Dealing with Emotional Abuse

Dealing with Emotional Abuse

Blog Session

June 2017

There are many issues that are not discussed on a regular basis.  However, there are many issues that take place on a regular basis.  Somewhere at this very moment, many people are being emotionally abused; many others are recovering from emotional abuse; and many more are the ones who are the emotional abusers.

Welcome to all New Blog Readers, Followers and Visitors to the Blog . . .

This Blog Session is about Emotional Abuse. Emotional pain often exacts a greater toll on your quality of life than physical pain.  The stress and negative emotions associated with any trying event can even lead to physical pain and disease.  In fact, emotional stress is linked to health problems including chronic inflammation, lowered immune function, increased blood pressure, altered brain chemistry, increased tumor growth and more.

Of course, emotional pain can be so severe that it interferes with your ability to enjoy life and, in extreme cases, may even make you question whether your life is worth living.

Unfortunately, there are many children that go through emotional abuse.  There are children that are bullied by the other children at school, and there are also many children who are bullied by their parents and sometimes teachers at school.

Being Labeled, Called Names, Bullied

How does the above picture make you feel?  Have you experienced what this picture invokes?  How many times have you been called out of your name?

If you can remember incidences from your youth, then those incidents made an impression upon your mind, body, spirit & soul.

Somewhere in your subconscious mind, your memory will regurgitate those awful moments at the most inopportune times.  Someone may have called you "stupid" 30 years ago, and you happen to run into someone at a party who says to you, "you stupid fool."  ~ and oh boy!  That person gets punched in the face because it is what you have always wanted to do to the first person who ever said that to you and made you feel badly about yourself.  Even though the person who says, "you stupid fool." ~ was only kidding and laughing when they said it.  That is how misunderstandings happen. And that is also how hurt feelings rise to the surface.

Many of our Readers here may be in need of Emotional First Aid, or may know someone who needs it.  We're going to get our Journals out for today's Blog Session, and write down five tips for healing your emotional pain . . .

Journal Notes

Healing Emotional Pain

Five Tips for healing your emotional pain:

1)  Let Go of Rejection

Rejection actually activates the same pathways in your brain as physical pain, which is one reason why it hurts so much.  The feeling of rejection toys with your innate need to belong, and is so distressing that it interferes with your ability to think, react, recall memories and make decisions.  The sooner you let go of painful rejections, the better off your mental health will be.

2)  Avoid Ruminating

When you ruminate, or brood, over a past hurt, the memories you replay in your mind only become increasingly distressing and cause more anger, without providing any new insights.  In other words, while reflecting on a painful event can help you to reach an understanding or closure about it, if you are ruminating about it, it simply increases your stress levels, and can actually be addictive.

       Ruminating on a stressful incident can also increase your
       levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation in
       your body linked to cardiovascular disease.

3)  Turn Failure Into Something Positive

If you allow yourself to feel helpless after a failure, or blame it on your lack of ability or bad luck, it’s likely to lower your self-esteem.  Blaming a failure on specific factors within your control, such as planning and execution, is likely to be less damaging, but even better is focusing on ways you can improve and be better informed or prepared so you can succeed next time (and make sure that you try again, so there is a next time).

4)  Make Sure Guilt Remains a Useful Emotion

Guilt can be beneficial in that it can stop you from doing something that may harm another person (making it a strong "relationship protector").  But guilt that lingers or is excessive can impair your ability to focus and enjoy life.

       If you still feel guilty after apologizing for a wrongdoing, 
       be sure you have expressed empathy toward them and
       conveyed that you understand how your actions impacted
       them.  This will likely lead to authentic forgiveness and 
       relief of your guilty feelings.

5)  Use Self-Affirmations if You Have Low Self-
      Esteem
    
       While positive affirmations are excellent tools for 
       emotional health, if they fall outside the boundaries of 
       your beliefs, they may be ineffective.  This may be the
       case for people with low self-esteem, for whom self-
       affirmations may be more useful.  Self-affirmations, such
       as “I have a great work ethic,” can help to reinforce 
       positive qualities you believe you have, as can making a 
       list of your best qualities.

Embrace Life!

