Solutions for Negative Emotions © Martyn Carruthers

Few recovery programs work. Their effects don’t last. Changing thoughts and behaviors is not enough. Willpower and programming are often inadequate. Psychoactive drugs often delay relapses. How can you move on?

Who is the “I” that is You?

We help people manage emotional problems by dissolving transferences, conflicts, relationship bonds, abuse & trauma, mentor damage, codependence and entanglements. We help people find, recover and integrate themselves!

Emotional Blocks & Identity Loss

Identity loss is not identity theft. During identity loss, people lose access to their talents and qualities. Instead, they may habitually react in robot-like ways, often with negative emotions and relationship problems.

Solving relationship problems can be challenging. Following our research into systemic psychology, we labeled some common emotional problems in different ways to current psychological models, focusing on how people lose access to a personal sense of identity. These are:

•  Lost identity – dissociated behavior, little sense of self
•  Identity bonds – behavior is bonded by negative emotions
•  Identification with another person (conscious or unconscious)
•  Identity conflict – simultaneous identification with two or more other people

Lost identity refers to chronic dissociation (imagine a professor deeply engaged in solving a complex problem) and identity bonds refer to deep hardly-conscious beliefs. Identification refers to the unconscious acceptance of a dominant personality (think – “possessed”) and identity conflict refers to chronic bi-polar behavior or mood swings (think of classical ideas of “split personality”).

Some indications of identity loss include:

• Emotional outbursts
• Impulsive desire to retaliate
• Chronic conflict or self-sabotage
• Intense verbal or non-verbal communication
• Dissociation or withdrawal from relationships
• Age regression (behaves like an emotional child)

Other factors that may trigger strong negative emotions include:

1. Stress, fatigue & overwork
2. Drugs, medications, food sensitivities & allergies
3. Loss, or threat of loss, of important relationships or possessions
4. Untreated diseases or physiology changes (e.g. weight gain or loss)

Whatever the causes of emotional outbursts, maintaining healthy relationships can be challenging. Changes in one member of a family or team often trigger emotional reactions in other members. Emotional responses include threat avoidance, denial and systemic issues.

1) Threats

• Ego: One’s value or contributions are belittled or minimized
• Success: If a success seems dangerous, sabotage own success
• Imminent danger: Perceived danger in the immediate environment
• Loss: Something may be lost: relationships, things, power, recognition, etc
• Environment: Risk of being displaced be removed from one’s environment
• Position: Membership of an important group (organizations etc) is threatened

2) Denial

• Denial: Pretending that a problem does not exist
• Blame: Recognizing a problem but avoiding responsibility
• Flight: Physically or emotionally distancing from a problem
• Excuses: Recognizing a problem but denying responsibility for it
• Minimizing: Acknowledging a problem but refusing to see its severity
• Avoiding: Changing discussions or thoughts to avoid threatening topics

3) Identifications

Do you act as if you are partially identified? Do you feel normal, just and right, even when expressing negative emotions in ways that people consider abnormal? Have you identified with someone?

An identified person feels most intensely when expressing the unexpressed emotions of a role model. These emotional expressions may come as a massive relief, although perhaps with awareness of unpleasant consequences to come. Do you feel “right in a wrong world“?

• A person identified with a hero expresses chronic fear or anxiety
• A person identified with a victim expresses chronic anger or rage
• A person identified with a dead person expresses chronic melancholy

 

Identifications . Consequences of Abortion . Learning Disabilities

4) Identity Conflict

Do you suffer inner conflict? If you have identity conflict, you may feel normal, just and right, even when jumping back and forth between two parts or sub-personalities. (Part of me wants to but part of me doesn’t).

If you have identity conflict, you may feel that life is conflict.
You may want many simultaneous tasks. If you make decisions or promises
in one mood, you may forget or deny those decisions or promises in another mood.

• You cannot focus on one thing for more than a few minutes
• You shows profound mood swings between two personalities
• You may forget or deny promises or decisions made in the other personality

The symptoms are so common that they may be difficult to perceive. Severe mood swings (between the two “sides” of the conflict) may be diagnosed as bipolar disorder (manic-depression), as intermittent anxiety disorders or something else.

I thought that my emotional problems were caused by my father’s death.
My therapist said that my emotions were from a past life. You never agreed
nor disagreed with either point of view, you just helped me solve my problems London

In a simple conflict, two sub-personalities (parts) may simultaneously express different motivations, the most obvious being shown by incongruence between verbal and non-verbal behavior. Complex conflict refers to conflicts that have many simultaneous motivations (although only two motivations (or personalities) may be simultaneously displayed). (See transcript: Resolve Complex Conflict)

5) Lost Identity

I was empty of emotion. My work and family life felt robotic.
I had few personal goals, and I followed other people’s directions.
I was told that my emptiness indicated spiritual development. It did not!

• Do you have little or no internal motivation?
• Can you define your own goals or outcomes?
• Do you express few or no emotions and appear dissociated?

• Are you so preoccupied with daydreams that you cannot make decisions?

Do you stay in unpleasant relationships due to unpleasant beliefs?
Contact us to manage negative emotions and solve relationship problems.