A huge part of my work is educating people emotionally. All the college degrees in the world, can’t make us emotionally intelligent~ and without this development, we’re shooting in the dark as we navigate Life, and that crazy little thing called, Love. Thus, I often repeat myself.
It’s not that I’ll say the same words over and over until they make sense to the recipient, it’s that each time a theme comes back around, the same idea is conveyed in a slightly different way. My hope is, intellectual repetition will at some point convert to emotional integration~ and once we know something emotionally, we cannot forget it or unknow it.
Brand new, revolutionary concepts and insights don’t always land in a place of total comprehension, and to be very honest, most humans grew up thinking what they believed was right, was actually wrong~ and vice versa. It’s often hard to wrap your head around new information, especially when it challenges views you may have always accepted as “normal,” based on a somewhat limited frame of reference.
We might agree that novel concepts are universally difficult to integrate, but in a world that’s rife with Borderline Personality Disorder, very little rational, practical or logical thought can be absorbed, due to emotional immaturity, cognitive dissonance, lack of empathy or just pre-adolescent-type rebellion.
Breaking up is hard to do (thanks, Neil Sedaka). But when an ex seems to reject or forget what we’ve said no matter how many times we’ve reiterated, it can be difficult to discern whether it’s because we’re not communicating clearly enough~ or they’re just not hearing and retaining what we’re saying, because they won’t accept it.
Unless you see yourself as an utter brute, it’s the latter.
Repeating non-novel concepts to someone is frustrating, anger-producing and (to a reasonably normal person) confusing and troubling… but where did we learn this was required of us~ and why must we continue in this manner, when our efforts to be understood feel so futile?! Can you guess?
Show me a man or woman who grew up with parents who comprehended what their child expressed the first time around, rarely needed further explanation and ‘got’ him or her, and I’ll show you someone who has zero threshold for tolerating this nonsense.
When we grow up with underdeveloped parental units, we actually expect to be misunderstood, because if we’ve developed a higher order of thinking than they have, we’re literally speaking two different languages to each other! This is a deeply lonely existence for a child.
He starts to learn thru trial and error, that he must dumb-down his statements and questions to his parents, or no viable communication whatsoever, can ensue. Furthermore, if his parents don’t have a clue about who he really is, does he presume it’s due to their deficits~ or his own? Do ya see where I’m going with this?
Many of us are programmed since infancy to anticipate that life and love will always be hard, because it’s all we’ve ever known. Whatever breakdown in honest, open, intimate communication we experienced when we were kids, is what we readily accommodate in our adult relationship dynamics.
It’s not necessary to be with a volatile and abusive partner, to be suffering and in pain. If we grew up feeling emotionally disconnected from our parents, we survived by getting good at living without warm, secure attachment bonds.
When we ponder the possibilities of a more meaningful love bond in contrast to what we have, we tell ourselves, “it’s not so bad,” and we’re a bit too agreeable to making the compromises we must. If you ask me though, the worst kind of lonely, is what ya feel with someone who’s basically a roommate instead of someone you wanna grow old with, because you can’t even imagine living without ‘em.
Oh, and by the way? You never have to repeat yourself or struggle to be understood with somebody whose vibration matches your frequency, and who totally gets you.