Experiences from childhood, events in which we created meanings about self and other, in our interactions with primary caregivers in particular, have the power to unconsciously shape our lives. Our core beliefs about who we are, what we are capable of, how we want life to be, and so on, were formed mostly in the formative years of childhood–and these meanings unknowingly guide our steps as we walk along our path in life.

Some do so continuously in positive ways, giving us stamina to overcome challenges, or encouragement to sustain our enthusiasm for expressing our talents and interests.

Other experiences affect us in negative ways, blocking our growth.

Often the impact of negative childhood experiences remains dormant until adulthood, when an intimate relationship seems to bring out some deeply painful aspect of ourselves, hidden deep inside.

Yet our most intimate relationships are often the ones that cause us the most pain, likely because they also offer the most fertile ground and opportunities, potentially, for us to consciously explore any unexamined beliefs or unresolved wounds from childhood and realize our own healing. We may uncover issues coming up of trust or control, fear of abandonment or engulfment, or perhaps we find ourselves instinctively reenacting the actions of a parent that we find distasteful, based on our current values. We may experience painful emotions and feelings that overwhelm or rob us of the energy and hope we need to make better choices. Regardless the challenge, we each have the power within us, as adults, to change, transform and heal ourselves at the deepest level.

What facilitates our healing?

1. It helps to start from a place of knowing, that: if we survived the formative years of childhood—which we would not have, had we not received some level of love and care, physical and emotional, from our primary caregivers—we are now, as adults, whole beings unto ourselves (despite the reality that we are social beings at heart).

Whereas this would have been an insurmountable task in childhood, with the wisdom and cognitive abilities of our adult self, we can learn to be the nurturing …

The concept of power is widely misunderstood, yet how we conceptualize “power” — our own and others’  – shapes our innermost values, and thus the neurochemical processes that decide the direction of our behaviors, relationships and life.

As human beings, it is our nature to attribute meanings to our world through the use of language and symbols. These meanings in turn shape our lives, especially when they are hidden from view.

Our view of “power” forms a core belief system.

Several top psychological theorists of the 20th century, such as Alfred Adler, Rollo May, William Glaser, Abraham Maslow, Virginia Satir, Victor Frankl, Carl Rogers, William Glaser, among others, describe power as a healthy inborn striving. 

If you’ve ever experienced a moment of emotional connection with a loved one, then you know that, like the sweet fragrance of lemon blossoms, it can be a profoundly enjoyable experience, perhaps too heavenly for words.

To make this a regular experience, it takes a conscious plan, one that sets your intention on doing what you observe “works” to improve your life and relationships, and stop doing what doesn’t.

What will it take to have such command of your choices? A mindful mastery of the emotional-physiological states of your body, a conscious intention to focus your attention on being present in challenging moments of your life and relationships. This is a training of sorts that you consciously choose to participate in to cultivate your ability to handle, understand and regulate upsetting emotions of anger (and fear). You always have a choice, and cultivating a mindful mastery of your emotions is a conscious choice at any given moment to take action from optimal emo-physiological states of mind and body.

In Part 1, defensive ways of expressing anger, whether passive and aggressive, were described as toxic to relationships (in most situations). Like too much lemon juice, anger can have a souring effect that inhibits meaningful connection and intimacy. In Part 2, the emotion of anger was identified as essential, a potentially healthy, balancing agent that, when effectively expressed, can move us to take action to not only survive, but also to thrive, to live authentic lives; it prompts us courageously express who we are or what we think and feel, our unique talents and abilities, and so on.

Without the emotion of anger to propel us to take the reins of our lives as the choice-making agent we’re designed to be, conceivably, we might get so overwhelmed by the emotions of vulnerability associated with our hardwired emotion-drives, i.e., for meaningful connection and intimacy — that we’d fail to make any distinctions between ourselves and others as separate beings. It’s not a question of eliminating anger, it’s a question of how to direct this energy to create optimal outcomes, rather than tear down, punish, retaliate and the like….

What determines how we respond, express or handle anger?

Largely, it’s a combination of what we consciously or subconsciously believe and what we most want or (emotionally) need in the situation. What we believe is possible or what we believe we or others “should” (or shouldn’t) do, for example, activate emotions and neural command networks in our brain that shape our behaviors.

The questions below are designed to expand awareness of your emotional experience of anger, what you’ve learned and believe, and perhaps the beliefs that underlie how you express or respond to anger, others’ as well as your own.

Instructions: Write down your responses to the following questions:

1. Anger is…

2. When you were growing up, what did your mother do with her anger? Your anger?

3. When you were growing up, what did your father do with his anger? Your anger?

4. As a child, what did you decide about expressing your angry feelings?

5. Who taught you “how” to express or not express anger?

6. In what situations did you learn to express anger or silence anger?

7. In the present, what do you do when you are angry at your partner? Child? Parent?

8. How long does it take you to let go of angry feelings or stewing inside (days, hours, minutes etc.)?

9. Are you satisfied with how you resolve your anger with your partner? Child? Parent?

10. What do you want to change so you will feel good about how you resolve anger?

Co-dependency is a way of relating to self and others in which a person experiences little or no sense of self in relation to key persons in their  life.

Rarely the primary focus, codependency issues are often identified in connection to the treatment of a family member with an addiction. A person in a significant relationship with someone addicted to a substance or activity is at risk of developing a set of behaviors (also an addictive pattern) from which they too need healing to restore life balance, integrity and peace of mind.

