Can emotion be lost? Can we deny or attenuate what we deeply feel as if blinded by an overwhelming force? This possibility of self-harm is put into practice more often than we think. What often influences us are: expectations of others. Who are "the others"? Parents, teachers, coaches, classmates, co-workers, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, children: all those, in short, whose approval we value. All those who have expectations of us and approve of us only if we don't disappoint them.
Homosexuality still functions as an "unexpected event" in relation to these expectations. Often, those who perceive themselves as "unexpected" to others become prey to panic. They may then deny themselves, in an effort to adapt. But conflicts remain latent, and clues are everywhere: in the relationship with food, with sexuality, with interiority, with time. We must have the courage to assert ourselves, to feel, to understand with introspection and a critical spirit that "others" cannot always "predict" what is profoundly true for each of us. That the discovery of any truth, including love, is always "unexpected.".
Paolo Rigliano, psychotherapist
Searching for oneself with introspection and critical thinking
Body and emotions
«I'm 17, when I kiss boys it seems like it's a foreign part of me doing it. I am a lesbian?»Adele asks. "I'm 45 and I indulged a feeling for another man after years of marriage during which I felt affection for my wife," Andrea confides. "Only after two children and not-so-intense relationships did I fall in love with a woman," Rossella writes. "How can I tell if I'm gay?" asks Maurizio, 20. These testimonies introduce an important topic: what is emotion? What does it tell us about ourselves? Let's begin a journey in search of "lost" emotion, meaning "misunderstood": it's often difficult for those who experience an emotion that isn't sponsored or even foreseen by those we might call important social actors—parents, teachers, employers, cultural workers—to understand its true significance.
It's not just about emotions «repressed» against which open war has been declared. But also emotions that are undervalued or unrecognized, perhaps because in families children are expected to follow in their parents' footsteps and the importance of each person finding their own path is overlooked. Emotions are many, but some have a particular value for each of us because they reveal our identity. This happens only if we are able to understand what we feel and connect our perceptual experience with our self-image, integrating it into the various levels of our lives. Otherwise, a distance can arise between us and our body, understood as the place where emotions are expressed; and we can lose touch with the meaning of what we experience. We discuss this with Paolo Rigliano, psychotherapist and author of the book "Loves without Scandal: What It Means to Be Lesbian and Gay" (Feltrinelli).
The body emphasized. «"Every emotion is a sentence in a speech," Paolo Rigliano emphasizes with a metaphor. "We experience so many emotions, some force themselves into our awareness and become fundamental because they reveal our authentic way of being. They can only be hidden at the cost of violence." Caution: emotion is not a magic wand, a revealing place par excellence; "we need to have a secular and disenchanted relationship with emotions," warns Rigliano. If we fall into overemphasis, we end up saying that only the body reveals us, and we transform the body into a testing ground. This is not surprising: these days, sexual practice is considered a calling card that tells us who we are. If we embrace this logic, we risk detaching our bodies from ourselves, distancing ourselves from the value placed on what we experience. Let's return to the testimony of Andrea, who, while married, discovered he was gay: in his relationship with his wife, Andrea may have experienced an emotion that he considered important because it was "permissible." And he may have hidden his feelings for men until they seemed too strong and disturbing, considering them a residual defense. The same thing may have happened to Rossella, who fell in love with a woman after having two children with a man. Andrea and Rossella, according to this hypothesis, committed violence against themselves. Why does this happen? "Just as it happened with women, who grew up in a context that emphasized goodness and evangelicalism, the same happens with homosexual people, who often live in contexts where there are no paths to identify with. A homosexual has much more difficulty than others in identifying his emotions, not in experiencing them, but in finding meaning in them, in giving them a name. The internet is full of men who seek out others and categorize what they feel as "curiosity," or at most "a double life." Today, homosexuality is more talked about; we are in transition, but often these proposals do not reflect meaningful life paths," adds Rigliano. The media and TV allow the gay image to pass, but often homosexual people become what a novelist would call "sidekicks", not rising to the role of characters.
The critical spirit. When the social and cultural context doesn't offer paths for self-discovery, the individual, if he or she doesn't want to hide and do violence to himself or herself, must find them on his or her own. What can help? "A critical spirit. But also introspection, which is an attitude of searching toward interiority. Today, the tools for inventing new paths are accessible. Therefore, educational agencies—family, school, television—must provide a variety of paths for young people. While adults, if they want to live fully, have the opportunity to find them on their own." Again, caution is needed: "A critical spirit isn't the Holy Spirit, but arises from the concrete possibilities of comparing various paths," Rigliano emphasizes. "The girl who questions her lesbianism because she doesn't feel fully committed to relationships with men, when and if she experiences feelings for another girl, will wonder if it's possible that it's love. There are no automatic reactions, but rather experiences to be understood. A liberal culture should value different emotions and the plurality of outcomes." To put it simply, if the emotionality I recognize as an inalienable part of myself is soon hindered, even simply because it's "unforeseen," I find myself at a crossroads. Either I give up on my existential project and pretend to be what "I'm supposed to be," or I assert myself, engaging in a close dialogue about the meaning of my life with the cultural and social context that doesn't value me. This is a quest that comes at a price. "Pluralism isn't free; those who propose it must know that it involves subverting the Order, and conflict with those who benefit from it," adds Rigliano. The one who pays the price is the ethical, aesthetic, religious, and metaphysical order founded on machismo, which certainly doesn't seem willing to abandon the field as a coward.
