Triumph
and
Grace
Emotional Debt
Chase Hughes discusses Emotional Debt in a recent video [link below].
He states that every unprocessed emotion becomes a line of credit that your nervous system is silently paying interest on.
When significant emotional events occur, typically in our childhood years, and the body doesn’t have the ability to complete the response, that charge gets stored in the body – not as memory but as a state.
As we accumulate hundreds, even thousands of these unfulfilled responses, the nervous system can be triggered by the slightest things – we react as though we are still in the unsafe, unresolved situation, not as remembering, but as re-entering.
Examples: you can’t fight back when you are a child, you can’t run because it’s your home, you can’t cry because that gets punished, you needed to express anger but it wasn’t allowed, you had to grieve something but you were forced to be strong, you needed to be a child but you were forced to be the adult.
As an adult, you feel tightness in your body where the unresolved energy is stored: shoulders, jaw, stomach. You think your anxiety is normal.
Over time this emotional debt is accruing interest. Your body must pay.
We see this in our neurology, our nervous system.
Amygdala – our emotional center becomes hypersensitized and it takes less to set us off.
Prefrontal Cortex – our executive function loses its ability to think and control the situation, yielding to the reactive amygdala.
HPA Axis [hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal] – our stress response system elevates cortisol which diminishes immune function, destroys sleep quality, diminishes our ability to story memories, increases visceral fat, and accelerates cellular aging
System Recruitment – our unprocessed emotions pull other systems into the debt repayment where relationships become debt servicing arrangements, careers become distraction strategies, and habits become interest payments.
Our emotional debt is compounding, and the system needs to process the payments. Debt servicing never reduces what is owed, it only prevents default.
We service the debt in a few ways:
Numbing with alcohol, weed, scrolling, food, shopping, binge watching television all ease the pain, and this makes them difficult to stop.
Performing by being the funniest, smartest, most charming person in the room only masks deeper loneliness.
Over-functioning in relationships by anticipating every need, sacrificing, and bending over backwards is mistaken to be love.
How do we clear this debt then? All effective methods come down to a shift in perspective or vantage point that allows us to see the truth and change our behavior.
See the Payments – learn to see the pattern where we react disproportionately
Name the Debt Servicing Behavior – identify but do not judge your go-to behavior: numbing, overworking, controlling, withdrawing, etc. – don’t judge or try to stop it
Let Your Body Finish – the stored emotions are incomplete motor responses – help them express through movement, crying, tremoring [TRE], breathwork, cold exposure, rage, vagal toning, other somatic work
Stop Taking On More – avoid new debt by giving your emotions 10 full seconds of attention when you feel them – just notice and teach your nervous system that feelings are allowed to come in and don’t need to be stored
Get a Witness – most emotional debt was created in psychological isolation – find a witness who can hold space for your deep emotional release without trying to make it stop
Stop asking yourself, why am I so messed up or what is wrong with me. Instead ask yourself, what do I owe and how do I start paying it back. Perspective shifting is the start.
Watch the full video here: Why You Can’t Relax - Emotional DEBT
From the NCI University web site: Chase Hughes is the world’s #1 leading authority on behavior profiling, nonverbal human communication, influence, and persuasion. His work has long been the go-to training resource for the most elite professionals in human intelligence.
The YouTube channel @chasehughesofficial contains years’ worth of valuable and insightful content.
Hi, I'm Ellen...
... and I am a writer, coach, and adventurer. I believe that life is the grand odyssey that we make of it.
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