Theory of emotional relativity. Practical guide to the development of awareness and emotional intelligence

Unfortunately, most people do not have a focus on emotions, people know one thing for sure – there are negative emotions that you don’t want to experience, but there are pleasant emotions, but they need to be earned and not to be shown to anyone, as they are not decent and too personal.

Actually real emotions are sincere; this is information that exposes us to real ones. Not many people in the modern world are ready to take off their masks and face themselves true, and to show others – just beyond the line. But there is no other way to happiness, if you do not want to be happy, do not read on this book.

Life Cycle of Emotions:

•  Sensation
•  Awareness
•  Mobilization
•  Action
•  Final contact
•  Satisfaction
•  Withdrawal

Life cycle of emotions is described in Gestalt approach.

At first, an emotion is born somewhere deep in the subconscious, we still do not know, but it already exists. Then it rises to the level of our inner sensations, at some point it is not yet visible from the outside, but already at the level of sensations it let itself know. The next stage of the life cycle of emotions (mobilization) begins when the emotion expression covers the whole body, when each of its cells responds to the call. At this moment we are processing an emotion, we allow it to express out-of-body. This is very important, it is healing the body. Emotions that we do not process hide inside our body. As our emotions are not only information, but also a large amount of energy, which has its own characteristic and direction, this energy gets stuck inside our body and begins to destroy it. The next stage in the life cycle of an emotion is action. What does it mean to understand an emotion? Firstly, it should be noted what it is and give it a name. Only then we can say that we have realized the emotion. The process of action does not end there, it is very important to decipher the information that the emotion carries.

Why has it appeared now?
What does it mean?
What important things are happening with me now?

The energy that is contained in any emotion is designed to meet our current psychological needs, so it is very important to ask yourself important questions and direct your activities to an acceptable and ecological way to get what you want.

And then the next stage begins – the satisfaction stage, in which we transform the energy of emotion into our real actions. Thus, the transition to the final stage – the withdrawal of an emotion is smoothly carried out. We can say that an emotion leaves our body, giving an empty space for other emotions.

Here is such a natural life cycle – birth (sensation), adulthood (awareness), mobilization, action, transformation (final contact), satisfaction, withdrawal. This cycle is suitable not only for emotions, but also for any life processes. It is important to understand how necessary it is to process emotions, otherwise severe conditions and illnesses will not keep you waiting.

For various reasons, people express emotions differently. In order to allow emotions to be shown, you need some inner courage, an inner willingness to see your needs and stop considering them as weaknesses. The ability to admit sincerely your needs is the position of a strong person.

But instead, we often protect against our emotions, hide them under different masks guiding by various limiting beliefs.

4 Types of Expressing Emotions

1. Switching off. I feel, I notice what I feel, but I decide not to express this feeling as the time and place are nor suitable. And in general, emotions are bad, so I do not express them outside.

2. Ignoring. I feel, but I don’t even know how I feel. I do not recognize and block any emotion. Consciousness blocks information about the emotional state. Such people to the question “What do you feel?” always answer that everything is OK.

3. Processing. The most resource and ecological way to express emotions. We touch each stage of life cycle of emotions.

4. Reacting. The most usual way to express emotions. People around us use it very often. At the moment when the emotion was born, you wisely thought that this was not the time and place for its expression. So you tolerated and suffered. Some time passed, you moved to a different context and there you acted out this emotion, let it show. For example, you didn’t cry not at a party, but at home, expressed dissatisfaction not in the store, but in the kitchen with his family, was angry not at his colleague, but yelled at children at home. But as this process is all unconscious, we do not realize whom the emotion was actually directed to, what it tells us, we simply respond to the one who comes to hand.

The most difficult thing is to develop emotional intelligence for people who tend to forget information about their emotions, completely block it, especially if this happens from childhood, if it is already a family culture of dealing with emotions. It is not at all easy to find contact with one’s own feelings in this case, as they need to be explored from the very beginning. It is not easy, but possible! This is hard work that can only be done in a state of high awareness and a very strong contact with the body.

Welcome to the world of emotions…

Fear

Fear. How does it Serve?

Fear is a fundamental emotion, because the purpose of fear is to save life, this is its main goal. If we talk about the life value, fear is never too much, there is nothing more valuable than life.

We face fear too often, because it is primarily to take care of life. It controls our actions, if it were not there, we would not understand at all where we could stumble and fall, it would not even occur to us. And even if we stumbled and fell, we could not use this experience on a simple logical level, because this painful experience usually reminds us of fear.

Pain is some kind of harm to the body, the highest degree of pain usually leads to death. Even when we pricked a finger and got the experience of this pain, the next time we’ll be afraid a little bit of such a situation, but we feel fear. So we should think in this direction when we talk about fear, because in our brain there are ancient departments that work very quickly at the level of instincts. In these parts of the brain (the reptilian brain, the limbic system itself), very strong primitive pain-fear relationships are stored. If we are very afraid of something, it means that our ancient brain perceives the situation almost as a situation of “life and death.” And only owing to the “modern” part of the brain (cerebral cortex) we can reorient ourselves and help ourselves cope with this fear.

According to Jung approach, the most terrible fear for humanity is the abyss. On a large scale, people are afraid of death when they think of it as the abyss, after which there is nothing. Any religion gives us an understanding that there is something else beyond death, and if you believe in it, you will escape the abyss. Such knowledge allows you to feel calmer. So a person should follow a set of certain rules about what to do in order to avoid a bad scenario after life. The good purpose of religion is to create conditions for a person to live in a state of faith. In this state, a person can look at the desired future, set goals and move towards them calmly and confidently. But at the same time, when there is a certain set of rules that must be followed, a person has a fear of violation of these rules. It turns out a paradox: tools that are designed to make our life more relaxed, i.e. deliver us from fear, they also bring this fear.

