By Javinne J. McCoy
Warning! This post is Real T (truth) and may stir some ISH up.
This is not a twirling about the meadows post, but a truth serum post, with the added benefit of feeling better in the long-term, by getting a bit uncomfortable in the short-term and exploring the process of becoming Emotionally available by learning to fully experience one’s feelings, No-Holds-Bar.
This post is about asking ourselves the tough questions about the origins of our pain, unhealthy patterns, and unhealthy core beliefs.
Avoiding these truths, is a prime reason we remain stuck and block ourselves from becoming an emotionally available person.
Asking the tough questions is a step toward committing ourselves to the process of change.
Sometimes in order to feeling our feelings, we need to give ourselves permission to cry.
We need to tell ourselves “It’s okay to cry”.
If you want to become emotionally available, and want to start dealing with others who understand their own feelings, can empathized with yours, and who can reach out and make a healthy emotional connection with you, the buck starts with you becoming emotionally available to you.
Facing ourselves, our past, and our own contribution to how our own lives have unfolded as a result of the past, can be met with a lot of resistance from the one person who can heal it best-YOU.
When we chronically avoid, we succumb to bumbling through life as grown adults physically (we get older, gain more responsibilities, pursue the car, the condo, the Benjamins etc.), but behind the scenes, when the lights go out, we end up operating as defenseless, scared, and wounded children in our life, love and relationships.
We rarely take heed to acknowledge that there is a younger self that needs to heal and some tears that need to be shed.
The thing we avoid, our own feelings, and feeling them through are actually a gateway to our evolution in becoming emotionally available.
However, we often resist the short-term discomfort of feeling what we may perceive as “negative” feelings-the ones that don’t initially make us jump for joy and jump through the happy hoops of life.
In life we have many choice points where we can regress and remain stuck, or swing open the door to us becoming emotionally available functional adults, by dealing with our past.
Dealing with the past requires a slow peeling back of layers of feelings we have suppressed.
If we decide to save this work for a rainy day, life will usually let us slide for a while, but then those nagging life tests and lessons appear, usually in a more painful Imax Theater High definition uncut version.
We may delay doing the Healing work because we are afraid.
We get squeamish about feeling our real feelings.
We may prefer to numb our feelings by revisiting an ex for a second, third, forth, or umpteenth time, instead of letting go and healing our own pain.
We may resign ourselves to avoiding problems, pretending that they don’t exist.
However, if we want the True Self to emerge, to shed the False-self, and to stop dealing with other people who are duplicitous, shady, emotionally unavailable, Narcissists, Takers, and Users, we need to start asking the tough questions.
We need to get uncomfortable with going about business as usual.
This means allowing ourselves to face uncomfy things, have a good cry, (or many good cries) and feel our feelings fully without dialing up self-defeating and self-sabotaging behaviors.
We can readily cling to the self-defeating habits.
For example we may move at Gazelle speeds to date or have a relationship, too soon, with the same bunk core beliefs, expecting different results.
Or, perhaps it’s just cycling on through life with a new counterproductive feeling anesthetic like excessive sex, excessive food, excessive obsessing about why the EUP chump (Emotionally unavailable partner) refuses to love you back-pick your poison.
Mourning the loss of a relationship that we did not have to begin with, or what we feel was unfairly taken away from us, accepting the many disappointments and the people who have let us down, then getting a box of Kleenex out, shedding some tears for you, can be a gateway into becoming emotionally available.
However, I realize that this post will undoubtedly be met with lots of resistance and few readers, because very rarely do we as people want to explore emotions that are perceived to be “negative”.
However, I am here to tell you that there is wisdom in the house of mourning.
One of the things life and being a counselor has taught me is that folk would prefer to block out or numb anything unpleasant.
People would prefer to happy go lucky through life, Oh Happy Day It, avoid problems, and then secretly hope and pray that things will eventually work out.
Often they don’t because life just doesn’t work that way.
Life’s universal law dictates that whatever is avoided reappears down the line, in an amplified version.
You will know that this to be true if you’ve have ever found yourself revisiting the same issues and taking up relationships with similar types of people.
You will soon discover you are living life on repeat.
