emotional

Stepping Out of Harm’s Way

Health, Psychology

There may be certain people in your life that you need to let go of. Your love and relationship with them doesn’t counteract the way they treat you. Some people don’t deserve to be in your life, even how much you want them to be. Each time they betray your trust and mistreat you, you find nostalgic memories, unable to understand your own emotion. A basic human need is connection. Letting go of that connection is a painful process, particularly when that connection is with parent. You find yourself missing them, wishing they aren’t like what everyone said, and most of all wanting to believe that they wouldn’t hurt you.

There is a different kind of hurt that can only come from a toxic parent – someone who is meant to love you. Kind of like being broken from the inside out.

How to Heal from a Toxic Parent by Karen Young

The abuse that you had as a child leads into your adult life because you still crave that affection, attention, and affirmation that you were denied in your childhood. You have issues with your self-worth and confidence. You grow up not knowing your value since you always thought of yourself as lazy, selfish, and not good enough. Yet as you age, you forget and forgive the person who told you this in the first place. You understand that people are human, and more than anything, you wish to create the relationship you never had.

How many times can you keep forgiving someone whose hurt you? When you sit down to think about it, the person whose hurt you the most has never said sorry. You let it go for the sake of love, and occasionally, they showed the side of them that gave you hope. You held onto those seldom, carefree moments, using them as an excuse for their bad behavior toward you.

We are more strongly motivated by intermittent reinforcement — having what we desire happen some of the time — than we are by getting what we want all of the time, or even never getting it.

Healing From a Toxic Childhood? The Two Words You Need Most by Peg Streep

Maybe, the person you love that you need to let go is broken themselves. Maybe, they never knew how to love and have since treated you as a reflection of how they were treated. You feel empathy for them, but you can’t fix them. It’s not your job to. It’s not your fault they couldn’t be the person you wanted. No matter how much love and kindness you give to them, they’re never able to return it because they don’t love themselves. You wanted to see everything good you could in them, but there comes a point when you must face reality.

It’s okay to grieve.

Don’t try to be strong and hold it in. It hurts to lose someone, even by choice. It’s okay to miss them and want everything to go back to the way things were—familiarity is a comforting state. You’re allowed to worry about them and pray for them. But it’s time to think about yourself. You cannot control other people’s actions, despite wanting to. It’s time to start concerning yourself with your future, your happiness, and overall well-being.

In Understanding You

Health, Philosophy, Psychology, Social

Empathy is was makes you human. The ability to process other’s emotion and understand the source of their behavior is what advances society. When people are mean, domineering, and bullies, you search for a reason why, trying to figure out the reasoning behind being treated that way. Usually, it’s clear: those who are unhappy are mean. Those who are domineering are ashamed of who they are. Those who are insecure are bullies. Yet for some reason, when these traits are in the people you love, you find yourself defending them.

People are complex and emotional creatures. The battle for balance between thinking and feeling is dangerous to tread upon. Society has taught us that making decisions based on emotion verses logic is wrong, and in many instances, this is true, particularly when acting upon negativity. Working when stressed leads to making mistakes. Talking when angry comes out the wrong way. There are reactions you regret you did because you were trapped in a negative state of mind. Still, there are moments when your emotions are right because you decided based on a “gut feeling” rather than what you believed to be the most rational.  

Empathizing with others helps you learn to regulate your own emotions. Emotional regulation is important in that it allows you to manage what you are feeling, even in times of great stress, without becoming overwhelmed.

Importance and Benefits of Empathy By Kendra Cherry

The difference in these two decisions making processes in people is categorized in the following: Thinkers and Feelers. As in the name, thinkers value logic whereas feelers are ruled by emotion. Neither one is better than the other and they do in fact overlap. For instance, thinkers have deep emotions they aren’t particularly expressive about, and feelers think rationally too, using their understanding to base new opinions.

