Where did the disappointment go? Part 2: Button your blouse girlfriend

I am talking to a doctor at a Kodaikanal (India) hospital and the head-nurse enters to ask the doctor a question.  There is a pause while the doctor considers her response, and in this moment, the nurse looks over at me, clicks her tongue disapprovingly and rebukes: “you have not buttoned the top button on your kurta, please button it”.  I am incredulous, amused and irritated all at once as I respond genuinely: "there is no top button".  Now it is she who is incredulous, and she stares at me furiously for a whole minute then looks away.

Ten years ago I might have felt ashamed or incensed, but this time I was curious: what reaction was this supposed to elicit? What purpose does censuring a stranger serve?

My quick analysis: the nurse was discharging her anxiety by telling me what to do.  The sight of my exposed skin had made her feel out of control, by bringing up various feelings within her.  She was likely not aware what these underlying feelings were, but simply felt anxious and needed to re-assert a sense of control.  When the sort of passing the parcel of emotion as it were, failed, she become enraged, perhaps because my response further increased her sense of feeling out of control.

In considering where unacknowledged emotions go, one idea is that they are shut down and go to the warehouse of the individual’s unconsciousness for storage. Another is that they go from their owner to someone else, like the nurse, pushing away her emotions and flooding me with a flurry of thoughts.  Of course that the nurse was likely quite unaware of the underlying feelings that were causing her anxiety.  Rather she most likely attributed her comment to “doing her duty” or possibly some kind of sisterly consideration, moralistic defenses that allow the owner to escape further inquiry.

It's a small example to illustrate that unacknowledged emotions cause us anxiety and put us at risk of displacing the unacknowledged emotions onto others.  During a breakdown, our defenses toward our own emotions fall away and we are flooded with authentic feeling.  Painful as this may be, therein lies great beauty—in the truth of who were are.