: Yeah, take it out on the printer. Not the dog.
Elizabeth: He's right here too. You're safe. I'm glad you bring up this idea of our relationship to anger. Speaking for myself as someone who grew up in the United States, white conditioned female in a religious environment. Oh, the power of the good little girl and good little girls don't have anger. And I can't even tell you how many times in my life I said to myself, I don't have anger, I just get sad. Because I was conditioned so deeply that it was wrong for me to feel anger, let alone express it.
And goodness knows if I did, a lot of things happened if I expressed anger, I was out of control. I was hysterical. I was histrionic. I was a B word, you know, insert judgment here. That is, a pretty intense deterrent and the way that we as a society have and continue to respond just to this example, to women who are angry and then you add on other layers to that.
If it's a queer woman, if it's a woman of color, if it's a woman with disabilities, like, you keep adding to that list and you go, oh, there goes like the marginalization variable, just rising up. And the kind of pushing down that says you can't do this, because if you do, bad things are going to happen.
Anger and Power
Joanne: I came across an article recently that's fascinating. It's about so the author, I think it's Thomas, and it's like a 2009 article about Powerlessness and Anger in African American Women. And the main thing that I took away from that is that there is a severely heavy double standard for African American women. More specifically in this article, in that on the one hand, that subpopulation has the least amount of power in a lot of ways, but then there's also the stereotype or the trope of the strong Black woman. And so it's like, well, how can these things be reconciled? Can they be reconciled? Well, the, the main way for these to be reconciled is for the individual, the individual Black woman to bear the cost in her body.
And so in a lot of ways. There are certain survival skills that are actually rewarded that, you know, these women cannot speak up, cannot emote. Lest they be further punished for it. Right? And so on the one hand, there's this actual experience of vulnerability. And on the other hand, there's a stereotype of strength and people are rewarded for it. For that.
Serena and Venus Williams, like Beyonce, like, you know, like, there's a lot of admiration for certain aspects of an individual, but that individual might actually also be experiencing the exact opposite in a lot of ways. But like, where will they have the space to talk about that? Where will they have the space to work through that? Well, it kind of gets all buried in the nervous system.
Elizabeth: When thinking about this idea of emotional privilege or lack thereof. This conditioning is so deep and fundamental, I think, to how we see ourselves in relation to the world around us. Again, speaking only for myself, I didn't even recognize for so many years that what I was feeling was anger, rage, aggression.
Can you explain for our listeners what that is and why that happens? That when we effectively have no identifiable relationship to a certain feeling. What's happening there?
Maintaining the Status Quo vs. Shaking Up the System
Joanne: Well, anger specifically, that's what I'll focus on. I'm glad you've actually mentioned the good girl example, and about how sadness is okay for you to tap into. Whereas things like anger, like definitely not.
The nature of privilege is that it favors things that reestablish or strengthen already existing systems. And that it resists anything that shakes things up and changes the status quo. And so if it's the case, if it's the case that we have an emotion that doesn't fit our immediate environment's values, that those emotions will get locked up.
And I like thinking about emotional experiences in different countries. So, like, the United States of the BIG 5 Feelings probably favoring NUMB, GLAD, and MAD, depending on whether it's a privileged person or not. And in Japan, probably say that some things are similar, probably they favor numbness, but it leads more with fear than with anger. Some more subdued experiences, because Japan, in a lot of ways is a country that kind of values tradition, modesty, not standing out, making sure that everything works very smoothly in a community. Doesn't emphasize the individual, you know, the nail that sticks out.
In the United States, the individual is like the most important thing. We even have a whole holiday for it. And anger and joy, those are the, probably the two main emotions that get extra attention because of that. But focus on the individual as a double edged sword. Someone can be highlighted in being an extra quote unquote good person, or an admirable person, or because they're a terrible person.
There's so much like polarization as we see it in this country and centered around certain individuals. And so, in that context, certain emotions are going to be labeled as good. Certain ones are labeled as bad. The good ones are overly sought after at the expense of the bad ones. Where do the bad ones go? Like the beach ball?
The Emotional Vortex
They don't go anywhere. They still exist, but they need some place to go. You stuff them underwater. They show up in lots of unexpected ways, health issues, financial issues, marital problems, intergenerational family stress and trauma, you know addictions, things like that.
