10 Easy Ways to Undermine Your Relationship with Emotional Irresponsibility

By Dr. Paul Michael Schlosser, edited by Cynthia Rose Young Schlosser

1. Triangulation. This ‘psychological’ term means letting someone else be
more important than your mate. Letting someone or something else ‘get
between’. Loyalty to other people, making someone or others more important
than your mate–example. staying ‘married’ to your original family, being
‘married’ to work, hobby, buddies etc. Mate should be second only to God.

2. Being too busy to share, such as not doing the ten minute exercise to
heal and share feelings on a daily basis. Too preoccupied for quality
sharing. Not allowing intimacy. Workaholism, being emotionally unavailable.
Staying numbed out. Refusing to melt, not opening the heart.  Sexual, or
‘kundalini’ energy can be aroused to rise up the spine to stimulate higher
glandular centers, healing body and spirit, but the heart must be open.
Whatever blocks the heart should be healed on an ongoing basis.

3. Expecting the partner to make you happy, holding partner accountable for
your own bad feelings. Blaming partner if you are not happy–a blatant way
to do it is to tell mate : “You make me unhappy,”  This includes judging,
labeling, and putting mate down.

4.Threatening to leave. Threatening divorce.  Sometimes includes unnecessary
risk taking or suicidal behavior [such as associating with criminals or
dangerous driving] that might attract disaster to the relationship. If you
make threats, you put in motion destructive energy. Why create what you
don’t want?. Why implant programming that undermines what you really want?
Why not visualize you and your partner radiant with happiness and love,
making a mutual  commitment to heal upset feelings and work toward what you
really want.

5. Refusing to process feelings when upset, holding grudges, bringing up
past mistakes, Acting out negative feelings. Bringing up old lovers and old
relationships, etc.  Every relationship should have mutually agreed upon
ground rules for working through feelings BEFORE inevitable upsets arise.
Practice healing your own upset feelings instead of projecting them onto
your mate.  Learn what emotions are and how they get wounded and how they
heal. Feelings heal when allowed to flow safely and nondestructively in an
empathetic atmosphere, either within yourself or with a therapist.

6.Consciously or unconsciously setting up double binds. Keeping your eye out
for a better relationship to come along. Gossip and bad mouthing partner to
others. If you establish a judgmental atmosphere of the critical parent
[perhaps like your parents did with each other and with you] then that’s
what you will get back in return.

7. Being fakey and dishonest. Keeping up a front or facade, even if it is to
please the partner, to keep an ‘act’ going on all the time. To live in
denial and hide true feelings.  Unintimate behavior, such as avoidance of
meaningful eye contact, allowing only superficial communication,etc.

8. Not copping, not apologizing or admiting when you have made a mistake.
Refusing to grow and reach enlightenment. Not benefitting from experience.
Not forgiving any mistakes of self and others.  Not learning life’s lessons
is a formula guarenteed to waste this lifetime.

9. Not letting the partner influence your decisions. Insensitivity and
defensiveness. Not listening. Not respecting your mate. Extreme of this is
forcing the partner to go along with activities that don’t have juice.

10.Not staying healthy, not taking care of yourself or your appearance, such
as teeth etc. Obsessive drinking, smoking, dangerous substance abuse,
gambling, financial irresponsibility, etc.

11.: Denying you are triggered without giving it due consideration when your mate proposes it to you. Summeraly dismissing the idea, the possibility, reacting angrily, curtly, emotionally blackmailing your mate for bringing it up.

Note:

These behaviors often result from a ‘Hero to Villain Flip’.  Often when a
major emotional upset happens in a relationship, an upset partner may go
from a positive to a negative emotional parental transference within his or
her inner child self to the mate. The mate is seen as negative and
unsupportive instead of loving and nurturing.  If the upset partner does not
identify these strongly upset feelings as originally coming from early
childhood emotional wounding, and blames the mate for his or her upset
feelings in present time, the relationship can suffer. Instead of acting out
destructively, it is good to discuss committing to heal and clear these
feelings with emotional processing.

10 MINUTE EXERCISE

Some people feel troubled or depressed most of the time. If that is true,
it is appropriate to commit to doing a great deal of emotional flowing, by
becoming aware of wounded feelings, accepting them, loving the feelings
themselves and watching them heal.

Among several, alternative emotional healing practices which are effective
for implementing this commitment are the ‘ten minute exercise,” trauma
clearing practices, eye movement and the practice of “feeling and healing
bad feelings with empathy and understanding”.  Some other methods such as
breathing and tapping also work well in individual situations, but usually
require a partner trained to do them.

One big advantage of the ten minute exercise is its efficiency to transform
most bad feelings quickly.  Also, it can be quickly and easily utilized with
minimal training of the listener.  The main stipulation is that the listener
agrees not to interrupt, i.e. just to listen lovingly and non-judgmentally,
and to repeatedly ask the salient question for that particular emotional
issue when given the cue to do so.  A listener should never interrupt long
periods of silence, for it is in the silence that insight arises.

Doing “ten minutes” works very well for quickly resolving double binds and
ambivalence.

The ten minute exercise is a session in which a facilitator asks you a
question about your feelings, listening while you answer, and then repeats
the question again.  This is repeated over and over until you feel
resolution, usually in about ten minutes.  The facilitator does not give
advice or interrupt in any way, allowing your  own emotions to go through
their natural healing process.  The question itself is chosen by you.  Some
examples of questions are: “What are you feeling now?  What is upsetting
you?  What would make you feel better?” etc.

In general, the ten minute exercises is best utilized in cases when the
issue is less loaded, and seems to involve “present time” stress.  The
trauma clearing exercise, on the other hand, is the treatment of choice to
resolve strongly triggered “old feelings” when enough time can be set aside
to complete the process.

In both cases, emotional release needs to continue until good feelings
return.

Entrain your body to expect to feel resolution.  Then always conclude by
“anchoring in” good feelings.