Documented Thought#1

This inspired piece of writing is courtesy the movie 'Crazy, stupid, love.' Most of my random thoughts emerge from the after taste of movies, music and books. I was in one of my crappy moods this afternoon, no particular reason really(just one of the innumerable reasons why I love being a woman). So, I got a movie to watch to just make me feel better and guess what? It worked! It had Ryan Gosling in it and that cheered me up quite a bit. But I am sidetracking here. The reason why I started talking about that movie is for one dialogue where Mr.Gosling says, "Ask me something very personal." It probably means nothing to most people, but of all the things that happen in the movie, which is a lot, this is what I'm probably going to remember the most. I have an innate inability of sharing my thoughts and feelings. I can't go up to my friend and say that I need to talk to them about something that I have been thinking. I wait for the perfect moment to say something that's been running on my mind for months. I re-run the entire scenario in my head quite a few times too. Mostly these things come out better when I'm mildly intoxicated. Even then its not like I just start talking. I ask the person to ask me anything they wish to and I promise to answer it very honestly. This for some would be pretty surprising as I normally keep myself heavily guarded.

I was reading a few articles on social sharing of emotional situations and what it does to us. It is a chapter called 'Long lasting cognitive and social consequences of emotion:social sharing and rumination'. It was one of the first search results on the topic. There was a very interesting research that they spoke about. A person while watching a movie in which there is something gruesome, is less likely to cringe his/her face in the presence of other people than when alone. This means that people are less likely to socially share negative experiences than positive and among negative experiences social emotions like shame or others like sadness are less shared.

So I guess even though everyone has an urge to share most of their emotions, the memories that cause most pain or sadness becomes difficult to share. Even when we do share these memories, the delivery of these thoughts would make sure that we do not cast ourselves in bad light.

Finally, I found another insight from another article, that for people who are not comfortable sharing their emotions, and feel that certain conversations are heading towards something personal, they bring in academic or intellectual explanations to maneuver their way away from the intimidation of the personal topic.