2: Romeo & Juliet, Unit I, Sadness

Unit I. Topic: Sadness

Part A: DBT skills to be applied.

To start with, I distribute relevant portions of the skills training manual to the group members as a hand-out. We had already gone over this material once, so it was in the nature of review. (Part B of this chapter is the actual lines they read; Part C is a set of discussion questions I give them orally to answer as a group.)

1. Identifying emotions.

First is a list of basic emotions from the skills training manual that I will ask them to look at in several sessions, when we try to identify what emotions a character is feeling (pp. 83-92):

Love…..Joy….Interest….Sadness….Anger….Fear….Shame

In Act 1 scene 1 of the play the emotion that the characters discuss is sadness. So I gave participants a passage describing the feelings and urges to action that go along with sadness (p. 84). They can use this list to say which of these are mentioned in connection with Romeo, by him or his family. They might notice one or two that aren’t mentioned:

Feelings and urges I experience when I feel sadness:

I feel drained
I have an urge to hide from others
I want to avoid work, school, and other social settings
I want to isolate myself
I feel vulnerable and weak
I feel lethargic
My stomach feels tied in knots
I feel disconnected or unreal
I want to cry
I feel raw or crushed
It feels hard to get out of bed
I want to think about sad things all day.
Other__________________________

2. Triggers.

Romeo’s family asks, “What caused Romeo’s sorrow?” They want to know what our book calls “emotional triggers” (p. 66). There are external triggers and internal triggers:

Emotional triggers are events in the outside world and thoughts within you that cause emotions to well up. Triggers are often what people are referring to when they say things like “That guy makes me so mad,” or “That song made me sad.” Externally there are things that people say or do to you, traffic, bills, the weather, layoffs, illness, and so on. Within you there are triggers such as remembering, thinking, and ruminating.” Knowing your triggers is a useful step toward dealing with the surges of emotion they can produce.

The participants can use this passage as a reference when trying to identify Romeo’s external and internal triggers

3. Dialectical thinking.

In describing his feelings Romeo uses pairs of opposites. He is “thinking dialectically,” which the manual describes as follows (p 107):

To understand a dialectical framework, think of the polarities inherent in reality, the many opposites we encounter in daily life and the way things work. From the simplicity of night and day to the unseen tension between matter and antimatter, reality is full of opposites. There is both day and night, not one or the other

Looking at Romeo's sadness in these terms shows the dialectical aspect of his emotions, as filled with opposites. Later, in Unit IV, Chapter 4, we will see another example of the same principle.

4. The principle of opposite action.

Romeo’s cousin Benvolio and friend Mercutio offer Romeo a strategy for overcoming his sadness. The way to stop being sad about one girl’s rejection of you is to go out and meet other girls. Our book offers a similar strategy, called “the principle of opposite action" (p. 135):

Engage in behaviors that are opposite to the emotion that you’re feeling so that you interrupt the emotion that is currently firing and re-firing. This means choosing behaviors that are incompatible with the emotion you’re targeting for change…The trick is to “act as if.” If you act as if you aren’t sad, your sadness will lift… For opposite action to be effective, you have to do it again and again, until your emotions change. You must throw yourself completely into opposite action, doing all that you can to engage your whole being and your whole self into doing, thinking, and eventually feeling differently.

One of our worst enemies in trying to change is our own beliefs and automatic thoughts about ourselves. Then besides negative primary emotions, we have secondary ones as well, triggered by our thoughts. The book says (p. 35):

The more run down or reactive you feel, the more likely you are to think less of yourself, If you’re a man, and you think of yourself as a sissy for experiencing fear or for experiencing sadness, you may feel worse. Your emotion won’t simply be fear or sadness, but fear about fear, sadness about sadness, and maybe shame about both of these. Perhaps you judge yourself as being weak-willed, crazy, or having “lost it.” Your automatic thoughts and judgments will affect the way you experience your emotions. And these judgments often lead to secondary emotions, which don’t help us with survival, social connection, or general well being.

The author puts all these beliefs, thoughts, and judgments, leading to paralyzing secondary emotions, under the term “self-talk.” Our self-talk comes up especially strongly when we are trying to change, telling us not to.

Part B: The group picks parts for the scene and reads it. The text is from Act 1, Scene 1 and Scene 4.

Characters in order of appearance: LADY MONTAGUE, BENVOLIO (her nephew), MONTAGUE (her husband), ROMEO (their son), MERCUTIO (friend to Benvolio and Romeo). Scene: A street in Verona.

LADY MONTAGUE O, where is Romeo? Saw you him today?

BENVOLIO Madam, an hour before the sun
Peer'd forth from the golden window of the east,
A troubled mind drove me to walk abroad;
Where, underneath a grove of sycamore
So early walking did I see your son:
Towards him I made, but he was wary of me
And stole into the cover of the wood.

MONTAGUE Many a morning hath he there been seen,
With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew.
Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs;
But all so soon as the all-cheering sun
Should in the furthest east begin to dawn
Away from the light steals home my heavy son,
And private in his chamber pens himself,
Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out
And makes himself an artificial night:
Black and portentous must this humour prove,
Unless good counsel may the cause remove.

BENVOLIO My noble uncle, do you know the cause?

MONTAGUE I neither know it nor can learn of him.

