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I Second That Emotion

So what are you choosing to do? We all know the pain of heartbreak.

I know about my life that sometimes I am flying high on life, and other times I am miserable and ready to give up. It is in those ready to give up moments that I am always in pain, and that pain is always caused by some heartache somewhere… usually some power struggle with my husband.

I may get upset with my work or body or kids, but nothing hurts as much as miscommunication with my spouse. I have said this before, that I don’t have 100% to give the rest of the world when things aren’t good with my man and me. Call it codependent or pathetic, or whatever you want, but that’s just the way it is… probably why I am so passionate about what I do. What about you? How much do you have to give the world when you are fighting with a loved one: parents, kids, and partners? I can become moody, miserable and mean, and I don’t like it. So why do I go there? Why do many of us go there?

Do you know that we go to our emotions? They don’t come to us. Do you ever react to something and think, “Why oh why did I react that way?” I do. I also learned recently that emotion is faster than thought, and if we go to our emotions, why do we go to the ones that are destructive and depressive?

Well here’s a bit of news for you all… they serve us somehow. Shawn and I have been teaching the value of understanding how we meet six human needs, and that we get these needs met in one of two ways: constructively or destructively. Depression is a way to get one of them met, and it becomes habit, and we fall back on it. Let me explain this a bit better:

Love and Connection is one of the needs I am talking about. If I show signs of depression and despair, and my husband comes running to my rescue, I have just succeeded in achieving love and connection. Oh. Not so lovingly or passionately as I would have liked, but nevertheless, I have met that need. Now, I have no real need to be loving or passionate, because I just got my fix of love and connection. A lot of people claim to be depressed, and they are, in the moment, because it’s easy for so many people to drop their shoulders, think about how hard their lives are, and then focus on that.

It’s a habit that so many people have fallen into, and until we become aware of this, we won’t get out of it. Once I realized what I was doing, and also noticed quite quickly that as a result of my depression I was not happy, and I was not moving in the direction of my dreams; therefore, I decided to change my mind.

Oh easier said than done. When I am in my stuff, it’s easy for me to stay there and suffer like the poor little dove that I am, and I can do it so well. Then if I want to hurt myself a bit more, I just try on some jeans that don’t fit anymore, or dwell in what he did to me over and over again… building a great case against him and for me. This can go on for days, and the longer it goes on, the more depressed I become. Then something magical happens…

I will read an article or a book, or listen to a song, or go for a walk or a run, and all of a sudden I begin to feel better. I do something for someone else, (not him of course as I am still mad at him), or talk to a friend, and I start to feel better. I even sometimes get a little glitch of liking him again…

Knowing that there are six human needs to fulfill in myself and others, it becomes easy for me to ask myself, “What can I do for my partner to build his needs.” I am no fool, and know that men just want to make their women happy, so the more fulfilled he is, the happier I will be in more ways than one. So I have reminders for myself set up that support me in getting out of my own way and finding ways to build the needs of my husband. Like I have said before, whether it’s me that reaches out to hold his hand or he mine, the feeling when we connect is always the same.

I often ask myself how I can be so madly in love one minute, packing my bags five minutes later and then pouting for a bit and back to being in love again… I have come to learn that each time I live in this cycle, it doesn’t change. It plays out the same way each and every time. The one thing I have figured out is that the sooner I get out of my own way and focus on what I can do for someone else to support them in meeting their needs, the sooner I feel better, and then I find myself madly in love with my husband again. And for me, there is no greater feeling than that.