What is the emotion behind the war?
My friend posed this question on facebook. And I found myself answering this way,
“Being out of touch with ones own emotions (as in narcissism), not valuing oneself, so feeling inadequate and powerless as a result, and desperately yearning to feel emotions somehow (so it needs a lot of intensity to be felt) , which end up being attained by the emotional reactions in others/ external symbols of power as in the chaos, unpredictability, fear, terror and anxiety it evokes in the external environment from ones actions”
“Pretty much like narc abuse on an international level”
“And I feel narc abuse is a common theme in most evils in the world now, starting with large scale events to abuse within the family, even leading to internalized capitalism within an individual. Luckily it’s getting to be seen more and so getting to be healed, by Gods grace!”
Let’s look at the emotional basis of the war and how it affects us emotionally. How is it linked to burnout?
Let’s look a little closer, shall we?
Let’s use narcissism as an example to see how emotions come to play here.
A narcissist is basically a person who does not have empathy. Meaning they are not able to place themselves in someone else’s shoes and understand what that person is going through.
Which implies that he/ she is unfortunately trapped in a situation where they are not in touch with their own emotions. For some reason it is hard for them to connect to their own emotions. They may have had traumatic experiences growing up, leaving deep hurt and fear in their psyche. So may have developed a coping mechanism of shutting out their emotions to reduce the hurt and eventually become numb to them. Or they may have a structural/ functional change in the brain (genetic or otherwise) which makes it hard to tap into their own emotions. Leading to lack of insight of what is going on within themselves.
But they yearn to feel emotions. This ends up happening via seeing the emotional reactions they evoke in those around them.
And they are relatively numb to emotions, so they need those external emotional reactions to be very intense.
At some point they learnt to not value themselves, as part of the trauma in their development or the limiting beliefs they picked up about themselves. Which makes them feel powerless and inadequate. But they may lack the ability to appropriately channel their frustration. So they tend to act out.
Together with needing to feed into the emotional response they evoke in others, the need for intense reactions from others to feel the emotions, and their inability to pacify themselves, their actions end up creating chaos, unpredictability, fear, terror, anxiety and suffering in those around them.
The more chaos and fear they can create, the more they feel powerful. Almost like a direct cause-effect relationship. So the attempt to fill a perceived emotional void in them ends up having disastrous consequences for those around them.
At their core, they are living in fear and deep hurt, and trying to protect themselves from further wounding. As a coping mechanism, they have stopped being in touch with their emotions but compensate by building a flawless attractive/ charming external persona (almost an alter-ego). Any attempt to voice an opinion or action against their actions may be seen as a personal attack to flaw this alter-ego. Flawing the alter-ego implies the death of the perfect existence/ identity they tried to create to replace the sense of void. Which evokes strong responses to show again that they are powerful.
Since they lack empathy, it would be hard for them to understand the suffering that others go through from their actions.
When we look back at history, it may be easy to see this pattern as a common theme in most large scale atrocities in history.
Wars leave people traumatized. Trauma leads to healing for some, but sometimes where there is no healing, the victims go on to become narcissists, sociopaths and/or dictators.
Who end up causing more trauma in their immediate family, work and the world. Perpetuating the cycle unless there is healing following the trauma.
Thus, a single ancestor who was not loved growing up, and hence could not find self love, may cause trauma in their own family. This may spill across generations person-to-person, each generation trying to replicate their own traumatic upbringing in the subsequent generation, being unaware of what is happening. The behavior may even be imposed on their fellow human beings in the society. When more people in society follow that behavior, it may easily pass as a cultural trait rather than a social evil.
We can see how it spreads far and wide to cause:
- Large scale social atrocities
- Mental health conditions in those around them like anxiety or depression or burnout
- Intergenerational trauma: direct effects on their children as in depression and anxiety, as well as effects passed down through their children directly and via genes (especially mitochondrial genes) like anxiety or depression or sociopathy
- Cultural practices of disregarding individual wellbeing (can lead to burnout)
- Work practices of disregarding individual well being (can lead to burnout)
- Internalized capitalism within the individual (can lead to burnout), i.e. indirectly a lack of self love to varying degrees, but it may be hard for them to realize it is not normal since they have been trained by societal conditioning to accept that as the norm
Whoa! Who knew being out of touch with one’s emotions can have such a huge impact in the world?
So, how do you connect to your emotions, Beautiful soul? Please share in the comments below.
