Form Matters

By Dr. David McMillan

My assistant, Gloria, sent me a message that Clarke Rogers had to talk to me ASAP. Clarke worked for a major health care company in Nashville as Vice President in charge of Diversity Hiring. She saw me recently with her ex-husband, Alvie. I helped them negotiate a parenting plan. Their version of the parenting plan gave Alvie the role of primary parent and gave him two hundred and twenty days of parenting time a year and her one hundred and twenty-five.

            This part was the easy part of the negotiations. Alvie was a work at home computer trouble shooter for a high-tech company and his work hours were flexible. He could work or not work whenever he wanted. Clarke’s job was demanding and her schedule was not hers to create. Their oldest son, Reginald, found out that his mother had an affair and he refused to be with his mother or even talk with her on the phone. The divorce was complicated by the Clarke’s parenting history. She often traveled for work sometimes as far away as Saudi Arabia and was gone for months at a time. Reginald often expressed that he felt abandoned by his mother. Clarke deflected and ignored these comments saying that she was like a good soldier. She had to leave home for work and he knew she loved him and that his dad took very good care of him. Reginald often felt like he didn’t have a mother like other children. Then came the divorce which gave Reginald, in his mind, a chance to divorce his mom. My work with the family included helping Reginald and his mother rebuild their relationship. And, with my help, Reginald began to spend time with his mother with the goal of being able to eventually follow the parenting plan.

            Clarke has a strong personality. She was captain and pitcher for her softball team. She worked her way through college selling solar panels door to door. That’s where she met Alvie. She set sales records for the solar company and helped Alvie reach his quota. Throughout their marriage, Clarke’s temper had been a problem along with Alvie’s passivity.

            Clarke started our phone conversation in an exasperated tone. “He’s taking our children to see my parents the day after the divorce.”

            “Okay,” I said, wondering why this was a problem.

            “My parents cut me off from my extended family,” Clarke said. “None of them will talk to me. They have been unhappy with me for years. They are conservative Baptist’s from Texas. I wasn’t going to church with my children. That was bad enough. Then, these conservative Republicans saw my face on TV leading a Black Lives Matter demonstration and they had a fit. They yelled at me over the phone, ‘How could I do that.’ The last straw was the divorce and the fact that my husband told them I had an affair and when I said he hadn’t touched me in bed for  two years, my father said that must be my fault. My mother said that maybe I was a lucky woman with a husband who didn’t bother me that way. But the last blow for them was that I let Alvie have the majority of the parenting time, no matter that I am paying over $100,000 in child support and alimony. If I don’t work, who will pay the children’s private school tuition or for their college? They want me to be stay at home mom.

            “This was it for them. I’m furious they won’t support me in my divorce.”

            “This is tragic,” I said. “How sad and how unnecessary.”

            “I never told my parents about the youth minister, who raped me. I’ll be damned if I’ll set one foot in a Baptist Church where women can’t be ordained, taken seriously or protected from predators. He finally got caught. In college I bought a gun and I had plans to find the bastard and kill him. I still have the gun and I’m still tempted to go after him.”

            “You didn’t trust your parents to tell them?”
            “No, they would’ve said it was my fault. That’s what my dad always said when he heard about a woman being raped. They would have never protected me. Right after the youth pastor raped me, he decided to take another job in another church in Texas. The senior pastor, who thought we were close, asked me to try to persuade him to stay. I tried to tell the Pastor what he did and the Pastor said that it was probably a misunderstanding. I hate the church. But this has nothing to do with why I’m calling.”

            “So why are you calling?”

            “Recently I saw an Instagram post from my mother to my son, which said that she prayed every night that I wouldn’t get a divorce and that I would come back to the church.”

            “These words support your son’s rejection of you along with hers,” I said.

            “Yes, that’s the point,” she said. “When I saw that, I called my mother and chewed her out. I told her that she was not to talk to my children about me or my divorce or I would see to it that she never saw her grandchildren.”

            “What effect do our think that had on your mother and on the rest of your family when she reported the conversation to them?” I asked.

            “I’m sure it made my father angry. But that’s nothing new. And now Alvie’s taking my children to my parent’s home the day after the divorce.”

            “That can’t be good for your relationship with your son,” I said.

            “Exactly,” she said.

            “Your parents could be toxic to your relationship with Reginald,” I said.

            “You think!” Clarke responded. “I called you because I wanted your advice. It’s Alvie’s call where he goes on his vacation. I have no legal say over that. But if Alvie wants to encourage and support my relationship with Reginald, this will do the opposite. Maybe I can call my attorney and object to this under the clause in the Parenting Plan which requires my approval when the children are taken more than 100 miles from Nashville. That’s what I’m thinking about. I’ve got to stand up for myself. I’ve got to express my feelings and my objections.”

            “Yes, you do,” I said. “There is nothing wrong with your thinking and your perspective. It’s not the content of your feelings that is a problem. Your feelings make complete sense. It’s how you present your objections and how you talk about your feelings with Alvie and your parents that can cause a problem. The form of what you say often matters more than the content of what you say”

            “What should I do?” Clarke asked.

            “In the past, the primary intervening emotion you have used in your marriage and family seems to be anger,” I said.

            “Yes, that’s true,” Clarke replied. “Anger and fear. I was constantly afraid of upsetting my father.”

            “ So, there are three negative emotions, anger, fear and sadness,” I said. “When you express anger and or fear, you are mostly likely to receive anger and fear in response. These aren’t bridging emotions. They perpetuate conflict and expand divides.”

 “I’m not a fan of sadness.” Clarke said. “It makes me feel weak.”

