Break the Cycle of Emotionally Unavailable Relationships: Self Help

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this video on how to stop choosing emotionally unavailable people. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. So let's talk about some concepts before we get into relationship strategies. Empathy, emotional intelligence, and emotional availability. A lot of times people kind of use them interchangeably, and they're really not. So let's take a look at these definitions. Empathy is the ability to recognize people's feelings and imagine what they're experiencing or might experience. So when you empathize with someone, if they look sad, if they're telling you about a tragedy they went through, empathy is the ability to kind of put yourself in their shoes and experience on a less intense level what they were experiencing. You can kind of, and I try not to use the word understand, but I'm going to use it now. You can kind of understand what they're going through. Empathy can also be used proactively. You can empathize how someone might feel if you surprise them, if you yell at them in front of other people, if you stand them up. You can empathize and think, how is this person going to feel if do this? And that's empathy. A lot of times people talk about wanting their significant others to be more empathetic, wanting them to be able to try to experience what they're feeling instead of telling them how they should feel or ignoring it all together. They want their significant others to be more empathetic with their children, for example, and try to understand and try to explore what their children are feeling when maybe that's not how they were raised. It doesn't mean they can't learn to do it. But empathy is definitely a characteristic that's important in relationships and important in developing intimacy. But it's not something that everybody was taught to do, and it's not something everybody's comfortable with. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and understand the function and meaning of feelings in yourself and others. For example, anxiety and anger, they're part of the fight or flight response. When you feel anxious or angry. That means part of you thinks that there might be a threat somewhere. That is the function and meaning of those feelings. Now, whether there is a threat is not guaranteed because feelings are not facts. But understanding that is so important. Emotional intelligence also is the ability to tolerate a variety of feelings in yourself and others. Being able to tolerate when you feel angry, anxious, depressed, happy, when any feeling you have, not having the urge to immediately act on it, but being able to tolerate it and go, okay, this is how I'm feeling now. Let me get into my wise mind and figure out how to proceed. And emotional intelligence is the ability to respond to feelings in a helpful way. Now, going back to tolerating a variety of feelings in others, maybe your significant other is angry with you and they're, that is uncomfortable. So you're feeling distress. But also it's important to be able to tolerate, as long as they are be displaying it appropriately tolerate their anger and then respond in a helpful way. For some people when they're angry, they need some time. They just, they need a minute, and that's okay. Responding in that way would be helpful to them as opposed to chasing them around going, we're going to finish this. So emotional intelligence involves not only being aware of and understanding your own feelings, but having a general understanding of the feelings in others and ways to appropriately respond. Now, you may not always be right, but at least if you start from a place of general knowledge, you are probably not going to go terribly astray. Emotional availability is a person's willingness to feel their feelings. I'm going to make my feelings available so I can feel them. Some people have experienced such trauma, such disappointment, such heartache in their life that they've walled off those feelings. Their emotions aren't even available to them. All right? So that's one place where people can have difficulty with emotional availability. Person's willingness to share or express their feelings is another aspect of emotional availability. Not only am I going to feel them and have my feelings available to me, I'm going to make my feelings available to you. I'm going to let you know how I feel about this thing. And then a third component of emotional availability is the willingness to empathize with others, with someone else's emotions and, and let yourself feel what they are feeling. If you are trying to empathize with somebody, but you don't want to feel what they're feeling because that's really awful, then you're not actually empathizing. So empathy is part of emotional availability, but it's not everything. Now let's talk about emotional availability in relationships. Are. Is the person emotionally unavailable for a reason, for a pathological reason, I guess, or are they just different and you need to sort of bridge the gap between your differences? Some people are going to be less emotionally available because that's how they were raised in their culture. And this can include. If you were raised in a military family, you may have been taught that, you know, feelings are not something we're going to have deep discussions about. You need to, you know, feel it and fix it. Just get on, make, make, make it go away or suppress it or whatever. And I'm not saying that's necessarily healthy, but when you look at different cultures and the way people are raised, like traditional masculine values or being in the military, or even people who are in what we would consider traditionally male oriented professions like law enforcement and firefighters and those sorts of people, they can't afford the luxury when they're on duty of feeling every feeling because they see some pretty awful crap and they learn to sort of lock it down. Some are very emotionally available, I'm not saying that, but there's a large proportion that become over time emotionally unavailable because it's just too painful to feel anything anymore. It's important if you're in a relationship with somebody who was raised in an environment where it wasn't safe or expected or okay to talk about feelings, to acknowledge your feelings, that you express your needs for emotional availability and what