Accepting Unwanted Emotions
Emotions: according to the dictionary, the definition of an emotion is, “a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body”.
But emotions serve us in a variety of ways. For example, they give us valuable messages (e.g., fear in an unsafe situation), reveal how important something is to us (e.g., you have stronger emotions in your romantic relationship than you do when you’re shopping for cereal or having a casual conversation with a stranger), and prompt us to act (e.g., you stroke a partner’s face with love or turn away from spoiled food in disgust).
But the story of emotions is a bit more delicate and complex, as it isn’t simply about what we feel in response to what happens around us. We tirelessly size up our inner world and place value judgments on it. Depending on the circumstances we’re in and the messages we’ve received along the way about what we’re allowed to feel, emotions (or at least certain ones) may get tagged as acceptable, healthy, or reasonable, or they might get labeled as wrong, crazy, or threatening. For instance, researchers at the University of Oxford highlighted the following categories of disapproving beliefs when it comes to painful emotions:
Emotions are too powerful and can’t be managed.
Emotions are bad and/or ridiculous.
Emotions are defective and make no sense.
Emotions are unproductive.
My emotions could sabotage me or other people.
My emotions might spread to other people and I can’t let that happen.
What’s thorny about this is that if we have a negative outlook on our emotions, we’ve got a whole new load to carry—we’re more likely to have another negative emotion layered on top of the one we’re already experiencing. The emotions we have about how we feel are known as meta-emotions. For example, let’s say we see sadness as a sign of personal weakness and inadequacy. Because of this viewpoint, we might feel shame or fear in response to our sadness. And it’s not just uncomfortable emotions that get a bad rap. People can feel nervous about pleasant emotions too.
Our ideas about our emotional life don’t just impact how we feel about our emotions, but the steps we take to respond to them as well. To illustrate, let’s stay with our example of sadness. We regard it as a signal that we’re weak and defective in some way, and this idea stirs up intense shame. The big question now: What do we do with all of this? Considering that we’re treating sadness as intolerable and we feel ashamed of it, we’re relatively unlikely to talk about it with someone else, to be kind to ourselves in the face of it, or to allow ourselves to feel sad and see what happens. No, instead we’re probably going to be more inclined to react to sadness in other ways, such as:
Mentally beating ourselves up for feeling it
Racking our brains over why we feel this way and why we can’t get over it and feel happy like everyone seems to feel
Trying to cover it up when we’re around other people
Self-medicating with alcohol or other substances
How we choose to respond to our emotions also has an impact on how we feel and on our quality of life. If we criticize ourselves all the time, that harsh voice gets stronger and we’ll continue unintentionally manufacturing more shame. We could mull over why we feel the way we do and question why we can’t make it go away, but this approach is more likely to leave us feeling even worse. If we try to hide our sadness and mask what feels so unspeakable, we’re liable to bear the cost of this strategy, experiencing more distress, less comfort, and more detached relationships. And although we can try to escape through alcohol and other substances, this opens the door to use disorders and other problems.
There are a variety of other ways in which rejecting what we feel sets the stage for giving us more of the very thing we don’t want. For instance, when people are scared of emotions, this forecasts difficulty managing anger, feeling more upset, drawing from pleasant memories to feel better, and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Moreover, people who view uncomfortable emotions as bad are also less likely to be empathic toward themselves. And the idea that painful emotions are hazardous is related to lower odds of naming such emotions for one’s children, a valuable step in emotional skill-building.
So if it doesn’t serve us to treat our emotions as off-limits, what’s the alternative? When we accept distressing emotions as being a universal, natural part of life, it’s ironically linked to experiencing them less and, in the long run, having better emotional health.
But why might this be? Why would accepting the emotions we don’t want generally be connected with them dwindling rather than growing? Researchers have proposed several possible explanations:
Rumination can make people feel worse, and individuals who accept upsetting emotions don’t tend to ruminate over them as much.
Efforts to avoid what a person feels can go awry and have a boomerang effect, furnishing them with more of what they tried to push away.
Individuals who accept their emotions may be spared an extra layer of emotional pain by not having to feel upset about feeling upset.
Disquieting emotions that we meet with acceptance are less likely to have as much staying power.