But once people express things in unhealthy ways they're singled out and they're judged for it, right? It's not only having the expectation of being the good girl, but it's a good girl who's not allowed to have any needs, not allowed to have any feelings. And has to always remain the good girl, otherwise she'll be the bad girl. Like, there's only one other option for it, and so I think that there's a whole lot of strain in all of our nervous systems around different things. But again, some of us have more of the ability to do something about it.
Some of us have more of the means to actually get care. Even financially speaking to afford therapy, whereas other people, they just need to make do with whatever they got.
Elizabeth: In your example that you gave about a more collectivistic culture, specifically, let's follow what you had said about Japan. If there is prioritization of numbness, does it mean that in order to achieve more balance, there's an additional work to the beach ball emotions that have gotten pushed down?
So if we're looking at numbness as like, okay, this is socially sanctioned. It's okay for you to be really stoic. We value that. It's an example of self control, intelligence, whatever these other associated traits are. And so we've pushed down sad. We've pushed down mad. Those are the things that are sublimating and arguably going elsewhere. In that culture then, let's so let's pretend as a Western therapist, you are working with an individual who was raised in Japanese culture, one way or another, whether that's within that country or within a culture here or familiarity.
Do we need to automatically be thinking like, okay, where did MAD and SAD go? As practitioners, just as okay, if we're operating within this Western American framework, and here's this person sitting in front of me where we're like, Hey, these are good, but those are bad emotions. We're like, where did those ones go?
Joanne: Yeah, I don't know what would happen if you were to ask that client directly. Like, I would imagine they'd be like, huh? What are you talking about? But if we zoom out, it's like, I mean, there's like TV shows, there's anime, there's music. Oftentimes the arts are kind of where they go. You know, in that like, or examples of, there's like a term called hikikomori.
Which is like, I think someone like locking themselves in the room, completely isolated. They never come out. They're a hermit. And like that can even happen in like an office setting where someone who stepped out of line is kind of ostracized at like, the edge of the building where they're not allowed to be like interacting with anybody.
And so like there are hidden ways that these collective and individual emotional experiences like leak out. But we're not always going to be able to find those dots to be able to connect. So even if you ask the individual, like, you know, these are general emotions that are within the full human experience.
Like, where did these, these, these go? Because I see X, Y, Z. I don't see A, B, C. You're probably, you might get a blank stare. And there's a term called alexithymia. I really appreciate that someone invented that word. Alexi means no, or none. Thymia means words or feelings. And the idea is that it's hard to put into words what someone is feeling sometimes because there is a huge disconnect or a huge blanket covering emotions.
Sometimes we could be without words because we don't have the vocabulary for it. So I go with MAD, SAD, GLAD, SCARED, NUMB, because they're more simple, right? But there are so many nuances like frustration, irritation, impatience, rage in feeling indignant. Like those are different versions of anger. And they all point to different things, but that's too difficult for someone who doesn't yet have a vocabulary for it.
So we kind of have to oversimplify a lot of things as a way of building the foundational steps. But the person sitting in front of us in therapy, like, who knows what their emotional education has been?
Our Own Journey with Emotions
Elizabeth: Which, yeah. That's a great point because they've been getting education. It just may not have been in a formalized way.
And I'm thinking about myself, if you had taken like 16 year old Beth, who was, you know, number one in high school, which is just inherently topsy turvy for just about anybody but had experienced at that point in my life already a number of like traumatic losses. And then also going through my parents divorce and if a therapist at the time had had been like and tell me about your anger I'd be like what anger And they'd be like well, you must feel anger.
I'm like, no, I don't. It was just not even there. And I can't see for myself the moment when I was like, oh my gosh, like, that's rage. I don't I can't tell you when that happened. But I can tell you that the 16 year old version of me was alexithymic about anger for sure.
Joanne: Oh, yeah, totally resonate with that. I mean, I grew up, I was born in the States, but I had to move to Korea for a few years, lost all my friends, had to move around back and forth. And like, making friendships was super difficult. And when I look back, it's like, probably in the fourth grade, I was probably depressed because depression for kids shows up as Irritability and anger and all that stuff.
And then got into video games. And then a couple of years later, my mom was like, you can't stay at home this whole time. Whereas within myself, I was like, well, what's the point of making friends if I'm going to lose them anyway? Anyway, because I expressed the no no emotion of anger, she shipped me off to Mexico as part of a church missions trip.
