Foundations Of Our Emotional Patterning

The foundations of our emotional patterning can be found in three primary levels: our genetic background, our social education, and our traumatic events. While all humans experience the same range of emotions, the way that we navigate and process those emotions are deeply affected by these three factors. At the core of these three levels is our ability to connect to our own truth, feel it, experience it, and express it in a way that ultimately brings peace and happiness to us.

Transcript

Hey,

So I am Justin from Jade Medicine,

And I just wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about some of the foundations of our emotional patterning.

A lot of the work that I do is helping people get through difficult emotional struggles,

And there is sort of a structure,

A process to being able to unravel why we feel the way that we do,

Why we react the way that we do,

And why we process our emotions the way that we do.

And so today I wanted to talk about the sort of foundations of that process.

There are basically three primary levels that form the foundation for how we deal with our emotional experiences.

That would be our genetic background,

Our social education,

Including society as a whole,

And our more immediate family,

And then traumatic events in our lives.

And while all humans,

You know,

We all experience the same range of emotions of joy and fear and anger and sadness,

The way that we navigate and process those emotions are really affected by these three layers.

And at the core of our emotional health is this necessity to be able to connect to what our truth is,

How we see this world,

How we experience it and feel it,

And to have the capacity to express ourselves for who we are in such a way that we ultimately feel at peace with what the world is and where we are in that world.

And so a lot of the work that I do with people is trying to help them understand how each of these three layers has affected them,

Especially how it affects their capacity to truly feel their emotions,

Their feelings around life.

It's of course always good to remember that the truths of the society that we live in and the truth of our genetic heritage,

And especially the truth of traumatic events,

Are not necessarily our truths.

And so sometimes the emotions that we are interacting with or trying to heal are really what Chinese medicine would call a branch and not a root.

They are a reaction to something rather than our true feelings.

And for all of us,

When we have a genetic or social or traumatic programming that gets in the way of us being in touch with our true feelings,

Those patterns become a block and hence we suffer some degree of unhappiness because we're not really living our truth.

And so this can show up as anxiety,

It can show up as depression,

Either end of the spectrum,

Kind of based on our own personality and where we go with it.

But whether we're experiencing anxiety or whether we're experiencing depression,

Usually that's because we are turning away from our own actual feelings,

Something in the world is happening that we are not liking.

So if we begin looking at the foundational level,

Which would be our genetics,

The two main areas that we would look at would be our gender and our race.

We know pretty easily that men and women experience,

Process,

And express their emotions very differently.

And although there will be differences between subsets of men and subsets of women,

There are certain general patterns that are present within each gender.

The same can be said for different cultures as well.

A relatively quick survey of the world will give us plenty of examples of cultures that are more fiery and cultures that are more reserved or structured.

And yet again,

Within each culture,

There will be a natural variation,

Just like with gender.

And there will be this overlay or this generalized theme to each culture.

And then it's also important to remember that some cultures and some families also carry genetic trauma in their past.

And we see this can be passed down along genetic lines,

Especially in cultures that have experienced genocide and major trauma like war.

So when we are looking to work with our emotional health,

It's important to consider what those foundations are for us and where we're coming from because they influence how we see the world and they influence what we consider to be normal or appropriate.

What is a healthy relationship to your emotions in one culture or for one gender can change with the culture and the gender.

And so the definition in a sense is relatively arbitrary to your culture or to your gender.

And they may not be in sync or in resonance with your actual feelings.

And this is where we start to have a dissonance and some unhappiness that comes out of it.

For families that are immigrants,

First generation or the children of immigrants,

They often have to deal with how to navigate the emotional and cultural norms of their new society and how to integrate that with their old society,

Their old culture.

And from that can come quite a bit of emotional struggle.

The same thing can happen within the LGBTQ community as well,

Who have a different experience than the norm and have to integrate between multiple cultures to find out how to be themselves within this larger framework.

And of course,

Depending on what part of the country they live in,

What part of the world they live in,

That can can make a very big difference.

