The biggest revelation to me in mulling over yesterday’s topic was that I have the ability to be emotionally healthy enough for one person and too emotionally unhealthy for another person regardless of the level of emotional health of the other person. The reason for this is that each of us has strengths and weaknesses. We each have areas in which we interact with others from a healthy place and other areas in which we are far from healthy. That doesn’t characterize any of us as “fully healthy” or “fully unhealthy.” It’s a matter of which part of ourselves we choose to use as a foundation in our relationship with another person.
As an example, before I ever recovered my first flashback (which means I was very emotionally unhealthy in most areas of my life), I was emotionally healthy in my professional life. It hit several bumps in figuring out how to be successful in the business world, but in the years before I left my profession to be a stay-at-home and then started having flashbacks, I was emotionally healthy at work.
I “got” what was expected of me and what to expect from fellow coworkers, and my relationships with my coworkers were healthy ones. I was capable of this despite being very emotionally unhealthy in most other areas of my life. People with professional relationships with me during this time would probably characterize me as “emotionally healthy” based on this one aspect of my personality, but I was an emotionally unhealthy train wreck in just about every other area of my life.
The converse is true today. When I look back where I was nine years and compare it to today, I barely seem like the same person. I have changed in so many (mostly healthy) ways in so many areas of my life. Nevertheless, as you can tell by my blog entries over the past couple of weeks, I am far from having it all figured out. If I were to build a relationship with someone based on those aspects of myself, I suspect that relationship would be emotionally unhealthy for both of us.
This does not make either me or the other person “emotionally unhealthy” as a whole, but that area of my life would not be a healthy foundation for me upon which to build an emotional connection with another person. Also, just because the other person was willing to make this less healthy part of me the foundation of the friendship really isn’t a reflection of that person’s overall level of emotional health any more than it is a reflection of mine.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
I think this makes a lot of sense. I’ve found that I have certain friendships that weather the test of time very well – one in particular that I have been friends with for about fourteen years now – back to a very unhealthy time in my life. I think the reason that friendship has lasted is because we are both constantly analyzing and working to become better and change. If one person is working to grow and change and the other isn’t, things can eventually become very imbalanced. In this friendship, there are times when one of us make some strides, putting them in a healthier place and it always inspires the other to work toward being healthier in that way. It seems to me that those are the best kinds of friendships to have because everyone has work to do and progress to make.
Our body, thought, desire, intellect changes every second, so our state, as a human being whether healthy or unhealthy, depending on the definition of healthy or unhealthy, changes every second too. Does this make sense?
Hello. Super nova here. I am speaking for Bruce. I have found out recently that we can have a trauma bond with some one and their good parts. For me what I do is feed the good parts and still be attracted to other peoples good parts. A trauma bond is you are either a perpetrator or a victim or a rescuer. That for me does exist. I no longer require my participation in the abuse. I am talking about unhealthy people who try to get close to me. I only learned how to do this at a place called Del Amo in cal. I really missed every one, and I appreciate you being there. I came up with something, a saying while I was in treatment, and that is” You are not alone. You never have been. It just felt that way. I love you with all my heart!! I will see you forever!!!
I am much about just because I do not want to do something now which includes relationships that does not mean I have advanced or it was unhealthy etc at the time. I just plain do not want to do that now.
I surly do not not want go back to the way I ran my business. I pretty much am now just taking the really easy jobs. That does not mean that when I loved doing the hard one and that is all it did that it was wrong or unhealthy then it was just different is all. It is not that I leaned or even grew to a different point. It is just what is right for now. This is beyond I do not have the energy as I am so worn out from the work of therapy.
This is not a real multiple thing. I used to love building buildings. The bigger and more challenging the better. Pretty much I took that to where and as far as I wanted. Now I want a different love.
I have always been about no one person can be all to another. Even in college the girl I was living with did not like theater and I did not like marching bands we went with other people and it might be male of female. Just the way it always was for me.Same as when I was married It always worked out that neither of us had to do much that we did not really like. Except laundry and cleaning house. We handled that by hiring someone to do as much of that as possible. Neither of us was in to yard work so I designed a lot with little maintenance.
One of the hardest things for all of those that are us to deal with is it takes so much time each and every day to heal. That and we do not like the adrenaline that we used to have.