And for the next several, probably for the next decade, I was like heavily involved in like churchy things. Back then, I didn't know that I was also queer, but it was just like, you ask 16 year old me who, like, whether or not I have any anger, I'd be like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
And it's like, fast forward, another six or seven years later, I'm in the middle of putting together this huge event. And I'm literally, I have like an earpiece like calling different people while I'm running around trying to make sure things are okay and I'm the only one who's stressing out.
Everyone is having fun and I just lose it and I like fall to the ground. I just like can't stop crying. This like, burst of emotions just like spilling out of me while, you know, no one else sees this because I do this in the corner like a good church girl. But that is what prompted me to get into therapy because I'm like, I don't know what's happening.
There's like a whole shift inside of me, but I didn't have words for it until like another decade later in being a therapist myself, looking back. You know, so I can only imagine, I mean, I happen to be fortunate enough that I came across therapy relatively early, early meaning in my twenties. Probably could have used it earlier. But like my life could have gone a very different direction if I didn't have the resources at those junctures.
And so I can't help but feel gratitude. Because I know that this is not even a possibility for huge portions of our population. And that's partially why, like, I'm taking my rage. I still have, but, because I've understood rage as being the flip side of desire, and identifying what really effin’ matters.
I am taking that rage and I'm channeling it towards creating something to bridge the gap, you know. I'm providing at least some sense of meaning and order to help individuals who, let's say, don't feel comfortable with or don't have the means to go to therapy, that they at least have something to provide language to their own emotional world, because it's super chaotic.
Elizabeth: Thank you for your disclosure and talking about that aspect of it, because I think this phenomenon is very real for so many people of like, just not having a relationship. I don't feel sad. Like, it's fine. It's just life, you know, and we just push it down, push it down. You had mentioned earlier, kind of this concept of injustice for people who have experienced this kind of marginalization of not being able to have a relationship with a specific emotion or to express it, or many specific emotions for that matter. How does this relate to injustice in your eyes and how any of us with any marginalized cards in our pockets contend with what may be and become pretty epic rage.
The Individual vs. the Collective
Joanne: I think we have to see things through the lens of the individual versus the collective. If an unjust act happens between individuals, that might actually still be actionable. Let's say a fight between two peers. Equal power dynamic. Let's say between friends. They just need to hash it out, even with their own emotions, like to make room for each of their experiences.
Cause sometimes fights can happen because of a misunderstanding. It's not anyone's fault per se, but still needs to be addressed. Both parties are hurting in different ways and there needs to be room within a relationship between equals to work through that. But anytime there's a power differential, someone is one up, someone is one down.
There needs to be an extra sense of safety for the person who's in the one down position, but the person who can provide that safety is the person with the power who's in that one up position. And so let's see, even if we just consider the individual context of, let's say, within a company, employer, employee conflict. The employee being employed is in a one down position because at any moment they can get fired just at the discretion of the employer.
And if the employer is satisfied with how things are in their position and doesn't really want to change things up and all they need to do is kick out the employee, swap them in for someone else. And that would be an unjust situation. And at this point, like there are some like laws with like HR that protect the employee from certain kinds of unjust treatment, discrimination and, you know, unfair firings and things like that.
But that doesn't eliminate the difference of vulnerability. And within the employee standpoint, it's like, well, how do they know that they're actually going to get protected? They don't, they're just at the mercy of some entity, either it's the boss or it's HR or powers that be, whatever. But when we're talking about injustice, that's on a wider scale than just an individual company or an individual employee versus individual employer.
Injustice is a systemic issue and we cannot solve a systemic issue with individuals, we need to summon the collective. And so I think we've been seeing pretty interesting phenomena more recently in that, let's say things with George Floyd, right? At this point in time, there are more ways of gathering a collective sentiment. Through the powers of the internet and social media and things like that, right? There can be more orchestrated or centralized ways of tapping into this deeply buried emotion, but on a scale that's far beyond the single individual, right? Music can be another one where people really resonate with a particular song and the songwriter might have intended a very different meaning to it, but people can like come to a single, they can gather around a single point, right, for that collective force.
When it comes to injustice, I think that has to be the approach where we address things on a more collective level. But, in especially the United States, with the high emphasis on the individual, it's like, well, this doesn't really bother me. So why do I have to deal with it? It's like their issues not mine. And I think that's kind of where, like, it's really hard to even gather that collective momentum to actually implement that wide systemic change. So until then we kind of at the current moment, it might be that we wait until there's enough rage built up, that something happens. It's probably going to be something unfortunate because that's really what catches people's attentions, something happens and then everyone kind of wakes up.
