Emotional Baggage or Just Emotional

Baggage

Emotional Baggage

Now I have no interest in discussing luggage merely because it is the holiday season.  No, this chapter is about emotional baggage.  This phrase may fill you with horror and you may immediately wish to build up a barrier against anyone you see thus entering into your life because you may view the term similarly to some of the authors shown here on the Urban Dictionary.  Here is an example:  “An issue regarding a person's past that can affect their current disposition: addictions, debt, diseases, bad habits, past relationships (significant other or family), or kids.”  Let us move away from what you may think baggage is and look at the Encarta Dictionary definition: “ideas, beliefs, or practices retained from somebody's previous life experiences, especially insofar as they affect a new situation in which they may be no longer relevant or appropriate”.  What this suggests to me is that there are irrelevant conceptions and behavioural responses to present circumstances.  Certainly nothing to do with the offensive thought that children are baggage. 

Anyone can possibly have some form of emotional baggage at some point in their life.  Is it an automatic weapon waiting to be triggered that will leave chaos in its wake?  Or perhaps it is less dramatic, like a stone in your shoe that needs attention to remove it.  Perhaps the shoe needs repairing so no more stones will cause suffering.  In a previous chapter I showed how fear of becoming wounded emotionally for a second time affected the behaviour of the person in a new relationship.  As in the Encarta Dictionary definition this behaviour was irrelevant to the new relationship.  Further in this chapter you will read a scenario which shows that psychologically, repeated behaviour becomes relevant to the person, for when it becomes conscious that person can then do something about it.

What we can be assured of is that we are the sum of all our life experiences. Some experiences are foisted upon us and we must endure them.  Others we relish, and grieve when they end.  All these experiences are stimuli for our emotions.  Our emotions are then stimuli for our behaviour.  If we experience something which triggers a past emotion (and this can be conscious or subconscious) then it is likely we will go on to repeat the behavioural responses.  This then becomes a pattern.

The Scenario

Consider a nine year old child who has experienced abandonment, in this case we are discussing poor parenting such as emotional neglect.  The boy has little understanding at this tender age but unconsciously learns to fend for himself emotionally.  As an adult he begins to understand the foundation of his childhood was different to the expected norm.  He may or may not be aware he has slowly built a brick wall around himself for protection.  He goes through life seemingly no different from the average male in any given society, experiencing a variety of relationships (intimate, familial, work-related and friendships) and surviving their partings.  Perhaps some of these partings have occurred when people have not fully been allowed into his life.  

Just imagine during one intimate relationship the bricks of his fortress start to fall aside and he begins to truly love his new partner.  This unconditional love has not been experienced since he was a very young boy.  Back then the subjects of his affection were his parents.  The relationship fails to last and his partner walks away.  At some point following the break-up of this relationship, the nine year old MAN consciously connects the abandonment (neglect) with the abandonment (rejection).  He has to grieve for both (remove the stone) before he can move on emotionally, and begin to understand and accept himself for both his qualities and frailties (repair the shoe).  If there has been no connection or he disallows this experience as a catalyst for personal growth, he is likely to rebuild his fortress (and the shoe remains in a state of disrepair).  This man-child may need to learn that he is worthy of love and to begin to love himself.  This is not narcissism but a healthy love for the self which means understanding how the mind and body works, and how negativity and self-neglect can be destructive to both the mental and physical well-being.  It is never too late to build the foundations of oneself that should have been built during childhood.

What this man-child must not do is seek others to “fix” him.  Many of you readers may come across dating profiles which have the overtones of “fix me” such as “seeking one to make me happy”.  Unfortunately we only have the power to fix ourselves, not others.  The greatest help anyone has is the help that is inside of them.  How can we gain access to that help?  Sometimes we may need the assistance of a healthcare professional, or perhaps we have those close to us who can support us with their kindness, compassion or words of wisdom gained from their own experiences during their personal journey.  Other times reflection may hold the key like this man-child making the abandonment connection.  A note of warning - be wary of anyone who wants to fix you as they may have co-dependency issues, a subject already discussed.  

Being spiritual I have to advocate the use of affirmations: positive statements that can have beneficial psychological impacts.  Social networking has become an integral part of modern life and as such it will be a rare person who hasn’t come across illustrated affirmations on-line.  You may be interested in browsing  Kate Spencer’s Facebook page.  Do also consider both modern and ancient philosophical teachers such as the Dalai Lama and Confucius. 

Biologically I omitted something from the chain reaction of experience stimuli > emotional stimuli > behavioural response.  Within that chain our hormones play a huge part.  Therefore the true chain is experience stimuli > hormonal response > emotional stimuli > behavioural response.  Some hormones are excreted during various levels of pleasure such as dopamine and oxytocin and likewise some are excreted during times of stress - cortisol and norepinephrine.

No Baggage Just Emotional

Discussing emotional baggage also nicely leads us onto the times in our lives when hormones affect our emotional state not through external experiences but internal changes.  There are hormones which are released due to an internal (biological) change, such as during adolescence, menstruation, early pregnancy and peri-menopause.  Apart from adolescence the list is gender biased.

 

On approach to adolescence my daughter S hit the proverbial wall of obnoxious behaviour.  I likened it to a permanent case of PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome) with the irritable behaviour, anger and sudden bouts of tears.  Every month for about a year her father and I waited for the onset of menstruation.  When it finally arrived her behaviour settled down and a distinct pattern of monthly PMS began to emerge.  We were happy to have our old daughter back and were able to cope with the couple of angst ridden days a month, and just as importantly so was she.

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A small minority of women do not suffer the symptoms of PMS.  Likewise a small minority of women suffer horrifically. Take a look at the Harvard Medical School site. Read through the common physical and psychological symptoms experienced: from fatigue to pain and from depression to feelings of rejection. So guys when your girlfriend, sister, mother, or female friend is acting up   because of the menstrual cycle fluctuations of the progesterone and oestrogen hormones, hypersensitivity to these fluctuations, or a hormonal imbalance, quickly learn when she needs your support or your silence; and never take her behavioural responses personally.

My own PMS experiences have altered over the years.  For several years I have had one “red rag to a bull” day although sometimes I would cry at a drop of a hat, a week or two before menses occurs.  More recently things have changed.  Amongst the changes is the timing of the PMS, it has gradually moved closer to the start of the bleed until finally coinciding with the bleed.  I suspect peri-menopause is approaching but the GP assures me my greatly increased PMS symptoms are due to the newly replaced Mirena coil contraceptive device.  I am currently trying many different things to ease the symptoms.  Return to this site for guidance regarding dietary intake, exercise, supplementation and prescription medication.

Red For Danger

It is important to remember that it is never a choice to suffer mood swings and the resulting behavioural responses, which are fortunately temporary.  My advice to hormonal girls is to duck out of dating during these times.  Let a guy get to know the real you, otherwise his opinion of you will be coloured and that colour will be red!  My advice to guys is to temper whatever communication you give to a relatively new date who is hormonal: temper criticism or judgement with kindness (and grit those teeth).

On A Lighter Note