When I first created the LA Blog (inspired by years of experience in residing in EUPville-my own Loveantics), I did so with the intention of providing a resource for folk to understand how emotional unavailability develops and how to spot it.
Additionally, I had a burning desire to assist people in finding a way out dodgy and painful relationships.
I wanted to highlight a way out so people who have gotten caught out there can implement damage control, and save their souls, from toxic emotional unavailable relationships and people.
All too often, people find themselves neck deep in the murky waters of these lopsided, non-mutual, soul killing, self-esteem shattering, janky, Wannabe Relationship substitutes .
I am a firm believer in developing and operating in discernment-the ability to see the inner workings of things at a deeper level, and cut past the surface façade of people, life, and relationships.
The core of my writing on LA is a reflection of this, as is my personal life.
That said, whilst I believe it’s of value to develop keen discernment, and understand the whys and the how’s of EUPs and other shady varieties of problematic people, I also believe for (sanity and growth sake), there needs to be a cut-off point to all the diagnosing and prescribing that’s done to understand people’s foolery.
At least for our peace of mind, some of the sh#T we are trying to understand about folk who play mind games, avoid problems, and run three ring circles around us, can be simply written off as jackassedness from problematic people, who are not dealing with their problems.
Yes, this makes them emotionally unavailable, but when are we going to shift the focus from them, to us, so we can deal, feel, heal, and maybe even cry a few tears (or more), in order to break through our own resistance to acknowledging our feelings and pain?
Isn’t it time we stop running from and numbing our real feelings and work on becoming emotionally available?
What we fail to realize is that a lot of our feelings are old feelings that are left unresolved from the past-our childhood, or way back, when some traumatic event (or events) happened that we buried.
We got on with the business of adulthood by working long hours, getting degrees of higher education, getting validated by social status (or seeking validation through attaining it) etc., but somehow failed to turn back to our younger self, and mourn the loss of what we didn’t have, and have a good cry about it.
We each have a younger self- an Inner C (Child).
However instead of acknowledging our younger self, making a conscious choice to nurture him/her, we betray our younger self by resurrecting the old wounds and hurts experienced in childhood.
We often due this by trying to right the wrongs of the past.
We end up choosing relationships and life situations that represent those wounds. Then we try to make up for lost time by vying for acceptance and approval from the wrong people in the present . This never ends well.
We do this by inserting our Inner C into our adult relationships with unhealthy, unavailable, problematic, and downright toxic folk, who can’t love us back and cause us pain.
Ironically, the pain they cause via their shady behavior is a signal that something in us needs to be healed.
That something that needs a healing is our Inner C (this doesn’t make you responsible for someone’s effed up behavior. So, chill. Don’t go there with the blame game bit)
However, what happens is that we ignore our younger self because it is tied to our past, which most people would prefer to duck, dodge, and avoid.
As soon as a hint of reality hits us we check out and scram for cover.
It’s okay to acknowledge all parts of YOU.
In fact, it is a vital piece to the healing puzzle.
If you want change and healing it starts with understanding the past, your younger self, and knowing when to put the pain whitewash down, deciding to stop avoiding, letting the pain and uncomfy feelings come through.
It’s okay to cry.
It’s okay to feel your feelings fully.
Remember that your tears are the healing cycles’ way of opening the gateway to becoming emotionally available to you.
If you say you want emotional availability in your life and relationships, it starts with you.
It’s time to Face-time yourself.
If you are wondering how to start healing your younger self, and how to stop giving them the keys to drive your life, one way to begin the healing work is called Inner C (Child) work.
It’s nitty gritty but it’s a powerful step to free ya’ self.
Stay tuned for the spinoff post of this which will cover how to heal childhood wounds- a paramount step into becoming an emotionally available person.
Thoughts? Comments? Stories? Do you have a topic or a question on emotionally unavailable relationships that you would like addressed on the L.A. Blog? Please feel free to or comment directly on a post that has inspired and empowered you or email: [email protected]
The post It’s Okay to Cry and Feel The Feeling. Your Tears Are A Gateway Into Becoming Emotionally Available appeared first on Love Antics- The Relationship Blog.