But the difficulty is, can we sustain that level of high intensity emotion, or is it going to just pop up and then after a couple of months, the media is going to change directions and all that. So, in order for there to be, meaningful societal change, yes, there has to be this collective engine driving it and to be able to sustain that, but I think there probably also needs to be a centralized gathering power in order to direct that canon power effectively.
Elizabeth: Many of us have pretty big feelings about hopelessness. Relating to whether or not these things are ever going to change, you know, whether it's George Floyd, Roe v. Wade, really enormous concepts that we could just sit here and keep naming that are happening in the world and in communities. If I'm understanding correctly, you're saying that when a person specifically, a member of one or more marginalized communities is feeling this really overwhelming sense, I'll say anger, of anger in our society. Yes, the ultimate goal being that we collectively work to change it on a systemic level. But if we can't, if that moment hasn't arrived, if it may never come during our lifetimes, then an antidote is connection with other people in that emotion, like you had mentioned about songs.
Can you speak more to that? Like, how do we help clients and even help ourselves, when there's just so much pent up feeling around the things that we can't change? And I should say, because we can't CBT our way out of it. Like, I think that's been such a big criticism, particularly in the last 10 or 15 years.
There are lots of ways where it's helpful for us to identify and argue with an illogical thought. Some of these things are not illogical. They are the way that society functions. And the last thing that we want to do as practitioners is gaslight a client by being like oh, your lived experience of that microaggression, like, is that really a microaggression?
Let's challenge that automatic thought. That's not going to work. So what do we do?
The Stages of Grief
Joanne: I mean, my brain goes towards grief and the Stages of Grief. Which corresponds with the big five feelings. Denial corresponding with numbness. Anger corresponding with anger. Bargaining corresponding with fear. Depression with sadness. And acceptance with joy.
I like thinking about grief as not just being about loss, but it being about adjustment. Adjusting to a new reality. Because the old reality is gone. Or, it might be adjusting to the reality that things aren't what they should be. The ideal world should be an equal and fair and equitable place, but it's not. So how the hell do we adjust while we're living on this planet in this lifetime? How do we adjust to the reality that there's a huge gap between how things really need to be and how things are now. And in that space, there's a lot of bodily experienced moments where we have rage.
The Power of Expression
But it's like, you can't stay in a rage space for very long. It's very exhausting. And so, it needs a place to go, and I think the art or any creative endeavor are some options of how, like where to channel that songs, artwork. So for me, it's been creating businesses but somewhere for that ideal to be made manifest.
And it's not to say like, we should like write songs for the sake of being that, like gathering focal point for everyone to like rally around. Some individuals have been gifted that mission and that individual might not even know it because sometimes things go viral in unexpected ways. But we create things that express our dream for what seems out of reach.
I think art and art has probably been one of the main pushing forces of culture throughout the whole human experience, right? Renaissance and things like that, right? And so maybe like that is one readily available place for people to direct their totally valid rage and their grief and their pain. But sometimes it's also having a reckoning with our human condition in tapping into what is superhuman or what is supernatural.
And I don't mean this in like the religious sense, but there are some things like hope. I mean, you're talking about hopelessness, right? Hope, justice purpose, meaning. Those are all existential needs, right? We are finite, limited human beings living in an imperfect world for a set amount of time. There's no way that we can tap into the full experience, that's part of what it means to be human.
Solidarity in Our Emotions
But there is a solace that comes from recognizing that every other person on this planet is also the same in that way. We have a set amount of time. We can't do everything. We can't be everywhere at once. And there's a comfort that comes with knowing that I have something in common with someone else, even though on paper and on surface, we might have vast, vastly different experiences.
Because I was talking about the cashier and that customer earlier, so many different experiences on one level, but on another level, that privileged person can also experience the pain of loss. That person doesn't know how much moral loss that people can experience, but there's kind of a shared humanity that bridges the gap.
I think when we experience moments of injustice where we kind of rally around each other. Like, I mean, people listening to this might not know, I'm not a Black person. I am Korean American, second generation, firstborn daughter, all that stuff. I will never know. The true experience of what it means to live as a Black person in America.
And I have had my own experiences of powerlessness, grief, rage, sense of injustice. I have a whole lot of experiences with spiritual abuse, dealing with power differentials and feeling so stuck in knowing the truth, but feeling like I can't do anything about it. That was an experience that happened right after I had that rage moment back in college.
