“Psychologists say that “chemistry” is really our unconscious attraction to someone who we imagine will meet our particular emotional needs. What we unconsciously want is to get what we didn’t get in childhood from someone who is like the people who didn’t give us what we needed in the first place”~ Harville Hendrix.
I believe childhood f*cks you up.I didn’t have a horrible upbringing by any means. My parents were unique but they were caring, loving, and as supportive as they knew how to be. All of my life, family meant a lot to me. As an adult I’m able to have a mature relationship with my parents and siblings that doesn’t include resentments and past hurts. I respect my family members, and I try not to carry any ill feelings that reflect past memories. I realized however, somewhere around 26, maybe a little earlier that childhood had f*cked me up.
What I mean is… My childhood had an extreme influence on me as a person and I realized then (and maybe a little late) that I had emotional wounds that I needed to heal.Think about childhood. As you’re discovering what you like and what you’re good at you’re also absorbing the environment around you. It wasn’t ideal or perfect despite if it was enjoyable.
Everyone faces disappointments as children that stay with us into adulthood and I think it’s everyone’s social duty to undo the traumas of childhood before they claim to be adults. The pettiness, insecurity, jealousy and other unwanted emotions that come from the open wounds many of us still have from years we hardly even remember need to be addressed.
Especially if you want to date and be a great partner! Attraction as mentioned in the quote is about finding lovers who can help us heal and grow as people.If you attract the wrong people you can end up reliving the same pains and hurts that you felt as a youth. If you don’t recognize your issues, you’ll constantly seek to heal the same wounds all the while making new ones. Sound fun? Didn’t think so.In my advice giving profession, many theories are formed from generalizations.
Of course it’s easy to say, you’re a mess because you were hurt as a child but the degrees of hurt, and residual effects vary person to person. Many single men and women are grown children who act out emotionally because they’re unable to cope with the memory of past pains and disappointments. It isn’t what has happened that they can’t handle, it’s how what has happened makes them feel and how closely it resembles a past, more painful, trauma. So why heal? Others aren’t healing, so why should you have to admit that you’re flawed when no one else is? When you heal your wounds you help yourself. When you heal your wounds you disable the ability of others to hurt you over and over again. When you heal your wounds you regain control of your emotions. When you heal your wounds you gain a clearer understanding of what you feel and why.
“What I see is not real, what I see is the past.”
This quote from the book, ‘A Course In Miracles’ truly resonates with me because what we feel isn’t about the moment. It’s a culmination of every moment that has ever made us feel this way. One disappoint isn’t just a disappointment, it’s a reminder of every disappointment we’ve ever felt. Negative emotions such as anger, insecurity, jealousy, bitterness, resentment, shame, fear and feeling unloved are reminders and remnants of wounds that never healed.
Let’s say you begin to heal…
Does this mean you go around happy all the time, whistling and waiting for your perfect love? Does healing mean that you never feel sad or depressed or lonely ever again? Does addressing your childhood traumas mean it undoes what you’ve experienced? Of course not, but it allows you to face the problem in the relationship instead of becoming the problem.
Once you identify what you need to heal, you no longer let that emotion run the show. Instead the actual problem is identified and corrected.If your date is late and you become upset, your negative emotion is now the focus of the date instead of their inconsideration. If your partner forgets your birthday, and you’re upset your disappointment becomes the issue instead of their lack of respect.If you find that your lover is running around with someone else, all of a sudden the problem becomes you being ‘crazy’ instead of them being a lying, cheating, low down dirty ho. When you can look at a situation from a rational standpoint, instead of an emotional standpoint, you’re dating like an adult.
You have to train your emotions to guide you not to rule you. I’m not suggesting that you look into your past and start correcting painful memories because I’m a doctor, or a psychologist. I just want you to be happy. Don’t you want to be happy?
It’s hard work and its uncommon but it’s necessary. How you feel is up to you so reclaim your power. Choose to move past your past. If you’re not in touch with your emotions and you continue to ignore the pain in your past, you’ll attract someone who constantly salts the wound. That’s no fun. Thoughts?