To be happier and feel better does not come through desire rather through professional help.  Yes, there are things that you can do to feel better but eventually you will hit a wall.  We all have limitations and there are many reasons for that but we need other people in our life that can help us.  The people we need in our life need to be healthier, more successful, live in happy homes, and are more stable.  

Your social circle determines your quality of emotional health

I had a client tell me, “I don’t understand why I keep picking the wrong person?”  I asked them where they were going to find a potential mate and they told me it was at a bar.  My reply was, “If you want to catch salmon you have to go to particular places of fishing where they live and move.  If you keep catching carp that is because you keep going back to that kind of habitat where carp live and breed.”  Social circles are important, if you want to be inspired, challenged to change then upgrade your social circle.  

Your choice of teachers determines your quality of feelings 

Who teaches us is important because we learn only to the level of our teacher.  In the Bible Jesus said, “The student is not above their teacher.”  We need teacher, mentors, mothers/fathers to help us become the best we can be including how to better emotionally regulate.  Who do you look up to the most?  If it’s yourself than that is a big part of your problem.  All too many people believe that once they grow up they have arrived.  Where did we learn that from?  We learned that from our family and our friends.  One of the most stunting things we can do is for us to qualify ourselves as the mentor of our own lives.  I hard one person say they learned all their stuff from the internet and watching documentaries, that might be okay to some degree but I have seen too many people who have become mislead or confused by this method of self-mentorship.  Being fearful and ignorant leads us to the place where we become our own coach, mentor, and teacher, by doing so we will forever be learning but never really changing in an objective way.

I heard a well known financial teacher once say, “I surround myself with people that are smarter than I am so that I can succeed.”  I have also heard it said, “I am not my own accountant because I will lie to myself.”  Having a quality mentor or mental health professional and life coach will keep us honest about ourselves whether or not we can see it or like it.  Feelings change when we change.

Unless you have a secure attachment and are happily married, and are content about the quality of your life then you don’t need mental health therapy.  But, if you desire to improve your life you have to begin by improving your feelings this is done through the help of a good therapist that can help you.  There are many different types of psychotherapies, helps that can help you to improve, feel better and be more stable.  Some of these might include:

• EMDR
• EMOTIONAL FREEDOM TECHNIQUES
• HOMEOPATHY
• LIFE COACHING
• PYSCHOSOMATIC ENERGETICS
• FRASER’S DISSOCIATIVE TABLE TECHNIQUE
• PSYCHODYNAMIC THERAPY

Changing how you feel is important because that is how you are energized, motivated, and the quality of life you live in.  Start taking some good healthy steps today.  Book your appointment today and get started on your healing journey!

For us to better function better in our life, marriage, and work we need to be able to identify emotions.

Life Enhancing Emotions 

We can now observe the opposites to these emotions:  

• Guilt and shame is opposite to Pride
• Self-pity to Gratitude
• Disgust to Happiness
• Fear to Curiosity
• Anger to Compassion
• Sadness and grief to Loved

Pride

There are a few definitions for pride but in this case we are understanding it in the context of self-respect where good feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, admiration and delight that arises out of ones accomplishments, abilities, qualities, and possessions that one has.  We get energy and thrive when we experience the good that comes from us, our talents and achievements.  When we feel proud we want to keep doing it and keep doing better and if we need to problem solve we can better tackle it.  This also gives us self-confidence.  Pride gives us confidence where we want to shine and be seen where guilt and shame compels us to feel less than where we want to withdraw and hide and possibly lie.

Gratitude

When we experience something good that is around us, given to us, or done for us we experience and feel appreciation.  The pleasure of contentment of benefits received.  Gratitude is something that we feel when we recognize good that has come to us and is expressed through words of appreciation and thanks.  We could also described it as when we are pleased.  When people are stuck in self-pity or a victim mentality all too often they cannot experience gratitude.  New studies have shown that gratitude is liberating and therapeutic in nature as are all Life Enhancing Emotions or Positive Emotions.  Self-pity is about self and the internal expense of ones self where you are the focus where gratitude is about others and the things around us, it is external and where the focus is on the good of creation, others, and what we have.

Happiness

Happiness comes from experiences that are pleasurable and have brought us contentment, joy, it is a state of well-being and contentment.  There are various levels of happiness that can range from contentment to ecstasy and euphoria.  When we enjoy something the experience regenerates us and refreshes us and promotes well being.  As in all emotions there are healthy and unhealthy sources and expressions of them.  Happiness draws that person, object or experience closer to ones self where disgust strongly rejects the such.

Curiosity

The emotion of curiosity is a complex one, but simply put it is the desire to learn and to know.  This emotion arises when we have a sense of safety and a hunger to grow as a person, this is more a felt sense.  Science has shown us that our brain makes new cells whenever we have a stimulating environment to think, feel, learn, hear, see, taste, touch, smell, and do something.  Unlike lust curiosity’s desire is to learn.  Curiosity is when we want to figure things out where we are inquisitive.  Curiosity moves forward where fear withdraws.

