Creating walls around us

 

I was talking to someone in my daughter’s generation about emotions and she mentioned that some of  her friends have sort of created a wall around themselves, because they have had failed relationships or been hurt emotionally, and they do not want to get hurt any more.

This wall prevents them from having emotions. If the principal calls them to her room, some student

Is this good or bad? In corporate life, would this wall help people survive?s get hassled, the walled ones do not care. If someone shares their emotions, the walled ones do not care. If someone praises or criticizes them, the walled ones do not care.

I think the key word is survival. We create walls to prevent intruders from entering our space because we are unable to control who should be allowed to enter and how much or how long they should remain. The wall that we create, severs the link between stimulus and emotion, by superimposing a belief that nothing matters.

Unfortunately, the wall works both ways. Neither do we display our emotions to the outside world, nor do we acknowledge other people’s emotions.

This lack of transparency in emotions hinders relationships that depend on sharing of emotions and a certain openness.

Without relationships, we become lonely. Some of us are comfortable with being alone, because

• we are well adjusted people who are okay with our thoughts
• we keep busy with activities or distractions  that prevent thoughts from intruding

Otherwise, we desperately move from one group to another, trying to find company, but get rejected because of our inability to share our thoughts and create an emotional bond.

In office, this lack of bonding may make us focus on work and therefore we become more productive. But this prevents us from creating goodwill among our peers, and since office life is based on goodwill of colleagues wiling to help and support, this can become an issue as we go higher up the ladder, and we need to depend on subordinates and also need political support.

So what should we do? We have to find a way to become resilient emotionally, so that we can bounce back or regain emotional balance when we are subjected to emotions. If we have this resilience, we do not need the walls, because we know how to handle the emotions when they come, and not artificially shut them out.