Today's Great Epidemic
Hello there.
The collective consciousness of mankind
has been evolving for centuries and centuries.
We have seen many dark ages
and many awakenings.
And welcome to today.
We're in the midst of one such dark age.
The name of this dark age
is the emotional dark age.
If you're even see in this video,
you're in the process of awakening
from this dark age.
So what exactly is the emotional dark age?
It's the age of ignorance relative to emotions.
Most people on earth do not understand emotions.
They're not terribly conscious of them,
they do not know what function serve,
they do not know what to do with them.
This is a serious problem
considering that emotions are the very basis
of every person life's experience.
There are many awakenings
which must occur
when we awaken to the idea of emotions.
But today I'm going to trigger
one of these awakenings for you,
because this particular
dysfunctional or emotional ignorance
is at the very basis
of our adult dysfunctions
in our day to day life.
I'm going to call this type of emotional ignorance
The Great Epidemic.
Because it quite literally is.
It is to blame
for more clonic unhappiness and suicide,
than all other causes combined.
Many of you who are watching this movie today
are aware of emotional abuse.
This like deliberate threatening, shaming,
humiliating, exploiting and isolating
to name a few.
But there is another form of emotional abuse
that goes towards people which is harder to recognize,
and it leaves even deeper scars.
It is this form of abuse
that is today's epidemic
and it is called:
Emotional Neglect.
The best way to understand emotional neglect is this:
It is trauma that is created
by what is not done,
instead of trauma that is created
as a result of what is done.
Now, keep in mind,
that your traditional forms of emotional abuse
can go hand in hand with emotional neglect.
But a person can be emotionally neglectful,
without ever being
overtly emotionally abusive,
in the traditional sense.
Yes you guessed it,
emotional neglect like most things,
begins in our childhood,
and so we are going to begin in childhood.
But not before we examine the life of someone
who did suffer emotional neglect in their childhood.
The person who we are going to study
is named Mary.
Mary holds a very successful position
at a law firm.
So, her life is pretty comfortable,
especially financially.
She came from a very small town in Colorado.
A town which was peaceful.
She is the last of three children.
When she looks back at her life,
things seem pretty good,
her childhood never had
any real identifiable trauma,
associated with it.
Her family was financially successful,
she never wanted for anything,
her parents who are still married to this day, never argued.
They had low tolerance for negativity of any kind, in fact.
When any of the children would wine or complain or cry,
they were promptly sent to their rooms.
So Mary is confused about why she is
the way she is.
She's confused about why she goes to bars on the weekends
and drinks until she blacks out.
She's confused about why
she can't seem to create a successful relationship with a man.
She's confused about why she often fantasizes about suicide.
You may confused as well,
but let's look at Mary's life,
but this time, under the lens
of emotional neglect.
It is a parent's responsibility
relative to their child,
to be attuned to that child's needs.
Now it's quite obvious,
the physical needs that a child has,
things like food, and shelter,
and water, and clothing, and bathing.
But what about emotional needs?
Chances are when I just said:
"What about emotional needs?",
your first response was:
"What are emotional needs?"
If that doesn't tell you
just how deep in the dark age of emotions we are,
I don't know what does.
That being said,
we all have emotional needs.
Every child has emotional needs,
and if those needs are not met,
we end up feeling empty.
For this very reason,
if you struggle with emptiness,
I want you to watch my video on YouTube titled:
Emptiness
When a parent does not meet
their child's emotional needs,
the message that they're unintentional sending that child,
is that the child is unimportant to them.
This child does not feel seen, heard, or felt.
There's no intimacy in the relationship
and so this child lacks the knowledge
about how to form intimate relationships.
When a child is shamed for having emotional needs from the parent,
the message the child receives is:
"There's something wrong and unlovable about me."
And this child grows up being completely blind
To his or her own emotional needs,
as well as being very afraid of their own emotions.
