Childhood catalysts for emotional response patterns in adulthood.
Inner Invitations by Lucy Tierney is a universal wisdom guidebook for nurturing inner balance, healing and freedom. An adventure awaits, as you dare to go within and discover the unique-to-you invitations for growth that arise from your deepest Self.
Is there value in understanding the origin story of your emotional response patterns?
Lucy Tierney | Author Inner Invitations
Each of us has had some early experiences in life that we have been responding from instinctively ever since.
The way we adapt in response to these early experiences shape us into the unique being we know as ‘me’.
If, in adulthood, we choose the path of personal growth, we begin to become aware of our emotional response patterns. You know the ones - the inner responses and outward behaviors that seem to happen over and over again without our conscious consent.
It can be helpful to be curious about the catalyst that got a particular pattern going in our lives.
When we can hold the origin story in conscious awareness, the patterning power usually softens and lessens in intensity. This allows us to access more balanced ways of responding in the present.
Becoming aware of various types of catalysts
Sometimes, uniquely personal outcomes of emotional response patterns stem from a major life event that had a significant impact at an emotional level, i.e. a parent dying while you were young.
Other examples of emotional response patterns stem from repeated negative feedback from a caregiver in the form of put-downs such as “You never finish anything!”, “You should grow up and not cry,” and the like.
Or, perhaps it was neglect – a feeling that you were not listened to over and over – that primed your inner instincts to expect more of the same.
There are many other such-like versions of experiences that set up uniquely personal rhythmic patterns with a long-standing emotional response.
Some Examples
Sometimes, patterns of response stem from within the person themselves in response to more subtle events. For example, because of a situation that occurred when I was 10 years old, I spent many years becoming a one-woman-show. From that time on I didn’t trust anyone else to know what was good for me.
I wasn’t consciously aware that I had come to that belief as a child but as a result, I developed a pattern of being highly self-reliant in an unbalanced way. This continued until the pattern came into my conscious awareness in my 40’s and I was able to bring more balance to my ways of being and relating.
In a similar vein, I heard a story of a man who had an unexplainable emotional reaction each time he ate tomatoes. As he sat with the emotional residue and got curious about the energy underneath it, he recalled a one-off event of being disciplined by his grandfather when he was 3-years old for reaching over the dinner table to pick up slices of tomatoes.
The emotional residue of this negative experience remained, and for many years to come he felt emotional negativity each time he ate tomatoes, or even thought about eating tomatoes. Obviously, it wasn’t tomatoes that was the issue, but the negative association with being inappropriately disciplined in a way that felt jarring and unfair to him.
Eating tomatoes was the automatic trigger to set off that emotional response that had been repeated so many times. Each repetition would only reinforce the negative emotional response experience adding to those already stored in emotional residue.
Understanding your rhythmic response patterns
Generally, there are three responses that occur when we experience a negative response from a caregiver to our behaviour or attitude:
1. A reaction response,
2. A muscular and feeling response and,
3. A beyond conscious ‘tagging’ or belief, that interprets the energy behind the specific assessment being made of you.
For example, if you constantly felt that you were not listened to, you would have an instinctive muscular and feeling response in your body that would be repeated in every instance of your experience of not being listened to. Some form of coping strategy would also emerge spontaneously.
As well, there would be a beyond-conscious tagging sense that would be building up in emotional residue as a belief about yourself or your environment.
These three response patterns are universal and are expressed in a way that is unique to each person.
For clarity, let me give an imaginative example.
Perhaps you grew up in a family culture where the framework of interaction was that children should be seen and not heard. An instinctive “I’ve got something to say” sense would arise fairly often as it does for all children.
Accompanying the constant quelling of that instinctive arising would be some tightening of muscles and a sense of frustration at the quelling of spontaneity each time you wanted to say something but couldn’t.
Instinctive reactions would vary from person to person. There would either be expression (despite the disapproving environment) or suppression of these instinctive arisings. Either response would have the goal of maintaining personal safety at a surface physical and/or emotional level.
As well, there would be some sort of unconscious tagging building up in emotional residue – perhaps some variation of a non-verbal sense that I am not worthwhile because what I say, and think is not important.
Another beyond conscious tagging could be, this is not fair. In this case, this could be because of a deep inherent knowing that it is not right that I am not heard sometimes. Such tagging is unique to each person.
Pause and reflect…
What are the experiences that have had such an impact on your inner landscape that they have morphed into an inner response pattern that repeats over and over?
What happens when you become more compassionately aware of the childhood catalysts at the root of these patterns?
Inner Invitations by Lucy Tierney is a universal wisdom guidebook for nurturing inner balance, healing and freedom. An adventure awaits, as you dare to go within and discover the unique-to-you invitations for growth that arise from your deepest Self.
Inner Invitations is available as a PDF E-book or on Kindle and Paperback via Amazon.
AUD$15
Inner Invitations: a universal wisdom
e-book for nurturing inner balance, healing and freedom.
This e-book from Lucy Tierney offers potent and practical wisdom for growth. You’ll explore insights and practices to help you find your authentic path for personal development and spiritual unfolding. Learn to exercise your innate human capacities to balance your conscious and unconscious domains in the service of freedom and healing. An adventure awaits, as you dare to go within and discover the unique-to-you invitations for growth that arise from your deepest Self.