Whatever this is, it stays inside.
Unsorted. Unexamined.
I don't ask what I'm feeling.
I don't ask why.
At the time, it doesn't seem important to know.
Feelings, I believe, simply happen. They overwhelm and then they pass.
They are endured, not understood.
Certainly not explained.
These lines are from a reflection I wrote which I called Carried in Silence. Looking back, Carried in Silence captures an experience that psychologist Claude Steiner would likely describe as emotionally illiterate.
In his book Emotional Literacy, Steiner puts it this way:
The emotionally illiterate experience is that our emotions are our enemies.
That sentence alone explains a lot.
Think about it: if emotions are enemies, then the goal is survival, not understanding. You brace yourself, wait it out, and move on. You don't get curious. You don't look closer. You certainly don't try to put what you're feeling into words.
This is what emotional illiteracy looks like: moving through feelings in silence, enduring them rather than understanding them.
The next question, then, matters deeply: what would the alternative look like?
Is emotional literacy something you either have or don't? A personality trait, a talent, a gift of upbringing? Or is it something that can be learned, step by step, skill by skill?
Claude Steiner argues it is the latter. He describes emotional literacy not as a vague sensitivity, but as a set of concrete capacities, ways of relating to emotions that can be practiced and developed.
In the next articles in this series, we'll look at what emotional literacy actually consists of, through the five core capacities Steiner identifies.