Hello there ...
You have heard it before,
'In order for you to live a healthy life, '
'you have to have a healthy a life '
'on the level of Body, Mind and Soul.'
These pillars have long been considered the pillars
of a healthy and complete life.
But what if I was to tell you that we got it all wrong?
When we think of soul
we think of the soul as an etheric or intangible energy.
Likewise, because of the ethereal, intangible nature
of feelings and emotions,
(which we do not understand)
we call them 'Soul'.
This is why, all advice
about how to feed and heal your soul,
is in fact designed to help you emotionally feel better.
In truth, our soul-aspect is innately healthy.
It cannot be in an unhealthy state.
Soul, which is pre-manifested energy,
creates feelings and creates mind and creates body.
All three levels of a person are, in fact, comprised of Soul.
A body is a soul projecting itself physically.
A mind is a soul projecting itself mentally.
Feeling is a soul consciously perceiving.
Because of this, we could look at it in one of two ways.
The first is that the three pillars of health
are Body, Mind and Emotion.
The second is that emotion is the language of the soul.
If you choose to see it this way,
then the key to what people are calling Soul Health
is your Emotional Health.
Part of Emotional Health
is the conscious acknowledgement
of our non-corporeal Consciousness
which we could call Spirit or Soul.
When we use the word 'Soul'
we are referring to the core-aspect of someone's being.
This is why the word 'Soul' and the word 'Heart'
are interchangeable.
It's why you might hear someone who's talking about
their core-aspect, their 'Soul', saying:
"I know it in my heart that _____"
This is an acknowledgement that we know that at the core-aspect of our being
our experience, here on earth,
is not physical, it is emotional.
When we first come into this life
we experience the world entirely through felt perception.
We feel the world before we see the world.
Feeling and Emotion is not only
the heart of your life here on earth,
it is also the heart of your relationships.
Because feeling and emotion is the heart of relationships,
it is also where the most damage is done.
I wanna step you, for the sake of understanding,
into a historical look
at relationships and how emotions play into relationships.
Over the centuries,
our ideas about the good and bad ways to raise children
have changed drastically.
For example:
In medieval days, childhood did not really exist.
As soon as a child could physically manage,
they were put to work.
Often in roles that would be seen today as slavery.
Children were not seen as pure,
in fact, they were seen as Evil!
And the extraordinary corporal punishment used,
which was, of course, considered normal and commonplace,
was used to grant a child salvation and goodness.
In this era, even in the most aristocratic households,
instead of valuing and adoring their child,
some parents took to despising their own children
and deliberately belittling and abusing them
thinking it was, in fact, for their own good.
In the late 1600s, history saw the birth
of the Punishment & Reward style of parenting.
Instead of pure corporal punishment,
philosopher John Locke suggested
that the better way of training a child to be good
would be to withdraw approval and affection
by 'disgracing' a child when they are bad
and to 'esteem' the child
by rewarding the child with approval and affection
when they were good.
I want you to sit in this realization for a minute,
of what I have just said.
It took parents until the 1600s
to come up with the idea of Reward & Punishment ...
Now, the Reward & Punishment style of parenting we now know,
is incredibly destructive.
One of the most destructive parenting techniques
we have today.
Now in the 1600s,
Reward & Punishment was a drastic improvement
upon how children were parented before that ...
In the early 20th century, not much had changed.
Child-rearing experts still formally denounced
all romantic ideas about childhood,
and advocated the formation of proper habits
to discipline children.
In fact, in 1914 U.S. Children's Bureau pamphlet
called 'Infant Care'
urged a strict schedule
and urged parents not to play with their babies.
John B. Watson's 'Behaviorism' argued that parents could
train their children by rewarding good behavior
and punishing bad behavior
and by following precise schedules
for food, sleep and other bodily functions.
Who could forget the Bible proverb
that so many parents have lived by
and still live by, today:
"Whoever spares the rod, hates their children,
but the one who loves their children
is careful to discipline them."
(as if discipline and corporal punishment are one and the same!)
