Emotional literacy: It's something I have struggled with until about five years ago. This relates back in part to not being from a very individualistic society. It also pertains to the reality of the war, with which I grew up. It used up all of our emotions, so we didn't filter much feeling into private concerns. By about the age of 26 (I had migrated to the First World ten years before), I realized that I was thinking and reacting very differently from how many had expected me to respond. I learned a little bit about my personality -- that I was most inclined to make intuitive leaps in logic, based on pattern awareness, but that my processes were not very linear. I also realized that I had little idea what my emotions were at any particular point in time. I was out of synch with them.
That's why I began writing -- to try to stalk down my emotions. It wasn't easy; they were very evasive due to years of repression. Also, the change in cultural scenery didn't help, as my original character had been formed in an entirely different environment, so common explanations, which pertained to the way reality was organised as per Modernity, did not have any meaning for me. Worse than this, they distorted my understanding of myself for a long period. More often than not, other people's "help" was in the form of a paternalist projection. These projections had much to do with how people perceived my gender and my historical background, which were in terms of inappropriately applied Modernist categories. Also, there was a lot of negativity about "colonialism", which made it even harder for me to understand myself.
In the end, I was able to achieve a very high level of emotional literacy only by giving up the project of adapting to Western culture or trying to understand my emotions in its terms.
Talking to Asian people finally enabled this development, as they are unaffected by Western history and so do not have a negative reflex reaction to my identity as a "colonial".
That's why I began writing -- to try to stalk down my emotions. It wasn't easy; they were very evasive due to years of repression. Also, the change in cultural scenery didn't help, as my original character had been formed in an entirely different environment, so common explanations, which pertained to the way reality was organised as per Modernity, did not have any meaning for me. Worse than this, they distorted my understanding of myself for a long period. More often than not, other people's "help" was in the form of a paternalist projection. These projections had much to do with how people perceived my gender and my historical background, which were in terms of inappropriately applied Modernist categories. Also, there was a lot of negativity about "colonialism", which made it even harder for me to understand myself.
In the end, I was able to achieve a very high level of emotional literacy only by giving up the project of adapting to Western culture or trying to understand my emotions in its terms.
Talking to Asian people finally enabled this development, as they are unaffected by Western history and so do not have a negative reflex reaction to my identity as a "colonial".
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