The Red Cloak

My dad said you should always wear a red cloak to stop people seeing the blood.

I really bought into this idea of his of wearing a red cloak and thereby not allowing people to see blood from emotional wounds. These days I’m not so sure if it’s a good idea. In social situations, in this modern world, the red cloak was meant to stop people taking advantage, to protect us from predators and users. No harm in that. But do we overdo it?

Roman soldiers would wear red cloaks when they marched into battle, believing it would protect them from harm. If the enemy didn’t see the stain of blood on the red cloak, they couldn’t see that you were injured and that may give them the advantage in a battle situation.

Yet the colour red isn’t just about being wounded. It’s also the colour of power and leadership and connected with wealth and luxury.

When Little Red Riding hood wore a red cloak, it was all about innocence, purity, danger and passion.

In Christianity, the red cloak represents the Blood of Christ and the sacrifice He made on the cross.

In terms of the red cloak as self defence, lately I’m seeing a tendency in some people to always be smiling or laughing and acting like nothing can hurt them. Not only does that deplete their mental and physical and emotional energy to breaking point, it makes other people think they are absolutely fine and that they don’t need help from anyone. Some people think they aren’t hurting and can take the knocks and they might even feel free to deal them out. After all, smilers can take it right? After all, the chances are you’re gonna come up smiling, like you always do.

Now that I’m seeing it in others, I can see it in me. When I was young one of my nicknames was ‘Smiler’ but now I’m thinking far from it being an expression of a happy soul, it may have been a trauma response, or as I like to say ‘The Red Cloak Response’, a desperate need not to show the blood for fear of further attacks. After all, I’m pretty sure the wounded gazelle in the savannah does not want the lion to know they are wounded and that makes perfect survival sense to me.

We say about people when they unravel, when they are undone, or are having difficulties that it is a ‘cry for help’, but at the same time, they may also be trying to hide. There is definately some merit in hiding at certain times but when you hide too well and too much, people think you’re okay and that you don’t need help. They may even think you’re thick skinned at best, inauthentic, false or fake at worst. I’ve seen how ‘appearing strong’, i.e laughing things off when you want to cry and smiling when you’re far from it, can backfire. When I was younger, someone once said to me, ‘Everything’s a joke to you isn’t it?’ but it couldn’t have been further from the truth. It was the red cloak speaking. So while we don’t want to appear too vulnerable for very many reasons, some show of vulnerability, at the right time, in the right place, with people you can trust, is actually essential for survival. But this is the crux of the matter isn’t it? How do we know who to trust? It’s not always cut and dried and we don’t want to trust too quickly.

Some of us grew up in environments where we walked on eggshells and it was essential to constipate our feelings in order to placate one or both parents or other family members, or just someone in authority, like a teacher. It could even have been another child who was bullying us. It wasn’t cost effective to show our feelings at the time. So, as a feint, appearing happy or jolly or like we don’t care was preferable to being kicked while we were down.

Far from the red cloak being a defence, it can be a liabilty, if it’s not tempered with assertiveness. Assertiveness is the real red cloak. The red cloak on its own is not enough. It’s all very well to act like we’re invincible, laughing off the insults of others, smiling all the time and generally acting like nothing is wrong but when we don’t show our disapproval at the way we’re being treated, nothing will change, red cloak or not. If we don’t make that change, by either letting someone know they are overstepping boundaries and/or taking advantage or using and manipulating us in some way, the red cloak is really just a costume change. It means nothing. So, there has to come a time when you say I’m not putting up with this or that or a certain unfair situation.

Wear the red cloak by all means, the red cloak has some purpose but it has to be accompanied by expressing yourself when you are feeling used or abused, or simply when you need help, when a situation isn’t right, whether that’s at work, or a friend is taking advantage, or maybe there’s an imbalance in a relationship that needs more balance. Sometimes, just voting with our feet will work, that’s a very powerful message.

So, we have to speak up, whether that’s with our body language, or our tongues or with our silence, or walking away. The red cloak is not going to protect us from anything, although it might may us feel good temporarily. It’s time to let our feelings show and not hide them. Our feelings, rather than being detrimental, give us validity. When we tell people what we’re thinking, or at least show what we’re feeling on some level, people then have to take notice. They then can’t say ‘Well, I didn’t know you felt that way. You never told me,’ or they at least have to acknowledge it on some level. When we hide or wear a red cloak, they may feel they can legitimately turn a blind eye. We always thought red cloak helped but it never has. Time to take responsibilty and give ourselves permission to show our feelings.