Emotional Development
I have been working on my own Personal Development since 2008 and I have been going to counselling and therapy since 2016. Of all the themes I have looked at, studied, researched and worked on myself, emotional development has been the most important and the theme that has brought about a huge transformation and peace in my daily life experience.
For most people born pre 2008 and back along for generations upon generations, emotional development wouldn’t really have been a consideration. It just was not on our radars whatsoever, even though emotions make up a large and important part of our system as a human being. So what changed? In my opinion, 2008 tipped the scales of emotional development (even though we still wouldn’t recognise it as such for many more years). 2008 was the year of “The Recession”. There was a huge increase in suicides, male suicides in particular (young and old) and it forced people to look at why this was happening and why people felt that ending their lives was their only option as opposed to turning to others for support.
I don’t need to go into the finer details of the recession and the immeasurable pain, powerlessness and loss it caused. CMAT recently released a song “Euro-Country” which hauntingly portrays that devastating time – “All the big boys, All the Berties, All the envelopes, yeah they hurt me, I was 12 when the da’s started killing themselves all around me”.
That was when I first started hearing conversations about mental health. “Was their mental health so bad? We didn’t know. What could we have done?” All questions and statements which began the development of discussion around mental health and what might be needed to care for it. Counselling and therapy to this day, holds not so much the level of shame it would have held back then (especially in Ireland) but there is still a lingering stigma, like talking about your feelings equals weakness of some kind. Thankfully, slowly but surely and with each new emerging generation, the stigma is leaving our psyche – with each individual who says “Fuck the stigma, I want change and I need support.” It’s no weakness to face the truth or face your true feelings. Yes it makes us feel vulnerable but the amount of energy denial takes from us is given back in spades when we surrender to the truth!
I don’t call it mental health anymore because the truth needs to be honoured. It’s emotional health. Most of what we could call “Mental Health Issues” are actually deeply rooted in unmet emotional needs and our emotional health. If we adequately cared for our emotional health, the health and wellbeing of our minds would be hugely improved.
Emotional maturity is something that we are now redefining. When I was growing up, the literal definition of “Being a mature child” (Oh the irony!) was suppressing my emotions – the worth of children was so often measured by how well you could hold in and push down your true authentic feelings (therefore suppressing your true authentic Self). No shame or blame on the people that projected that need onto the children around them, this largely came from the glorified statement “Children should be seen and not heard”. And that’s what has led to such an epidemic of addiction, trauma and emotional health issues! We were grand to have around but god forbid you would actually seek to have your needs met! Totally unacceptable! Thankfully this is changing.
Things went the opposite way post 2008 though which didn’t serve very well either but it was a necessary part of the process of change. 2 metaphors for you – a pendulum swing or an earthquake. A pendulum will swing from opposite side to opposite side until it eventually balances itself out. An earthquake happens when 2 tectonic plates rub up against eachother and create a build up of friction. Eventually so much friction and pressure is built up that the plates “slip” past each other with brutal force that creates shockwaves of a very high magnitude – it takes time for those shockwaves to die down. So 2008 – the pendulum began to swing and the emotional health “earthquake” happened and we have ever since been witnessing the balancing out and the greater emotional awareness that resulted.
Many post 2008 parents could see the harm that the authoritarian approach of ignoring emotions was doing but in the absence of the emotional development skills that would have offered a more beneficial strategy, many parents became even more terrified of emotions so much so that they treated their children with kid gloves and did everything for them, for fear of upsetting them or bringing about a big emotional reaction. Boundaries were dropped entirely and tasks that children could very easily do were taken out of their hands, due to fear of overwhelming them. It was named the “snow plough parenting” approach.
Even though it may not seem like it at times given how the world looks right now, we are finally learning the balance of facing our fear of emotions, acknowledging and allowing them, meeting the needs that they signal, setting adequate boundaries and growing our capacity for vulnerability, healthy expression and compassion.
Unfortunately, many in the older generations are finding this a real challenge because they were the ones that were “seen and not heard”, they weren’t really seen either though and this has led to a huge struggle when it comes to emotional development and I genuinely have huge compassion for anyone that is in that struggle. Working on emotional development has allowed me to see beyond the emotionally immature behaviour and see the internal pain or the lacking skills behind it, while also acknowledging the damage that can be done through behaviourally projecting that pain onto others.
We are all learning how to move beyond projection. Projection is the first way we show emotion in an attempt to get our basic needs met. When a baby is born, they are totally dependent on their parents or caregivers to meet their needs. How do we know a baby has a need of some kind? They tell us through crying and expressing emotion. They project that emotion onto the parent or caregiver and it is nature’s design that it be uncomfortable or stressful to said parent or caregiver in order to ensure that it motivates them enough to take action and meet the needs of the child. Without the appropriate emotional development skills that many generations of us missed out on, the challenge has been to move beyond projection to healthy expression and regulation of those emotions.
And herein lies the responsibility of each individual that wants to see a real change in the world:
- take charge of your emotional development
- get curious about who or what taught you to fear and deny your emotions
- acknowledge that you have suppressed a huge amount of your authentic feelings and set about releasing them in a way that serves you and others for the better
- give yourself permission to start sitting with your feelings
- make time and space for your emotions and get curious about what needs lie beneath them
- learn how to listen better to yourself and others
- get curious about your boundaries and values
- get curious about who supports you emotionally and who allows you to share and be vulnerable without criticism or judgement
Start there and if you would like further support please don’t hesitate to get in touch.