In the 20th Century,
corporal punishment began to fall out of favor
in the Western World.
Many parents became conscious enough to see
corporal punishment for what it is - which is abuse.
And so today,
while sadly there are still pockets of un-Conscious parents
that still abuse their children in the name of discipline,
the larger majority in the Western World
use parenting practices like time-outs
as a tool of discipline.
It is easy to look back over time and say
that we were in the Dark Ages when it came to parenting
but let me tell you, that in the years to come,
the future will look back at us today
and say the exact same thing -
that we are, in fact, in the Dark Age of parenting.
Now, just as corporal punishment has fallen out
as a favorable style of parenting,
I'm going to tell you today
that we are on the edge of a revolution.
The revolution is Emotional Parenting.
We are about to find out that we are in the Dark Ages today
in terms of Emotional Parenting,
and that we are doing the same kind of damage
on an emotional level, to our children,
as the parents did on a physical level and an emotional level
who were beating their children
in centuries that have passed.
I am here to tell you that we have no idea
how to create a healthy emotional climate in our households
for our children.
And there are, of course, exceptions to this rule,
but by far, in today's modern world,
the vast majority of children are being raised
in unhealthy emotional environments.
And, in fact, the emotional climate of the household
has not even factored into good parenting, until today.
We are emerging from the new Dark Age.
The Dark Age is the dark age of Emotions and Feelings.
We are awakening to the idea
that it is possible to be a very good parent on a physical level
while being a very bad parent on an emotional level.
And this has vast implication,
because we have already addressed, earlier in this episode,
that the very core of our existence
is Feelings and Emotions.
So, if the emotional climate of your household,
with your children,
is an unhealthy one,
then the core essence of someone's Life and someone's Being
is an unhealthy one.
In today's world,
most parenting advice ignores the world of emotion entirely.
It focuses on how to correct misbehavior
whilst disregarding the feelings
that underlie and cause that very misbehavior.
Regardless of how far we have progressed,
the goal of parenting is still to have
a compliant and obedient child,
not, to raise a healthy adult.
The goal is raise a child who is 'good'.
Our Justice System takes the exact same approach
with regards to misbehavior.
We are concerned with correcting misbehavior
and creating good citizens
whilst being unconcerned with the feelings
that motivate such misbehavior.
Good parenting involves emotion.
Good relationships involve emotion.
Today, most parents make three crucial mistakes:
No.1 is that they disregard or dismiss their child's emotions,
No.2 is that they disapprove of their child's emotions,
No.3 is they offer no guidance to a child
so that they can get through their negative emotions.
The parent who disapproves of their child's emotions
is critical of their child's display of negative emotion
and reprimand or punish for emotional-expression.
The parent who dismisses their child's emotions,
disregards them as unimportant,
ignores their child's emotions,
or, worse, trivializes their child's emotions.
And the parent who offers no guidance
may empathize with their child's emotions
but does not set limits on behavior
or assist the child in understanding and coping
with their own emotion.
To give you an example of how this works out in practical terms:
Imagine that William does not want to go to school,
and begins to cry when his parents make him go to school.
The disapproving parent might scold William
for his refusal to cooperate ...
The disapproving parent
may resort to calling him a brat
and punishing him in some way
with time alone or with a spanking ...
The dismissive parent may brush off William's emotions
by saying 'That's silly ... '
'There's no reason to be sad about going to school. '
'Now turn that frown upside down!' ...
The dismissive parent may even resort to distracting William
from his emotions by giving him a cookie
or pointing out a cow in a field on their way to school.
The parent who offers no guidance
may behave in an apathetic way towards William
by telling him that it's okay to feel sad or scared.
But that parent would not continue on
to help William decide what to do with his uncomfortable feelings.
Instead, they would leave him in a space
where he feels as if his emotions are an all-consuming force
that he is powerless to.
Children who are raised in unhealthy emotional environments
are not able to soothe themselves.
They also tend to develop health problems.
