“You’re so strong,” is a phrase you may have heard, and it is a phrase that covers up an underlying emotion from the person who said it. The subtext could mean anything from “I’m glad you’re not crying because I can’t handle your emotions” to “Thank goodness someone else seems fine” to “Gosh, I hope you don’t think I’m weak because I have all these feelings.” The key is that neither party feels okay about FEELING, and that means someone is going to get hurt.
The word “strong” or “strength” is often misunderstood and misapplied today. Being “strong” has become a byword for a toxic kind of masculinity, where feelings are tamped down and acting stoic in the face of adversity is applauded.
This is a bunch of malarky. ‘Stinky stinker potty words’ would be how my toddler would describe this idea.
A long time ago, when I worked in Corporate America, a co-worker told me she was going to quit. I was shocked and asked her why she was leaving. She answered, “When I came back after Christmas and New Year’s break, no one asked me how it was or how I felt about coming back.” No one cared. No one checked in. No one connected emotionally. Meetings started and we had all jumped in to business as usual. Feelings were those pesky that got in the way of work, or so it felt to my colleague.
What happened? We had forgotten to care. We had prioritized results above people. We were acting strong and stoic.
Stoicism vs. Being Stoic: The Great Divide
At its core, stoicism is a moral theory from the 3rd century BC, studied and possibly followed by leaders such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick the Great and Marcus Aurelius. The idea is that you are in harmony with the Divine. You realize you cannot control life’s circumstances and accept you can only control your own reaction. You steer clear of judging a situation as “good” or “bad.” You maintain perspective and take action. You use rational thought and pay attention to the actions of others more than their words (Interested in stoicism? Read more here).
Being stoic, however, means you act like you don’t have any feelings and to repress the ones you realize you have. You’re calm and steadfast, but without sharing your emotions. Somehow, acting in a stoic way became something people admired, likely around the time it became acceptable or admirable to say things like “It’s not personal, it’s business.”
Except people have feelings. And we want to know that other people have feelings, too. That’s why my former co-worker quit her job. She just wanted to know someone felt something – and that something was rooted in compassion.
Compassion
Compassion is a word I meditate on frequently. I find it hard to define because it is a mix of kindness, caring and thoughtfulness, and because compassion is typically a word we think of as applying to how we feel about others, but I find being compassionate towards myself is something critically important to my well-being. To be compassionate, you need to be in communion. You need to feel. You need to know how you feel, and how you feel towards a situation or about someone else. It is not stoic.
Compassionate Strength
Compassionate strength is when you let yourself feel and realize vulnerability makes you stronger. Compassionate strength takes the best part of being “strong” and balances it with connection and communion. You have the capacity to allow yourself to remain open instead of shutting down. This allowing comes from a place of great faith, hope and connectedness.
We shut down pain when we don’t have the strength to feel. We shut down our feelings when we are afraid of what the feelings will do to us. This fear can range from minor to serious, eg, Will we drown in sorrow? Will we lose our ability to get out of bed? Will we lose focus, or speed, or results if we pause to feel? Will we lose momentum if we stop to connect and find out how someone felt about coming back to work after vacation?
Compassion opens us back up. We remember that we are part of a community. We remember that our actions and behaviors have a ripple effect. We care about our own selves and our own well-being and we care about others, as well. This takes a lot of strength.
Honestly, this is not something I can do all the time. Sometimes, I need to shut off the flow of emotions and focus on logic or blow off steam and have a laugh. But when I need to ‘show up’ to listen and be present with a friend, family member, client, student or colleague, I have learned (and continue to learn) to align my heart with a place of connectedness and compassion. This creates a space of allowing emotions like grief, frustration, anger, depression and anxiety to be felt. These feelings, once felt, transform into something else. Anger may shift to hurt, hurt to sadness, sadness to forgiveness, forgiveness to peace. This is the flow that compassionate strength allows.
When you are working with compassionate strength, you become a conduit that just allows the emotions to flow through you. The emotions don’t get stuck. The emotions don’t get repressed. There is no block.
We need compassionate strength now more than ever
We’ve spent too many years practicing repressing emotions or judging people who show emotion as weak or ‘overly emotional.’ In my opinion, this has caused depression, addiction and feelings of loneliness and isolation. We’ve praised the idea of slicing off – or trying to slice off – major aspects of our nature. We have a natural instinct to be part of something, to belong and to connect, yet it takes emotion and vulnerability to build those connections.
Compassionate strength is having strength to feel and be vulnerable, while retaining the ability to choose your actions and your response.
We are all on an emotional roller coaster due to the coronavirus quarantine. I imagine most, if not all, of us have felt fearful. We’re not in control of this. But we can control our individual response. Part of that means allowing yourself to feel however you feel in the moment. Keep balancing that idea of being strong with compassion.
Image by Holger Langmaier from Pixabay