Compassion

Being compassionate or loving is a feeling we have towards others which helps us to grow and helps others to grow.  Compassion also helps us to feel satisfied and calm.  Compassion is a feeling and expression that touches our environment and others around us.  Compassion or loving is an emotional expression of great care, fondness, devotion, adoration, affection, warmth tenderness, mercy, understanding and concern.  Just like holding in or pushing away anger or sadness is not healthy for us neither is holding in compassion or feelings of love.  Love isn’t love until you give it away as the saying goes.  We feel it a greater more rewarding way when we allow ourselves to feel and express compassion and love.  Unlike anger that fights compassion helps and aids.  

Loved

When we feel loved we feel important and special which is meaningful to us because we feel nurtured and nourished in our sense of self.  When we feel loved we then begin to attach to another person.  We feel cherished where we feel held in deep affection.  When we feel loved we feel attracted and attractive to those who are loving and caring for us.  We feel connected to other people.  Healthy touch is a loving touch that is nourishing to our mind and body.  It is found that Oxytocin is secreted when we are touched in a loving way.  Loving touch is calming.  Loving words and and looks cause us to feel important and loved and loveable we are.  When we feel loved we grow stronger in our sense of self, securer in a relationship, where we can thrive where in contrast when we experience sadness and grief we feel weaker, less secure, more unstable, an emptiness and as though something has died or is dying in us.

Positive emotions or life enhancing emotions are a gift from above and when we are able to experience them more we are healthier, live longer, have better relationships, and become more resilient in life.  We need to work on these things and we can do that through therapies such as:

 

>> EMDR Therapy

>> Emotional Freedom Techniques Therapy

>> Psychosomatic Energetics 

>> Fraser’s Dissociative Table Technique 

 

At New Hope Counselling Centre we have the compassion, the hope and importantly the therapeutic approach that can help you to improve your happiness, marriage, healthy living, bringing you hope for a better tomorrow.  Call us today!

 

Serving Burlington, Hamilton, Oakville, Milton, Mississauga, St. Catharines and surrounding areas.

 

Unless you had a pre-arranged marriage you married for “love”.  Let’s be more precise, you married because your emotional needs were being met by the one you had been dating and engaged to.  Here is where the problem comes into play.

Our Unconscious Minds

Your unconscious mind is that part of you that is much like the hard drive on your computer.  The unconscious mind is the collection of all of your life’s experiences and lessons that has an emotional charge to them.  The unconscious mind is not in a coma but rather your conscious mind is mostly unaware of its operation and can often frustrate you.  For example, have you ever said something you regretted and wondered where that came from?  Or ever said to yourself:  Why did I eat this?  Why did I buy this?  What about, Why did I marry him or her?  This is the unconscious mind that responds much more swiftly than our logical conscious selves.  I have heard it said that 95% of all our behaviour and choices are the result of the unconscious mind.  Our emotions are part of this unconscious mind and when we “fall in love” and get married this choice is the result of our emotional intelligence.  Can you improve your emotional intelligence and thereby shift your unconscious mind’s choices? Yes, but it takes diligent work on a daily basis as well as having a therapist or life coach who can guide and aid you in your change.

Emotional connection

You married who you married because of the emotional connection you had with them.  The emotional connection with your partner is that somehow they were familiar to you, which I will discuss further on. The person we married at some point met most or all of our  emotional needs, they turned us on!  I explain this in my article, Happy Wife, Happy Life: Keys to a Successful Marriage.

We also probably married a person who’s emotional style is probably opposite from ours.  You’ve heard, “opposites attract”, well they do!  For example one might need to have some “cave time” after or during a conflict while others need to talk things out they are the “problem solver”.  In this way we can learn to be supportive to each other by being thoughtful of each other’s needs and feelings.  This can turn out to be a great lesson for our own emotional balance.  Though, all too often couples who come into my office don’t know how to utilize their unique style and be a support to each other.  Being considerate and thoughtful of your partner’s needs are necessary for a successful marriage.

Familiarity

We marry a person who is familiar to us. How? you may ask.  Back to the unconscious mind, we want to bond to someone who is familiar to us in some way of our family of origin.  You’ve probably heard the saying, “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know”.  This is true in marriage.  We are comfortable with the way our partner is, we are also upset with the way our partner is because the unconscious mind is trying to resolve our unmet emotional needs we had in childhood.  If you are trying to fix those unmet needs in childhood through your spouse you will be in for long drawn out pain of disappointment.  Yes, we are to meet each others’ emotional needs and be a support to one another but there are things that your partner cannot do for you and that is what needs to be fixed in therapy.  That is why I offer a two-tier approach to marriage and couples’ counselling (for more info click here).

Emotional Safety

We also entered into our marriage because we experienced emotional safety on some level.  Emotional safety helps us to not only connect but to feel safe enough to open up and become vulnerable.  The safer you feel the more you are willing to let down your guard and expose yourself to the one you love.  For some this is more difficult than others and frequently this is the reason for conflict because it is both aggressive and passive.  Love grows cold because there isn’t enough emotional safety or emotional vulnerability and openness.  This often exists because there are family of origin issues alongside traumatic events that have walled you off and incapacitated you.  Having your wall of emotional defence up will end up causing you more pain not less pain as most people would think.  Think about it this way, a wall is meant to keep unwanted people and things out.  A wall is not meant to be in a marriage, it will only destroy it in time.  This issue needs to be dealt with as soon as possible, matters of this nature require seeing a quality therapist to help you to heal and to allow your spouse in your heart so that you can have a happy and healthy marriage.