that looks like and create a safe place for them to learn. People can learn to be emotionally available. So for example, you may say something to them like for me, me to feel understood, I need you to validate my feelings. You don't have to agree with me, but validating my feelings. I see that you're angry right now. Empathy would be great, where you can kind of try to walk in my shoes and see it from my point of view, but at least validate my feelings. And it's helpful for me to know how you feel and your thoughts and reactions because then I can feel closer to you, then I can feel, then I can be more supportive of you. Whatever you want to say, but telling them, not only do I need you to understand me, but I really want to understand you at first. If someone is not used to identifying and expressing their emotions, it may be kind of like pulling teeth. You may have to ask, you know, it seems like you're feeling kind of angry right now. Would you like to talk about it? Am I right? Is there something you're angry about, however you want to approach it, but couch it because you don't know how they feel. You're looking at their non verbals, maybe they're in pain, maybe they're exhausted, but they look angry. So couching it and saying it seems like you feel really angry right now. Is there something you'd like to talk about? And then they can either say, yeah, I'm angry, we'll talk later, or no, I'm not angry about anything, I'm just really tired. And that helps them start using those emotion words that you may be craving. Another difference that can make somebody seem emotionally unavailable is their temperament. Introverts often loathe small talk and they want to have deep discussions about similar interests and maybe even deep discussions about feelings and reactions to certain things. Extroverts, that's not how they. That's not how they're wired. So they tend to like to talk a lot about a lot of different things and they'll talk about something for a minute, like how they're feeling, how their day went, whatever, and then they're going to move on to the next thing. And it's not that they don't care about you. Doing a deep dive on something may just not have occurred to them. There's a skit that a comedian does that in, in which he and his friend are at the gym and his friend is bench pressing and says, oh, by the way, I'm getting a divorce. And the comedian says, well, that sucks. And they moved on. He's like, that was all. He didn't ask a question. He didn't ask for my opinion. I figured he had it well under control. And that is the way they were raised. And his wife was just aghast. She's like, well, what happened? How did he feel? What's gonna. And he's like, I don't know. He didn't ask for my input, I didn't offer it. My point in bringing that up is that it's important to again, recognize it may not be that somebody doesn't care. It may just not have occurred to them to ask because either that's how they're wired and, and, or their culture. Additionally, introverts are more aware of what's going on inside them than around them. So this is where it flips. If you're in a relationship with an introvert and you're an extrovert, you're aware of what's going on around you all the time and you are more aware of people's feelings and reactions and yada, yada, you're not as aware of what's going on inside of you. But, but you are attuned to your environment. Introverts are the opposite. They're more aware of what's going on inside them. So if you're walking around the house pouting or sighing and hoping that they're going to notice and ask you what's wrong, you're probably going to keep doing it for a while because they may not be as attuned to what's going on around them. Now, walking around and sighing and Huffing and hoping that somebody notices is also really bad communication. It's important if you have a need, if you have a feeling, to communicate it assertively, to say, hey, I'm having a really bad day, I'd like to talk about it. Okay? Don't wait for them to ask you. And then if they don't ask you, assume they don't care. That making a lot of assumptions about their ability to be aware of what's going on with you and what's going on with them. They may have a bunch of stuff going on over here. And if you stop them and say, hey, I'm really struggling with this right now, can we talk? Sure. They'll drop everything for you, but they may not just automatically have this emotion radar. Another aspect of temperament that can cause people to feel emotionally unavailable to you is if they are thinkers and you're a feeler. Thinkers react and respond to fix it. They feel angry, they feel scared, they feel depressed, they are going to do something about it. They, they know the feeling, they identify the feeling and then they work to fix it, to address it. They feel validated. When others also jump into action. You can kind of think of it as actions speak louder than words or I'm showing you that I care. They see somebody that they love that is struggling and in pain and, and instead of saying, oh, let's talk about it, they say, I'm going to make it go away. I'm going to help you out. And you may not want that. If you are a feeler, it's important for you to be able to be given the opportunity to feel your feelings and not have someone try to take them away. I know it sounds counterintuitive, especially to thinkers where they're like, well, you're in pain, you're suffering. I can make it go away, so why can't I? Feelers need to have their feelings acknowledged and then they can use the person as a sounding board and fix it when they are ready. Feelers are very capable of fixing their own problems, but they start from, from a. Sorry, from a place of feeling and needing to feel validated and understood that helps them feel supported and able to take that next step to fix the problem. If you are a feeler, if you tend to, you know, talk in a lot of feeling words, if you need to have your feelings acknowledged, it's important to communicate that to your partner and let them know, hey, I don't need you to fix it. I just need you to hear me. I know you may not see the logic in that, but that will help me a lot. And an emotionally available partner will say, sure, if that's what you need. I don't understand it, but I am more than willing to hear you and support you through your process. Another cause of people feeling like their partner is emotionally