McGraw told her to talk to Ethan about his feelings, not what happened to him in the bunker.

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When I first came home, there were months of isolation where I was too proud and too ashamed to talk about my feelings -- a downward spiral that almost ended in suicide.

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You want to talk about hard feelings?

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But a mother who does something comparable like teaching her son to knit or even encouraging him to talk more openly about his feelings is looked at with contempt.

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If someone is yelling at the supermarket, this is another chance to talk to a child about other people's feelings, she said.

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No character emerges in fuller voice, for all his silence, than the novel's hero, Christopher Tietjens (Benedict Cumberbatch), son of a Yorkshire country gentleman, who clings stubbornly to old values as Tietjens saw the world, you didn't talk about your feelings or, for that matter, think about them.

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