On top of this,
children who are raised in unhealthy emotional environments
fail to emotionally connect with their family.
They often feel as if they do not belong.
They fail to develop intimacy with their families
and as a result, they feel isolated and alone.
This, of course, carries on into adulthood.
They grow into adults who are not capable
of managing their emotion.
They grow into adults who feel as if they don't belong.
They grow into adults who struggle to make relationships work.
They develop co-dependent relationships
and they develop a need,
while simultaneously, an extreme fear of intimacy.
In my personal opinion,
the number one cause of psychopathy and sociopathy in adults
is, in fact, an unhealthy emotional environment in childhood.
Now, keep in mind,
that the majority of people who study
the causes of psychopathy and sociopathy
are looking around in people's pasts
for overt signs of abuse.
It is much more easy to recognize overt signs of abuse,
much more difficult to recognize unhealthy emotional patterns
in childhood environments.
Many of the serial killers and school shooters
who reportedly came from 'healthy' homes
did not, in fact, come from healthy homes at all.
They came from physically healthy homes
where they were fed and clothed
and given many advantages, even.
but underneath that lovely-looking exterior
was extreme emotional dysfunction.
Emotional dysfunction that disabled them
from connecting with other people.
Emotional dismissal and emotional disapproval
are forms of emotional abuse.
But the future will soon teach us
to never underestimate emotional dismissal,
emotional disapproval and emotional abuse.
In my opinion,
(having experienced all the different forms of abuse)
emotional abuse is the very worst,
and also, the hardest to heal from.
But now we come to the most damaging aspect
of emotional dismissal or emotional disapproval
when it's given from an adult to their child.
When emotional disapproval or emotional dismissal
is shown to a child,
the child begins to trust the parent's estimation
of whatever event has caused them to be displeased,
instead of their own.
They lose faith in themselves,
they lose trust in themselves, and most of all,
they believe there is something wrong with them.
When emotional dysfunction rules the relationship
the child learns that they have no right
to feel how they feel.
In short, they learn that it is wrong to feel the way that they feel.
Now here's the crux:
The child believes,
that if it is wrong to feel the way they feel,
but that they feel that way,
something is wrong with them, specifically.
If I were to choose one single thing that is wrong
with the Mental Health industry today,
is that there's this popular idea
that there's a way people should feel.
And that if they don't feel that way
that something has gone wrong.
Psychiatrists' offices are full of people
who were raised in an emotionally dysfunctional home!
These people grew up to believe
that there is something wrong with them
because they 'shouldn't feel how they feel',
when the actuality is that they should feel
exactly how they feel.
They have perfect and sound reason
to feel exactly that way,
and the idea that something is 'wrong' with them
is a fallacy.
A fallacy that is the by-product
of having their emotions invalidated again and again.
This is in fact, one of the key-causes of anxiety.
Anxiety is caused so often by self-doubt and self-distrust.
Distrusting yourself and having doubt in yourself
causes fear of the Self.
As a result, you're trying to find any way that you can
to escape from yourself
because you feel like you shouldn't feel how you feel.
I had to go into this background story (as per usual)
because without that understanding,
you can't understand how you got to the place
in relationships that you're in today.
Long-story short,
because this is the emotional environment
you were raised with in your childhoods,
you have no idea
how to emotionally relate with people as an adult.
And the same rules apply.
We fail to develop true intimacy with one another
so often, because we dismiss each other's emotions.
We disapprove of each other's feelings.
We tell other people how they should feel.
We have no patience with the emotional needs of others.
We see emotions and feelings as weakness.
We call people who display emotions 'too sensitive'.
For the sake of your understanding,
I want to give you three examples
of adult relationships that are emotionally dysfunctional.
«laughs»
A woman goes to lunch with her friend.
She is disappointed because she did not get promoted at work
like she thought she would.
Her friend tells her that she is just being negative,
that she needs to look on the bright side and see
that all she's doing is creating more disappointment
in her reality because she is so negatively focused.
2. A husband gets home late from work.
His wife starts crying the minute he walks in the door.
