The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Esteem and Affection

Mar 23

The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Esteem and Affection

Posted in Techniques

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Breaking the Emotional Cycle

Breaking the Emotional Cycle: Introduction
The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Power and Control
The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Esteem and Affection
The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Security and Survival
How Not to Get Swept Away By Emotions
The Welcoming Practice: Letting Go

If everyone loved you – or even if anyone loved you – you’d be OK. Right?

This is the emotional program of esteem and affection. Last week I looked at the program of power and control, as part of this series on breaking the emotional cycle that promises us happiness but delivers frustration and misery. Next week, we’ll consider security and survival. But today: Esteem and affection.

Jeanne Segal’s book The Language of Emotional Intelligence: The Five Essential Tools for Building Powerful and Effective Relationships has a lot to say about all of the emotional programs, though she doesn’t use that terminology specifically. Her starting point is the very early experiences of small children, and the kind of “attachment” that we establish with our mothers (or equivalent caregivers).

One of the ways that the attachment bond can go wrong is if we don’t get a secure sense of esteem and affection – if our caregivers are distant, inconsistent or negative towards us. We then tend to spend our lives attempting to complete the uncompleted bond, driven from relationship to relationship or achievement to achievement seeking the esteem and affection that we crave – quite often driving people away from us and bringing about crashing failure in the process.

photo credit: terren in Virginia

Because the unfortunate paradox is that people who have a secure inner sense of worth are a lot more likely to attract affection than those who desperately crave it. Likewise, people who are confident and centred are more likely to achieve great things than those who are desperate to be applauded. My neice, who’s staying with us at the moment, is a fan of American Idol, and I’ve watched some of the auditions with her. It struck me very strongly that the people who are interviewed saying, “I’m the greatest singer in the world, I’m just the best” are often completely without talent and sing in hideous, forced voices. Meanwhile, the people who have some stability and inner strength, who have families that they care for or who have been through difficult personal experiences like major illness – who have a sense of themselves that’s not dependent on whether they can get into a singing competition or not – perform in a relaxed, appealing, natural manner and are often very good.

The besetting emotion of someone with a strong program for esteem and affection is sadness, the feeling of being alone and abandoned, of loss. Their inner dialogue is one of worthlessness, desperation and need. What they think they need, what drives them, is recognition and love, but they secretly believe they don’t deserve it. Some people even feel compelled to sabotage it if they get it, so that their inner beliefs about the way the world works can go unchallenged.

photo credit: ░░░SunEye░░░

What is the way out? The way out is the way in. Just as the way to deal with issues of power and control is to let go of the desire to control the world and those around you and build a sense of control within yourself, so the way to deal with issues of esteem and affection is to let go of the search for external validation and build a sense of authenticity and validity within yourself. And I know of no better way (in fact, I know of no other way) to do this than through the various forms of meditation.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, my own meditation practice is in the Centering Prayer tradition, which is also where I’m getting the terminology of the three emotional programs for happiness. That’s not the only way to meditate by any means, or even the only one I would recommend. One thing, though, that Centering Prayer has as an emphasis which is less prominent in most other traditions is the emphasis on letting go.

photo credit: hapal

The basic practice of Centering Prayer is to sit for 10 or 20 minutes and let go of each thought as it arises by returning to a preselected word or phrase. Unlike other “concentrative” traditions like TM, the word or phrase is not something to focus on – in fact, the word itself is something to let go of. Everything, thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, are there to notice and gently let go. Part of the charm of the method is that it’s impossible to get it wrong. Either you are successfully sinking into a state in which you have let go of your thoughts, or you are successfully encountering each successive thought and letting it go, over and over again.

My version of Herbert Benson’s Relaxation Response Practice is actually a simplified version of Centering Prayer (and the other practice on that page, the Welcoming Prayer, emerged from the Centering Prayer tradition). I’ll have much more to say about these practices in later posts. For now, here’s something to reflect upon: When you feel a sense of sadness and loss, what is it you’re really missing?

UPDATE: I’ve now revised the material in this series and turned it into a self-reflection process as part of my ebook, Your Emotional Hamster Wheel and How to Get Off It. It’s included when you sign up for my free Simple Stress Management Techniques course.

Technorati Tags: sadness, depression, loss, letting go, emotion, Centering Prayer