A really excellent article in The Walrus entitled Repress Yourself published originally in 2006 explores in some detail the social boundaries and attitudes towards ‘expressing everything’ and a more British ’stiff upper lip’ or as they describe it, ‘blessed silence’. With references to enthrawling tv drama where actors are scripted and characters at times magnetic, versus the raw emotionality of reality tv, it becomes a convincing argument for a fair amount of restraint. The article states, ‘We increasingly used self-expression as a justification for all sorts of bad behaviour on the grounds that to do anything other than what our natural feeling dictates is hypocritical.’

But do we?

Emotional intelligence has really built upon the belief that we should work to manage the expression of feeling, ensuring that it is done appropriately and sensitively, and even at times not at all. Additionally ‘delaying gratification’ is also seen as an emotional intelligence competence… is this not another word for ‘denial’ or ‘discipline’?

The conversations and controversies seem, as always, focused on the extremes. The times when people get it a little wrong or find circumstances overwhelming used as evidence. The ideal reality must be that somewhere between repression and overly expressed emotions must lie the Happy Medium, which hopefully includes some empathy and compassion for the times our fellow humans get it all a bit wrong?