Acceptance is a mindset, an approach of giving ourselves permission to experience our emotions and taking the perspective that they’re human rather than silly, weak, crazy, wrong, dangerous, or beyond our power to ever be able to manage. It’s about challenging that self-critical inner voice that says we can’t feel what we do, or that an emotion will harm us or be a badge of our inherent fault or shame. Acceptance is about giving ourselves the space to listen to ourselves in a nonjudgmental way.
Read the full article on Psychology Today.
If you live in the Los Angeles or Westlake Village area and are interested in therapy, I invite you to contact me via email at: tanyasamuelianmft@yahoo.com . I provide a complimentary consultation. Check out my services to see which one might fit your needs. Contact me now to see if we might be a good fit to work together! Or book your appointment here!
Demystifying Couples Therapy
There’s a stigma around couples therapy, we don’t end up having those conversations, and we can wind up feeling alone when, of course, that couldn’t be further from the truth. People associate it with divorce. However, most people who come to couples therapy are not getting divorced—they’re building a healthier relationship.
Q: What can you expect to get out of therapy as a couple? And what can’t you expect?
A lot of people come to therapy thinking that they’re going to change something about their partner. When you come to couples therapy, you have to be prepared to make changes yourself. You can’t change another person. But you can influence another person. And that’s why it’s important to know that if you make changes, you will instigate change in someone else. Meaning you can’t tell someone to change, but if you change your behavior, they will change in response to you.
We think: How can we get them to do something that we want? But really, the way we can do that is by helping them first. If you can do something in a way that helps them, you will get back something that helps you.
Q: How do you take the first step?
By the time a couple gets into an office, there’s often some resentment. And because of the resentment they don’t feel generous toward each other. They have to remember that they do love this person, and that the person isn’t acting in this way to harm them; the person is acting this way because they are also struggling. If you can look at it that way, you might have more compassion for your partner, because you’re not the only one who’s struggling in this relationship. When you have more compassion, you can carve out a place of generosity for the fact that your partner is struggling, too.
Your partner’s reality doesn’t cancel out your reality. Just because your partner sees the situation differently from how you see it, it doesn’t mean that that person is wrong or that you’re wrong. It just means there’s room for both. Sometimes people don’t want to take the first step because they think: I need you to see it this way. I need you to see it accurately. I need you to see it my way. It’s important for both people to listen to how the other person sees it, but that doesn’t mean they have to agree with it.
Q: When is going to couples therapy a good idea?
Sometimes there’s a concrete issue, like you don’t see eye to eye on something like money or how much time you spend with the other person’s family. Or you have different ideas about how you are raising the kids. You want to go before it gets to the point where you’re both backed into your corner and you can’t listen at all to the other person’s point of view. A good time to go is when you can say, “Hey, there have been a few times when we’ve gotten really agitated when we talk about this with each other. Maybe we need somebody else to help us learn how to have this conversation, because it’s a really sensitive topic for both of us, and it’s hard for us to hear each other.”
Q: How do you approach the idea of therapy if your partner is averse to it?
It’s very important not to make it sound like, “We’re going to therapy because you have problems.” Some people even say, “We’re going to therapy because I can’t handle what you’re doing.” Or “I can’t handle something about you.”
Try something along the lines of: “We’re going to therapy because I love you so much, and our relationship is so important to me, and it breaks my heart when we argue. I would really like to go talk to somebody so maybe we can get some help with that.”
Q: How do you go about finding the right therapist?
Word of mouth is a great way to find a couples therapist, but if you’re hesitant to do that, you can look on Psychology Today. Look at therapist profiles in your area and see which ones have an approach that feels comfortable to you. But really, you won’t know until you get into the room and you see what it’s like when all three of you are sitting there.
“It’s tricky, because there’s so much shame around couples therapy—even more than with individual therapy. People associate couples therapy with divorce. But in my experience, most people who come to couples therapy are not getting divorced—they’re building a healthier relationship. The people who end up getting divorced are often the people who never got help.”
It’s really important to know that couples therapy is hard work, but it’s also very rewarding. You’re very exposed in a way you aren’t in individual therapy. In individual therapy, you can present yourself the way you want to present yourself. In couples therapy, your therapist is going to see you and your partner and the way you two interact with each other. You can feel very vulnerable. And you should—that’s largely the point, to be real with each other.
After your first session, did you feel like the therapist heard both sides of what was happening? Did you feel like the therapist understood some of the ways you two interact? That’s a good way to assess initially.