Simonetta Marucci, expert in "integrated medicine"«
Meditation to unite mind and body
Integrating body and mind
Sometimes, emotion is hidden. Faced with a conflict between their emotions and the context that hinders or ignores them, the individual decides to silence them. The body becomes dominated by a denial will. Denial can produce a superficial mindset, a renunciation of understanding the world from within, a "disembodied" thought that proceeds through supposedly universal categories or can result in a true ostracism of feeling and its meaning. This desire can even boast about the control it establishes over the body. But the discomfort can become unbearable. In these cases, it is necessary to reconnect with the mind and body.
This is the field in which Dr. Simonetta Marucci, endocrinologist, head of the integrated medicine service at the Eating Disorders Center of the Perugia Local Health Authority. If we consider cases of bulimia (compulsive eating) and anorexia, we realize that these disorders, which signal profound distress, can be triggered when a person's life plan is thwarted. "In about 30 percent of bulimia cases, early psychological violence is observed," observes the expert. "In cases of anorexia, we find excessive control over the body. The hunger stimulus is there, but the person strives to control it, in favor of an idealized image of the body with obsessive contours that must lose every personal characteristic to conform to an externally proposed model.".
The body silenced. In both cases, these are "symptoms." If they are suppressed, failing to address the "primary discomfort," they can shift. Thus, a former bulimic stops being one and becomes an alcoholic or sexually promiscuous. The symptom, however, must be interpreted, as, like an emotion, it is "a sentence in a conversation." "Survival mechanisms are linked to eating and reproduction. A person prevented from pursuing their life plan may find themselves taking refuge in primary mechanisms, altering them as a defense. An eating disorder can hide uncertainties about identity or sexual orientation," adds Simonetta Marucci. These are issues that aren't always identified, precisely because the cultural bias that can influence therapeutic investigation tends to overlook "hidden" lesbianism or homosexuality. These are conflicts that the individual finds themselves unable to address, preferring to navigate the more manageable terrain of eating. Furthermore, nutrition, as the celebrated anthropologist Levi-Strauss points out in his book "The Raw and the Cooked," is the foundation of cultural development. Cooked food is culture, one might say, while raw food is nature. Altering the cultural rhythm of food or rejecting it can be an attempt to escape the destiny the sociocultural order has chosen for us.
Meditation It's one of the techniques proposed for regaining contact with emotions, which are then "read" and processed. In groups of boys and girls "invited to indulge in relaxation, to loosen hyper-control over the body," continues Dr. Marucci, "resistance or even fear attacks often arise. They are told: "Close your eyes, feel the weight of your body, feel your back. Inducing the subject to 'feel' means helping them rediscover perception. The fear that can arise is significant: there is a fear of not being able to manage what is perceived. Often, in fact, the only processing strategy that has been put in place is that of hypercontrol and rigidity," continues Marucci. Recognizing the sensation means starting to dismantle the mechanism that aspires to total control and that can spiral into deadly perfectionism. Meditation, which also makes use of guided visualizations, helps to accept initial failures. Even the acceptance of fragile parts is, in fact, the beginning of a recognition of oneself starting from what one perceives. Two aspects, again, are fundamental: the suspension of the judgment of "others" on what one feels and the support of self-esteem. "During meditation, we invite you to consider perceptions as non-threatening realities, present but not looming. We use the metaphor of clouds or another "soft" natural element, guiding one to observe thoughts and sensations without rejecting them or cultivating them in a morbid way. Often, in fact, if the subject associates the emotion with the "social" judgment, it can be paralyzed, in the case of perceptions not supported by the majority. There are various ways to support self-esteem, all centered on the invitation to self-love and self-care, care lacking in subjects who experience the search for their own orientation with discomfort. By regaining contact with the sphere of perceptions, it is possible to restart the development of a life project that has the subject at its center and not what others want from him. A path of education to freedom that is valid whenever the personal path of an individual has not been valued, including homosexual orientation. Far from curing homosexuality, as has been believed in the past, we must instead not lower our guard on the effects that explicit homophobia or the devaluation of homosexual orientation – neglected and unexpected – can have. provoke. Only if you know the prejudices can you avoid them.