Most of us have not evolved much past childhood in how we manage our emotions. Emotional childhood means not taking responsibility for how we feel. Just as a child depends on their parents to meet their needs, we often depend on the outside world to meet our emotional needs.
Think about the last time you felt happy, sad, irritated or elated. Ask yourself why. You will probably come up with a story about something that happened to you or something that someone said or did that caused you to feel this way.
The truth is that the only reason you felt anything is because of a thought that you had that caused the emotion.
When you attribute your emotions to factors outside yourself, you are in emotional childhood.
When you attribute your emotions to factors outside yourself, you are in emotional childhood.
It’s not a character flaw. It’s something that all of us do. And it’s not really our fault. Most of us were raised this way. Every time our parents or teachers asked us if we were upset when we got a bad grade or were treated poorly by another child or were teased by our sibling, we were taught emotional childhood. It’s not their fault either. They, too, were taught to connect emotions with outside factors. No one taught them differently and no one taught us either. It’s certainly not something we learned in school. I personally spent twelve years in school beyond high school and I had not even heard of this concept until the past few years.
The problem with being in emotional childhood is that it leaves us feeling powerless. We are left feeling that we are at the effect of the outside world and have no control over our emotions and our lives. We blame other people and our circumstances for how we feel. We give others too much credit for whether we feel good or not. If people would just behave a certain way or the world would just be different than it is, then we would get to feel better.
The bigger problem is that when we are in emotional childhood, we often try to control the outside world. We try to change the people and the world around us so that we can feel a certain way. And this doesn’t usually work in our favor.
Once you are aware of the concept of emotional childhood, you can recognize when you are in it. You can catch yourself whenever you find yourself attributing your negative emotions to something outside of yourself and take back your power. It was always right there.
When were you last in emotional childhood?
