Let’s face it, the face says it all! But does it? After all, the face is as good at masking emotions as it is at expressing them. In both of these ways, facial expression serve powerful functions – one, to suppress what arises in us and two, to express the emotions present. Certainly, it is far more threatening to your mature progress and wellbeing to hide your inner turmoil so that nobody but nobody gets a look into your interiority. However, we mask those feelings that are too threatening to reveal and we learn that lesson very early on in life. So many adults I have worked with relate stories of, as children, having to have a happy facial expression and daring not to show such emergency feelings as upset, anger, fear, disappointment and hurt. They unconsciously realised the dangers of emergency emotional expression, namely, that a parent or a significant adult would not be able to cope with distress.

Much of people’s distress, particularly children’s, arises in response to the tone of voice used by others. Many individuals are not conscious of the tone of voice they use but, nonetheless, conscious or not, they need to own what belongs to them. Contrary to what many people believe, tone of voice arises from an internal emotional place of either solidity or turmoil; when it is the former it communicates love, equality, openness, optimism, genuineness, sincerity, spontaneity, clarity, definitiveness and confidence; when it arises from inner turmoil it can communicate either in an acting-out way, aggression, irritability, tetchiness, dismissiveness, arrogance, control, dominance, hostility, threat, tension or in an acting-in way, fearfulness, pessimism, passivity, sadness, uncertainty and indecisiveness. I used the phrase ‘contrary to what many people believe’ above as it is more commonly believed that it is somebody else that triggers the particular tone of voice used. However, the truth is that what comes from you is about you and it is a clever defensive manoeuvre to blame somebody else for your own responses.

I have long contended that each of us is responsible for Self and for our own needs; if that is true you might ask: ‘what need do we have of other relationships?’ Many of our adult needs are met in relationship with others – friends, partners, work colleagues, teachers, lecturers, managers, service providers, politicians and so on. However, having a need of another does not mean I am dependent on him or her to meet that need; on the contrary, it is my need and I am responsible for it. When I am independent I have no resistance to expressing a need but it is a request, not a demand or a command. However, when I am dependent, the expression of a need is implicitly and, often, explicitly, a demand or command. To say ‘no’ means risking either a verbal onslaught or an emotional and physical withdrawal that may last for days on end – until the ‘offending’ party breaks the ice. Sadly, sometimes, the reaction can last for years or never be resolved. 

The Friday before last I wrote about Sally’s best kept secret that ‘each person is a genius.’ Even though this secret has been confirmed by science, it is remarkable the degree to which the vast majority of individuals still hide away their limitless intelligence. Of course, it is ingenious to hide the light of your intelligence ‘behind a bushel’ because to assert ‘I’m a genius’ is likely to be greeted with ridicule, laughter, judgement and criticism – a fate worse than death!

Where there is conditional relating (where you’re seen for what you do) there is conflict; where there is unconditional relating (being loved for Self) conflict does not arise. Unconditionality is not a licence for you or another to do what he or she likes; on the contrary, unconditional relating puts the responsibility for Self and one’s own actions fairly and squarely on the shoulders of each party to a relationship. Unconditionality is that place of ‘I-ness’, that place of separateness, that solid interiority where nothing is buried under the carpet or where everybody else is not held accountable for how you feel; they are accountable for their own actions, just as you are