As I was driving along in my car listening to and dancing in my mind to a particularly passionate Gypsy Kings favorite, I was struck by the discrepancy between the world in which I was immersed in my car and the “outside” world. The gray morning was filled with drivers, heads bent slightly forward in that intense focus of commuters intent on pushing themselves and their fellow drivers on a steady march toward their business day. While the drivers at my side gripped their steering wheels and poised their feet above their accelerator pedals in wait for that first flash of green light, I rolled my rib cage and shook my shoulders to the rhythm vibrating the walls of my private world.
It was then I realized the true damage of “acculturation” for any ethnic group from a culture whose emotive style doesn’t match that of mainstream America. Even when we have become bicultural, able to maintain our ethnic identity and values and still function well within mainstream society, the fundamental differences in affective expression take a silent toll. Outside of immersion in our family and ethnic group, we bicultural persons have learned to turn our emotions, particularly their expression and spontaneity, down a few levels.
While I do not advocate yelling as a preferred method of communication, certainly passionate presentation of our opinion or feeling is also often considered threatening, inappropriate, or sanctionable. Joy is replaced with expressions of pleasure, and enthusiasm receives an instant sh-ing if it rings loud and spontaneous. Non- verbal expressions receive even greater scrutiny, because they often involve touching another person to communicate or share our emotions. Because of these experiences, we have learned not to wait for the hushing sounds or curt looks. We have become conditioned to automatically censor that wave of emotion, initially just before it crests, but after many years, even when it begins as the slightest ripple. As a result, we “ethnics” have a lot of emotional energy that is suppressed, or actually smothered, to such an extent that it probably causes a host of somatic and affective discomfort or outright symptoms.
Since it is unlikely that any accommodation to diversity on the social/emotional level is in sight, I propose a new coping measure for all of us “ethnics” caught in this cultural discrepancy: Ethnic Emotive Therapy. This would consist of weekly group sessions in which we had a chance to re-experience events of the week by retelling or role-playing them with all the emotions we had to suppress at the time. We could laugh or talk “too loud,” cry and throw up our hands in despair, show enthusiasm and ecstasy, reach out and touch others as we spoke, share embraces, do silly little dance or use sweeping gestures. But most of all, we could let our emotions roll out among a group of people who not only would be open to their expression, but share the experience with mirrored understanding and relish.
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