The husband sees her crying and immediately says:
"You always over-react! I was only half an hour late. "
"Maybe you're just menopausal. In fact, you need professional help."
and then withdraws to his office to watch television.
3. A man is facing divorce.
He tells his friends about what is going on
and they convince him to join them at the bar.
When he shows up, none of them acknowledge
that he's, in fact, going through a difficult time
emotionally with his relationship.
Instead, they encourage him to not think about it, have a drink,
watch the sports game, and look at pretty girls at the bar.
Regardless of whether it is a friendship
or a romantic relationship,
feelings and emotions are the heart are the core,
of that particular relationship,
(if it is supposed to be a meaningful relationship,
instead of a surface-y one)
Without a healthy and deep emotional connection,
and an emotional-feeling relationship,
that 'relationship' is not, in fact, a relationship,
it's a social arrangement.
Intimacy is not about Sex.
It is true that Sex can be the by-product of intimacy,
but intimacy is about being seen for who you really are,
and seeing someone for who they really are.
It's me being able to take the totality
of the truth of who I am to you,
and being received by you, for the truth of who I am,
without you needing to change me.
It's you being able to bring the truth of who you are to me,
and me being able to see and receive the truth of who you are
without me trying to change and manipulate you.
It's meeting at the Heart-centre
which is the birthplace for empathy.
It's the birthplace for connection and for closeness.
I have said it before and I'm going to say it again:
the word Intimacy can be broken down to
'In To Me, See'.
The most important part about intimacy, is to see into one another.
To see into one's truth,
and one's truth is represented in feelings and emotions.
Feelings and emotions is the absolute core
of your reality and your experience,
and so it's the very most important part of intimacy.
The bottom-line is: emotions and feelings matter.
We must see the importance and value in each other's feelings.
We must show respect for each other's emotions.
We must listen for the emotions behind the words.
We must open ourselves to and offer understanding.
Statements of acknowledgement and understanding
should always precede advice.
If you tell someone how they should feel
you are teaching them to distrust themselves.
You are teaching them that there is something wrong with them.
It is the way that we deal with our negative emotions
that dictates how healthy or unhealthy our relationships may be.
For most of us,
the way we're dealing with our positive emotions
are already working for us.
It's the negative emotions we have the most resistance to.
For that reason,
I'm gonna outline for you some concrete steps
which can help us
when relating to other people's negative emotions.
Now, this goes for both children and adults.
And it's solid gold when it comes to relationships!
No.1: To become aware of the other person's emotion.
No.2: To care about the other person's emotion
by seeing it as valid and important.
No.3: To listen, empathetically, to the other person's emotion
in an attempt to understand the way they feel.
This allows them to feel safe to be vulnerable
without fear of judgment.
i.e. seek to understand, instead of to agree.
No.4: To acknowledge and validate their feelings.
This may include helping them to find words
to label their emotion.
To acknowledge and validate a person's feelings
we do not need to validate
that the thoughts that they have about their emotions are correct.
Instead, we need to let them know
that it is a valid thing to feel the way that they feel.
For example:
If our friend says "I feel useless",
we do not validate them by saying:
"You know, you're right! You are useless ..."
Instead, we could validate them by saying:
"I can totally see how that would make you feel useless, "
"and I would feel the same way if I were you."
No.5: To allow the person to feel how they feel
and to experience their emotion fully
before moving towards any kind of improvement
in the way that they feel.
We need to give them the permission
to decide when they are ready to move up the vibrational scale
and into a different emotion.
We cannot impose our idea of when they should be ready
or when they should be able to feel different,
onto them.
This is the step where we practice
Unconditional Presence for someone, and Unconditional Love.
We are there as support without trying to 'fix' them.
Do not be offended if they don't accept your support
at this time.
There is a benevolent power inherent in offering.
That is Love, in and of itself,
regardless of what someone does or doesn't do with it.
No.6: After, and only after,
their feelings have been validated and acknowledged
and fully felt,
help the other person to strategize ways
to manage the reactions
they might be having to their emotion.