Taking care of your emotional health

Just as eating healthy, exercising and getting a good night’s sleep are habits that must be held to in order to be effective, your emotional health requires ongoing care as well.  And, just like your physical body, your mind can only take so much stress before it breaks down.  Yet many neglect to tend to their emotional health with the same devotion they give to their physical well-being.  This is a mistake, but one that’s easily remedied with the following tips for emotional nurturing . . .

1. Be an Optimist

Looking on the bright side increases your ability to experience happiness in your day-to-day life while helping you cope more effectively with stress.

2. Have Hope

Having hope allows you to see the light at the end of the tunnel, helping you push through even dark, challenging times.  Accomplishing goals, even small ones, can help you to build your level of hope.

3. Accept Yourself

Self-deprecating remarks and thoughts will shroud your mind with negativity and foster increased levels of stress. Seek out and embrace the positive traits of yourself and your life, and avoid measuring your own worth by comparing yourself to those around you.

4. Stay Connected

Having loving and supportive relationships helps you feel connected and accepted, and promote a more positive mood. Intimate relationships help meet your emotional needs, so make it a point to reach out to others to develop and nurture these relationships in your life.

5. Express Gratitude

People who are thankful for what they have are better able to cope with stress, have more positive emotions, and are better able to reach their goals.  The best way to harness the positive power of gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal or list, where you actively write down exactly what you’re grateful for each day.  Doing so has been linked to happier moods, greater optimism and even better physical health.

6. Find Your Purpose and Meaning

When you have a purpose or goal that you’re striving for, your life will take on a new meaning that supports your mental well-being.  If you’re not sure what your purpose is, explore your natural talents and interests to help find it, and also consider your role in intimate relationships and ability to grow spiritually.

7. Master Your Environment

When you have mastery over your environment, you’ve learned how to best modify your unique circumstances for the most emotional balance, which leads to feelings of pride and success.  Mastery entails using skills such as time management and prioritization along with believing in your ability to handle whatever life throws your way.

8. Exercise Regularly

Exercise boosts levels of health-promoting neurochemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which may help buffer some of the effects of stress and also relieve some symptoms of depression.  Rather than viewing exercise as a medical tool to lose weight, prevent disease, and live longer (which are all benefits that occur in the future), try viewing exercise as a daily tool to immediately enhance your frame of mind, reduce stress and feel happier.

9. Practice Mindfulness

Practicing "mindfulness" means that you’re actively paying attention to the moment you’re in right now.  Rather than letting your mind wander, when you’re mindful you’re living in the moment and letting distracting or negative thoughts pass through your mind without getting caught up in their emotional implications.  Mindfulness can help you reduce stress for increased well-being as well as achieve undistracted focus.

Practice Mindfulness

Friends take care of your "self", mind, body & soul.

See you in the next exciting Blog Session!

Peace, Love & Light,

 René

© Copyright - René Allen - JUNE 2017 - All Rights Reserved

The Telephone Conversation

with the Emotional Vampire

June 2017

Welcome back to the Blog everyone!  We had such a good conversation in our last Blog Session, and we are going to make this discussion even more interesting.  You will definitely be able to relate to everything said in this Blog Session, because you will have already by now experienced what we are going to share today.

We'll be talking about Emotional Vampires.  For those Readers and Blog Followers that do not know what an Emotional Vampire is, here is where you are going to find out all you need to know.  If you have ever had a telephone conversation with a person and started to feel like all of your energy was being sucked away, and then after the telephone call you felt completely drained or zapped, then you will understand a little better about what an Emotional Vampire is.

Here's where you grab your Journal and your ink pen so that you can write down your notes . . .

Time for Journal Notes

Emotional Vampires are like the name suggests, they drain your life away.  But, just remember, it is not your blood they are after, it is the life essence of others that feeds them. In particular if you are the one dealing with an Emotional Vampire, it is your life essence they want to feed off of.

Your life essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make you who and what you fundamentally are, and which by necessity you have and are who and what you are.  Without your life essence, you lose your identity.

Here is where I need to ask you an important question:  Have you ever been connected with someone and felt as if you were slowly losing your identity?  The longer you were around the person or spouse, you felt as if you had lost sight of who you once were?  Maybe you were dealing with an Emotional Vampire.

