To overcome distress - home, work, or anything else - you need to think beyond the ordinary, because once you lose your rational grip, it becomes difficult to control your thoughts. You just make a mess of things. Once this happens, it will mirror your own tilted image
Emotional growth is as important as 'minding' the body and 'bending' the mind. There are as many factors that govern, or support, emotional expansion as there are issues that goad us to steer clear of it. The former is suggested to be a healthy outcome; the latter is labelled as emotional disengagement. If one is 'trained', for instance, to disrespect, or devalue one's emotions, it leads to a static.
The result is, one tends to emulate dull emotional role models without effectively expressing one's feelings. This is where parenting, nurture and nature play a significant role to encourage and promote our emotional needs and also concerns of our children. On the contrary, when there is a parent-child disconnect, it skews a child's self-esteem, growth and decision-making.
It is a paradox, that, in certain families, emotional expression, decision-making and freedom of expression are often undervalued - most often at the dining table during a 'relaxed' conversation, or through a stormy session. This leads to a feeling of hurt that is so intense that the child avoids being 'receptive' to their parents' emotions as a way of negating, or tiding over their perception, or view. They may, in so doing, desist from expressing themselves, because they fear that that they would be scoffed at. Such emotional bruises reach and quiver their soul - over time.
When our emotional side is constantly humiliated, it jostles our heart and soul. This state can sometimes run deep into our consciousness and impinge our emotional health. It can also lead to a state of discomfort while expressing oneself, until the issue is re-evaluated. In most instances, the affected child, or adult, is unable to trace a specific incident, pain, reprimand, or insult. Yet, they all lead to a deflated psyche - leaving their visiting cards in one's mind. Call it unresolved emotional trauma, or what you may.
Every child is born to freely express themselves through curiosity, inquiry, wonder, or bewilderment - or, inventively, or analytically, articulate themselves through art, science, music, dance, or sports. If children are deprived of their liberty to communicate, their spontaneity gets kicked in the face. This is one reason why excessive 'control', especially by a stern parent, often leads to a shortfall in the child's creative showcase.
This is also nothing short of an offence against the spirit, imagination and creative gifts of any child. Yet, all is not lost if an inflexible, or rigid, parent, or elder, can change and allow a child to be what they want to be, and nurture their creative talents afresh. When this happens, one can release and resolve their emotional bearings, as also reconnect and rejuvenate their resourceful personalities with a better purpose and, in turn, encourage their child's artistic, or inherent, abilities. The idiom of creativity is one of the greatest foundations of our happiness and existence -it should not be undermined.
This leads us to another element. It is a given that one of the most complex lessons, for a child or adult, is to learn that the only thing in life that is constant is change. Each of us builds and constructs a life in our small world - how life around us works and how we fit into it. Most of us grow up with the belief that sometimes life can hit us harder than we expect.
However, when we realise that we have dropped our inflexibility and gotten hold of our feelings for ourselves, also our children, such countless moments of discomfort and disgrace will be a thing of the past. It will uplift and remind us how conscious we are of ourselves, our growth and our child's success.
To succeed, or overcome distress - home, work, or anything else - you need to, therefore, think beyond the ordinary, because once you lose your rational grip, it becomes difficult to handle, or control your thoughts. You just make a mess, if not mockery, of things. Once this happens, it will mirror your own tilted image, depicting the individual who has elapsed into an 'unmindful' entity. This is primarily the reason why some people seem to never grow up in life. The outcome is obvious - fixated anguish.
Now look at the other side of the picture. When you are in control, you bring a sense of calm, poise and equanimity. You expand on your graph and augment your capacity to control with a certain restraint. In so doing, you improve the quality and purpose of your daily living habits and also life - despite the pinpricks at home, place of work, or elsewhere. This is not easy to achieve by any means - it takes a great deal of preparation too. All the same, when you endeavour to do your best, come what may, you will be able to transform and live with the adage - practice makes us not only optimistic, but also continually empowered.
There are no perfect situations, or no situations that are perfect. The point is: when you have a positive frame of mind, you are open to opportunities. You keep your mind, eyes and ears open. The outcome is often magical. You are able to spot the 'first opportunity' before anyone else would get to know of it.
You also smartly move out of your present unrewarding job, or position. This is synchronicity; it works to your advantage. We all know it by name - meaningful coincidence that comes true. It is not just a dream come true. Synchronicity surfaces when you are actually not bogged down by anger, angst, or disgust. It emerges just like that - out of the blue, so to speak. You'd call it 'gut' feeling, a corollary of consequence - a mystifying journey of rediscovering oneself, all over again. It makes life worth living, augmented by our readiness to accept the possibility that all good things will follow at the right time.
Nidamboor is a wellness physician, independent researcher and author
A version of this article appears in the print on May 1, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.