(Also, take a look at my post about how to find the right therapist)
Q: What else can you expect from that first session?
You should feel that the therapist can hold both of your realities at the same time. You should also walk out knowing there’s a definite possibility that you have some flawed assumptions about your partner’s motives, and maybe some of those will come out in the first session. And that he or she has some flawed assumptions about yours. The therapist can help point out that maybe you were thinking that the reason your husband is never home for dinner on time is because he doesn’t want to be, or because his work is more important than you, or vice versa. But your assumptions are often wrong. A good therapist can help you learn something new—even in that first session—about the way your partner thinks and feels about you that isn’t as harmful or hurtful as you had imagined.
It’s always helpful for the therapist to reframe for people: “Hey, the reason that this or that might be happening is not because your partner doesn’t care about you. The whole reason that you’re both here is because you care about each other. If you didn’t care, nobody would be sitting in this room right now.”
Q: What kind of commitment is couples therapy, emotionally and timewise?
It depends on what’s going on and how long it’s been going on. That’s why people need to come in earlier, because if something is a relatively new issue between a couple, that can be resolved pretty quickly. If something has been going on for decades, it can’t be undone in four sessions. That might take a little bit longer.
The good news is that once you start seeing the underlying patterns, it changes most of your interactions. It won’t just change the one thing that you came in to talk about; it will change the way you see each other. You’ll see each other with more generosity and more compassion. You will take what your partner is doing less personally, and you will feel less injured by the other person’s behavior. That helps globally in the relationship. You don’t have to keep coming back every time you have a problem, because now you know more about each other in a way that helps you to resolve your own problems.
Q: How does couples therapy work in conjunction with individual therapy, if one partner already has a therapist?
Lots of people do that. You get different things out of them. You learn a lot about yourself individually in couples therapy, but sometimes people need extra support, or they’d like the extra support. Or they’re working through something personally that they need an individual therapist for. A couples therapist will generally not see either member of a couple for individual therapy, because we want that relationship to be clean. We don’t want any perception of the therapist favoring one person over the other. There’s often a lot of sibling-like rivalry in couples therapy, where people feel like they want the therapist to take their side, or they want the therapist to like them better. It’s not really in their awareness. People want the therapist to validate their position, but we’re not there to do that—nor would that be helpful.
Q: What are some tools that couples can try using to resolve conflict?
A lot of people say, “You’re not listening to me. You’re not listening,” as they’re talking over somebody else. Before you say you don’t feel heard, consider how well you listen.
People don’t realize they do that. They feel so unheard that they don’t realize that they’re making the other person feel unheard. You will be heard much more expansively by the other person if you truly listen to them. A lot of people don’t realize that they’re terrible listeners; they really just want to get their point across.
One of the most important things is to realize that you’re two separate people: You’re going to have different ideas and perceptions. And you don’t have to convince the other person of the truth of your perception. It’s important only that they understand how you feel about it. But neither perception is more valid than the other.
Q: How do you know when you can pause on couples therapy?
When the couple feels like they’re relating to each other better. When they feel like whatever they came in for isn’t really happening anymore, or at least it’s not happening to the same degree. Or even if it’s happening, they are able to stop before it escalates and not go down that rabbit hole the way they used to. It’s about changing the pattern between them.
All couples do a dance. If one person changes the dance, either the other person is going to fall flat on the floor or they’re going to have to change their steps. Usually what happens is the other partner changes their steps, too. And now the couple’s doing a different dance, and if they’re doing a different dance and it’s working for them, then they don’t need to be in therapy anymore.
Sometimes people are scared to leave couples therapy because even though their problem has gotten better or is mostly resolved, they fear that if they leave therapy, they will backslide at times. But that’s to be expected. I say, “Go out there and try it, and if you backslide, come back in. You know you can come in for a tune-up.”
There’s nothing wrong with coming in for a tune-up, but I do want clients to learn to trust themselves, to trust that they can do this and that they are going to backslide. We all have longstanding reactions that are very visceral, and sometimes we screw up. But that’s okay—nobody’s perfect. It doesn’t have to be very significant. It’s kind of like when people go on a diet and they eat two pieces of cake and feel like their entire diet is ruined. It’s not—you ate an extra piece of cake, and you move on.
