A young person, let’s call them Ellie (not their name), who attends the school at which I facilitate, wanted to throw a prom. It was a nice idea, let’s all get fancy and dancy and have fun together, until no one else wanted to go. Ellie was distraught–“no one wants to be my friend, they all hate me!”

Other adults try to explain so Ellie will understand what happened, saying, “the other kids began a game just before your prom was meant to start, they didn’t know you wanted to do a prom right now and they’d rather keep playing their game.” Ellie was not consoled. Ellie still felt very sad, crying and isolating herself from the others. I have known this pain too: I have been the solo singer on the bus, the new kid who forgot how to talk to strangers, the lonely poet who’s unable to play along on with the chaos on Bourbon Street. I, too, have felt excluded, rejected, disliked by all, unconsidered, ignored.

Marshall Rosenberg calls these, “pseduoemotions.” He claims they are not real emotions because they cannot  be felt independent of other people–you cannot make yourself feel ignored without thinking someone is ignoring you (though I can attest that I have ignored parts of myself many a time). 

I prefer to think of these as states of feeling that have lots of individual emotions sandwiched inside of them. Inside of “ignored,” one may be feeling lonely, hurt, disappointed, sad, angry, confused, annoyed, doubtful, distraught. I’m sure Ellie was feeling some of these that day.

When she approached the group again, it was to have lunch together and she asked if she could join. They agreed and the 4 ate in silence for a moment before Ellie burst forth, “why didn’t you want to come to my prom? Do you not like me anymore?”

A member of the group responded, “no Ellie, we just didn’t want to do a prom but we still like you and still want to be friends!” The others chorused affirmations of this fact.

“Well if you want to be friends, then why wouldn’t you play with me?”

“It’s just that no one wants to do a prom, right you guys?” Another chorus echoing the speaker’s sentiments. “But we do want to play together. Maybe you want to play our game?”

“I just want to have a prom with my friends!”

“Can we try it tomorrow so we can be ready for it?”

I could not say if it happened the next day or not, but I do know they walked away feeling a bit more heard and cared for. I know they did play a game together immediately afterward and it was full of laughter and smiles.

I commend Ellie for confronting the people who she felt hurt by, this is not an easy thing when one already feels cast aside. And yet, addressing the pain was the first step in relieving the pang of loneliness. The next came from being willing to try and meet people where they are, doing what they want to do, and letting one’s own desires take a backseat for a moment.

I learn so much about humility from watching this young person confront such conflicts as this one. I learn about the quest for belonging and friendship in new communities and rather strange times. I re-learn that caring for my own emotions is the first step in building relationships full of belonging with others. We cannot belong to one another until we belong to ourselves, through hard times and boring times, through the sad and happy. I remember to go gently, feel into the discomforts, and find the bravery to be with emotion as it ebbs and flows, trusting that others will too.

DNVC: I’ve already written about this resource on the blog, but since critique of the “pseudoemotions” came up in this, I wanted to share the resource that inspired me to think differently about them once again. And I cannot say enough about how foundational this text has been in my unpacking of embodied emotional processing, which also comes up in this article, so it felt extra relevant. Cheers to Meenadichi on the amazing work that went into, “Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication.” Get a copy here.