It's a parents job to establish emotional connection with their child,
to give undivided attention to their child
seeing them as a unique separate individual,
who has a right to feel the way they feel,
and to use this emotion connection and attention
to respond to the emotional need
that their child is currently displaying.
This can sound like a tall order
if you yourself have never experienced
someone being emotionally attentive to you.
But it is my promise that you can learn.
Now when we look back at Mary's childhood.
We can easily see
how her well meaning parents
unintentionally taught her a lesson,
and all their children,
which is that if they have something emotional
going on that's negative,
or negative thoughts,
they had better keep them to themselves.
Negative emotion was bad and not to be tolerated.
Every time Mary had these feelings
she would feel ashamed of them,
Should isolate herself and not let anyone else see them.
she would try to escape them by drinking,
And she was so intent on hiding the shameful aspect of herself,
believing that if anyone saw this side of her that felt bad,
they would abandon her,
that she never got past the third date with a man.
She was lonely and regardless of whether or not
Mary's parents did actually love her,
she did not feel loved as a child.
Remember of course that we know a parent loves us
without feeling that a parent loves us.
Mary felt isolated did from the world.
Like she was on the outside looking in
and like no one really knew her.
And so, she often thought:
"What's the point of being alive?"
And one day when Mary was feeling lonely enough, she did commit suicide.
And no one saw it coming.
It was a shock to everyone,
because no one knew how much pain she was really in.
Mary's parents did in fact love Mary.
As well as all of their other children.
In fact, from the outside,
her childhood looked idyllic,
even enviable.
But the real truth,
which no one could see,
is that underneath that veneer,
these parents had no idea
how to emotionally parent their child.
They didn't know how to meet their emotional needs.
And as a result,
quite unintentionally,
their children, Mary included,
Mary especially,
was taught lessons,
that led to her death.
Most people who suffer emotional neglect,
either suffer in silence, keeping that internal world
away from absolutely everything and everyone,
or they go from psychiatrist to psychologist,
trying endlessly to figure out
what the hell is wrong with them.
When they look back at their life,
they can't see what possibly could have happened
to make them the way that they are.
So there must be something wrong with them.
This is because emotional neglect
is not what you see.
It is what you don't see.
It is the encouragement that didn't happen.
It is the comforting that wasn't given.
It is the loving support that wasn't offered.
The loving words that were not said.
It is the sense of belonging that was never granted.
The understanding that was never reached for.
You can't see what isn't there.
And so you can't remember what isn't there.
And until you see what could have been there,
you wouldn't even know that anything was missing.
At this particular point in history,
all parents will emotionally fail their children
on occasion.
It isn't these occasional failures
which corrode the very foundation
that a child life is built on,
so as to make their adulthood crumble.
It's the chronic failure
to meet emotional needs.
Now I can promise you
that the more aware you become of emotional neglect,
the more you're going to beat yourself up as a parent.
Because you're going to see the ways
that you're emotionally failing your child
because you'll suddenly recognize the way that you
were emotionally failed as a child.
Just why is this such an epidemic?
It's an epidemic because it is rampart.
Not only that,
it is passed from generation to generation
to generation, and everyone
is completely unaware of it.
They are unaware of it
until the day that one person becomes
aware and conscience of it.
If your emotional needs were not met in childhood ,
you'll have a very difficult time
meeting your own needs in adulthood.
That's why emotional neglect is in fact,
the number one cause of codependency in adulthood.
Now, if you're the kind of person
who heard that just now and said:
"Whoa wait a minute, I'm the most independent person that I know.
"I must not have been emotionally neglected, thank God,
because, definitely not dependent.
You can go ahead and think again,
because independent people
tend to be the worst at meeting their needs
for intimacy and close connection with others.
These are still needs,
still needs that you have.
We tend to swing to one direction or the other
when we have experienced emotional neglect.
We either become extremely dependent,
or become extremely independent.
There are many many symptoms of emotional neglect,
but here's a list of some common things
that will occur in adulthood
if you have suffered from emotional neglect in childhood.