This is the step where you can assert new ways of looking at the situation
that may improve the way the other person is feeling.
This is where advice can be offered.
Now we come to one of the most important steps
when it comes to emotional health within relationships.
You are in a relationship with yourself.
That means you have to validate your own emotions.
You have to stop dismissing your emotions
you have to stop disapproving of your emotions,
you have to stop expecting yourself
to feel differently than you actually feel.
In order to have emotional health,
you have to apply the 6 previous steps I've just outlined,
to yourself, first.
Aside from the way that you manage negative emotions,
here are some steps which can help you to create
a healthy emotional environment within your relationships.
No.1: Express your love to the other person.
You can express your love by reaching out to touch them.
Many people are touch-starved inside this modern world
that we're living in,
because there's so much separation between us.
You could express your love through a gift.
By giving a gift to someone,
they are understanding that you care enough about them
to think about them,
and then procure something for them,
and then, give that something to them.
You could choose to show your love to someone
by spending quality time with them.
Where your focus is undivided,
and you're looking at them,
trying to understand them,
trying to connect with them.
You can show your love to someone
by serving someone:
Offering to help them with the dishes ...
Offering them to help them with a project or moving ...
You can help someone by showing them appreciation
or giving them some form of affirmation -
giving them a compliment.
There are many ways that you can show love to someone.
One of the main reasons why we have emotional deprivation
in our childhood experience
and, in our current relationships,
is that we are restrictive when it comes to our love,
we're stingy with our love,
we don't overtly demonstrate it and give it to other people.
By being demonstrative in our love
and by offering our love
to other people
we enable them to feel emotionally
safe and loved and valued by us.
But, make sure that when you go to express your love to someone,
you're doing it for the right reasons,
not because you're wanting something from them.
No.2: Never ignore their presence.
There are very few things that are more emotionally hurtful
than being treated like you don't exist.
Even if you're angry at the moment,
it's no reason to give the cold-shoulder
to the person who loves you.
No.3: This tip goes hand-in-hand with the last one.
Do not physically or emotionally withdraw from them,
especially during a conflict.
People who are afraid of intimacy and connection
and thus, vulnerability, tend to cope with those feelings
by becoming an island unto themselves.
They become emotionally unavailable and disconnect from the other person
as a defense.
To withdraw in a relationship is to commit emotional-divorce.
and the number one symptom of withdrawal
is the lack of communication.
That being said, we are led to our next Tip.
Tip No.4: Communicate, Communicate & Communicate!
When we have committed to a relationship,
we have committed to communication.
And you are communicating
whether you're doing it verbally or not,
because the majority of communication
is taking place through your body language.
Communication is a huge part of connection.
Do not suppress your emotions
and try to avoid, deny, dismiss or numb them away
through distraction.
We need to be willing to acknowledge our own emotion
and communicate it in healthy ways to our partner.
When we are confused about how to do this,
a helpful tip is to take the thoughts we're having
and imagine bringing them down to our Heart-space
and then speaking from there.
This technique is called 'Speaking From The Heart'.
When we do this, we tend to be more willingly vulnerable
and thus, more Authentic,
and less defensive and attacking
in our communication-style.
Put your feelings into words.
There is almost nothing worse for a relationship
than remaining silent about how you are feeling.
Not communicating how you're feeling
creates a canyon between you and your partner.
They can feel when you are emotionally upset.
If you are not talking or if you are denying the way you feel,
when they can feel that you're emotionally upset,
it makes the other person feel crazy and confused.
We need to be willing to acknowledge our emotions
and communicate that to our partner,
in healthy ways.
If we're confused about how to do this,
we can take what we're feeling and our emotions
(what we're thinking about those things)
and we can imagine putting them down to our heart space
and then speaking them from there.
This practice is called 'Speaking From The Heart'
and it can be really valuable when it comes to creating
a healthy emotional environment within any kind of relationship.
#5: If you make promises, follow through.
