On ‘not carrying on sulking…’

I wrote a piece On Sulking nearly two years ago and it had some resonance for a lot of people. Now I am writing on sulking….how to get out of it? I received a request on more on the how to get out of it and so wanted to take this opportunity to share this with others who might be working on training their sulk dragons!

I had concluded my write up with this:

“We need to encourage the habit of articulating, giving voice to, giving words to, hurtful feelings. Then we can address it together with the offenders who have hurt us. It also gives the poor offenders a chance to tell us their side of the story, in their words and is therefore great for a relationship. Sulking is a way of cementing conflict and speaking about hurts is a way of cementing the relationship. Conflict is unavoidable in relationships, even if we are bound to nonviolent forms of communication and are able to reframe conflict in other ways.

Are you sulking with someone right now? Get yourself out of it. No one else should have to.”

Getting out of a sulk involves growing yourself up, being able to take the responsibility to communicate your own needs in a reciprocal relationship, to keep the relationship growing stronger.

If you are in relationships that are primarily not reciprocal, where you constantly feel that you are doing more to keep the relationship going, where your needs are never met, where you are constantly judged and belittled or told to not do whatever comes naturally to you, then this does not apply because ending those relationships might indeed be better for you overall. I am urging that we get out of a sulk ourselves, in our reciprocal relationships, where there is some give and take, something mutual about it.

Taking responsibility to communicate our feelings means that we take the courage to be true to our needs and we do the job of stating this sincerely to the ‘other’. But I know this is easier said than done. Most of the time we are completely unaware of our emotional needs, and sometimes we do not even really know for sure what we are feeling. Plus often the ‘other’ might not be feeling so good about meeting our needs and it might make the experience even more daunting. So the task of communicating something that is unclear to us, where the emotional response of the receiver is also unclear is really quite worth avoiding.

Except it isn’t.

Clarity of our emotional responses and the emotional spectrum that we ourselves engage in is something worth striving for and this clarity often emerges when we begin to speak about our feelings. It takes effort and focus and a commitment to stay with uncertainty and lack of clarity.

So I suggest the following:

Begin a journaling practice: Write about what has prompted your sulk. Be honest. It takes courage to be able to admit our petty-ness and our hurts are not easy to acknowledge even to ourselves.

Speak about it to another friend: If you have trusted friends who will actively listen as you make sense of exactly what you are feeling, it is a great source of clarity. We often think that our sulks are private, but being more open about them might help me get over them.

Draw with crayons and colour pencils: draw a picture of your sulk and then see what you feel towards it. This is something we often do with children in helping them make sense of difficult emotions. For example when a mother was leaving for a work-trip, her two year old son drew aeroplanes and snakes said that when the mother went away in the aeroplane, the snakes would eat her up and she would never come back. This only happened while the drawing was being created. The mother could not have got to this insight without the help of his creative facilities and it allowed the mother and the child to have a conversation. Be your own mother to your sulk, understand it, let it grow and go… draw a picture of your sulk and then see what you feel towards it. This is something we often do with children in helping them make sense of difficult emotions. For example when a mother was leaving for a work-trip, her two year old son drew aeroplanes and snakes said that when the mother went away in the aeroplane, the snakes would eat her up and she would never come back. This only happened while the drawing was being created. The mother could not have got to this insight without the help of his creative facilities and it allowed the mother and the child to have a conversation. Be your own mother to your sulk, understand it, let it grow and go…

Whatever you begin with, eventually go back to your sulkee and have a conversation. Go on, enjoy getting over your sulks.

I look forward to any dragon hearts willing to share their sulk stories.