Feeling like you do not belong,
feeling chronic shame,
feeling an insatiable sense of emptiness,
difficulty asking for help,
chronically unhappy relationships,
or the inability to form lasting relationships,
you're either too dependent on others,
or pride yourself on being completely independent,
the feeling that you're a fraud,
feeling either like you're safer alone,
or that you absolutely cannot stand being alone,
judging yourself more harshly than you judge others,
having a hard time figuring out what you're feeling,
what you're feeling you are on the outside of life looking in,
suicidal feelings or thoughts,
difficulty calming yourself or self soothing,
feeling a great deal of self blame or self hatred,
feeling as if something in you is defective or unlovable,
"there's is something wrong with me",
feeling either like you are too self disciplined,
or that you struggle with self discipline and are lazy,
having difficulty nurturing others
or providing adequate affection,
you feel unhappy for no obvious reason.
If you suspect that you were emotional neglected
in your childhood,
I implore you to watch the video
which I created on YouTube titled:
Meet Your Needs!
The more aware you become
of what your emotional needs actually are,
the easier it is to identify
how those needs were not met in childhood,
and thus the specific type
of emotional neglect that you suffered
in your childhood.
Learning how to self care
and also how to let others care for you,
learning how to meet your needs,
let other people meet your needs
and meet other people's needs,
is an important part
of overcoming emotional neglect.
Also it might enlightening for you to do a little research
on your own time, about emotional neglect
and about the many different family dynamics and circumstances
that are emotionally neglectful.
You may just finally be able to connect the dots
between what you've experienced,
or should I say, didn't get to experience,
and why you feel the way you feel.
If you have suffered from emotional neglect,
do not despair.
You can in fact,
heal from this particular trauma.
The first step,
is to dive directly
into the world of emotions.
Obviously with emotional neglect,
emotions is the aspect of our life
that we'll struggle the most with.
So what we have to do,
is to become aware of our own emotions.
We have to start noticing how we feel,
caring how we feel,
we have to look into the purpose of emotions,
what to do with them when they come up,
how to express them.
We need to develop our emotional intelligence.
If you want some assistance in doing this,
you can seek out a Somatic Therapist
or a Hacomi Therapist
in your area.
You also may want to watch my YouTube videos titled:
Positively Embrace Your Negative Emotions,
How To Emotion Your Emotions
&, How To Heal The Emotional Body.
Next, you need to learn about emotions
and relationships.
If we want our society to improve,
and emotional neglect,
to no longer be a function of Human Society,
we must learn how to meet our own emotional needs,
meet each other's emotional needs,
and let our emotional needs be met.
For this very reason,
I want you to watch the YouTube video
that I created, that is titled:
Emotional Wake Up Call.
Since emotional neglect affects our ability
to be authentic
and our ability to be intimate,
learning how to be authentic and intimate,
is a key ingredient
to overcoming emotional neglect.
Keep in mind that intimacy
is not about sex.
Intimacy is about seeing another person,
feeling them,
really listening and hearing them,
understanding them.
It's about touching the internal world
and conversely it's about being seen,
being felt,
being understood,
being heard,
allowing people to touch our internal world.
In this universe,
there is simply the presence of something
and the lack of that very same something.
This is the true polarity that exists.
So one could say,
that darkness is nothing more,
than the absence of light.
The vibration of lack
is the furthest vibration
from the vibration of source
or what many call God.
Therefore, it is emotionally
the most painful vibration you can experience.
More damage can be done to you
by what is not done,
that was ever done to you, by virtue of what was done.
It is my desire,
that by becoming aware of this
epidemic within the human race,
we can shift our focus
to the awareness of emotions.
We can shift our focus
towards meeting our own needs,
meeting the needs of our children,
and meeting the needs of each other.
And it my hope that you live long enough
to see what becomes of this society,
when we achieve this state.
Have a good week.
Subtitles by: Isabelle Montigny & Tanya Duarte (www.tanyaduarte.com)