There is another connection that needs to be laid out here in this discussion, and it is about something that we have discussed here in other Blog Sessions.  Characteristics of narcissism and toxic personalities are very much in line with Emotional Vampirism.

If you have been around a person who is a Narcissist, or who has a toxic personality, then you will understand the nature of their abusive ways.  Emotional and verbal abuse are part of their make-up.  You have to be careful not to transfer traits of abusive, toxic or spirit sucking personalities into your own psyche.  If you are an emphatic individual, it is easy to do, so you must be extra careful.

Make sure you write this definition down in your Journal...

Emotional vampire - someone who drains the emotional energy from others, either on purpose or unintentionally.

Beware:  The Emotional Vampire

will appear to many people to be very innocent.

Here are some questions for you to answer if you think an Emotional Vampire has attached their being to you . . .

1. Do you feel drained after being in the company of certain friends, family members or loved ones?
2. Is someone you know or love always surrounded by drama and they appear to be a walking Reality Show?
3. Is everything all about them -- the sun, the moon and all the other planets and stars revolve around this friend, family member or loved one?
4. Does the person call you at any time of the day or night and demand (basically) that you hear them and be there for their needs without question?
5. Do you feel like you are being stalked by the person that is draining all of your energy, your time, and your joy?

Let us make a note that there are distinctions between the Emotional Vampire, the physical vampire, and the psychic vampire.  (The physical vampire is the blood-sucking vampire)  The psychic vampire will be discussed in another of our wonderful upcoming Blog Sessions.

The Emotional Vampire has tactics that are subtle, and they may in fact be completely unaware of their energy sucking tactics and their negative and toxic actions.

The Emotional Vampire

(Has an innocent and harmless persona at first)

The Emotional Vampire is completely self-absorbed.  And they will be focused upon themselves above all others.  They also love themselves to the highest degree, and you will find that they tend to brag as well as name drop.

Also, you will find that they draw negative attention to themselves more than positive attention.

Sometimes, their self-absorbed behavior is unintentional, it is a result of habit.  Sometimes this behavior has grown from past abusive treatment from others, and their low self esteem.  So their self-absorbed behavior is a method they use unconsciously in order for them to become stronger again.

Emotional Vampires do not listen well.  They do not really hear you, because they do not really care about anything you have to say.  In fact, you will find that if you remind them of something you have told them, they will not remember at all.

You will also find that when you speak to an Emotional Vampire and you are telling them something about yourself, or what you have done or accomplished, they will cut you off, or revert the conversation back to themselves.  They may hear what you say, but they will always be formulating their next statement(s) as you talk.  They really are not concerned with hearing you out.  They are much more concerned about what they have to say, and would prefer that you just shut up and listen to them.

The Emotional Vampire will not really listen.  They will only stare with a blank expression, meanwhile formulating a response in their mind.  They are consciously thinking of something more interesting than what you said.  Their behavior is a result of a habit they have to fight against their low self esteem.  Yes, even if you are in a simple conversation. While many will believe that the Emotional Vampire is intentional doing things to hurt them, inherently they are really just begging for LOVE and attention in the wrong way.

Somewhere in the Emotional Vampire's life, they were emotional deprived.  They did not receive the type of attention they needed to be whole within their "self".

In addition, the Emotional Vampire is (just like many other people with personality disorders), lacking spiritually.  You will not find a strong spiritual faith with an Emotional Vampire.  They will be doubtful and indecisive.

The "victim mentality" is like a coat the Emotional Vampire wears.  It is a result of abuse and/or oppression they have experienced in their life from the past.

Please Note:  Emotional vampires travel a dark and unhealthy road, playing the immortal victim.  They play this role at the expense of anyone that happens to be connected to them.

We have a lot more coming up in our next Blog Session!

UP NEXT:  More on Emotional Vampires,

as well as information on Psychic Vampires

The term psychic vampire is sometimes abbreviated psy-vamp (or psi-vamp).  Alternate terms for these entities include energy vampire, energy predator, energy parasite, and energivore, as well as psionic vampire, pranic vampire, and empathic vampire.

Until we return . . .

Peace, Love & Light,

 René

© Copyright - René Allen - JUNE 2017 - All Rights Reserved