I had a very interesting debate today, during one of my workshops, about the "layers" people use to protect themselves from others. We talked about the professional facade we put on, the public image we project, and the countless strategies we use to shield ourselves from the world and the harm it may bring to us.

In her book, "I thought it was just me - but it isn't" - one of my favourite authors, Brené Brown, writes about shame - an emotion she calls the "silent epidemics" - and holds accountable for many of the destructive relationship patterns and life choices people make. She explains how we use anger as a shield against shame, the mechanisms that make us want to conform to what others seem to expect of us and the shame which comes when we fail, the impulse to hide who we truly are because we are too ashamed to show the world that we are imperfect and too afraid to let ourselves be vulnerable. She also writes about our tendency to run away from shame altogether, by denying it, even to ourselves. She also discusses labelling, stereotyping and the habit of shaming others before they get a chance to shame us, or as a means of coercion - for example parents using shame as an "educational" tool.

Reading this book made me think of the many ways we build walls to protect ourselves from the outside world and how we strive to defend the image others have of us. Today's discussion made me think one step further -how we often build shields to protect us from ourselves.

Take one example. In our culture, boys are usually taught to be strong. Of course I am generalising here and I am aware there are many exceptions, but still, statistics show us the leading trend. And the leading trend is that boys are shamed by adults if they cry or show signs of weakness, which tends to be considered a feminine attribute. The most frequent shaming affirmation parents use to instil this "strength" is: "Stop crying like a baby/girl! You are a man!". There are so many downsides with this way of raising boys that I could write ten more articles around this subject.

I will mention just a few:

It makes boys hide their own emotions;

It creates prejudices against women;

It puts unnecessary pressure on men to seem strong even when they are not (I don't think it's pure coincidence that men suffer from a higher rate of cardio-vascular diseases than women - repressed emotions tend to weaken the heart);

It robs relationships of the high-quality communication and sharing that would naturally occur between two emotionally mature humans, simply because one of the partners, usually the man, has been taught to think that talking about emotions is frivolous or "girly" and would rather shut down than bring emotional issues out in the open. 

Perhaps worst of all, it can make men (and women, for that matter) completely unaware of their own emotional mechanisms, so much so that they simply disengage from their own emotions - they don't recognise them when they feel them, they dismiss them as unimportant and they are incapable of expressing emotions that are outside the socially approved spectrum (like anger - that is one emotion that men are usually ok expressing, because it's more "manly" to be angry than to be sad)

My personal life experiences, as well as those of many of my coachees and friends, have shown me that this emotional shield tends to be responsible for more divorces and break-ups than you might imagine. I heard this story over and over again: relationships coming to a premature end simply because one of the partners is not open to the emotional needs of the other or has trouble dealing with his/her own emotions. Not talking about what we feel is killing our relationships. Lying to ourselves that we have no problems, no difficult emotions to deal with, is also killing our relationships.

This post is nothing but an invitation. It is an invitation to acknowledge your own emotional shield.

What are your emotions? Can you name them? Do you have the courage to face them?

Perhaps the question is not if you are strong enough so as not to feel much of anything. That is not strength - that is numbness. The question is:

Are you strong enough to feel pain or sadness and be open about it? Are you strong enough to be vulnerable, to lower your emotional shield and let yourself be seen for who you really are?