BENVOLIO Have you importuned him by every means?

MONTAGUE Both by myself and many other friends:
But he, his own affections' counsellor,
Is to himself so secret and so closed,
So far from probing and discovery!
Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow.
We would as willingly give cure as know.

Enter ROMEO.

BENVOLIO See where he comes: so please you, step aside;
I'll know his grievance, or be much denied.

MONTAGUE I would thou wert so happy by thy stay,
To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let's away.

Exit MONTAGUE and LADY MONTAGUE.

BENVOLIO Good-morrow, cousin.

ROMEO Is the day so young?

BENVOLIO But new struck nine.

ROMEO Ay me! sad hours seem long.
Was that my father that went hence so fast?

BENVOLIO It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?

ROMEO Not having that, which, having, makes them short.

BENVOLIO In love?

ROMEO Out--

BENVOLIO Of love?

ROMEO Out of her favour, where I am in love.

BENVOLIO Alas, that Love, so gentle in his view,
Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!

ROMEO Alas, that Love, whose view is muffled still,
Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?

BENVOLIO No, coz, I rather weep.

ROMEO Good heart, at what?

BENVOLIO At thy good heart's oppression.

ROMEO Why, such is love's transgression.
Griefs lie heavy in my breast.
Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
Farewell, my coz.

BENVOLIO Soft! I will go along;
An if you leave me so, you do me wrong.

ROMEO Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here;
This is not Romeo, he's some other where.

BENVOLIO Tell me in sadness, who is that you love.

ROMEO What, shall I groan and tell thee?

BENVOLIO Groan! why, no. But sadly tell me who.

ROMEO In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.

BENVOLIO I aim'd so near, when I supposed you loved.

ROMEO A right good marksman! And she's fair I love.
A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.

ROMEO Well, in that hit you miss: she'll not be hit
With Cupid's arrow. From Love's weak childish bow
She lives unharm'd. She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,
O, she is rich in beauty, only poor,
That when she dies with beauty dies her store.

BENVOLIO Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?

ROMEO She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste,
For beauty starved with her severity
Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,
To merit bliss by making me despair:
She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow
Do I live dead that live to tell it now.

BENVOLIO Be ruled by me, forget to think of her.

ROMEO O, teach me how I should forget to think.

BENVOLIO By giving liberty unto thine eyes;
Examine other beauties.

ROMEO He that is stricken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost:
Show me a mistress that is passing fair,
What doth her beauty serve, but as a note
Where I may read who pass'd that passing fair?
Farewell: thou canst not teach me to forget.

BENVOLIO Tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning,
One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish;
One desperate grief is cured by another's languish:
Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.

(They accidentally learn that there is to be a masked ball that night at the Capulets.)

BENVOLIO At this same ancient feast of Capulet's
Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lovest,
With all the admired beauties of Verona:
Go thither; and, with untainted eye,
Compare her face with some that I shall show,
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

ROMEO One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun
Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun!

BENVOLIO Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by,
Herself poised with herself in either eye:
But in that crystal scales let there be weigh'd
Your lady's love against some other maid
That I will show you shining at this fest,
And she shall scant show well that now shows best.

ROMEO I'll go along, no such sight to be shown,
But to rejoice in splendor of mine own.

(In the evening, they walk to the ball, joined by their friend Mercutio and other young men.)

ROMEO Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling;
Being but heavy, I will bear the light.

MERCUTIO Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.

ROMEO Not I, believe me: you have dancing shoes
With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead
So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.

MERCUTIO You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings,
And soar with them above a common bound.

ROMEO I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,
I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe:
Under love's heavy burden do I sink.

MERCUTIO And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
Too great oppression for a tender thing.

ROMEO Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

MERCUTIO If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.

ROMEO A torch for me: let those who are light of heart
Tickle the senseless floorboards with their heels,
I'll be a candle-holder, and look on.
My luck will get no better, I am done.

MERCUTIO If thou art dun [brown], we'll draw thee from the mire
Of this dung-colored love, wherein thou stick'st
Up to the ears. Come, our torches burn out, ho!

Part C: Discussion questions.

Orally, I give the group a series of questions, connecting the play with DBT theory, as follows:

1. At the beginning, Romeo’s family members discuss Romeo’s recent behavior. What emotion, among the basic ones identified by DBT, do they decide he is feeling?

2. What are the behavioral clues they use to come to this conclusion?

3. They wonder what the cause of his emotion is. How are they going to try to find out?

4. From what Romeo tells his cousin Benvolio, what would you say is the main external trigger for his current feeling? What is an internal trigger for the feeling?

5. How does Romeo describe his feeling in dialectical terms, that is, in terms of coexisting opposites? What does that imply about the nature of love?

6. How does Benvolio use the DBT principle of “opposite action” in trying to reduce the strength of Romeo’s feeling?

7. How does Romeo’s friend Mercutio use the principle of “opposite action”?

8. What is Romeo’s reaction to their advice? (This is an expression of his self-talk that adds to the negative feeling) What emotions are attached to his statements?

The group may not be able to get through all of these in 15 minutes. They can be discussed next time, too, if the group is still interested, preceded by re-reading parts of the scene. The group leader has to try sense the mood of the group--and be flexible if one has guessed wrong.