I would define an Emotional Complex as the entire neurological cascade associated with an emotionally based stress. How do you know if it is emotionally based? You feel…you feel sad, mad, anxious, depressed, enraged, scared, etc., etc. What’s the difference? A physiological stress would be something inside…an infection, blood sugar problems, anemia, etc.
The “Emotional Complex” is a significant burden to your stress capacity. Understanding and changing an emotional complex is a significant RELIEF to your stress burden. (For more on Stress Capacity and burden click here) RELIEF to your stress burden relieves physical tension and pain, allows increased energy production, allows you to eat cookies and ice cream without crashing out your blood sugar and feeling like crap…it allows you forward progress toward health.
Everyone has emotional complexes, and the only complete resolution of emotional complexes is a condition called death. (There was a doctor years ago utilizing this solution, but I think he got in trouble!)
Are you on board for finding and eliminating these health compromising complexes!? Great!!
The emotional complex includes a trigger. I have simplified discovering your triggers to five broad categories: Ignoring, Ignorance, Unfairness, Disruption, and Criticism. (For more info on Triggers,
click here)
The emotional complex includes an experience, which has to be in the past, since we haven’t experienced the future yet. It includes a meaning placed on that experience, and a strategy to avoid that experience, assuming it was painful or uncomfortable.
When a trigger, meaning, and strategy are replayed, over and over again, it creates a pattern. I also have simplified the patterns into broad categories, which you can read about here. These patterns are always win/lose or lose/lose and result in burdening your stress capacity.
In order to identify the patterns, I ask about triggers. “What was your greatest trigger and emotional upset in the past week or so?” This simple question is intended to exercise, with repetition, a very healthy process of checking in and noticing. I also ask about the “loudest” physical symptoms, which in could be more emotional based, such as anxiety or depression.
This process replaces the hard wired neurological response of looking away from discomfort. We might consider, if you have chronic symptoms of any type, that you have missed some more subtle clues to your pattern. Or maybe you did notice them, but your doctor used medicine to suppress the symptom/message, rather than wonder what the body is asking for. This is common, because we live in a symptom suppression culture, where each symptom has a pill to dampen the message. If we are to break a chronic pattern, we have to practice noticing.
This doesn’t mean that your symptoms or conditions are in your head, rather that they have ties to stress and inflammation, which is the physiological pattern ignited through exhaustive or defensive stress patterns, which include triggers and a stressful strategy. My goal to move you as quickly back toward health is to identify the chemical patterns…your cortisol is too high, and your estrogen is too low…and correct that…AND your emotional complexes, or patterns…which we might simply call your brand of stress…caretaking, fixing, advocating, etc. If we can identify both the chemical shifts away from health, and the emotional complexes, we can truly treat you whole system…brain, mind, and body.
Back to the process…Once we identify a trigger, we might link it back to a past event or experience, but not absolutely. The important part of reclaiming your health is to notice what patterns are happening right now. And, the triggers you have currently are most likely connected to painful event from the past.
Touching on the hurt, and recalling the hurt, if only for a moment, allows us to treat your energy system most famous in Chinese medicine practice…the meridians. Often this will release the energy and tension held in the body from the past hurt, and relieve the intensity of the CURRENT trigger.
Then we look at the meaning. The meaning of any experience is completely based in belief…and belief is completely subjective. If you think about some of the things you believed when you were a child, you will see that beliefs often change.
Next is the strategy…that is your action plan. You may not have consciously thought out your action plan or strategy, in fact, many win/lose plans are devised as a child as reactions to something painful or uncomfortable. I still have a love withdrawal strategy that sneaks out sometimes when I am really upset. The only win in that strategy is hurting someone else, and that really isn’t a true win, so this is more of a lose/lose strategy.
Ultimately, changing the pattern requires taking action toward a new and well thought out strategy. The nervous system changes with new input…and action is perhaps the most powerful input. For one, it gives you something practical to do…do this…again…again…and again. Repetition is the key to any change. In fact, there is a book called “The Outliers” that suggests that all superstars, from the creator of Microsoft, Bill Gates, to the Beatles, to All Star hockey players, simply practice more. So, if you want to be happy, you have to take an action step towards something that makes you happy…and do it again, and again.
After uncovering a strategy…such as the love withdrawal distancing and silence that I practiced for so many years…and was damn good at…we create an action step as simple as sharing my feelings. Sounds simple, but the first time I tried that while I was triggered/upset, I was profusely sweating, to the point of soaking my shirt, as I forced the words out. And now, during a recent marital upset, I couldn’t shut up. There was a couple points at the height of the upset that I reverted back to old patterns and walked away…but in the end, our relationship grew as I shared my perspective and she her own.
I have been asked “So, what IS the difference between the stress and inflammation of a healthy person and a sick person?” I believe, and have seen research studies that validate this theory, that there isn’t any greater intensity with the stressors we all “enjoy.” Not that there isn’t a difference in intensity…if you compare sexual abuse to a late bill…most, if not all would agree sexual abuse is a higher intensity of stress.
The point is that there could be two people with the same stress, sexual abuse or late bills, and there is no clear association between the intensity of stress and their health. One person with a late bill could have cortisol problems and the other does not. One person who experienced sexual abuse could have severe inflammation and the other does not.
So, what is the difference? It all goes back to stress capacity.
From a physiological perspective, we know that apparently healthy and emotional secure people become unstable with significant shifts in hormones. For example post partum depression. Most people are aware of the “normal” mother who drowned her children in a severe post partum depression. We all know people who snap at you when they miss lunch. If you are anemic, you are getting out of bed with a near full stress capacity, so spilled milk at breakfast seems overwhelming.
From an emotional perspective, if you have a “lose” strategy that you use over and over again, you are compromising your emotional needs (Read more
HERE!). This is no less significant than compromising your physiological needs (oxygen, glucose, nutrition). For example, when I was “practicing” avoidance over and over again, I was costing myself connection, an emotional need. If we are stuck in a pattern, we continue to get triggered, and keep using the same strategy that produces the same win/lose, or lose/lose results. The repetition, like any repetition, creates efficiency…in this case, efficiency of surging cortisol or adrenaline. In many ways, no differently than piano lesson create efficiency of finger movement and accuracy.
And, as powerful as functional medicine is, even if we adjust hormones, soothe inflammation, and ultimately relieve the symptoms…if the pattern remains, you end up with another problem or the same problem returns.
Case in point…I recently bumped into one of my “success stories” from my book. It had been years since his full resolution of high blood pressure, failed back surgery, neuropathy in his feet, significant weight gain…he was “cured” of all his problems. He reported that his blood pressure was again rising, and he had gained a bunch of weight again. Still better than when I met him, but because we didn’t change him…literally…he was playing out the same patterns and sliding down the health mountain once again.
Think about that…if YOU have a problem…taking supplements, following a diet, and exercising more doesn’t change YOU…it doesn’t change your triggers…it doesn’t change your strategies…it doesn’t change your patterns.
Only changing your thoughts and actions changes YOU…and permanently protects you from stress and inflammation overwhelm. And if it is as “easy” as noticing our triggers, tapping some acupressure points to help relieve the tension, and taking action, a different action, towards supporting our human needs, would you try that…do that…if the end result is a huge RELIEF and movement towards health and healing??!!