You can always come back to therapy. It’s a conversation that you have with the therapist and with each other. But it’s not as though everything needs to be perfect for you to stop. No couple is perfect.
Read the full article on Goop.
If you live in the Los Angeles or Westlake Village area and are interested in therapy, I invite you to contact me via email at: tanyasamuelianmft@yahoo.com . I provide a 15-minute complimentary consultation. Check out my services to see which one might fit your needs. Contact me now to see if we might be a good fit to work together! Or book your appointment here!
Why You Need To Know Your Partner's Love Language
Knowing a partner’s love language just might save a relationship. The idea behind this psychology is that every individual has a different way that they give and receive love. Dr. Gary Chapman, #1 New York Times Bestseller, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, argues that these ways can be divided up into 5 simple categories:
Acts of Service
If your #1 Love Language is “Acts of Service,” you feel most loved and appreciated when your partner thinks about what they can do to ease the responsibilities that are weighing on you. Hearing “let me help you with that” or “I already took care of it” is most exciting to you. Laziness, failure to perform their share of chores, or being unthoughtful with how they can help you are all easy ways for you to feel unappreciated and unloved.
Word of Affirmation
If your #1 Love Language is “Words of Affirmation,” actions do not speak louder than words. Unsolicited compliments make you feel secure and happy in your relationship. Hearing “I love you” on a regular basis is important to you, and helps you to believe you are loved. Hearing the reasons behind why they love you is icing on the happy-relationship cake. Insults are not easily forgotten and not hearing enough words of affirmation will make you feel unloved.
Quality Time
Having your partner’s undivided attention is the time when you feel most appreciated. Distractions during quality time or postponing dates can make you feel like you aren’t important to your partner. Scheduling the time to be together is crucial to the success of your relationship.
Receiving Gifts
If this is your #1 language, don’t question your character. It actually has more to do with the thought behind the gift than the gift itself. You appreciate the thoughtfulness behind gift giving (whether it’s a grand birthday present or bringing home your favorite magazine from a trip to the drugstore). All gifts, whether small and daily or big and grand, remind you how much you matter to your partner and how much thoughtfulness and effort they think you’re worth. Missed birthdays or thoughtless gifts are your relationship nightmare because it makes you feel like your partner doesn’t care about you.
Physical Touch
This isn’t just about intimacy — holding hands, hugging, or pats on the back make you feel loved and cared for. Physical closeness is directly related to emotional closeness for you, and neglect can be destructive to the relationship. A hug can lift your mood or take away your insecurities.
So why is knowing your partner’s love language so crucial to the success of your relationship?
It will help you and your partner feel more appreciated.
If you’re an “Acts of Service” person dating a “Words of Affirmation” person, your partner might shower you with compliments and “I love you”s every day, but you would spend the relationship not feeling truly appreciated because they never offer to run errands or do the dishes. Understanding your partner’s love language will help you discern how they show their love, so that you do feel loved and appreciated, knowing the way in which they give their love is different than yours.
It will allow you to communicate your needs more.
Understanding that they do other things out of love, and that they just have a different love language, will help you to communicate, “it makes me feel appreciated when you clean the kitchen,” or “I feel loved when you hold my hand.”
It will show you and your partner what you both should do without being asked.
Knowing your partner is a “Physical Touch” person will make you more thoughtful about holding their hand in public or hugging them when they’re down, and you will be able to understand the meaning and importance behind these little acts that, for you, would otherwise be insignificant. Your partner will be more conscious about what they can do to show you how much they appreciate and love you. When you and your partner both know how the other gives appreciation and wants to receive appreciation, it makes for more thoughtful decisions and efforts that make you and your partner both feel loved and valued.
If you live in the Los Angeles/Westlake Village area and are interested in therapy, I invite you to contact me via email at: tanyasamuelianmft@yahoo.com . I provide a complimentary consultation. Contact me now to see if we might be a good fit to work together! Or book your appointment now!
Attachment Styles & The Effects on our Relationships
Many psychotherapists (including myself) believe that our adult personalities are unconsciously planted in our childhood experiences. And the way we relate to others, too, seems to be established in our very first relationships—typically with our parents. From the way our caregivers meet our emotional needs in early life, we develop social coping habits that collect into something called an “attachment style”—a pattern in the way we relate to others. A healthy attachment style might serve us well, fostering solid self-esteem and positive relationships, but an unstable one might hold us back from forming functional relationships.
