The importance of emotional vulnerability:
example of Jake Sully in Avatar II
Disclaimer: If you haven’t watched Avatar II: The Way of Water yet, you may want to consider if you’d like to continue reading, as I will reveal a small (very small) detail about the movie. It’s certainly nothing related to the main plot and therefore not a major spoiler, but I’d like to warn you nonetheless so that you can decide for yourself. The scene I’m going to describe takes place around 17 minutes into the movie.
In the second Avatar movie, the main character, Jake Sully, has built a family with his wife Neytiri.
At the beginning of the movie, Jake’s two teenage sons put themselves in a life-threatening situation by not following their father’s orders.
After rescuing the boys, Jake yells at them, completely disregarding the fact that one of the kids has a bleeding wound that needs to be looked after. The boys lower their heads.
Afterwards, Neytiri (Jake’s wife) talks to Jake in private and shares an observation with him:
“They try to live up to you. It is very hard on them. You are very hard on them.
This is not a squad. It is a family.”
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In that moment, Jake lets go of his anger and shows what was actually going on for him when he was yelling at the boys: “I thought we had lost them”.
Fear disguised as anger.
A father who was understandably terrified because two of the human beings he loves most in the world had almost died.
Fear is an emotion that makes us feel vulnerable, while we tend to feel stronger when we display anger instead. This is especially true for many men that have been socialised to show up in a certain way.
However, being shown an outburst of anger instead of their dad’s true emotion of fear that is based in love and care has a negative psychological effect on the boys (who, let’s remember, just experienced in their own skin what it means to make unwise impulsive decisions and are still terrified themselves).
Situations like these tend to arouse unconscious internal reactions that are detrimental both to the child-parent bond and to the child’s relationship to themselves.
The potential internal reactions in the child’s mind could, for example, look like this:
Observation
My dad is super mad and yelling at me.
Possible thought
I’ve disappointed my dad. –> Dad clearly appreciates me less now.
Possible conclusion of the unconscious mind
I’m a failure.
and/or
My dad’s love is conditional and linked to always doing what is expected.
Potential psychological impact
Lowered self-esteem
and/or
Overly perfectionistic behaviour and emotional break downs whenever failure occurs throughout life
One of the kids (Lo’ak) spends the whole movie trying to get his dad’s approval, but the boy struggles with it. He is more free-spirited in nature than his older brother (Neteyam), whose temperament is naturally more aligned with what their dad expects them to be.
This more free-spirited kid simply needs to feel that he is as loved and appreciated as his brother and seen for who he is as a unique individual with the unique traits that he brings to the table.
As long as he is forced to be what he is not, feeling inadequate for this reason, the problems are likely to persist, placing a heavy burden on the parent-child relationship.
If Jake Sully allowed himself to be open, honest, and vulnerable around his boys in the above mentioned emotionally charged situation, he might have rather said something like this:
“I love you so much, that the possibility of losing you scared me to my bones. My heart rate is still on edge. We’ll definitely talk seriously about this later so that we can understand what led you to doing that, but for now:
I’m relieved to see you two safe.”
The boys have already learned the potential consequences of making impulsive decisions by the experience they just had. Life has just taught them an important lesson.
Through their father’s open and vulnerable communication, they would also have realised that what they did had a negative emotional impact on their parents, which will very likely make them feel uncomfortable.
But they would also see clearly (because it was made explicit) that this emotional impact on their parents is primarily the result of love and care for their lives, not a consequence of their personal inadequacy as human beings.
Feeling loved by their parents despite not being perfect and making mistakes is vital for the self-esteem of a child and for a healthy parent-child relationship.
But this kind of communication will also have another side effect:
The boys see their strong dad, who is a fierce warrior and the respected leader of the whole community showing his honest emotions with them.
This allows them to understand that fear, worry, and tenderness are part of the repertoire of emotions that anyone, even a strong warrior, feels and is allowed to feel. This means there will be no need for them to feel shame or a threat to their masculinity when experiencing these emotions.
However, to honestly communicate our true feelings to our close loved ones,
we must first learn to identify that within ourselves.
It’s important to get into the habit of slowing down and asking ourselves:
What am I actually feeling right now?
And also:
Why exactly am I feeling the way I’m feeling?
What is the true reason?
What do I need?
Showing your true emotions feels vulnerable and scary and it requires you to slow down to get an awareness of the situation, but it opens the path for empathy: a much stronger and healthier base for effective communication with our loved ones than anger outbursts, blaming or intimidation.
Images: 20th Century Studios
