Love And Romance - Understanding Emotions
In life we are taught a great many things, but for some reason we do not learn much about emotions! For most of us our emotions are something of a mystery. We know that we have them but have little idea where they come from or how we can experience them more positively.
A useful model developed, by psychologist Dr C. Spezzano, allows us to become more self-aware and to better understand our emotions. At any point in life, our emotions will be experienced from any of six different perspectives.
Denial > Resistance > Pain > Guilt > Fear > Love
Denial - Many of our fears and insecurities are hidden beneath the surface of our conscious minds and we can therefore be completely unaware of them and how they affect our lives. We are often in denial of these insecurities - an unconscious strategy designed to avoid us having to face the emotional pain that we believe might overwhelm us if we were to unearth our hidden fears. We hide them away for protection and then try to get on with life. Unfortunately, these insecurities have a nasty habit of reappearing in our lives as emotional trauma, relationship difficulties and even health problems.
Resistance - Life will through all sorts of challenges at us and these will raise the emotional temperature. In a struggle to keep our insecurities at bay and avoid feeling our negative emotions we will tend to resist anybody or anything in life that might trigger these unpleasant sensations. This normally involves some form of compensatory behavior or distraction from anything that could trigger our pain. Trying to be very successful in education or work to gain approval, or trying to be a really 'nice' person would be typical examples of compensations, but there are many, many more