BLAME ROBS US OF THE OPPORTUNITIES TO DIRECT OUR LIVES Life is complex and many factors influence our experience. If the pain of life becomes overwhelming, there is no shortage of outside influences we can blame for our less than satisfactory personal experience. The advice to take responsibility for our experience should not suggest for us to ignore the contributions of the world around us to our emotions. We do not live in a vacuum unaffected by the choices and behaviors of others nor should that be our goal as often is suggested. Responding to the world around us is a part of our human inheritance. Our relationships are built upon our ability to share and appropriately respond to each other’s emotions. My relationship with my wife is a bundle of shared emotions which includes sadness, anger, joy, desire, and even at times disappointment. Willingness to share in the positive and negative emotions of a relationship does imply vulnerability to the actions and behaviors of others. If others, especially our parents, have been a source of confusion and chaos in our past relationships, then vulnerability to the emotional connection of relationships can be very threatening. The thought of being able to build a protective wall around our soul which is not penetrated by others is very attractive if we have a legacy of painful relationships. Building a protective wall is a natural consequence of continuous and destructive attacks by outside foes. “My emotions are subject to my own iron fist and not others,” I may confidently declare my independence from the natural vulnerability of relationships. With my declaration of independence, I fool myself into thinking that I can experience the intimacy and comfort of a relationship without the inherent vulnerability. Our declaration does not free us from the emotions of a relationship. We still experience them. Our minds have become masters of deception and has devised many ways to block the conscious recognition of the emotion which is being experienced. Unfortunately, the lack of recognition does not free us from the influence of the emotion on our behaviors. Our unrecognized emotion can be expressed in a variety of ways from explicit behaviors which we conveniently attribute to uncontrollable outside events to cleaver passive-aggressive slights or remarks. The most effective influences on our lives are often the ones which we do not recognize. Bringing the emotions back into the relationship and facing our vulnerabilities, allows us to reconnect with others and become the foundation of healing from past pain. Recognizing our emotional reactions to others and then taking responsibility for how we respond is true empowerment. Without the recognition of our emotional connections to others, we lose the insight needed to appropriately respond to the disappointments and sorrows which inevitably will surface in any relationship. Lack of awareness of the emotional connections prevents us from using the reoccurring experiences as avenues to better our relationships. Take notice when you engage in the act of blaming and let that act of “blaming” set off an inner alarm that you are allowing others to steal your power to direct your own life. Instead of wasting time finding a soul cause of the discomfort to blame, remind yourself that usually many causes are joint participants in the final act. Often the best course of action is to accept what has happened as reality and refocus your energy on how to react appropriately to find a solution. ~Troy Murphy
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 14:05:00 +0000
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