Why do we so seldom disclose our deepest emotions, even to friends? There are probably many reasons, but is that most of us have somewhere heard that if we reveal our needs or get emotional, people will not like us. But exactly the oppoisite is true. People begin to feel close to us when they know something of our needs.
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Sometimes we develop the habit of wearing an emotional disguise because early experiences gave us the wrong start. Here, for instance, is a beautiful young woman who is unable to let herself love a man. She remains aloof and detached, and eventually all men get discouraged and leave her. In her counselling sessions we probe for the memories from her past that may have careated this emotional policy. Finally it comes out. As a little girl she had an unsual amount amount of body hair, and one day, when some neighbour children came over to swim, they and her sisters called her "Bush".
"I started to cry," she said, "and I was so ashamed of crying that I ran into the garage and locked the door. I must have stayed in there and sobbed for half an hour, and right then and there I made up my mind that nobody was ever going to hurt me that bad again."
The tragedy is that by so insulating herself from her emotions since, she has not only kept herself from being hurt, she has also kept herself from being loved.
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Dr Roy Mennnger, president of the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, explained that men are more prone than women to what he called the "I-must-always-be-strong syndrome." ... "(he) sees himself as a very high- powered piece of machinery rather than as a human need system."
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