unavailable is speaking in different love languages languages. It's like one person speaking Chinese and the other speaking Italian. They're just not going to understand one another and even their nonverbals are going to be very, very different. So it's important to understand what your love language is and what your partner's love language is and how they define it. Gifts, acts of service, quality time, words of affirmation, physical touch. Those seem very self explanatory on the face, but they're not. It's important to recognize what kind of gifts make you feel loved and appreciated. What kind, what acts of service, what does that mean to you? What does quality time look like to you? Okay, so that's important to understand how your, what your partner's love language is and how they define finite. So you can communicate with them in your, in. In their love language instead of in yours and they can communicate with you in your love language. This is one of the most fundamental concepts that I find people don't have in relationships. And when they start kind of getting the hang of it, both people start feeling respected and loved and supported so much more. Reflect on how your partner may have tried to show you love in their love language, have tried to express emotions and be available to you in their love language. Especially if you're dealing with somebody who's a thinker or who's from a culture where they don't use a lot of those feeling words. They may have defaulted to, for example, acts of service and physical touch. And that may not be your love language, but maybe that's how they were trying to communicate to you. It's important for you to explain to them what your love language is. And also it's important for you to communicate with them in their love language so they feel loved and appreciated. Are you expecting mind reading? This is another thing where somebody can seem to be emotionally unavailable, but in reality you're kind of setting them up because you're expecting them to constantly be hyper vigilant to your every thought, want and need and have this emotional radar to read your mind and know when you're feeling upset and automatically react. And that that's just not going to work in relationships, especially over the long haul. Now of course it's very obvious when you get a call that someone in your family has died and you're. You start crying, that's. That's very obvious how you feel. But it also may be that you get a call about somebody in your family who's dying and you barely knew the person, and you're like, well, that sucks. And you move on. And expecting your significant other to know how you're feeling, that that's expecting too much, that that's expecting them to read your mind. So if you're feeling a certain way, maybe you feel guilty for not feeling even worse, feeling worse about the person dying than you do. Okay, well, that's one of those. That's really unreasonable to expect somebody to just pick up out of thin air. So it's important to use your assertive communication skills and tell your significant other, I'm feeling, fill in the blank. I'd like to talk about it. Or when you did this, it made me feel fill in the blank. And because sometimes people do things that hurt our feelings or make us angry and we hide it, we expect them to know how it made us feel, but we didn't express it at that time. And it wouldn't have bothered them a bit. It's just something that, you know, wouldn't have even phased them. So for them to know how it's going to impact us and us to assume that they're going to read our mind is foolhardy. It's important to communicate. I know I've said that about a dozen times already, but I find at the heart of what a lot of people determine as, or call emotional unavailability is just differences in communication, differences in telling each other how they tell each other that they feel loved, or problems in communication where they expect mind reading, they expect somebody to agree with them all the time. If you want your significant other to regularly ask you how you're feeling, have you told them if this is something that was normal in your household? Okay, it was. But it may not have been normal in their household growing up. So it's important to tell them. I'd really like for you to be more in tune or be more curious about how I'm feeling and just ask me how, how my day is going when you say it. It can feel petty for a lot of us, we. But it's also important to recognize if this is something that's important for you, then we need to tell the other person. And the more explicit you can be regarding your definition of emotional availability, what specific specifically is it you want them to do? The easier it is for them to say, oh, sure, I'll give that a shot or yeah, no, better find somebody else. Other reasons people may be truly emotionally unavailable, walled off, they have a lack of emotional intelligence. They never learned how to identify their own emotions, so they certainly can't pick them up in you fear of intimacy, rejection or getting hurt. If they've experienced this before, then they may not be ready to feel their own feelings. If you're in a relationship with them, they may not be ready to feel love or even a close connection because the last two, three, four times that happened, they got hurt and they don't want to feel that again, so they're just not going to feel. They may have low self esteem and fear rejection, so they don't want to feel because they're assuming that you're going to dump them. They may have abandonment trauma from childhood and having that trauma, they never developed a secure attachment, which leads them to believe in most cases that they're going to be repeatedly abandoned. So they're not going to want to share their feelings, they're not going to want to be vulnerable. It's like putting your hand on a hot stove intentionally, you ain't gonna do it. They also may have trauma related hypervigilance. Even if they had a secure attachment, if they've experienced trauma and they don't feel safe in their environment, they're scanning and they're always on edge. It's gonna be really hard to be emotionally attentive to you or even to them, their own self because they're just constantly anxious and constantly trying to stay safe. Think about a soldier in a foxhole. He's probably not going to be super empathetic because he's trying to make sure he doesn't get