Overcoming Your Emotional Blocks Through Others

We all have obstacles in our daily life or we are presented with events that are difficult for us to confront. We can’t figure out how to fix those problems. We simply feel that we do not have the resources, intelligence, life force, or strategies to overcome these difficulties.

Sometimes we fantasize that this inconvenience will magically disappear, that we will go to sleep and the next day it will simply be gone. At other times we imagine that someone will be able to help us or that an individual capable of taking charge will appear. However, those dreams fade when the setbacks are still present.

Not being able to solve, confront, undo or modify things, we become paralyzed. Especially when the problem in question is emotional, that is, when we cannot clearly identify it, or name it, or explain it, or share it. We grieve before an invisible but present enemy.

What is an emotional obstacle like?

For example, when a discomfort appears within a couple’s bond that – by not fully understanding what is happening, added to the fear of being alone or of being loved – we feel expelled into an affective desert from which we do not know how to get out or we can think of how to explain or share or order.

Nor do we know how to approach it because we do not fully understand what is happening to us in its real dimension. Then, by not making any decision or taking action in any way, the whole of our being becomes immobilized.

Another example may be the saturation of a job that consumes our vitality, but by not foreseeing a possible change or considering that we should not seek a better job than we have, we are not able to elucidate the advantages and disadvantages or share the grief with anyone that we feel, especially if we think that we are going to be judged negatively.

It can also be a sadness that we harbor inside us since ancient times, to which we no longer find a reason to exist but nevertheless persists and is sapping our enthusiasm day by day.

There are times when we have family obligations that we are no longer willing to assume, that we have inherited without our consent, and we are thrown into a sea of ​​depression and disenchantment.

Identify what paralyzes us

Many emotional obstacles that we feel within us, but that we cannot detect or solve, turn into emotional waste, which takes place and generates a sensitive intoxication. We have to do something.

How to address those issues that we do not finish identifying but that bother us, consume us energy and contaminate our emotional territory, blocking our creativity, libido and well-being? Establishing a point of view with greater perspective. How would we do something like that?

In the first place, we will have to make an intellectual effort to locate the beginning of this obstacle, since probably at the origin, what saddens us today was a minor issue or to which we did not give importance. For instance,

• If we are out of touch with our partner because he lies to us, it is likely that at the beginning of the bond, the lies were already part of the relationship, but we did not care too much because in part we preferred not to find out what did not suit our comfort.
• If it is a job that surpasses us because it is monotonous, perhaps at first we were raising children and we needed a job that did not demand much attention from us.
• If we are the only ones responsible for taking care of our sick and elderly mother because our brothers have emigrated far away, perhaps on the basis of those agreements we obtained some benefit.

And so with each circumstance: it is possible to locate the current obstacle from its gestation to observe it with that new perspective.

Break with the established

This panorama seen during a period of time that has elapsed will already provide us with a more complete idea to be able to modify aspects that today are not comfortable for us. We will understand how we have cooperated to establish –from the beginning– a link, a job, a responsibility or an agreement, therefore it will be easier to find ways to modify that event that has been distorted and that today keeps us paralyzed.

Redirect our gaze: from self to others

There is another important aspect when we try to seek a broader perspective: not only approaching the facts from the beginning of that link or specific event, but also observing what today keeps us blocked and immobile, from outside ourselves. As if we were observing from a drone, from the sky, with a magnified lens and well beyond our little daily life.

Then we will discover that there is life beyond us and our frequent obstacles. There are other complex realities, other people around us waiting to be assisted or accompanied by us.

Sufferings of different natures appear, sometimes much more delicate than ours and requiring greater attention and availability.

What does this all mean? That the best way to get out of our stagnant blockages is to make the decision to be generous with our fellow man, instead of polluting ourselves with our miseries, assuming that is what life is about. Of course, sometimes we need help to solve conflicts, overcome losses or change course, but the best way to find resources to improve ourselves is by directing the focus towards reliable help in favor of our neighbors.

Who is our neighbor?

Very close people with whom we bond daily : our children, our nephews, our students, our partners, our friends, our neighbors, our siblings, our employees or our co-workers. Very specific individuals who circulate in our affective environment, who need our maturity and our experiences to face their problems.

Understand others

Are we capable of accompanying external processes? Surely yes, because we have perspective. We are outside the suffering of others. We are able to observe through magnified glasses because we are not affectively involved in the plot. It is wonderful to see everything we see.

We can see objectively what that other does not perceive, because he is flooded by his own emotions.

When we begin to understand complex dynamics – alien – we verify that events, illnesses, love disagreements or unattainable longings have a logic. Everything that causes us anxiety today, we have ever built it. It is easy to recognize the meaning that each suffering event carries within itself. Now, as it is about the blocking of the other, the incapacity of the other or the fear of the other, we can activate ourselves. We can help.

A change of perspective

But by helping to solve other people’s problems, are we going to be able to solve our own ? Of course. For several reasons.

The first is that the drive and desire to support our friend, child or partner has already set us in motion. Imperceptibly, the stagnation of our emotions accelerated. We go into a subtle movement, almost without realizing it.

On the other hand, the fact of reflecting on other people’s problems offers us greater skill by considering various options. This intellectual training also helps us when it comes to using certain tools to get out of our personal quagmire.

And finally, when we are collaborating with those we love, our little personal dramas tend to disappear, since something that seems tragic today will be nothingness itself tomorrow. It’s just about helping.