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Reclaiming Your Emotional Life · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the final episode in the three-part series on emotional contamination.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Before I uh commence, there's something that I I think is a really important concept, and it is the idea of always endeavoring to do what is right.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now that could sound like a very moralistic thing to say, because it kind of suggests that there is a big book of things entitled How to Do It Right.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm not so sure about that.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I believe that doing what is right is not about following a set of rules.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, of course, there are social rules and expectations which broadly speaking define what is and what isn't right.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's more personal than that.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's about deciding what is right for the individual, actually deciding for yourself what is right for you, what works for you.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't mean conforming to the expectations of others, particularly if those expectations are unrealistic or distorted.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: It means you deciding what is right for you.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: This I think applies in all relationships and encounters with other people.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: What is right to do for you?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now sometimes we we make a kind of series of rules and live by certain principles that we've learned are right from for us.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And there are times when we deviate from that.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: We do things which on reflection we regard as having deviated.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we return to what is right for us, then we stay, broadly speaking, on track.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Life is an experience where we're challenged very often by different things, and those things don't conform to principles, apart from the principle of life is horrible sometimes.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: But if we can return to what is right for us, that provides a kind of psychological stability which becomes reliable, consistent, and containing.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose in some ways this final episode is a manifestation of that.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm calling this reclaiming your emotional life.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: In the first episode, we explored what emotional contamination really is.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in the second, we looked at how it happens and why we can begin carrying emotions that were never truly ours to carry.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now here comes the most important question.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Can we free ourselves from emotional contamination?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is yes.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: But we can't do it by pretending that it never happened, not by trying to think positively or dismiss it or avoid it.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't do a thing.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we certainly can't do it by blaming ourselves for feeling the way we do.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Recovery begins with one simple but profound realization, and that is not every feeling you experience belongs to you.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: That may sound surprising, but you know, we think back to things that I've already said and pause for a moment and think about your own life.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever walked into a room feeling calm only to leave feeling anxious?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever spent time with someone who left you questioning your judgment, your abilities, or even your worth?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever found yourself carrying guilt without being entirely sure what you've done wrong?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: If so, you've already experienced how powerfully other people's emotional worlds can affect your own.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the difference now is that you are noticing it, and noticing it changes everything.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: One of the greatest gifts we possess as human beings is the ability to reflect on our emotional experience rather than simply react to it.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of immediately accepting a painful feeling as truth, we can exercise curiosity.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Here are some useful questions.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it I am feeling this now?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Asking yourself, what is it that's happened?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it also helps sometimes to say, what is it I am feeling now?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we name it, we don't necessarily then have to re-enter what it was that triggered it.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the what, not why question.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: The next question is, when did this feeling begin?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Not historically, but on the day, for example.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then the final question is then does it truly belong to me?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I remember a friend of mine some years ago came to see me and he was also a therapist, and I said something like, you know, how are you doing?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he looked agitated.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I don't know, I feel really angry.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, okay.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I I didn't, but I do, feeling really aggravated and irritated.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked him the question, well, when did that start?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so he described having lunch with somebody, and he said that before that time he was feeling okay, but during the course of that time, he noticed himself feeling all kinds of things, and I as it happened, I I knew the person who he had lunch with, and I smiled and thought, yeah, I felt that way as well.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: But in his noticing when the feeling began, which was shortly afterwards, something important happened, and I said, Have you made the connection yet?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Yeah, it's not mine, is it?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, No, it's not.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just a moment where some illumination happened.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now he was a therapist, and so he would probably ask these kinds of questions.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And what he realized was it wasn't what the other person had done to him, it's what the other person had pushed into him, and he had absorbed it.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: So these asking questions like this, that they're not about denial, they're about acts of psychological reality.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And often as people begin reflecting in this way, they see patterns emerging, and perhaps they feel inadequate after speaking with one person in particular.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a family, a family member, it could be anyone.