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Although our parents, teachers and mentors taught us a lot of things as we were growing up, many of us failed to learn one of the most essential steps to feeling secure – organizing our feelings. It is by far one of the most important skills we can learn to be more finely-tune as adults.

The study of human behavior is fascinating. And now, with neuroscience and our understanding of neuroplasticity, or how the brain changes over time. Though this may seem technical in nature, but it has made the study of psychology more stimulating and compelling than ever. Because therapists have developed the science behind the art of psychology, we have discovered the keys to how an individual’s feelings of security are earned, enabling us to focus energy and interventions in new and exciting ways. Our brains can change as we become less focused on the distracting experiences of over-indulgence, and more focused and adept at organizing our feelings and understanding our real needs.

I have been studying neuroscience with some of the most brilliant researchers and clinicians of our time. Among them are Daniel Siegel, Mary Main and Eric Hesse, Stan Tatkin, Alan Shore, Diane Fosha, Bruce Ecker and Laurel Mellin. I will be sharing much of this research with you as I have shared so many other new and exciting topics over the past three decades. What I have always known, however, is that people can and do earn security.

Earning security happens when the emotional brain focuses on the task of unpacking the deeper, specific emotional themes and schemas that feed our insecurities. We do this by applying well-established psychotherapeutic principals and new information in focused, contemporary ways. One of the outcomes of this work is a feeling of freedom. Freedom is an inner experience, permitting individuals to unshackle the bonds of their own past—bonds that may have relentlessly interfered with experiencing a deep sense of well being, as well as the ability to enjoy fulfilling relationships.  Other earned life rewards are gratitude, happiness, pride, accepting love, loving others, satisfaction, restfulness and health.

How do we define a secure relationship?  Simply put, it is one in which we feel so safe that if we were in distress. We can count on our ability to reach out to the other and know the other will be there. We trust that we can and will repair any rupture we experience with the other quickly, feeling secure in the notion that we won’t leave and, as just importantly, he or she won’t leave. In essence, there is only room for two adults in a primary, secure relationship.

When a child comes into the world, he or she has many needs, one of the most far-reaching being the need to feel secure.  There are 12 essential needs leading to security, among them the need to organize our feelings, as mentioned earlier.  Because having organized feelings is a vital key to a feeling of well-being, it is an important concept that I recommend individuals and couples explore deeply.

Part of my role as a therapist is to help my clients organize their feelings and/or organize their life experiences. Another part of my job is to bring unconscious feelings, beliefs, or experiences to the surface that may have served as roadblocks to receiving the earned rewards of life. It is with the integration of unconscious material and the use of conscious skills that a person begins to have the power to choose that which will add to a sense of well-being.

The feelings I ask my clients to recognize and organize within themselves are: anger, sadness, fear, guilt, loneliness, hunger, fatigue and illness. Some of these feelings are readily organized by admitting, “I’m hungry; I need to eat,” or “I’m tired; I need to rest.” Others are not as easily organized.  It may take time to notice anger, sadness, fear and guilt. Summoning the effort to do so, however, can lead to the realization of what may lie on the ‘other side’ of those feelings.

Feelings are energy. Energy moves constantly because that is its nature. When we suppress emotional energy or distract ourselves from it by over-indulging in alcohol, work, or food, for example, that emotional energy doesn’t just disappear. It can surface again in more negative forms, such as hostility, depression, anxiety, shame, abandonment, exhaustion and misery.

Stress is another word for pain. ‘Check in’ with yourself and examine what you are feeling. The four essential pains are: anger, sadness, fear, and guilt. Begin to make your experience more specific by attempting to analyze what lies behind what you feel – what therapists do with you at every turn during your time with them.  When you hear yourself say you are stressed, be alert to feelings of anger, sadness, fear or guilt. After you clarify your feelings, your needs become more apparent, helping you identify the root causes.

But this doesn’t have to be all about you. One of the greatest gifts you can give your partner, your children, and your friends is to listen carefully and to help organize their feelings and experiences as well. Instead of trying to change their feelings or “fix” them, listen first and then say: “It sounds as if you are feeling…? Is that correct?” Let them keep externalizing their experience/feelings, after which you can ask them what they need. This is so much more constructive than trying to find the solution and offering a simplistic, “Why don’t you do XYZ?”

The process of organizing feelings, which leads us to earning security, is a form of intimacy, and intimacy is a healing principle. As parents, we are never too old to help our children organize their feelings and our children are never too young to hear you organizing your feelings as well. One of our evolutionary tasks as responsible beings is to become secure adults. Our ability to organize our own feelings aids us in bringing up children who are secure, able to go out into the world from that place of security.

Sources:
“Wired For Joy,” Laurel Mellin
“Love and War in Intimate Relationships,” Stan Tatkin
“Parenting from the Inside Out,” Daniel Siegel

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