Attachment theory isn’t talked about as often today. However, we all have something to learn from knowing our attachment style: The first step is knowing if you have an insecure attachment style, and, if so, what kind. The second—and this is the tough part—is changing it. Stepping into the unconscious mind isn’t intuitive or easy, but it’s not impossible—and it can reform the way you approach relationships going forward.
Here are a few examples:
You may have been single for some time and wonder why. Or you may be a serial dater who enters relationships falling hard in the first few months—only to cool down and lose interest. You may yearn for love but find yourself staying home binge-watching Game of Thrones. You may have found the perfect partner but get so in your head that it’s impossible to enjoy dinner with them. Perhaps you have been in a long-term relationship but feel unfulfilled, and no matter what they do, you can’t seem to trust your partner. If any of these scenarios apply to you, you may be mimicking feelings that were established when you were in diapers.
Do any of those sound familiar? Many of the fears, beliefs, and behavioral patterns you present as an adult are derived from how you felt in the first few years of life. Our thoughts and actions are shaped by the way you were attached to your primary caregivers.
Attachment theory is useful and relevant especially in identifying insecurities and detachments that affect our general well-being. There are three main types: anxious, avoidant, and secure. Of course, there’s a lot of individual variability, but most people tend to identify with one of these types.
Anxious
Anxiously attached people require a lot of attention. They never seem to be satisfied with the amount they are receiving and consistently want more, a need driven by the devastating fear that they are not good enough. They often compare themselves with others and strive for perfection.
It is almost impossible for an anxiously attached person to fully trust anyone, and so they make a mess of romance and friendships. They are often suspicious, scared of being betrayed, and predisposed to meddling in the affairs of others. If you don’t text them back within an hour or two, they tend to take it personally; they believe that something is wrong, feel annoyed, or worry they have offended you in some way.
People that are anxiously attached are waiting for the other shoe to drop. They may constantly be on the verge of breaking up with their partner or friends, but they don’t go through with it because they don’t want to be left alone. Does it remind you of anyone?
Avoidant
These people often seem indifferent and unaffected by even the most turbulent of relationships. They keep their emotions closed off and don’t engage too deeply in love.
It feels unsafe for avoidants to show who they are; they’re often dealing with self-doubt and uncertainty. They busy themselves with a wide array of useless tasks in order to place distance between themselves and others. They are often workaholics who have little time to socialize with friends, and they even have a tendency to neglect their spouses and children. Avoidants are masters of self-soothing, which often leads to reliance on unhealthy obsessive patterns around substances, exercise, and food.
People who are avoidant may yearn for a loving connection but find themselves running from scenarios where they are asked to commit—in the face of real intimacy, they become uncomfortable and tend to slip away when things get serious.
Avoidants are encased by an unconscious fear that they will be abandoned and rejected and therefore they do not allow themselves to get too close. Unfortunately, this can lead to loneliness, a sense of disconnection, and pessimism.
Secure
Those who are securely attached find the joy in friendships and intimate partners and are not afraid to let it all hang out. They have a balanced and healthy ego—for the most part—and believe in themselves and the vitality of companionship. They seek partners who are also healthy and have a low, well-balanced center of gravity, which allows them to take risks without the fear of failure.
When a securely attached person is paired with an anxious or avoidantly attached person, he/she can tell right away that something is amiss. This does not mean that relationships do not exist between these groups, but if they do, they are often short-lived and unfulfilled. Securely attached people sometimes have a blind spot that prevents them from understanding what people with insecure attachments are coping with. They are the fortunate ones who had parents who showed the correct amount of love for them. This is the primary difference: Avoidants and anxious types did not receive what they needed to feel fully safe.
What next?
We can’t go back and change the details of the first years of life, but there are a few things that can be done to heal these wounds. I encourage you to seek out the help of a therapist. Therapy can be immensely helpful in healing old wounds, shifting your perception of yourself and the people around you, and allowing you to feel safe.
If you live in the Los Angeles/Westlake Village area and are interested in therapy, I invite you to contact me via email at: tanyasamuelianmft@yahoo.com . I provide a complimentary consultation. Contact me now to see if we might be a good fit to work together! Or book your appointment now!