We should be thankful to our fear that it saves our life
and gives us the cue how to avoid danger and pain.
Fear is careful of preserving our life
and protecting us against pain.

We all have habitual behavior, habitual emotional reactions, family scenarios of relationships with others. The habitual means the successful. Why do we declare so categorically, because at first glance our behavioral strategies very often do not lead us to a desired result?

In past experiences (in your own or in the experience of your ancestors) it was this particular pattern of behavior that was successful. It means that once such a behavior, such a position in life allowed someone to save life or allowed to continue life, which led to the birth of new family members, so this model was imprinted in ancient memory as a successful one and it doesn’t matter how much time have passed, but unconsciously you still use this model. Going beyond such behavior at a subconscious level is perceived as a threat to life. The subconscious mind tells us: “Do like that – and it will save your life.” Despite the fact that now such a behavior may not lead to where we want, we should be grateful to it, because once it has already saved a life.

In order to change the usual model of behavior, you need to make much effort, because we will need to face fear, which greatly inhibits us from giving up this strategy, identifying any other behavior as a threat to life.

For example, an attitude about money. Most of our ancestors in the post-Soviet space had money savings and material wealth, but during the political and historical events they were deprived of them, they were subjected to repression and dispossession, they suffered. This situation could not but affected the descendants. A large amount of time has passed, but now a lot of people is still, desiring material prosperity, unconsciously refusing the opportunity to earn a lot, as there is a stable model in the memory that leads to suffering or death. According to this fact, many of us have to re-learn at the level of will and awareness to withstand the discomfort (fear) that accompanies the presence of large sums of money, to save and accumulate them, despite the fact that all the time we want to waste them or get rid of them.

Everything unusual and unknown causes fear. Accordingly, the information becomes very valuable. What is around the corner? What awaits me tomorrow and the day after tomorrow? What are the prospects in this area? What do these people expect from me? What is the economic situation in the country? Information helps to calm your fear.

When we start something new, even if the business we desire, we always experience fear, because the unknown is ahead. And the more valuable the goal for us, the more fear we will experience in the process. It is human nature to exacerbate his inner state: “What will happen if it doesn’t work out?”

In order to cope with your anxiety, you always need to remember your ancient brain, this allows us to sober up a little.

“My life is out of danger, in reality there is no danger”

Yes, there are places in war in the world and bullets are whistling —this is a real danger. But there are a lot of peaceful places in the world and all the dangers are largely invented by us. The ancient man really had dangers around every corner: wild animals, bad weather, bad harvest. In the modern world, people have learned to organize their lives in such a way that we always have something to eat, where to sleep, what to wear, etc. In this sense, we have largely secured ourselves. Of course, there are and always will be those people who are still fighting for survival in the modern world.

Interestingly, people who have to survive are much braver than those who live in comfort. When you survive, you have no choice, you act on the basis of vital necessity. If you try to steal a bun in the store when you’re full, you will begin to have a lot of psychological barriers, thoughts, you will worry what others will think about you, about the consequences if you get caught. But if you haven’t eaten for 5-7-10 days, you don’t think about anything at all, you just take it and eat it right in the store, and you don’t care that they look at you, that you are being led somewhere, the most important thing you did eat.

Why do we worry so often about what others think of us? Why is it so often the fear of condemnation or “sidelong glance” stops us? In the ancient world, the affiliation and location of the tribe to which you belonged was important at the level of survival. If you are excluded “you are bad, get out”, it would be tantamount to death; to cope alone with those severe conditions was almost impossible. Relationships with society at the level of the ancient brain are issues of survival. And now the reptilian part of the brain continues to equate situations “they don’t like me” to death, seeks to avoid such situations and build its behavior, its life like everyone else.

Only a man himself, at the level of conscious work, can control his fear realizing that fear is only a familiar strategy to cope with life.

Fear. How does it Show up in the Body?

Fear is revealed brightly in our body, we should learn how to notice it.

Body. The very first reaction of the body to fear is the increase of tension in almost all the muscles of the body. The muscles of the shoulder girdle are tightened, the shoulders rise up to the ears, the body slightly deviates back and freezes. There is some muscle tonus in the arms, legs, buttocks, lower abdomen, back of the thighs. You can notice fear expression in raised, tense shoulders. At a low intensity of fear, many small movements of the fingers begin to appear: touching hair, a face, a neck, clothes, etc. Small movements are a clear marker of anxiety. In order to look confident, men often hide their hands behind their backs, but fingers keep tugging behind their backs. A person often shuffles his feet.

Hormones. Adrenaline

Body language. The micro motion “eyebrows up” lasts literally a split second at a slight intensity of fear. Horizontal wrinkles appear on the forehead, the forehead is tense. The eyes widen precisely at the moment of fear, the lips are tense, the mouth is usually horizontally stretched.

Breathing. A vivid breathing pattern appears in fear: it is very superficial, breathing fades. It seems that a person breathed some air in the form of a resource and froze not to give it away.

Look. At a low intensity of fear, when there is no obvious danger, a person searches for the source of this danger, so his eyes are running, twitching and moving sharply from object to object. When the intensity of fear is increasing, the gaze begins to slow down, stop and lose focus. When a person has a very strong fear, he seems not to see anything neither outside nor inside himself, his gaze goes to nowhere.