A DIFFERENT KIND OF EMOTIONAL AFFAIR

By: Aaron Mitchum

Having split off emotions and needs is like having an affair. Your vulnerable emotions and their needs are kept out of your regular life. You go on with your day, your friends, spouse, kids, job, etc. without your vulnerable emotions and needs being involved. In fact, the people close to you don’t even know about your vulnerable feelings. Those feeling are kept in exile, in hiding. They are not to be acknowledged. That said, you do visit your feelings...in secret. Just like an affair you meet them at the "hotel" for a rendezvous. The "hotel" in this situation are habits like: pornography, alcohol, drugs, eating, intensities like extreme sports or exciting adventures, shopping, watching sports, etc. In those spaces you can feel the permission to have emotions you can’t usually. These places help you feel things like: relaxed, loved, seen, alive, wanted, excited, confident, sexual, soothed, etc.

Side Bar: You might notice that a lot of those things can become addicting. In psychology addiction is often understood as an attachment disorder. Meaning, we have come to use these things to meet attachment type of needs (i.e. seen, soothed, safe, secure, etc.) instead of seeking those things through relationships (i.e. opening up to those we’re close with or seeking a hug, etc.) or self help (e.g. mindfulness meditation, yoga, massage, etc.). We establish these patterns out of stressful times (usually when we are young) in which don’t have the help we need. Eventually these things become patterns and happen automatically. In other words, without much thought or awareness we grab that next beer not realizing that we are doing that because we are hungry to feel loved in that moment.

Back to our metaphor…we may meet our feelings in the hotel and get a fix but soon it’s back to our regular lives (perhaps with some guilt in the background for behaving in a way, once again, we don’t really want to). And as long as those emotions don’t show up at our door where our friends and family live too (cause that’ll be shocking and painfully messy we fear) we continue to maintain our split lives: a main self that is non vulnerable and doesn’t trouble others with our messy needs (sure we can’t quite connect deeply with others but we compensate with just doing more) and our secret selves that meet with our “messy” emotions and needs on the side.

#emotions #emotionalintelligence #falseself #integrated #wholeself#coaching #selfhelp #vulnerability