Do you have a great life, but sometimes wonder why you don’t feel more content?

Do you sometimes wish you could better handle common challenges - relationships, worries, anger, or disappointments? Our ability often depends on how our parents handled their own challenges. Our early years are critical for developing coping skills, or better yet, emotional resilience: the ability to adapt to stressful events, to resolve them, and to ultimately thrive.

Why is emotional resilience important?

Emotional resilience allows us to objectively explore our childhood and those who raised us, to “separate message from messenger,” to re-evaluate, and to ultimately give to ourselves that which our parents did their best to provide. Engaging in this process can create sustained personal and relational contentment, and new, exciting levels of personal and relational growth.

What does it look like?

According to Brad Waters and others, emotionally resilient people cultivate self-awareness and self-acceptance. They know their personal and relational boundaries. They are able to self-regulate. They keep good company and enlist this company when needed. They regularly engage in self-care activities, including time alone. They are able to love and be loved.

How hard is it to become emotionally resilient?

It can take a little work: becoming resilient requires the strength to examine the ways we may unconsciously sabotage our own happiness and thereby our relationships, and the willingness to re-teach – essentially re-parent – ourselves. This process facilitates us in being able to regulate our feelings, get our needs met, and come to feel like a person whose emotional “tank” has been full since birth.

Can’t we get by without doing this work?

Maybe. A common misconception is that growth and contentment come through having a mate. While good relationships do provide healing, no relationship is a substitute for the emotional resilience that adults must generate for themselves. This is why many relationships are fraught with peril.

What about having children: won’t they make me feel more whole?

Maybe. Another misconception is that having children will make people feel whole. But, as Dan Siegel suggests, the best predictor of a child’s well-being is their parent’s self-understanding. The peril is that the parents’ lack of self-understanding will “pay forward” to their children. There is no greater gift you can give your children than to be emotionally resilient yourself – your good self-esteem fosters good self-esteem in them, giving them a strong foundation to thrive in all aspects of life.

Commitment: a ball & chain or a path to relational joy?

Commitment can feel like a ball and chain when you do things for your partner simply to avoid being left. Relational joy, a phrase coined by Terry Real, is what arises when you feel inspired to do things for your partner simply because of how good it feels to be loving and connected with each other. The former is characterized by avoidance; the latter is characterized by inspiration.

Why do this work with me?

As a Marriage & Family therapist, I am experienced in helping people identify how early life shapes their current personal and relational issues, and guiding them as they resolve these issues. My therapeutic approach is an amalgam of Relational Life Therapy (RLT), attachment theory, working with the body-mind connection, re-parenting techniques, cognitive behavioral therapy, and mindfulness.

Bottom line

Recognizing that our past is always part of our present, therapy helps us understand how our earliest relationships with caregivers have shaped our present selves, and most importantly, how to use that awareness to heal unhealthy patterns/habits that undermine our ability to live a rich and satisfying life. Therapy, at its best, is a vehicle for enriching the overall quality of our lives beyond mere problem solving.