And so that forms the foundation of sort of our genetic makeup that can influence how we are.

So when we're looking at our patterning of why we deal with our anger,

We deal with our fear,

Our depression,

Our anxiety in a particular way,

Sometimes the answer can be found in your genetic line or your gender line.

And then we can begin the process of inquiring as to why is this happening?

Why am I different from everybody else?

And why am I not okay with being different?

The second layer to begin looking at is the social layer,

And this sort of has two subsets.

One would be the larger society and one would be the more immediate society of our family.

Each culture has its own norms for how to process and express our emotions.

They are,

Of course,

Arbitrary,

Because they vary from culture to culture around the world,

Even though every culture,

Every human deals again with joy and anger and fear and sadness.

Factors such as religion and language and climate can all affect how we process stuff in different parts of the world.

And even within one country,

Different regions can have different cultural norms as well.

And so when we look at our personal perspective and how we integrate and how we behave in certain situations,

We want to consider what is the world that we grew up in and what was considered acceptable or unacceptable.

If you look at a culture like the Chinese with a very heavy Confucian influence,

There is this belief that children are supposed to speak to their elders or their seniors in a very specific way.

And to do so in a different way would be considered inappropriate.

It might be warranted,

It might be appropriate based on the situation,

But culturally it would be considered inappropriate and how the individual navigates that struggle can lead to depression,

Anxiety,

Etc.

We know that,

You know,

In the larger sense of the globe,

Cultures from warmer climates are often known for being a little more fiery compared to cultures from colder climates.

And we know that certain religious cultures allow for the expression of emotion in particular ways or suppress the expression of emotion in particular ways.

And these factors form the foundation for how we see the world and what is considered appropriate behavior for how we navigate our inner world as well.

And then we have our immediate family as well.

Each family has its own norms and its own quirks.

And even within the same family,

Your sister and your brother and your aunt and uncle can all have very different social norms than you as well.

But yet within your family,

There's often a theme of what is considered a normal behavior,

A normal emotional way to conduct yourself.

What's considered polite or rude,

What is spoken about or ignored or joked about and mocked will change from family to family.

And these patterns are taught to us at such an early age as we're growing up and just sort of observing what is considered normal behavior.

We often don't even realize that thinking of them in a different way would be an option.

We just assume this is the way things are.

And they may again not be in resonance with our truth.

We may not see the world the same way,

But our entire family might.

And when there is that dissonance,

We have to find some way to integrate that so that we don't lose touch with our own truth.

And then the last layer,

Where a lot of therapy gets focused,

Is around trauma.

And when we look at trauma,

The way that I like to define it is that trauma is really based on the internal experience of the person versus the external events.

And so what I mean by that is what actually happened,

What the person doing the something,

What they meant for it to be or any of that sort of stuff isn't really too important when we're working to try to heal trauma.

What matters is that the experience for me was traumatic.

And hence,

Because I did not like it,

I make every effort possible to avoid re-experiencing that.

We all kind of know that depending on our mood throughout the day,

How energetic we are,

How well we slept,

How much we've eaten or not,

Other factors going on in the world,

The same event could be traumatic,

It could be annoying,

Or it could not even hit our radar of perception.

And so what is traumatic or what isn't traumatic is also sometimes arbitrary.

And of course,

There are certain events that are pretty universally traumatic.

But the main thing we want to consider is that it is some sort of event that is a painful experience,

A negative experience that we want to avoid again in the future.

And so hence,

We begin to navigate life and prioritize how we navigate life so that we don't have to re-experience that specific emotion,

That specific pattern.

And this is where we start to have problems because now we are turning away from expressing ourselves because we're afraid of experiencing anger or afraid of experiencing fear or rejection or abandonment or those sorts of things.

Within trauma,

When we're trying to heal trauma,

There are sort of two main variations that we try to work with.

One is trauma that we kind of know,

I don't like it when people get angry.