            “Perhaps that’s a good thing,” I said. “Strong, powerful, angry, demanding voices don’t bring reconciliation. They don’t persuade. They trigger the building of walls and stimulate attacking-in-kind responses.”

            “I can see that,” Clarke said. “That’s why I called you.”

            “This cut-off between you and Reginald is sad. So too is the cut-off between you and your family,” I said. “You must feel your real feelings and I think it’s only healthy that you express what you’re feeling.”

            “I do too,” Clarke agreed.

            “Below fear and anger, sadness is always swimming around. Usually, it’s our desire to avoid our sadness and hurt which triggers our fear and anger.”

            “Yeah,” Clarke said. “I would rather feel anything but sad. I don’t do sad.”

            “Perhaps you should,” I said. “Anger and fear cut-off our brain’s ne-cortex. We only have 1/3 of our brain power when we are angry and afraid.”

            “Yeah,” Clarke said. ‘I’ve done the stupidest things when I’m angry or afraid. When I sober up, I often regret what I did or said. That’s why I called you. I wanted cooler heads to prevail here. And I knew, right now, my head wasn’t cool.”

            “But, it could be,” I said. “If you allowed yourself to feel sad. Sadness uses your whole brain. You are stupid when you’re angry or afraid. Sadness is smart. And sadness lowers your emotional intensity and takes tension from your body. You say it makes you weak and in a way it does. But, do you need humility and the softness of sadness when you’re dealing with people you love and who you want to love you back or do you need power, strength and pejorative, hurtful words?”

            “I get your point,” she said. “This is a sad situation.”

            “Yes,” I said. “And sadness is an essential ingredient to compassion.”

            “In one of my employee trainings about empathy and listening,” Clarke said, “I came upon the phrase ‘compassion leads to understanding and forgiveness.’”

            “Yes,” I said. “I agree with that. So, my first bit of advice is when you feel anger or fear coming, because fear is just beneath anger most of the time, when you feel anger or fear, go to sadness. It’s right there. You don’t want to be numb. You can’t stop feeling your feelings. But you can always feel sadness. Life is a tragedy. Sadness will dissolve anger. Saying that you are hurt and sad brings compassion from others. So first, lets use sadness here as our emotional frame.”

            “I am sad and hurt,” Clarke said. “Alvie’s decision feels like more pain and rejection is coming my way.”

            “Do you think Alvie wants you and Reginald to have a good relationship?”

            “Yes, I do,” she said. “That’s what he says and it seems like he means that, but why is he doing this?”

            “Perhaps,” I said, “Alvie is trying to tell the children that the divorce doesn’t mean that they are losing your half of the family.”

            “Yes,” she said, “I think Alvie may be well-intended, but this is a bad idea.”

            “Perhaps,” I said, “but perhaps you might take advantage of Alvie’s compassion for you and Reginald. You can tell him that his decision hurts you and makes you sad, instead of blowing up on him.”

            “He might listen to that,” she said. “My anger always used to shut him down. If I told him how stupid and damaging his decision was, he would just go anyway to spite me.”

            “That’s a real possibility,” I said.

            “No,” Clarke said. “I know. That’s what has always happened. I get angry. Alvie gets quiet and ignores my feelings and does whatever he wants. That’s what I’ve lived with for the last fifteen years.”

            “And think of how an objection from you about a visit between your parents and children would play with Reginald.”

            “Oh yeah,” she said. “That’s why I called you. Your sadness trick has opened my mind. I see now that this would just give Reginald more ammunition to hate me. That’s right.”

            “So what if you approach Alvie, not as an enemy or as unthinking and stupid,” I said.

            “Yes, that’s my usual speed,” Clarke said.

            “Okay, well what if you approached Alvie as an ally, someone who might really help you with Reginald.”

            “I don’t see how I can do that,” Clarke said.

            “Well, if Alvie will talk with your parents and tell them that the cut-offs and divorces in this family are sad and set a bad example for your children. I think they will agree.”

            “Oh yes,” Clarke said, “he’ll be pitching them a fast softball right over the plate and they will hit it out of the park. They will love that.”

            “And then Alvie can ask them to encourage Reginald to value family and to honor and respect their mother.”

            “That would be another great pitch,” she said. “They would swing at that, too.”

            “And if he could suggest that the Bible teaches forgiveness and they might encourage Reginald to forgive his mom.”

“Oh, they would eat that with a fork.”

 “The least Alvie might do is be sure that your parents don’t continue to vilify you,” I said.

            “I think he would do that for me and Reginald.”

            “And now beginning with sadness as our base emotion we have a plan for taking advantage of this situation instead of becoming fate’s victim.”

            “That feels so much better,” Clarke said.

            “It’s not the content of your feelings and thoughts that are a problem,” I said. “It’s the form in which you package them.”

            “Do you think this is always true?” Clarke asked.

            “I don’t know about always, but I do know that form matters. And I know its important to speak your truth, but truth needs to be packaged in respect, kindness, and compassion. With sadness you can usually find a path there to speaking truth in love.”

            Where did the advice for Clarke come from? Did I just pull it from the sky? No, this advice comes from Physics and the laws of homeostasis (if you hurt me, I will hurt you back) and momentum (the negative motion of Clarke’s relationships with her parents, Alvie and his son were set in a negative direction).  I used the paradoxical thinking of Quantum physics, to choose a response directly opposite one’s impulses. I suggested that Clarke would find strength in weakness.

            I also used the Chinese definition of the word “crisis”. From Chinese, the term is translated as “danger and opportunity. I looked for the opportunity that Alvie’s plans offered.

 And finally, from research on emotions and how the brain is wired and how sadness works in our minds and bodies. Sadness, though popularly a reviled emotion, is perhaps one of our most useful emotions for helping us find connection and compassion with others.