Codependent persons have a developed ability to “read” the moods of others, and take pleasure in “knowing” what others want, how to pacify or appease. Pleasing others, however, is rooted in fear, and a wishful fantasy or expectation that, somehow or someday, the ones they seek to please will recognize, appreciate, and value them for the efforts they make.

This set of behaviors, sometimes referred to as “enabling,” is known as “codependency” or “co-addiction.”

Though we commonly confuse the two, simply put, “wants” are something we can live without, and needs are essential to our life and health.Our personal “wants” can shape our behaviors as much as our physiological needs and emotion-drives. When we’re thirsty we take action to get a drink of water, for example. Similarly, when we want to reach a goal, i.e., get closer to a loved one or excel in a particular sport, we take action accordingly.

factors disconnect In interactions with others, for example, when our attempt to fulfill our drive to find value or matter in relation to another is blocked, we experience painful emotions. This pain is healthy, providing we know how to interpret and respond to it. It is our body’s way of letting us know to take some action, preferably one that is informed by our inner understanding and wisdom.

The two exercises in this step are designed to build awareness and strengthen your ability to consciously connect to your emotional needs as a means of calming and centering yourself in challenging situations.

Conscious harmony between your wants and needs?

A conscious plan focuses your attention foremost on what you most aspire to realize. It takes into consideration both your personal wantsand aspirations as a unique individual — and at the same time, yourhardwired emotion-drives to matter, making unique contributions while also securing safe mutually enriching, healthy relationships.

1. Are your wants mostly conscious or subconscious?

There’s a key difference between what you think you want and what you consciously want. What you think you want is mostly subconscious, which means there are unresolved conflicts that prevent you from realizing what you want, for example, you may “want” to be slim and trim but you also “want” to watch TV rather than exercise. Which will win out? The one that’s backed with the most passion. Your body’s operating system, the subconscious mind, knows what you really, really, really want by what gives you the most pleasure inside. This inner “feel good” fires and wires actions and momentum with the release of feel-good chemicals.

For the most part, the subconscious mind manages the energies of your body based on a simple …

Most understand the links between our thoughts or self-talk and our emotions and feelings — not so with emotion-drives. How can they be as as real as our physical needs for food and water? In Part 1 emotion-drives were described as action-motivating factors that propel us to take action from within to matter and meaningfully connect to life within and around us.

The concept of “emotion-drives” as life shaping and connected to our health and survival is more challenging to understand. And, we rarely think of or explain our own or other’s behaviors in terms of these powerful universal strivings.

This is surprising when we consider that several top psychological theorists in the 20th century, among others, Alfred Adler, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May and William Glasser, viewed human behavior as primarily motivated or purpose-driven to meet social needs, such as love, belonging, contribution, all of which are emotional in nature.

Why the disconnect?

Emotion mastery, or the ability to regulate our emotions, is essential to our personal and relational health and happiness. It is a built-in capacity that must be cultivated, yet often ignored. No easy task, this inner work requires an ongoing willingness to develop awareness of our emotions and feelings, and an openness to feeling and understanding them.

Like gauges, emotions are status checks, personal messages our body-mind (subconscious) sends at any given moment to keep us (conscious-mind) informed on what most concerns us.

Essentially, emotions tell us where we are or how well we’re doing, so to speak, in relation to what and where we most aspire to be in life, with regard to the following:

• Personal wants and aspirations
• Physical sustenance needs
• Emotion-drives or yearnings (needs) to matter

Emotions may be triggered by what’s going on around us, however, our emotion-responses are primarily activated by a combination of internal factors, that:

When it comes your body or life, not much happens without emotion.  To your brain, emotions are essential chemical signals that connect all the systems of your body 24/7, in a complex and sophisticated communication network like no other.

To your mind, or conscious and subconscious self, your body’s ability to transmit signals of emotion and physical sensations help you survive and thrive the myriad of social, intellectual and emotional (spiritual?) challenges of life, which are natural to your own unique growth and development patterns.

How vital is this communication? Quite. As it is impossible not to communicate or to relate, it’s a quality of life matter.

Like it or not, you are a walking-talking communication system. To be alive is to communicate, to relate, and to connect with the world within and around you. Your brain is a relationship organ, which makes you a social being at heart.

Conscious communication is a window into the world of our heart and mind – and another’s from their vantage point.

As a tool, it’a a way to manage the energies we bring to our communications, so that we remain consciously aware of what is going on inside of us, our feelings, thoughts, what we want and need, and so on, without getting triggered.

In Part 1 we described eight attributes of a conscious way of talking. In this post, the focus is on attributes of conscious-listening.

Conscious-listening is a way of being intentionally present to see, to know and to recognize our own and another’s felt presence and unique value in the relationship. Safe to say, it’s not possible to authentically love another, without being willing to freely give the essential gift of listening. In other words, if we’re not genuinely listening to another, sooner or later, they will stop listening to us. (They have no choice, it’s physics.)

Listening as critical to healthy relationships?

Listening is perhaps the most critical component of effective communication. That’s because we are hardwired with emotion-drives that propel us to feel known, heard, understood, valued, and so on, aspects of our overarching drive to do more than merely survive life, to also thrive, to matter and meaningfully connect in relation to life around us. In fact, our drive to thrive in life is also critical to our physical health and survival, as stress directly impacts our health, emotional, mental and physical, in negative ways.

As important as it is to resolve past or present problems, for example, when one or both parties lack empathic listening skills, problems quickly rise to the level of seeming “impossible” to solve. Why?

• The problems themselves become non-issues because the “real” issues are questions of the heart that cannot be solved with logic alone.
• Not realizing this, we over focus on improving our “logic” – hoping to find some way to get them to see our side (disprove their logic), and thus are …
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