The Direct Road to Emotional Health

Emotional health is a tricky subject. There are millions of “experts” that purport to know “the truth.” Maybe many of them are right, but most of them are way off the mark. To understand emotional health, you must understand human development.

We, as the humans we are, will create a template for our lives. We will draw in all of our experiences, modeling, and whatever lessons we learned when we were young. These lessons will include our concepts of masculinity, addiction, disconnection, language, level of happiness, comfort with anxiety and drama, etc. This template is what is known, expected, and familiar.

In most cases, having a template is helpful. It will subconsciously guide us into a reasonably good life. However, we will also absorb negative lessons that can keep us stuck, sabotaging, or out of the relationships (or success) we truly desire. It is these lessons that must be addressed, and need to be restructured.

Without getting into the weeds, it’s fairly common sense that our major relationships will be the majority of our template building materials.

Father - How we feel about men, masculinity, authority, intimacy with males, etc.

Mother - How we feel about women, femininity, roles in the household, intimacy with females, etc.

Siblings - How we feel about friends, community, expectations for intimacy and connection, etc.

And so on. We could break down all of our early childhood influences, but you get the general idea. What you may or may not know, is that these people (and circumstances) are modeling for you what is normal, healthy, expected, and what will typically recreate in your life.

We must rewrite the negative lessons in order to get free from them. For example, if your family always struggled around money, it is likely you will have strong negative feelings about money as well. You might be anxious about money and avoid it, or feel insecure about money so you’ll try to earn and horde it. Neither of these options are a healthy relationship with money.

Next, you’ll want to consider what your primary role models (likely parents) taught you about their sex and their health levels. For example, I’ve had numerous clients who “just happen” to work for mean, controlling, and manipulative women. Inevitably, they find themselves in positions with these types of bosses. When I asked about their moms they predictably say, “well, she was mean, controlling and manipulative.”

In other words, they were recreating a familiar template. They were doing this because that’s what they expect, but also because they were reenacting their trauma in an attempt to heal it. Unfortunately, this is not the way to heal our trauma. Recreation of trauma typically just exacerbates and reinforces it (in this case, we’ll believe all women are manipulative!!).

At a 30,000 foot level, there are three major considerations when it comes to emotional health stemming from our childhoods.

1. What is our template? What do we anticipate and how has it been recreated in our lives (already discussed).

2. What have we made part of our identity which is actually an internalization of our experiences?

3. And lastly, what is the template we want to have in place in our lives?

The second consideration has many levels. But as a primer, you can start to consider how you feel about yourself. Your beliefs often stem from your experiences with your family of origin.

As an example, if a dad is not present (physically or emotionally) in the home, it communicates that the children are not a priority. The child, reasonably, concludes that they are not valuable. When the child grows up, they will carry these feelings of valuelessness into whatever situation or relationship they find themselves. This concept will be discussed more fully in upcoming blog posts.

The third consideration is the positive development (or reconstruction) phase of emotional health. It isn’t enough to recognize all of the malformed areas in our identities. If we do, we’ll become negative, disillusioned, or consumed with our issues.

Along with confronting our issues, we must be building (or uncovering) our authentic identities. Our authentic identities are the beautiful, wonderful, and powerful parts of ourselves. Basically, we must remove the areas that are hindering our lives, and replace them with concepts that will assist them.

With all of these considerations in mind, where do we begin?

Of course, you could spend the next ten years on your therapist’s couch discussing the answer to that question. But we can give you a major head start. Begin with answering these questions:

1. What were the strengths in my family growing up?

2. What were the weaknesses in my family (especially my mom and dad)?

3. What did their weaknesses communicate to me ABOUT me? How could I have interpreted those experiences?

4. How can I disconnect from those negative lessons so I don’t have to try to resolve issues that aren’t mine (basically leave them with mom, dad, etc.)?

That’s it. Don’t overcomplicate it. Sometimes we just need to recognize where we learned a lesson to understand that it isn’t a lesson we need to continue owning. Maybe dad was disconnected. It doesn’t mean I’m worthless. Maybe mom was narcissistic or controlling. It doesn’t mean all women are that way. Maybe my parents struggled with money. That doesn’t mean I have to struggle with money.

Recognizing where we learned negative patterns (subconscious lessons) is half the battle to being free of them.

Stay tuned for more information on how to identify and replace our subconscious barriers.