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
Why I love being a therapist.
By: Aaron Mitchum
I can’t shake it. I just think I’m built to be an artist. The arts that I’ve chosen to work in are music and counseling/coaching (I’m bracketing for just a moment that there’s a whole important science side to counseling/coaching and a whole important math side to music).
In music I am passionate about song writing. Keith Richards has said, or was it Leonard Cohen?, I can’t remember, one of them said that writing a song was like putting your ear up to the hotel wall and listening to a radio that’s playing in the next room…you just kind of have to tune in and listen really hard. For me, the feeling of tuning into a song, finding words and melody that match and elucidate something from life that maybe had only been felt up until then is addicting.
In counseling/coaching it’s similar. We work hard together to find a way to harvest the sub feelings of life into words, thoughts, movements and expressions so that people can change in ways that help them feel better and liver fuller. It is truly something sacred. I absolutely love helping people. To get to be on the journey with someone as they: learn about themselves, believe in themselves, change old patterns and beliefs that hold them back, heal from wounds, find forgiveness and hope, etc. is a sacred thing and a gift.
Both song writing and therapy/training are chances to sit with the mysteries of life and bring them into a form that can be shared and thought and be changed by. I can’t think of many things more meaningful for someone like me.