2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
There is such a dirty trick in the everyday life of dermatology: corns. These are seemingly barely noticeable and invisible seals of skin on the feet or toes. They do not appear suddenly. They can be ignored for a long time. But sooner or later, the "grain" of dead epithelium in the center of this compaction, in combination with non-optimal shoes, begins to "cut without a knife", causing incredible pain.
In the everyday life of relationship therapy, I have to observe something analogous to which the metaphor of a corns, with its invisibility and extreme soreness, is very suitable. This is what I call “emo corns,” that is, a hotbed of emotional discomfort that occurs in the context of repeated negative emotional experiences.
It happens: at first, a relationship is a sheer pleasure, and then conflicts, resentments and pain arise out of nowhere. It is wrong to think that this only happens in a relationship where one is a bastard, and the other is a sufferer. Often these are people who love each other, striving to preserve their relationship. It's just that over time, without realizing whether one of them or both of them acquire their own emo corns. They do not always know how to convey to another the cause and nature of their emotional experience, and the very nature of what is happening to them is often unaware and this only aggravates mutual misunderstanding.
In order to restore impaired well-being in relationships, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of our neurophysiology, primarily the brain.
Emo callus formation
Our neurophysiology is designed in such a way that it constantly learns, that is, it processes and preserves units of experience. It saves files not like a computer, but by creating and activating connections between neurons and neutron centers. It is these connections (axons) that send a signal, that is, an electro-biochemical stimulus that activates certain of our emotional and physiological reactions.
For example, your partner does not show himself empathically enough at the moment when you expected empathy and understanding from him. No malicious intent, just some carelessness on his part. You feel subtle discomfort. But you do not want to make an elephant out of a fly or do not consider this discomfort to be anything significant. And you don't try to talk about it.
The next time, with the same behavior, the partner again evokes a similar response in you, and now you also feel confusion: realizing that you should somehow react to it, you still put it off until later. Perhaps you avoid the negative reaction of your partner or are afraid to provoke his rejection or misunderstanding … One way or another, the neural connections of each of you learn: your partner assimilates the experience of the apparent “normalcy” of what is happening, and an emo corns is formed in you.
Later, you experience the same discomfort again with a new intensity and try to talk about it. The partner reacts with surprise: never before did it “bother you and then suddenly”. Any such misunderstanding naturally causes disappointment and grief. The intensity of the emotional response grows, the emo callus becomes denser.
When you are trying to eliminate the cause of discomfort, due to the accumulated emotions, it is difficult for you to talk about it diplomatically and calmly: a nucleus is formed in your emo corns and it negatively colors your general psycho-emotional state. With insufficient diplomacy, you inadvertently provoke the formation of an emo callus in your partner, if it was not there before. As a result, your partner begins to move away from you, to avoid intimacy in bed and conversations at the table - his emo callus also presses on his most sensitive place.
Then, in any communication, you expect from your partner those forms of behavior that give you discomfort. Even just the timbre of the voice can already trigger an emotional reaction, which seemed to be waiting for its launch, like another Elon Musk rocket. You feel irritated, angry, angry, angry.
Now you are experiencing discomfort not only from the behavior of your partner, but also from your own emotional reaction, which seems to you to be uncontrollable and takes away a lot of precious psychic energy. You catch yourself on the fact that you are already constantly in a state of mobilization, waiting for the next negative experience and as if preparing the most appropriate reactions to unwanted stimuli. Emo callus is constantly present in your life as background pain. This is how the phrases “all men are bastards” and “all women are bitches” are born - these are just external symptoms of emo corns that inevitably arise in disharmonious relationships.
Obvious and non-obvious
Emo calluses can be seen during relationship therapy. I always pay special attention to what kind of emotional reactions are reflected on the faces of partners in the process of communication. And what kind of triggers trigger them - after all, this is necessary to help clients develop both sensitivity to these signals, and their correct understanding, and most importantly - to develop an adequate response to them.
But about the inner, that is, about the neurophysiological side of emo corns, you can read in the scientific articles of researchers who observe the scanning of brain activity using an MRI machine on their monitors. Read, for example, how the centers of pain are activated in our brain in a situation of rejection or at the mere mention of a person who caused negative experiences. According to research, this is the same reaction that occurs in the brain to inflicting physical, bodily pain. Thus, the brain seeks to force us to stay as far as possible from whoever the emo corns is associated with. These invisible difficulties that those who are trying to improve their relationships face are very important for me to take into account in my work, and for all those who seek to restore comfort in relationships.
The most sensitive and therefore the most vulnerable place on which the emo corns is formed, this is our central need from the category of social - need for proof of value … Emotions in general are signals through which our needs signal us that everything is okay; the needs are all right only when they are satisfied. If our needs are met, we experience positive emotions or we are calm, calm, balanced. Not satisfied - we experience negative emotions, discomfort, grief, irritation. Likewise, the need for confirmation of value: if it is sometimes not satisfied, it is at least discomfort, but if it is not satisfied chronically, it is already a callus that hurts.
Confirmation of value is exactly what we start a relationship for, because our main expectation is that our partner will appreciate us and prefer us to everyone else. That is why we are so hurt by any partner's attitude, which is felt as neglect - of us and our feelings. After all, we never neglect the feelings of the one we truly value.
In a relationship, it is very important to be able to adequately inform your partner about your emotional reactions, without hurting his feelings and at the same time taking care of your own. And for this it is important to understand how emotions work and what they are for. Because emotions will always arise, they are a natural part of our mental life, and they are our helpers and allies - if we know how to understand them correctly. It is equally important to have complete clarity about our natural needs, that is, not to confuse them with "whims" and to understand how and why they are connected with our emotions.
It's also important to contact relationship therapy on time. Until the emo corns was formed. Or while it can be removed painlessly and relatively quickly. That is, while you are still disposed to hear each other. And until the pain of intimacy began to prevail over the pleasure of it.
Lena Korneeva
Literature:
Eisenberger N., Lieberman M., Williams K. Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion. Science, 2003: Vol. 302, Issue 5643, pp. 290-292.
Fisher H., Brown L., Aron A., Strong G., Mashek D. Reward, addiction, and emotion regulation systems associated with rejection in love. Journal of Neurophysiology, 2010 Jul; 104 (1): 51-60.
Kross E., Berman M., Mischel W., Smith E., Wager T. Social rejection shares somatosensory representations with physical pain. PNAS April 12, 2011 108 (15) 6270-6275;
Mollet G., Harrison D. Emotion and pain: a functional cerebral systems integration. Neuropsychology Review, 2006 Sep; 16 (3): 99-121. doi: 10.1007 / s11065-006-9009-3. Epub 2006 Sep 28.
Rizzolatti G., Sinigaglia C. Empathie und Spiegelneurone: Die biologische Basis des Mitgefühls. Frankfurt am Main.: Suhrkamp, 2008
Tomova L., Wang K. L., Thompson, T. et al. Acute social isolation evokes midbrain craving responses similar to hunger. Nature Neuroscience 23, 2020.
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