The Emotional Imaginary Battle We Have With Others

emotional battle emotional projection emotional vulnerability mental strength Aug 05, 2019

Ever experienced a time when you felt emotionally small, or emotionally big? I’m sure you have. This may be something that most people experience with certain people only.

There are some who are under the emotional grasp of their parents, who still feel like a child whenever they are with their parents, even though they are grown, adults. Every little thing said to them will trigger a small child feeling, and a need to be obedient or rebellious, submissive or aggressive, I think you get the picture. The dualistic nature of these emotions, when controlled by the lower ego, manifests in such extreme ways.

The higher ego dualistic nature, however, would manifest, for example as unconditional love or clear boundaries, firm and loving inner parent, owning one’s personal power and surrendering to a higher power simultaneously. Though they seem dualistic, they are both aligned with the higher forces.

This is where most people get too confused, I was confused too when I started my journey on how to transcend the lower ego. I thought the world must have exact opposites in order for me to learn and grow. So I believed that I must have love and hate, good luck and bad luck, win and lose. I thought this was what was meant to have a dualistic nature. Until I learned that both the lower ego and the higher ego (or higher self) each have their set of dualistic natures! And that the thing to do is to align with the dualistic natures of the higher ego!

In our emotional imaginary battles with other people, what can happen is that two different sets of dualistic natures may be at play. Let me illustrate this with my own experience with someone.

For those of you who know me, you know that I am a confident person and this can sometimes be perceived by other people as arrogance until they know me better. Perception is based on our first instinctual nature, and what we have been emotionally fed growing up. So if someone grew up in an environment where confidence in women is not the mainstay, then their perception of me is not going to be a positive me.

So in this encounter, I was having a conversation with someone whom I know can be emotionally vulnerable and prone to feeling attacked. During the conversation, I was stating a situation matter of factly, simply asking questions, conversing to gather information so that we are both on the same page. However, she felt accused and attacked and became emotionally frazzled. I observed this for a few seconds and realised that I was becoming a parent figure to her, that she started to project a parent figure towards me. I dropped the matter and didn’t pursue further, and decided to give her space and time to recover internally.

The dualistic nature of the lower ego & higher ego at play: win-lose, aggressive-passive, confidence-surrendering, firm-loving, and many others. So a combination of these expressions coming into play can cause a confusing situation, with each person not meeting the other at the same level. When they cannot meet at the same level, there is no connection, the disconnect is not anyone's fault. It is simply one person is standing on the fifth floor and the other on the first floor.

Two things I learned here: Firstly, I am not the right person to have this conversation with her. And secondly, I should not change who I am in how I communicate with her (even though I did think about it, but I do not think that would be helpful to her or to me).

With my clients, I work from different angles with each person to get the most out of them, to empower them. If this was my client, I would have pursued it further and asked her to think about what she was projecting, and what sort of emotional imaginary battle she was having with me.

Personally, I have these imaginary emotional battles too with some type of people. Types of people who have wounded me growing up and as a young adult. I have in my mind the kinds that push my buttons and makes me feel uncomfortable, and in my interaction with them, I strive to face them squarely and to see them for who they are, trying not to project my issues onto them. And this learning is still very much an ongoing process, and sometimes I still get internally nervous meeting these sort of people. The constant reminder to myself that, it is not about them, it is about understanding myself and to harness the lessons learned here to be more whole.

Keep remembering that the real emotional battles we are actually having are in our own minds, and they are the demons we have kept locked within our psyche. We are rarely if ever, having emotional battles with people that are in our lives NOW. The shadow parts of ourselves (parts of self that are in the shadow, that we are not aware of) offers the doorway to our higher wisdom, we must be open to them as grow as human beings.

Shamala Tan is an author, spiritual entrepreneur and healer. Her work focuses on transforming the lives of others on the spiritual, emotional, mental and earthly level.

One of her success stories as an author is to being featured alongside New York’s bestsellers Sonia Choquette, Robert Allen, Arielle Ford, Marci Shimoff as well as Christine Kloser in the book Pebbles In The Pond.

Shamala’s clients include small business owners, holistic practitioners as well as those seeking to find more significant meaning and value in life. Shamala offers laser coaching to her clients on a one-to-one basis or in a group environment, offline as well as online.

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The Emotional Imaginary Battle We Have With Others

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