So I try to always speak in such a way that keeps them from getting angry.

I know I don't like anger and I do everything I can to avoid being in situations where people are angry.

Sometimes that means I have to kind of take the high ground or endure their stuff so that I don't have to endure the anger.

But I'm basically aware of that pattern and I'm choosing to just ignore my needs so that I don't have to confront this unpleasant experience.

The other layer of trauma,

Of course,

Is the deeper traumas that we shove under the surface and sometimes don't even know that we're there.

And in psychology or in meditation traditions,

They may call them blind spots.

They will be things that we don't even realize we're doing in certain situations.

And they influence how we behave in many situations and we don't know that it's actually happening.

And these are,

Of course,

A deeper influence than the ones that we're conscious of on a certain level because we don't know that they're playing out in our daily life.

These three levels of our genetics,

Our social programming and our traumatic events form the foundation of why we choose to admit to ourselves that we are experiencing an emotion,

That we are angry or afraid,

That we are anxious or depressed.

They influence our ability to work through those emotions,

To be able to process it and be like,

Okay,

Why am I angry and how do I make peace with this world that I'm angry at or this event that I'm angry at?

And they deeply influence our ability to express our emotions to the outside world so that we can feel we have the capacity to stand up for ourselves and create the world that we want in our life.

Because obviously if I don't know that I'm angry or if I can't process my anger,

I can't express to somebody that what they're doing makes me angry,

I will have to continually live in a world where those events happen.

And of course,

Then I will not be happy.

So beginning to understand what it is that we're feeling and why it is we react in the way that we do and why it is we process in the way that we do becomes the foundation for how we begin to unravel these very deep-seated patterns that we sometimes struggle with.

So I hope you have found that helpful.

Again,

It is a rough overview of sort of the three layers that we always want to look at.

And if you're struggling with some emotional blocks,

Maybe take some time to look at which of these three layers are the primary influence for that specific block.

Thank you.

Reviews

This is amazing

I am in the midst of becoming fully conscious of how I processes and not intergrate difficult emotions. This talk is extremely helpful. Thank you for the gift.

Excellent rough outline, thanks Justin, happy new year 2021 😂

Excellent!! Thank you. That makes so much sense and I’m beginning to understand some things about myself. I can see myself having a different view while living my life.

Justin❣️
This is one of the most INTELLIGENT and INSIGHTFUL Talks I have ever heard on this subject❗️
As someone who loves people in general and very deeply those to whom I am close, I have been observing others, as well as myself and asking, “WHY?”, for the majority of my 62 years of life.
Coming from a very loving Italian Mama (born and raised in Italy), thus culturally diverse, with a deep love and respect for God, two brothers (one close in age, the other eleven years younger) and a father whose Genetics affected our family deeply ( he being one of 7 siblings and 1 of 3 who committed Suicide) I had my own personal “Science Lab”!
Add to that marriage, 2 daughters, 1 more deeply affected by my “Family Genetics” than the other, 5 Grandchildren, dogs and cats...
Well, I think you get my point. 😄
Add my “Curious Mind” and you can imagine how busy my brain has been❗️
All this to say that what you have shared has proven VALID in my PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
I will DEFINITELY be sharing your Talk when given the opportunity.
Thank you for sharing this EDUCATIONAL and VITAL information for those who TRULY DESIRE to better understand their fellow man. 🙏🏻💕

Very helpful information. Rather complex. Thank you.

Very helpful thanks

TY TY recognizing or acknowledging is the 🔑 to addressing issues. May people not avoid releasing anger nor avoid being self to placate others from being angry. We experience so much trauma. This is interesting to see why we react rather than respond to situations. Yet, hopefully we begin to integrate back into our bodies & not take on the role of feeling responsible for other people emotions & behaviors. It is theirs to resolve. Otherwise, we can easily fall into the trap of codependency & denying true self to appease others. This was interesting to identify the 3 concepts & common potential reactions. Namaste. Peace Shalom 💃Tee🐒