Here's a light and easy topic for today's post: how do you handle extreme emotions in yourself? Ok, so I'm joking about that being a light topic. It clearly is not! As I've grown up and been in a "normal" everyday type of life having a career, friends, family, etc, I've noticed in myself that I have my reoccurring things/circumstances that cause me to feel extreme emotions. These are the types of emotions that make concentration difficult and normal relating to people sometimes challenging. And when these emotions keep occurring even though I talk through them, journal about them, gain some relational support around them and yet I keep feeling them, many times that leaves me in a weird position. It makes me realize that I am a complex being and my feelings are complex as well. Life circumstances both short-term and long-term are complex as well. There are no easy answers.
To get through these things, sometimes I simply power through an exercise routine to help clear my head, other times I need to talk with someone. But as I've learned in recent years, sometimes I just need to sit and wait - sometimes for days, months or even years before I understand my emotions and before resolution comes. Trusting this can be extremely difficult. So again, I'm curious, how do you handle the extreme emotions in your life? Are there any ways that you're not proud of how you handle your emotions?
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Truly Present Conversation
I've been reading through a fantastic book titled Stop Being Lonely: Three Simple Steps to Developing Close Friendships and Deep Relationships. This book has been nothing short of amazing and I highly recommend anyone reading this post should read this book.
While reading from it today, the text made me consider that I can further improve on listening to people without comparing or feeling comparison from things in my own past. When someone tells me something about their past, maybe how their mother treated them one time or that studying for math while going through school was really easy for them, I can't help but feel a comparison within me surface shifting the focus from them back to me. This is not helpful for developing closeness in that relationship!
Instead, what I'd like to start practicing is to not react and replace the reacting with a deepening interest in what that other person has confided to me. The book suggests that I can do that by asking inviting, generally open-ended questions with the goal of getting to know that other person's perspective in a better manner. The goal is not to have them simply state something from their past and then for me to state something from my past in a back-and-forth comparison kind of way. Why? Because that is a surfacy, competitive game of conversational ping pong. It does not allow me to better get to know anything about that person because I didn't use those moments with them to ponder and consider what they told me about themselves. I quickly replaced it with my own past experience leaving that conversation in an awkward surface state. The natural result is for that conversation to die pretty quickly, especially after this is established as a relational pattern. People will have a hard time feeling close to me, thus causing me to wonder what's wrong with myself (again, the same pattern). This kind of relating takes great confidence and I believe it also is self-reinforcing in creating even more confidence.
It's time to practice a different way of relating, one that I believe will reap huge relational rewards for not only myself, but everyone else in relationship with me. I'm excited to get started on this practice! Share your thoughts on this in the comments below.
While reading from it today, the text made me consider that I can further improve on listening to people without comparing or feeling comparison from things in my own past. When someone tells me something about their past, maybe how their mother treated them one time or that studying for math while going through school was really easy for them, I can't help but feel a comparison within me surface shifting the focus from them back to me. This is not helpful for developing closeness in that relationship!
Instead, what I'd like to start practicing is to not react and replace the reacting with a deepening interest in what that other person has confided to me. The book suggests that I can do that by asking inviting, generally open-ended questions with the goal of getting to know that other person's perspective in a better manner. The goal is not to have them simply state something from their past and then for me to state something from my past in a back-and-forth comparison kind of way. Why? Because that is a surfacy, competitive game of conversational ping pong. It does not allow me to better get to know anything about that person because I didn't use those moments with them to ponder and consider what they told me about themselves. I quickly replaced it with my own past experience leaving that conversation in an awkward surface state. The natural result is for that conversation to die pretty quickly, especially after this is established as a relational pattern. People will have a hard time feeling close to me, thus causing me to wonder what's wrong with myself (again, the same pattern). This kind of relating takes great confidence and I believe it also is self-reinforcing in creating even more confidence.
It's time to practice a different way of relating, one that I believe will reap huge relational rewards for not only myself, but everyone else in relationship with me. I'm excited to get started on this practice! Share your thoughts on this in the comments below.
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