But it's like, I think that one of the beautiful things about the realm of emotions is that it levels the playing field, no matter our life circumstances. Our identities, our emotions are the one thing that connects every single human being on this planet, and even across different millennia. That we all have universal basic human needs.
We all have emotions that signal whether or not those tanks are full or empty. I think in a sense, as long as we can see the shared experiences between ourselves as an individual and some other person, I think that's kind of what can garner this larger momentum that we see past color differences. Past differences of, you know, power and socioeconomic status.
Elizabeth: Thank you for that. To go back to what you were saying about the power of expression, power of the arts, can I interpret from that, that you're saying that when we're working with a client that's experiencing this, let's just say anger, whether that's about an enormous injustice in the world or a specific injustice to their life and their dynamic.
As we've said, we don't want to gaslight somebody. We want to create a safe container for them to feel and express that. And I'm imagining you in a therapy session with that person, what are other interventions that you're reaching for where it's like, effectively, I can't make this go away. I can't make your boss listen to your complaints about whatever's happening or their stance and political statement or whatever it is. So how do you work with someone in that kind of environment of like, how do we deal with that?
Expressing Anger Effectively
Joanne: In a professional context, if you have understandable and valid anger about your situation that you can't express to the powers that be, it doesn't mean you should shut off that anger. It means you need to give it a specific place to go.
So I've recommended to so many people, so many of my clients, like it's time for you to up your resume. It's time for you to start looking elsewhere. It's like the emotional safety bag or the go bag, you know, for victims of domestic violence, like we can't prep those clients to tap into their anger and express to their aggressor. That doesn't make sense. It will put them at further risk.
But, we usually help them by saying, “Hey, like, can you kind of secretly create a go-bag for yourself? And set up the conditions so that when it's time, you're ready to go and you can leave. You can take your kids, you can make sure your finances are okay,” like have that, it's kind of a long game preparation process so that they can best ensure their safety and security.
I think in a professional standpoint, that's also similar. It's like time for you to go back to your resume, time for you to gather all the positive affirmations about how you've been doing at work, gather all those emails, put it on one single document. And then so also the practical steps for that, you know, and so we need anger always needs a target.
Giving Anger a Place to Go
We need to give it a place to go. And sometimes that could look very practical. Sometimes it could look very visceral. So arts is one example of creating something. To give our anger a place to go, but sometimes it's actually destroying something.
I work with a lot of Highly Sensitive Persons, really empathic, conscientious people, Enneagram Twos and Fours, etc. Who were like so good at shapeshifting and stuffing their feelings so that they can make themselves more palatable.
I'm like, go to town, like, there's a break stuff room, there's a Rage Room in downtown San Jose. I've been there, it's unlocked so many things for me. If you don't want to, you know, do that level of expression, then go to the nearest dollar store, grab a bunch of towels, and just shred them with your hands.
If you feel like that's wasteful, then fine. Go to the grocery store, grab a head of lettuce and a couple of carrots, and then just shred them and tear them apart with your own bare hands. And then have a salad afterwards. Like some way of releasing this energy that is unmanicured. That is not pretty, not cleaned up. Anything that allows us to be more primal is better. Guttural cries, great. Roll down your windows on the freeway, blast your music, and scream or sing at the top of your lungs.
Elizabeth: Again, I feel singled out, Joanne. How did you know?
Joanne: I mean, I cannot confirm or deny that I have done these things myself. So it's anything to counterbalance how we usually live our lives.
Because we've been so suppressed, so repressed, you know, like, write that angry email, you don't have to send it, but write that email, don't censor out anything, say exactly how you feel. Because, why must we still think about whether or not the other person on the other end is going to receive this, like, we need to have the ability to be uncensored and unfiltered, to give ourselves full permission to be human, right?
And so I think tapping into animal wisdom is great, moving your body, going for a run, like playing sports sometimes, honestly. We need to give ourselves places for our anger to go. That implies that we acknowledge that anger exists and that anger is valid. So that's probably the first step recognizing, yeah, you're probably a lot angrier than you think you are.
And probably your body's not going to let you tap into the full tank of it just yet. Little by little, can you practice dialing back the censoring, dialing back the apologizing, dialing back the disclaimers by five percent in the next month? Great. And so it's kind of like thawing our beings, because we've been frozen solid. Slowly thawing ourselves until we get to that point where we can actually like break off huge chunks of ice in certain settings. This is a temporary arrangement. This is something that individuals can do while there are still collective injustices. So, in the sense of the hopelessness piece, we can't change things on that massive scale just yet. But that doesn't mean that we can't do nothing. There are some things we can do, and the more we thaw ourselves and come alive, the more likely we're going to inspire the person next to us to do the same.
