If we were to ask people who know Turkish people around the world, what would they say about Turks, one of the first answers they would probably give would be "they are emotional". So, are we really like that?
When we ask most of our people, they will admit that they are emotional, but there is a serious gap between feeling emotions and expressing them. Even though our culture glorifies emotionality, when we look at individuals, we can observe that they have serious problems in expressing emotions. Therefore, we may think that we feel pressured to suppress our emotions, that these suppressed emotions then burst, just like a balloon that exceeds the water capacity it can hold, and that we are described as overly emotional in the eyes of others due to the effect of these intense emotions (which are actually experienced in the same way when they are suppressed). So why do we feel like we have to suppress our emotions? Here, rejection, lack of approval, abandonment, etc. Fears like these come into play. In other words, another emotion, fear, affects the inability to express emotions. At this point, the lyrics of the song "Fear and Love" by a band called "Morcheeba" come to my mind. “Fear keeps you from loving; “Loving prevents fear.” Fear and love are two such strong emotions. So why do we fear? If we were to tell a person that we were hurt or angry, a thought that immediately comes to our mind is: "What if he gets angry with me!" or “What if he gets upset!” When we question these thoughts a little, the fear of abandonment emerges. That's why we hide, say we're hurt or angry, and keep silent. Silence is just an avoidance. Since emotions are not confronted, the feeling or emotions in question continue to exist within us. Another way of coping is not to express our feelings, but at the same time, to suddenly end all relations with the person we are talking to, that is, while in the previous example there was a partial distance, here there is a complete break. In other words, the hurt and anger suddenly removes that person from our lives. We try to solve it by removing it. However, the other person is surprised because he cannot understand this. We think that we are punishing him and assume that our feelings are expressed in this way. Whereas c The person we persecute is none other than ourselves. This method serves no purpose other than transferring our emotions to other relationships and other people and damaging our relationships every time. While this is the case with negative emotions, what is the level of efforts to express love? Here we encounter the perception that there are roles according to gender. Of course, there are some myths. “The man should always take the first step.” “A woman should never immediately tell a man that she loves him,” etc. When we look at the negative thoughts here, if the woman expresses love, fears such as these may appear: "The wrong (bad, light(!)) person will know me" or "If she knows that I love her, she can use this". It is possible to increase these negative thoughts for women. Let's look at the male side, why is it difficult to express love? The first thing we encounter is the fear of rejection. Another situation is the fear that the strong image of men in our culture will be damaged by emotionality and its expression. Another negative thought is being accused of matchmaking. In this whole process, for both women and men, negative thoughts and perceptions, social infrastructure seem to be serious obstacles to expressing emotions.
As a result, people who are intertwined with emotions but do not actually recognize emotions, even if they do. We continue to live like a community of individuals who cannot express themselves. However, if we have a mutual dialogue about expressing our emotions with other people, this will make it easier for others to understand our emotions, and we will feel more relaxed as we have the chance to express ourselves and our emotions. In this process, it is absolutely necessary to AVOID expressing emotions. Even if there is anger or hurt, instead of breaking off communication suddenly, we should prefer to end communication with this person after establishing a dialogue, expressing these feelings, making the other person realize these feelings and believing that there is no other solution. This type of behavior will prevent us from transferring these feelings to others and will make us more emotionally free. In the final analysis, regardless of the emotion experienced, each individual must express his/her feelings in the most reasonable way and with the simplest words. In fact, he is obliged, otherwise he would be their burden and convict.
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