If you say you're gonna do something, do it.
You have to make good on your word.
Doing other than this systematically destroys trust in a relationship.
And the thing about emotional health and relationships
is that trust is a big part of that.
Admit to mistakes and commit to changing the behavior.
Apologizing again and again,
without really changing the behavior,
sends the message that you don't actually care
about how another person feels
as much as you care about getting them off your back
... temporarily ...
This also, systematically destroys trust within the relationship.
We have to actually take steps, if we care about somebody
to not only apologize, but to make the changes necessary
so that that same mistake
or that same painful thing we did to them, doesn't occur again.
That being said,
an apology can go a very long way
to create emotional health in a relationship.
Tip No.7: Get a handle on your priorities.
You have to know your priorities
in order to develop a healthy emotional relationship.
If you want a relationship to feel good emotionally,
you're going to have to value it enough to prioritize it.
There is no such thing as a right priority or a wrong priority.
But if your work or hobbies are a higher priority
than your relationships,
chances are, your relationships will suffer
because, if you have to choose between them,
you'll choose your work or your hobbies.
This will make the other person feel unloved and insignificant.
It will also make the other person feel
like it is unsafe to connect emotionally with you.
When you are facing a conflict of interest
between one thing and another thing,
you need to be able to consciously decide
where your priority is.
In the healthiest relationships,
the health of the relationship and the way your partner feels
is the number one priority.
Tip No.8: Encourage them!
Encouraging people makes them feel like they're not alone.
It's no longer the World-against-Them, they have a team-mate.
Encouragement allows us to know we have emotional support.
It is the opposite of criticism and discouragement.
It builds a person up instead of tears them down.
This also allows people to be emotionally 'safe'
to share their dreams and desires with us.
#9: Express your wants, needs and expectations, clearly,
in a relationship.
This is about healthy boundaries.
In order to understand healthy boundaries,
feel free to look up my YouTube video titled:
Boundaries vs. Oneness (How to Develop Healthy Boundaries)
It is not fair to keep the other person guessing
about what you want and need.
It is also not fair to expect them to read your mind
by expecting things of them that they are unaware of
and have not agreed to.
It is also important to take time to understand
the other person's wants, needs and expectations.
Ask for what you want and need
and encourage them to do the same.
And assuming that their wants and needs
don't conflict with your wants and needs,
meet those needs and wants.
Tip No.10: Laugh and play together.
This is something which most modern relationships
don't prioritize enough.
Fun and laughter and play have the capacity to bond us
in the same way that experiencing intense struggle,
with a person, does.
It can also be a powerful aphrodisiac
for those of you that are in relationships.
Prioritize doing things together
that feel good and are exciting.
It also ensures that conflict and struggle
is not the undertone of the relationship.
Tip No.11: Become an expert on the people
that you're in a relationship with.
Learn everything that you can about them,
provided that you're doing that for a good reason.
It's the heart of intimacy.
The more you know about a person's wants,
a person's needs, a person's feelings,
the closer your relationship with them can become.
Becoming an expert on another person
will help you to make the right choices
about how to interact with that person,
so that the emotional environment of the relationship
is healthy and supportive.
It also helps us to be experts
at loving them in the way they feel the most loved.
Like all things, we need to apply these tips to ourselves.
The one relationship you can't end (except for/through death),
is the relationship between you and yourself.
That means you have to know what you want,
you have to know what you need,
you have to know your expectations,
you have to validate your feelings, admit to them,
no longer dismiss them,
no longer disapprove of them.
That's the way to develop
a healthy emotional relationship with yourself.
Which is the heart of the relationship between you and yourself.
Never be ashamed of how you feel.
The way you feel is valid.
If you're having an emotion, there is always a good reason
why you are having that emotion,
so don't let anyone tell you how you should or should not feel.
You deserve to have a relationship where feelings matter.
And the best way to get into that relationship
is to decide that your emotions matter, to you.
Have a good week.
Subtitles by: David Soh & Tanya Duarte