Emotional Fitness
Discovering Our Natural Healing Power
by
Janice Berger
Chapter Summaries
Part
III: Unlocking Relationships
Acknowledging
and using our natural healing power helps us to bring to consciousness
the forces that are interfering in our present relationships.
When we are unable to free ourselves from the personal binds
in our relationships, it is because we are unconsciously gripped
by our past experience. Trying to work out old pain in present
relationships causes us to reenact our past. We set ourselves
up for familiar feelings, a perpetual life rerun fuelled by
hope that keeps us stuck.
The more we heal our past, the more we react appropriately in the
present, the better we feel about ourselves and the better our
relationships are.
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Chapter
16
Life Partner Relationships: A Place to Grow
In
this relationship we unconsciously reenact our past, suffer familiar
bad feelings and unconsciously hope for a different outcome this
time. We struggle to get the love, acceptance and approval that
was missing in our childhood. As our partner "disappoints" us we
get caught on old feelings that erupt from the past.
When we courageously engage our emotional healing power to unravel
the knotted pain from our past, we free ourselves to enjoy a richer
relationship.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• When
we want change
• Dealing
with differences
• Expectations
• The
protection game
• Attraction
to others
• Jealousy
• Trust
• Commitment
• Rejection
• Becoming
aware of defensiveness
• Resentment
kills love
• Verbal
and emotional abuse
• When
our partner is shut down
• The
continuum from alienation to intimacy
• Stereotyping
undone
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Chapter
17
Parent/Child Relationships: Conscious and Responsive Parenting
The
key to healthy parenting is knowing ourselves and taking responsibility
for the health of our relationship with our children. Having children
gives us an opportunity like none other to expand and to grow emotionally.
When we have children we cannot avoid the fact that we will come
face to face with our past; children open us to ourselves.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Valuing
children
• Meeting
our children's needs
• Parental
need
• When
our children trigger us
• Helping
our children complete their feelings
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Chapter
18
Other Relationships: Adult Children and Older Parents, Adult Siblings,
In-laws, Friends, Peers, Employers and Employees
Acknowledging
that our current relationships are influenced by unconscious, unresolved
pain from our past is the major key to understanding the dynamics
of human relationships.
Example
There is an
opportunity for us to move to emotional health when we recognize
problems that surface in our friendships. This can happen when
we find ourselves:
- Measuring ourselves in relation to our friends
- Self-doubting, self-blaming
and feeling inadequate
- Gossiping
- Feeling that "there must be
something wrong with me"
- Having unrealistic expectations
of our friends; blaming
- Feeling responsible for others'
feelings; feeling guilty
- Needing to be needed
- Helping others to our personal
detriment
- Subduing ourselves for fear
of being resented
- Seeking approval, pleasing,
trying to be perfect
- Pretending everything is okay
when it is not
- Afraid of conflict
- Fearful of hurting our friend
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- Overlooking things that hurt
- Explaining and justifying
ourselves
- Unable to talk about negative
feelings
- Threatened by our friends
achievement
- Fearful that our friends will
abandon us
- Feeling betrayed
- Confused by double messages
- Walking on eggshells; withholding
- Feeling unrecognized, discounted
or closed off
- Continually thrown off balance
- Needing to be right
- Not taking responsibility
for our negativity
- Finding fault as a basis of
conversation
- Needing to put the other person
down
- Being uneasy with silence
- Needing to use sarcasm
- Feeling locked in others'
expectations
- Needing the other person to
change
- Unable to be authentic
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Epilogue
Discovering
and utilizing our natural emotional healing power can lead us toward
a more positive future. Whether we are taking small steps to take
responsibility and feel or whether we are in deep intensive therapy,
we are moving in the direction of being a more emotionally healthy
person.
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