And the person next to us, you know, I talked about the Emotional Vortex where when we stuff our feelings, more feelings show up and becomes a big old hot mess. Well, there's something the opposite of that too. And I like to call it the Emotional Flow. Emotional flow is when you work with your emotions instead of against it.
And when you work with your emotions, you become more alive. When you become more alive, you replenish your own Need Tanks and your Want Tanks. You become more vibrant, and that's very inspirational for other people. You have the means of taking care of your other needs that have been depleted, taking care of other people's needs, but not from a space of you have to help other people or else.
It's more of like, dude, I already got my needs filled. I'm good. And I have surplus. I would like to direct this somewhere. All right, let me go beyond myself and my own immediate needs to help my neighbor. But what if that person's tanks are filled? Well, that person can do the same with other people. And so we're reversing the Emotional Vortex into this Emotional Flow state.
And I think that just because the injustice is on a collective scale doesn't mean that there's no room for the individual, because the collective is made up of a bunch of individuals. I think we can take ownership of our own journeys.
Elizabeth: Thank you for that. And for what you just suggested, because I think it gives clinicians some directions, like, yeah, we can't change these things, at least not on this macro scale.
If we've thawed enough and feel safe to do so, what can we do on a micro scale to feel like we're having some impact? And then also that element of expression and giving voice to it, perhaps for the first time ever. Joanne, for our listeners that are wanting to learn more about the concepts that you've presented today, are there any particular books or websites that you recommend?
Like how do we help ourselves and help clients move beyond alexithymia and be better at identifying and feeling and even potentially expressing in ways that are healthy and safe for us?
Joanne: There's some materials that I came across that have been very helpful for me, and some of those are the book Rage Becomes Her, it's a very spicy book, it like woke up so many things in me. Another one called Running On Empty, and it's sequel Running On Empty No More, that one talks about childhood emotional neglect, that's where I picked up the term alexithymia by Janice Webb. Top of mind, one more book is called Radical Candor by Kim Scott also fantastic resource. That one has been originally written for the professional context but I think a lot of its principles also apply on an individual relationship level. And the rest I'm kind of filling in the blanks you know, sometimes like I don't really know what other resource might be helpful so I'm just making them myself.
So I have one resource that's for free for everybody. That's called The Big Feelers First Aid Kit. And it's a free PDF guide that helps people when our feelings seem to show up in the wrong place, wrong time, in wrong ways. And we are in the middle of a date, we get triggered, and we need to figure out what else to do.
Well, The Big Feelings First Aid Kits to help us to buy us some more time so that we can focus on what's right in front of us so that we don't put ourselves further at risk. It's a very temporary, it's a first aid kit. So it's, you know, short term solution, but hopefully that'll help smooth things over as you dedicate actual time and space for you to really, really get process this and another one is a one hour masterclass called The Big Feelings Masterclass.
I do an overview of some pieces I mentioned during this podcast episode about the Emotional Vortex, the Emotional Flow, the BIG 5 Feelings. Need having lots of tanks that are running empty. And so that would be a way to kind of get a bird's eye view of it.
And then a full on version would be my signature program, Intelligent Emotions that basically takes the masterclass, but goes in a lot deeper depth. So there are seven units where I talk about how feelings are supposed to work, how, how we've used them so far, the different steps of how to move in a more helpful direction, and also a much more comprehensive exploration of each of the big five feelings.
So there's a lot for us to catch up on because we're trying to learn a lifetime's worth of emotional lessons in a very short period of time. So if anyone feels even triggered or you have feelings about learning about feelings. That's totally okay! Start with what you have access to and then slowly thaw your way into having a bit more room to consider some of the scarier emotions.
Elizabeth: Fantastic Joanne. I'm so glad that we had this conversation. I've learned so much and you've given language to so many different concepts that we may feel deep in ourselves and now have more understanding of what's happening in our own bodies and our minds and our souls and the same for our clients. Again, for our listeners, this is Joanne Kim.
Please check her out online. Please tell our listeners, Joanne, how to get in touch with you and how to learn more about your work.
Joanne: Yeah, so you'll find me on Instagram @intelligentemotions or on my website IntelligentEmotions.com and grab yourself a first aid kit.
Elizabeth: Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today, Joanne.