Given this information, half of the people you know and love have a completely different way of looking at things than you do. Often, these differences can lead to misunderstandings based on individual perception of how one should act. For instance, you may be a man who fully embraces his emotions and expresses them freely as they come, or you may be a girl who hides her true feeling because she’s unable to convey herself in coherent way. Many people you’ll experience in your life won’t understand the way you process emotions. Some might say you’re difficult to read, others might think you’re too dramatic.

When your mind is so busy with negative thoughts about you, then you don’t have the space to really be present for another person. Often people think they are empathetic but when you consider what are you thinking about when you are listening to the person, you may find that you are busy thinking about you.

The Importance of Empathy By Julie Fuimano

Understanding the people around you may in turn help you understand yourself. You may not know the root of every action, the cause behind every word, but you may come to realize the image you projected onto those you know aren’t who they fully are. This is particularly true with those who have destructive tendencies and toxic traits. Some people are mean because they have had a tough upbringing that haunts them for the rest of their lives. Others aren’t even consciously registering that their behavior is selfish. This doesn’t validate their behavior, but can help you accept that it isn’t your fault.

You get caught up in the image you hold in our mind, that you forget to look at the truth. You have flaws, broken bits, and issues you don’t want anyone to know about it. Next time, when someone does something that upsets you, take a step back and contemplate why they did what they did, what did you do to cause the situation to play out the way it did. Understanding will help you forgive, and forgiveness is what helps you move on.

The Relationship’s Emotional Rock

Social

Love relies on compromise and nurture. Through the lifetime of any relationship, there’s give and take between the parties involved romantically. Emotions are a touchy subject, particularly between two people. One person may feel like they’re putting in all the effort, supporting their partner emotionally. The other may feel like the connection is lost all together.

Over time, two people can disconnect because they feel the love and attachment fades within a marriage or relationship. We are human. We feel emotion. Still, so many of us ignore that part of ourselves, and in turn, disregard it in others. Romance is more than lust and attraction, it’s support and intimacy, emotionally and physically. Here are a few tips to emotional stability within relationships:

The important thing is that you gently communicate your feelings, so you both know where you stand and so you can figure out how best to help one another deal with the situation.

Emotionally Supporting Your Partner by Barton Goldsmith Ph.D.
  1. Touch Each Other: People need human touch, and in certain circumstances, a loving embrace works better to communicate than words. When your partner is upset and frustrated, even touching their hand or arm could put them at ease.
  2. Communicate and Listen: Both men and women want to be heard. We all want to express ourselves and have our feelings validated. It’s hard to remember, as a partner, that we don’t have to give our opinion in every situation, rather we should provide our support in whatever our loved ones are going through.
  3. Deal with Stress Together: Stress is a catalyst for negative emotions. When one thing goes wrong, so does everything else, as it would seem. This takes a toll on everyone involved and is completely unavoidable. The best way to handle it is together, with open lines of communication and compassion.
  4. Take Care of Yourself: In a relationship, both parties have to work on fixing each other’s issues together. Yet, sometimes we get so involved with helping those around us, we forget to take care of our needs. Love and partnership helps in making yourself a better person, but self-care is still necessary for long term mental health.
  5. Emotions are Handled Differently: Depending on how a person was raised and their genetic make-up, humans all express themselves in their own ways. As you spend more time with someone, you’ll notice what their ticks are, based on what they’re feeling. Through observation before action, a person can infer a situation by a person’s body language.

Men release less Oxycontin than women when they are stressed, meaning they have a stronger reaction from both cortisol and epinephrine. [Women nurture] those around them in an effort to both protect themselves and their young. Men [are] more likely to have the “fight or flight” response when it comes to stress – either repressing their emotions and trying to escape the situation, or fighting back.

HOW TO HANDLE YOUR PARTNER’S STRESS Posted by: Team Tony

We are flawed, imperfect beings with irrational emotions, and intellectual minds. The emotional rock in a relationship is handed back and forth. Sometimes, you’ll be the one that needs a shoulder to lean on. Other times, you’ll be the shoulder that is leaned upon. Beyond physical pleasure, the joy and beauty in being with another person is having someone to go through it all, together.