In a previous article, we talked about why it is necessary to speak about “relational health“; well, this topic is directly related to how we experience and express our emotions.

By Vilma Perren

It is very clear that we are at a crucial moment, at an inflection point as a species, where EVERYTHING must be questioned and relearned, and these issues are no exception.

We have learned to bond with others from a possessive attitude, therefore control, jealousy, anxiety, uneasiness, anguish, and confusion are emotions and states in which I will inevitably fall and will be seen as normal, expected, and inevitable.

Now, what happens when I begin to realize that this suffering is not the way I want to live, that relating in a possessive way ends up generating emotions, internal states that I no longer want to feed?

I will necessarily have to rethink my way of relating and resist and modify certain learned forms that only cloud and hinder my bonds and my emotional health.

Taking Silo’s words, in the chapter Giving and Receiving, from The Internal Landscape, let’s take a look at what relationship you establish with yourself:

1. Let’s see what relationship you establish with your external landscape. Perhaps you consider objects, people, values, and affections, as things laid out before you for you to choose and devour according to your special cravings. This centripetal view of the world probably marks your contradiction from thought to muscle.

2. If such is the case, it is certain that everything about you will be highly prized: your pleasures as well as your suffering. It is difficult for you to want to surpass your intimate problems, for in them you recognize a tone that, above all things, is your own. From thought to muscle, everything is educated to contract, not to release. And so, even when you proceed with generosity, calculation motivates your letting go.

3. Everything goes in. Nothing goes out. So, everything is intoxicated from your thoughts to your muscles.

Yes, “From thought to muscle, everything is educated to contract, not to let go. And so, even when you proceed with generosity, calculation motivates your letting go.”

Many times, we believe we proceed with generosity but this contains the need to “be needed”, “to be loved”, “to be acknowledged”, etc., therefore it is an action from which I expect a return.

This is not about self-incrimination; it is simply an invitation to personal reflection on the bonds and the emotions that derive from how we build those bonds. We have learned ways, forms, and models that no longer serve us.

It will then be an opportunity for it to make a profound emotional relearning.

Vilma Perren, Clinical psychologist – Logo therapist
Founder of GARVA (Group of Assistance and Recovery of Addictive Links).
She coordinates groups and workshops on the subject of relationships.
Author of the book: La sanación viene de dentro (Healing comes from within).