A child who wasn’t able to emotionally develop, becomes the adult who: takes everything personally, is highly defensive, & struggles to voice what they actually feel.
HERE’S WHY
Our emotional development happens beginning at birth & through childhood, where we learn: how to identify and regulate our emotions.
Emotional maturity comes from this process.
In order to learn this, we need to be modeled it by a parent figure.
If we’re raised in a home where we are parentified (made to be the emotional caretaker for a parent), where a parent is too busy or overworked, or where a parents rage or emotional instability runs the climate of the home— we don’t get to emotionally develop.
The sole focus becomes staying safe in the environment.
So, we cope with hypervigilance.
Hypervigilance is the attunement to the environment. Meaning, we sense everyone else’s emotions or shift in facial expressions or behavior.
We know when a parents mood is going to shift & how that will impact us, when we might be blamed or shamed, or when a parent might withdraw from us completely (ie: the silent treatment.)
We learn & adapt quickly to caretaking the emotions of those around us. Or managing those emotions the best we can as children.
Sometimes this is mistaken as empathy— it’s not.
It’s a survival mechanism.
Long term hypervigilance creates nervous system dysregulation.
We become high reactive to those around us because we’ve learned that people are not safe & we must defend ourselves.
Everything feels personal, because at one time in our lives: it was.
With our awareness on the external, this leaves little time for self awareness, self reflection, or emotional regulation.
The result: we are emotionally immature.
Unable to know what we feel, how to express it, or if it’s even ok to feel what we feel (many of us have been shamed for our emotions: “stop being dramatic,” “don’t be so sensitive” “man up.”)
In earliest years we were made responsible for adult emotions.
Does she feel younger than me? As you’re lying in your bed Does she feel younger than me? Or is that in my head?
Does she feel younger than me? New and shiny Does she feel younger than me? But most importantly
Do you call her bright eyes too? Too
Too
Too
I know she’s younger than me As I’m lying in our bed I know she’s younger than me Can’t get it out of my head I know she’s younger than me Less pain to carry I know she’s younger than me Darling tell me
Do you call her bright eyes too?
Too
Too
Too
Now are you haunted by me? That age old marital trip What’s gotten old about me? Serpent in my bed Now, is that your pain you see? Replenished, strung ahead I don’t know how to stay me But repetition lies ahead for you For you
Long ago Coyote opened a bag of darkness and it spread over the world. Creatures of the night loved it. But birds and little animals longed for day. The little animals played a game to win back the light. They won, but one night monster remained. After the game, the first human, White Painted Woman, gave birth to a son. She hid him from the monster. When the boy was grown, he faced the monster and killed it. He was then called Apache.
Time seems to be going so fast that I feel it’s going to flip.
Is this the time war? Where we go one direction for awhile, then reverse for awhile? Do we just bounce from one polarity of the time construct to the other? Are we trapped in a loop? If so, how do we blast out?
I see it as a sock, flying thru the air with a golf ball in it. It goes very fast, then the ball stops suddenly and the sock peels up and propels the ball into the other direction.
Is it possible that instead of the sock rolling up and pushing off the ball, that the ball could actually tear the fibers of the toe and burst forth from the sock before it flips?
Can the momementum which carry’s the sock move faster than the sock?
At peak momentum, does the golf ball (earth) protract some device which pierces the “fabric” of time, ending the loop?
Maybe slipping out of the sock is a good thing.
Maybe what appears as a loop, is something other.
You’d have to speak to the Loop Masters about that.
Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no.
Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.