We have grown up in a society that harrows the idea of experiencing feelings and talking about the emotional experience. Because of this we developed negative or harmful mechanisms to deal with difficult shit on our own. Biologically, emotional connection drastically effects our brain chemistry and our outlook, feeling safe with someone where being vulnerable is encouraged and supported. Throughout history we have lived together in communities, we had a better chance of survival if we had the trust and support of others. In this day and age we are faced with such a disconnect from that primal need, and for so many of us growing up our emotional experience or needs were only spoken of in negative light, met with disdain and disapproval.
Building connection is important, for our relationships and for our mental health. If we aren’t raised in an environment that is emotionally secure it can have a detrimental effect on our growth and development. Dysfunctionally approaching adulthood from such an emotional disconnect, a fear of our negative emotions and relational vulnerability. Although it isn’t our fault, we may have missed out on the opportunity to develop emotionally, now its our responsibility to change that for ourselves.
Building our emotional intelligence to create meaningful connections can be an interesting journey and I say this from personal experience. Self reflection can be very confronting, sometimes our emotional disconnect causes us to be impulsive and reckless, not having learnt how to process our emotions leads to them bleeding into our lives and effecting our loved ones in ways that can haunt us. Facing the guilt surrounding our outlandish behaviours is quite a feat but the thing is with feelings, they have to be felt, the more we try to avoid or bury them, the more they arise in harmful ways.
Some things that have really helped me on my journey of self discovery:
1. Negative emotions are actually good, they provide us with an opportunity to reflect on a situation, learn from it and take the pieces from the experience that hold value in our growth as a person. Being able to self reflect and process how we feel about certain things gives us an almost direct guide to the values we hold. We don’t have to be afraid of feelings that can be painful because when we process them we can move on in a productive way.
2. Feeling words matter, there is so much miscommunication because we haven’t the verbal tools to describe what is going on for us emotionally. It is extremely valuable to be able to explain accurately how something is effecting you and being able to objectively label each emotion in regard to a situation. once you have the right language to describe your feelings its a lot easier to identify the needs that aren’t being met in association with that feeling. for example embarrassment might come out as what looks like anger which gets met with distance from another person, If you can identify that you are embarrassed you can communicate in a way that allows loved ones to provide right kind of support for your needs to be met.
3. Anger is usually misrepresented pain, when we look beneath that, curiously probing for the underlying emotion, we can discover that anger is not what we are even experiencing. Because some of us aren’t provided the tools to navigate complex emotions anger is the go to for a lot of them. Yelling, screaming, throwing things or hitting are not acceptable ways to process feelings. It’s important for our family, friends and our own well being that we make the effort to understand our underlying emotions and focus on getting those needs met. Many of us use unhealthy defence mechanisms so its important to identify those and work to create healthier ways to cope with complex feelings.
4. Some criticism is helpful and kind. We often jump to the conclusion or falsely identify things as criticism, especially if we have been on the defence for a long time. Reactionary to things perceived as threat to our battered self esteem. When someone is informing us that we have crossed their boundaries or hurt their feelings it’s important to look at this information as a learning opportunity rather than a threat. Its okay to make mistakes and be wrong, that’s how we learn, people really appreciate when we respect their boundaries and apologise when we miss the mark. When people confront us about upsetting them it gives us the opportunity to treat them how they want to be treated and respect their human experience. An opportunity for vulnerability and relationship building.
5. Its okay to fail or make mistakes. I once got a fortune cookie that read “failure is the mother of success” which I think is important to remember. We must walk before we can run so during our process of going from novice to having adequate abilities on anything we must fail and make mistakes to learn and progress. Somewhere along the line we might have been punished for a mistake or failure rather than given the opportunity to learn and in a young mind that converts to “failure/mistakes = bad”. If we keep this belief we will stunt our growth and live fearing the stepping stones of little failures and mistakes that lead us to success.
6. Being human is messy and that is okay. None of us are perfect, we are stunning imperfection and goals to be perfect will be serially unmet. We all have flaws and unfavourable characteristics, rather than reprimanding ourselves for this it’s important that we accept ourselves unconditionally. It is more than okay to be a bit of a mess sometimes, love yourself anyway, you deserve nothing less. We must face the parts of ourselves that we don’t like to ever begin the process of changing that. If we choose to ignore them we run the risk of developing denial surrounding anything we perceive as bad about ourselves. Doing this can lead to narcissistic defence mechanisms that drastically prevent healing and growth and can damage relationships. It’s okay to be shit sometimes, it’s not okay to deny it.
7. Expectations/ assumptions ruin everything. expecting people to be a certain way without directly affirming that’s what you would like from them is fruitless. It is up to us to communicate our boundaries and how we want to be treated, some people will respect that and some people won’t, this is a pretty good indicator of who we want to keep in our lives. In saying this people will rarely meet your expectations and you will spend a lot of time sorely disappointed so its best to expect nothing. This way you are pleasantly surprised when people are behaving in ways that are positive and when they are negative or hurtful we are less disappointed. Similarly assuming you know what someone wants, feels or thinks is also fruitless. We can make an educated guess but its impossible to know this unless it is communicated to us directly from the person. Assuming to know is harmful, resent building and breaks down relationships through lack of connection.
I’ll stop at lucky 7 before this gets too long. Please take care, love and kindness and batter yourself with it.
If you ever need a listening ear there is a website I love called 7 cups where trained active listeners who volunteer are available for an anonymous, free online chat 24/7. Its always okay to reach out for help therapy is one of the best tools available to us and I seriously recommend it for anyone.
Peace, love and kindness an all that.
Big hugs,
-Kj
Well Beings 