COLUMN: 'In our relationships we can often struggle if we've buried traumas'

Our mind is designed as a survival mechanism at its base function and the most basic form of ensuring our survival is our emotions.

All our thoughts are created from our emotions and every single emotion is the carrier of a myriad of thoughts.

When we use our rational minds we are being informed by how something makes us feel, as a current far deeper than our thoughts which flow along on the surface of our minds, subconsciously or at least on the very periphery of our awareness.

Unless the emotion is realised or at least acknowledged, we create realities based on the thoughts that spring up to explain the situations we find ourselves in and may not even be aware why we think what we do or why we act and react in the ways we do.

This leads us to being prone to being triggered by external events that we mistake as attacks on us personally when the real issue is the unresolved emotion we feel internally.

To become aware of ourselves we have to look at these triggers and to recognise them as red flags in our own souls, not the event or person that has triggered us.

How do we learn to recognise them? We take that all important pause between the event and our desire to instantly react. We ask “why”, why am I prone to this reaction? Why am I defensive, or angry, or inflamed? Why do I perceive an injustice directed at me?

Why am I struggling to feel secure at this moment?

What is the feeling and is it valid for what’s happening or is it an indication of something deeper, a tug of that deep current of emotion that I’m ignoring, one that’s struggling to find its way to the surface, which it will do through any means it can.

It’s a lot like water, it always finds its way and suddenly we’re neck deep and wondering if we’re going to drown.

In our relationships we can often struggle with insecurities if we’ve been ignoring emotions, burying traumas, childhood events or adult conflicts.

In fact, trauma based insecurities can severely impinge on our relationships, creating shadows and having us build walls to keep ourselves safe, not realising that the walls we create to keep people out are the same ones we use to lock ourselves in.

Often we hear talk of creating boundaries to prevent people from taking advantage, to ensure our safety or to protect us from vulnerability to those who would hurt us through manipulation or deceit.

If we put up these boundaries while we are trying to heal from previous traumas we have to remember to take them down, albeit slowly, as the healing process continues.

Let our boundaries be a shield not a wall.

We put it up when we need it but otherwise we just feel safe knowing we can but don’t have to, allowing us to experience emotions fully, without feeling guarded or apprehensive.

In this way our boundaries become flexible rather than rigid and we enjoy life more easily because we too are more flexible and able to bend to situations rather than rejecting them out of hand because they engender feelings of threat or insecurity that we immediately rationalise as the same as some trauma that happened before, thinking rather than experiencing the true emotion and creating the very insecurity that boundaries are supposed to protect us from.

To learn from our emotions, to find the root of our thoughts and by extension our insecurities we have to give in. We have to allow our emotions to come to the fore and tell us what is actually happening for us.

We have to acknowledge pain if that’s what bubbles up and accept its presence and the message that it brings, that we aren’t healed from an event or a memory of a situation or period in our lives.

The insecurity we feel, the desire to fight or lash out against a current situation is just a mirror of the unresolved issue of the past.

In a space that feels safe, such as with a counsellor, we have to dive into our emotions, find the source from which they spring and learn to swim with them.

If we don’t we may well drown in them, living a life full of reaction, insecurity, poor decisions and self sabotage.

Our boundaries will never be boundaries, they will be rigid lines that prevent us from living freely, from having any kind of peace.

They will become our prison.

The single most important reason for learning to become self aware is to discover who we are, why we think and feel as we do and to improve the outcome of living by this process. We become self aware to find a precious peace.

The peace of knowing ourselves and others and learning to live in a way that has no boundaries but that carries the shield of understanding.

After all, if I can understand my motivation and understand your motivation there is no battle I can lose.

By working at understanding my emotions I can arrive at a place where no external influence can change how I feel, because I already know the truth of that to my very core and I accept myself for who I am, imperfect but improving every day.