Lizbeth García: "It is important to talk more about emotions".

Psychologist Lizbeth García talks about the need to normalize the emotional.

Few people would doubt that emotions are a very important part of our lives. However, for a long time, it has been assumed that in many situations they should be totally repressed in favor of supposed moral mandates or the need to gain social acceptance. It was proposed to act as if the emotional was a fiction.

Fortunately, with the passage of time, we have become increasingly aware that making emotions (and especially the so-called "negative emotions") taboo is not only pointless, but harmful. But even today there are still remnants of those social dynamics anchored in tradition and roles in which the emotional is combated and punished.

That is why, on the occasion of World Mental Health Daypsychologists like our interviewee today, Lizbeth García, propose to give much more visibility to our emotional side.

Interview with Lizbeth García: the #EmocionesAlChile campaign ahead of World Mental Health Day

Lizbeth García is a clinical psychologist and founder of Astronauta Emocional, one of the most important psychotherapy centers in Chile.one of the leading psychotherapy centers in Mexico City.

From her training based on the cognitive-behavioral model and the gender perspective, she has been working for years both in individual support to patients, as well as promoting and giving visibility to awareness initiatives on mental health issues at a social and cultural level. She does the latter both from the social networks of Astronauta Emocional (her Instagram account has many followers) and from the podcast De Otro Planeta, dedicated to topics related to Psychology.

On this occasion, Lizbeth tells you about the campaign that Astronauta Emocional is launching on the occasion of World Mental Health Day: #EmocionesAlChile. Through this hashtag, from which videos and images with references in Mexican folklore will be disseminated, she proposes to normalize the fact of talking openly about psychological problems beyond stigmas, to express emotions, and to prevent certain problems from becoming taboo instead of being addressed or giving rise to situations of social or psychotherapeutic support.

Why is it still quite normalized to hide our most intense emotions, or at least not to talk about them?

There are multiple answers to this question, but I dare say that one of the most representative is that emotions can be taken as a symbol of weakness or vulnerability and, under this perspective, those people who allow themselves to experience them can receive invalidating responses from those around them, or even by themselves, and therefore, they prefer to minimize them.

Another point is that sometimes the role that emotions play in our lives is ignored (emotions as an interaction mechanism that "warns" us of the effects on us of the internal and external situations that make up our daily lives) and on the contrary they are seen as obstacles or hindrances in our human experience.

Under this logic, people prefer to "ignore" them by not talking about them, but that does not change the fact that emotions are still there. It is important to mention that these mechanisms of avoidance, minimization or attempts to ignore our emotions are often more harmful than beneficial, so it is preferable to learn new methods of relating to our emotional experiences.

There is a tendency to assume that men should be cold people who do not show feelings and emotions that can be associated with vulnerability. What role do gender roles play in this kind of self-censorship?

They play a very important role, since traditional gender roles dictate that emotions are entirely a female issue, and any man who shows them tends to receive disqualifications (usually sexist or homophobic disqualifications).

It is evident that role-based upbringing patterns together with the implicit presence of these gender roles in different scenarios of social interaction allow these ideas to be perpetuated throughout men's lives, that the process of allowing themselves to experience or not their emotions is molded according to this homogeneous learning and that, therefore, it becomes consolidated as a part of the masculine identity.

Phrases as short as "crying is for girls" or "behave like a little man" often attribute that boys or men cannot (or should not) have emotional experiences, and although surely going against these ideas can be extremely adverse in some social contexts, currently we are beginning to see movements that normalize emotions since they are not a gender issue, they are part of the human experience, and that is why we should talk about new ways in which men can relate to the emotional component that is undoubtedly present in their lives.

What taboo subjects about the way we experience emotions are most prevalent today? Both within the mental health field and outside of it.

That talking about emotions is only necessary when we can no longer cope with them, when they are too intense or upsetting, and that at these times the task is to learn to control them. The reality is that no, we should not only talk about emotions when they are already too intense and we do not learn to control them, we only learn to regulate them and live with them in a more compassionate, calmer way.

Another taboo is that there are good and bad emotions. The reality is that this polarity comes from the interpretation we give to our emotions and how annoying some emotions can be, however, each and every one communicates how we are facing an event and therefore, they are important in our life.

Another taboo that we find and that unfortunately is perpetuated by public figures who sometimes talk about this subject for profit, is that the best possibility we have before emotions is always to try to see the positive side or keep the best attitude at all times. This is not true.

While feeling sadness, fear or anger (to give just a few examples) is usually unpleasant, it is possible that these emotions are minimized if to cope with them we try to distort our vision in the extreme of positive attitude, why not try and allow ourselves to feel these emotions that are there for a reason? Why not integrate the nuances that make up our emotional experience?

Perhaps this sounds strange "why would anyone want to be sad?", but it is not a question of whether we want certain emotions or not, it is a fact that we will experience them throughout our lives and therefore what better than to learn better ways to feel them.

What are the most harmful consequences of not expressing what we feel?

Undoubtedly, emotions "seek" some method to be expressed or processed, then, those people who tend not to do so present undesirable behaviors that fulfill this function and in multiple occasions present adverse consequences for their well-being or integrity, they begin to interfere with their activities or even in their way of relating to other people.

At this point it is important to emphasize that it is not that people seek this type of less favorable mechanisms for the expression of emotions because they want to or because they are unable to foresee the possible adverse consequences: as mentioned above, there are social or cultural patterns that govern this, and therefore, other more favorable methods for emotional management are little known, or sometimes these more adaptive methods begin to have effects after a long period of use.

For example, it is common that, when feeling stress or anxiety, people want to get rid of it and they use emotional relief mechanisms that have immediate effects (but adverse in the long term) such as drinking alcohol, eating food without really being hungry or isolating themselves.

This is why it is important to talk more about emotions, and sometimes actions as small as noticing when we begin to experience them, writing them down or even sharing them with someone we trust, can contribute to living with our emotions in a warmer way.

This is no small job and is also one of the reasons why there are professionals in the field, especially mental health professionals.

How can a campaign like #EmocionesAlChile help to make it easier for people to express the way they feel?

It can be a first approach to normalize what happens to many of us, to talk about what happens to more than one person and see it as they are: a part of us.

Of course, being a topic that is rarely talked about, it is important to do it from a perspective that is familiar to us and that is why we decided to use many references of our popular culture that represents us so much.

#EmocionesAlChile is about seeing emotions not from the taboo or from that boring topic that only experts address, it is about recognizing that talking about them can be an easy task, which we refer to with the words we use every day and more importantly: that there is more than one person feeling the same as you.

Finally... What advice would you give to a person who wants to help another person express their emotions without being paralyzed by fear or mistrust?

Social support is one of the most powerful tools we have to face difficult moments, so the simple fact of being present in the life of those people who are dealing with a particular situation is of great help.

To provide this support it will always be important to take as a starting point the other person's perspective in order to really have an empathic perspective, and empathy is not necessarily about what we call "putting ourselves in the other person's shoes" but rather that even in the differences we may have with the other person, we make an effort to accompany them in what afflicts them.

Perhaps we will never know for sure how each person lives their emotions, but showing interest and offering a space where they can express it without prejudice can be the first step for people to start talking about emotions.