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, perhaps they leave family gatherings feeling guilty despite nothing actually having happened.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps they've spent decades believing that you know I am too much for others, or I'm not enough, or I'm difficult, or unlovable, only to realize that these were messages that they absorbed rather than truth that they discovered.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the beginning of emotional separation.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most liberating experiences in psychological growth.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: But separation doesn't mean becoming emotionally distant or uncaring.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Healthy psychological boundaries aren't walls, they're filters.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Walls keep everyone out.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Filters allow kindness, compassion, and other things to enter while preventing unnecessary shame, fear, and hostility from taking root.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: People with healthy emotional boundaries remain deeply compassionate.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: The difference is that they no longer they no longer assume responsibility for feelings that belong to someone else.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this this is something which can feel a bit unfamiliar at first because it might feel like well I've stopped caring.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, no, what's happened is you've started caring about yourself because that's the person you've been abandoning.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Many people who've spent their lives caring and carrying other people's distress really do experience guilt or can experience guilt when they begin putting emotional boundaries in place and you know they worry that they're being selfish when in fact they're exercising self-care.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: The opposite's true.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when we stop carrying what doesn't belong to us, we become far more available to offer genuine care and to offer it to people who act really appreciate it and who reciprocate.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Quite often, these kinds of relationships where you're doing all the caring and all the work, the thing that's lacking is reciprocity.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And those those situations are highly damaging.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of rescuing people, we can understand them.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of absorbing their distress, we can stand alongside and help them carry it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: But there's an important difference here, and children teach us this lesson beautifully.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: A frightened child doesn't need an adult who becomes equally frightened.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: They need an adult who can recognize the fear, understand it, contain it, and help make sense of it.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that the adult is untouched by the child's feelings, but neither are they overwhelmed by them.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is emotional containment, and it's one of the most powerful forms of love we can offer.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: The same principle applies through adult life.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Whether we are partners, parents, teachers, therapists, whoever, our greatest gift is not taking on another person's emotional pain as though it were our because that is crippling.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's helping them think about it without losing in ourselves in the process.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: But they have to be prepared to do the thinking, and sometimes they're not, because they're not looking for resolution or change, they're stuck in the self-maintaining drama they live by.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes emotional containment and sorry, emotional contamination has been present for so many years that untangling it just can't be done alone.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where therapy can become transformational because good therapy isn't about giving advice, it's not about telling people what to do or how to fix themselves or how to fix their families.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's about creating a relationship in which the confusing emotions can be safely explored.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And over time people begin recognizing what belongs to them and what doesn't.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And their thoughts become clearer, their relationships become healthier, and the constant sense of carrying an invisible emotional weight gradually begins to lift.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the greatest sign of recovery is not that life becomes free of pain, it's that your emotional life begins to feel authentically yours.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're no longer living according to somebody else's fears or somebody else's shame or somebody else's unmet needs.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: You begin responding to life rather than reacting to emotional burdens that were maybe placed upon you years before, and that changes everything.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because when emotional contamination loses its grip, something remarkable happens.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because your confidence no longer depends upon another person's approval.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Your decisions become clearer and your relationships become more genuine, and you will have relationships with people who are themselves more genuine.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps for the first time in a very long time, you discover the quiet freedom of knowing who you really are and not having to make excuses for yourself or become self-critical.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't just emotional recovery, it's psychological liberation.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the thing that takes us to that point of realizing, and I said at the beginning, the realization of what's right for you.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me for this three-part series.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: My hope is that these conversations encourage you to look at your emotional world with greater curiosity and greater compassion because understanding ourselves is never about finding someone to blame.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there are many people who are stuck in in that kind of pattern where, you know, my life is the way it is because of all these people who've done all these bad things to me.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody, everybody's critical of me, and nobody recognizes.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, my response to that is give it a rest.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Start looking at yourself.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Start looking at not other people, look at yourself.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because you're doing something wrong, it's because you're not seeing what's there.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now that can be freeing and liberating.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this has helped.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do another series, another three-part series on decontamination.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this is particularly for people who are stuck, and it is an effort and an attempt to help people to look at where they're stuck, how they got there, but more importantly, how to be free of it.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.