Unhealed emotional wounds and over the top reactions : healing through identifying unmet needs.

Nancy Van Dyken’s book Everyday Narcissism provides a great chapter which deals with what happens when unhealed emotional wounds and unmet needs get trigged in people, leading to what seem to be ‘over the top reactions’. This dovetails with what Thich Nhat Hahn addresses in his writing about taking care of our own pain and connecting with our inner child before reacting.

Having compassion for certain reactions in ourselves and others requires a great deal of empathy and compassion which is not often possible in the heat of reactive struggles. Often we tend to blame or may try to make the person feel bad for having reactions when we are triggered or struggling ourselves. In order to grow and mature we have to begin to take responsibility for our own wounds, and recognise we do not have the power to heal the emotional wounds of others. We most certainly can care about others and studies do show that when empathy is shown the circulation of positive neurochemicals such as oxytocin increases due to mirroring. The oppose occurs when we are on the receiving end of aggression. The most we can do is care about ourselves and others, try to be sensitive to sore spots and mirror back warmth, unconditional positive regard and healing. (not always easy!!)

According to Van Dyken when trigged these are the ways we may react :

Becoming very angry.

Crying

Blaming the other person for how miserable life is, all the problems they have, etc.

Blame the other person for being rude, thoughtless, uncaring, mean spirited, heartless, stupid, etc.

Blame ourselves – e.g. “I knew I shouldn’t have let someone like you drive me to work, I am such a fool.”

Pout.

Seethe.

Become quiet and withdraw.

Refuse to speak or make eye contact. (Silent treatment.)

Pretend not to hear.

Yell,

Become physically violent.

Fights over something small and stupid are actually about key inner child issues which trigger unhealed childhood wounds. At these times two people can be acting from Everyday Narcissism and trying desperately to be heard, or cared for, appreciated, loved or valued. Often we fruitlessly engage in seeking to get someone else to heal our pain or fix our emotional wounds which cover over needs or feeling left unresolved from childhood. Things escalate when we don’t turn within or have sufficient empathy for the other person.

As Van Dyken points out in chapter 11 of her book this is a process that is doomed to fail when instead we end up stepping on the other’s wounds or just reacting out of pain, sadness, anger or other feelings of powerlessness.

Triggered emotional reactions lead us to over ride the sensible neocortex and instead react from the amygdala, the trauma centre of the brain, so practicing a pause in the midst of such conflicts is essential in order to reconnect inwardly, identify our key wounds and unmet needs, and take action for self care. Blaming will not work, we need to do the work ourselves.

When you trigger an over the top reaction in someone it is not about you, it is about unresolved childhood wounds either in yourself or another. We can step into healing and reactivity by :

Accepting the hurt for a time.

Recognising and identifying unmet needs from childhood (see list below), listing them, working on them.

Pausing in the midst of over reactions, asking for a time out to centre within to practice self care and connect with what is really going on.

NOT BLAMING OR TRYING TO TEACH THE OTHER PERSON A LESSON

After identifying our needs we can then find ways to meet them ourselves rather than always demanding others do it. We may need help from a more emotionally literate objective person at a time like this. This does not mean we can not ask for help from time to time, but moreso that we do not put this pressure on others, we take responsibility for our own life and happiness.

The essential human needs identified by Van Dyken are as follows:

Being – believed, believed in, comforted, counted, heard, liked, loved, taken seriously, trusted, valued.

Belonging

Caring

Clothing

Connection

Emotional safety

Emotional security

Kindness

Nourishment

Physical safety

Physical security

Respect

Shelter

Trust

Unconditional acceptance

Unconditional love

Reviewing this list it is plain that no lasting happiness could come without such needs being met but with a neglectful childhood we may not even have come to know we have these needs and have a right to meet them. If we were shamed for needs then we may shame ourselves or others for having them, if we don’t have awareness of triggered unmet needs in our self and others and their true source, how can we have compassion?

Trying to get our needs met by others does not work well according to Van Dyken and it can be a recipe for very unhappy relationships. Blaming others leads to more pain, agony and separation. While practicing self care and self love means we too can extend this to others, only when we have truly learned to identify and take care of our own needs.

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