Language and Emotion

Language fails me when I am overwhelmed with an emotion. When I find myself in the midst of extreme frustration, I am unable to articulate the nature of my feelings. In this case I use language not to communicate or search for help, but rather to lure my listener towards my extreme confusion. Thus, language is no longer a tool of communication, but it is rather a tool in miscommunication. Words become inadequate at times to describe my intense feelings. When I search for words, I am searching for a way to express my lucid thoughts. However, words cannot capture the essence of an extreme emotion because emotions are intangible, and they can only be understood on a personal abstract level.

For example, I can recall one time when I was tremendously hurt by a girlfriend of mine. Her selfish and condescending comment brought forth in me a combination of anger and hurt. Not knowing whether to scream or cry, my words failed. Later that same afternoon, my mother picked me up from school. With her motherly sixth sense, she immediately noticed something was terribly wrong. However, when she asked me about it, I could not form the words that matched my horrific pain. My eyes bugged out, and tears began to roll down my flushed face. I remained silent. My mother seemed to understand without my saying a word. My display of intense anguish said it all.

Looking back on the incident, I am glad that my mother recognized my distress. Had she not understood, it would have been impossible for me to express it with words. At the time, no such word existed. My mind was too consumed with some feeling

between hurt and anger. How can that be described? It cannot. It can only be communicated by a scream or a sob.
When a person encounters an overwhelming mental state words are at a loss. It is like the reoccurring childhood dream: a person has the need to scream, but when he opens his mouth all that comes forth is silence. Words cannot always be appropriate in de-mystifying emotions. Even though words carry different connotations to different people, they are the concrete side of communication. Emotions are not concrete, they are abstract, and therefore they require an abstract representation.

Memory

“We can know ourselves only because we can remember” (Ratey) I have to say that our class on memory blew my mind. I left puzzled and second guessing myself. What from my past can be considered a fact? What actually happened?

I can think of numerous times in my life when a friend and I have completely disagreed on how an event in the past took place. For example the other day I was arguing with a friend about an order in which a sequence of events occurred. We remembered two very different stories. But who was right?

When I think about it. We were both right. There is no precise and exact evidence to prove or disprove either of our views. The only thing we have to go by is our memory. I find this extremely frustrating! If the only way “we can know ourselves [is] because we can remember,” and we can’t be confident in our memories, then we can’t be confident in exactly who we are.

Ratey helps to bring understanding to this idea, “The formation and recall of each memory are influenced by mood, surrounding, and gestalt at the time the memor is formed or retrieved. That’s way the same event can be remembered differently by different people…”

Ratey also bring up the point that, “Memory also changes as we change over time. New experiences change our attitudes and thus how we remember.” I know that when I try to recall a memory from a time when I was in an excited state of anger or frustration that I remember details very vaguely; however, it is almost as if my brain fills in the details for me each time I recall and angry memory