attacked. Insecure or avoidant attachment is another reason that people may be emotionally unavailable. Children who are raised by parents who are rejecting and critical and harsh and unpredictable often produce people who have what we consider to be avoidant attachment. It's just, it's too painful to actually attach to you. I may be in the same room with you, but it's too painful to risk connecting with you and getting hurt again. When they shared their feelings as children, they were punished for it. When they needed help, when they needed comfort and support, they were punished for it. So they're afraid to do it now. Which goes back to making sure that if you want somebody to be emotionally available, you've created an environment that is safe and supportive and nurturing. And finally, somebody can have a lack of a personal awareness of their own feelings, thoughts and needs. If they grew up in an environment where caregivers were unpredictable, where there was somebody with borderline personality disorder or addiction, the child may have been taught, don't talk, don't trust, don't feel. So they don't even know what they like, what they feel, what they want. They're kind of numb inside and you can't share what you ain't got. And they don't. It's not that they don't feel emotions, but they're not connected to them. The emotions may exist back there somewhere, but they have such a strong wall that they don't even really feel them anymore. They are too busy taking on the feelings of everybody else. You're upset. Okay, I'm upset. You're scared, I'm scared. You're happy. Okay, well, I'm just going to tread this one out for a little while. So they take on everybody else's emotions and aren't aware of what theirs are. So our reflection. Remember, behavior is communication. What are you defining as emotional unavailability in your in relationships? Specifically, what behaviors have people done in relationships that or failed to do in relationships that make you say, hey, that person's emotionally unavailable? That's important. That's an important first step because then you can say, this is what I need people to do explore in those relationships. Even if they're past what might have caused those behaviors to develop in your significant other, it's important to understand their perspective. Just like you want them to empathize with you, it's important to empathize with their perspective and how being emotionally available may be just terrifying to them. What would emotional availability look like in your next relationships? And remember, emotional availability is not mind reading. It doesn't mean knowing when you're sad or knowing when you're angry and being hyper vigilant about your needs. Are you actively practicing emotional availability? If you are, then you're going to attract people who are more emotionally available. If you are interacting with somebody who is completely emotionally unavailable, then your conversations are probably just going to be one way and you're going to do a lot of talking, you're going to do a lot of being vulnerable, and they're going to do a lot of just kind of sitting there going, what do I do with all this act to attract. When you are emotionally available and someone reciprocates with a little bit of emotional availability, then you know you're on the right track and how can you communicate what you need to your significant other. Even in early on in relationships, if somebody is doing one of those behaviors that you identify as emotionally unavailable, it's important to identify or express to them what you need instead. What do you need? Instead of them fixing it, you need them to validate how you're feeling. Instead of doing this, it would be really helpful if they did whatever. When looking for new relationships, consider whether you're looking for something that is counterintuitive. And I know you don't want to hear this, but it, it is what it is. If you are looking for a ultra powerful, ultra male or dominant alpha figure, then expecting them to have that Persona 90% of the time and then also be totally emotionally available and connected and expressive probably ain't going to happen. So it's, it's important to connect it. And, and like I said, there are alpha males out there that do have a big, soft, squishy side that they let certain people see when they feel safe. So I'm not saying they can't coexist, but very often they don't coexist. What other traits might you need to compromise on in relationships and to get the emotional availability you crave? If you are typically attracted to, for example, we'll call adrenaline junkie type people, Whatever their gender, those people tend to run on, on adrenaline, on cortisol, and they tend to tend to. They're not always, but tend to be less emotional and expressive. So it is important to consider maybe instead of looking for somebody that is an ER doctor, I might need to look for somebody that's a family practice physician, or I might need to look for somebody who's not a doctor at all. And that is a paradigm shift because it's going to shift where you look for people, where you try to meet people, and finally notice the signs early on and be honest with yourself. If you're in a relationship with someone who's completely emotionally unavailable and you've tried to communicate your needs and it's just gone nowhere, it's probably best to move on. Emotional availability is learned and it's dependent on people's early attachment experiences, their ability to be emotionally intelligent, which developed from those early attachment experiences. Most of the time, their sense of personal safety in relationships. People are going to be emotionally available and vulnerable when they feel safe and cultural influences. If they were taught that emotional, emotional availability is not okay, then that is a behavior that they just never learned and it's one they will have to learn. People can learn to be more emotionally available if they feel like they're in a safe and welcoming environment and provided the coaching to learn those new behaviors. You can't just say I love you. And this is. It's a safe place for you to express your feelings and expect all of a sudden this person to become super emotionally available. They're going to have to be coached. Tell me how you're feeling about this. Tell me what your reaction was to this. Until it becomes more second nature to them.