Inna Zakharova - Theory of emotional relativity. Practical guide to the development of awareness and emotional intelligence

➤ Unwillingness to take responsibility.

Taking responsibility for decisions is unsafe. And when security is a leading psychological need, it is not easy for such people to take responsibility for themselves and their lives, and to be responsible for two partners is totally unsafe. In such relationships, the ball “who will make decisions” will constantly roll, there will always be expectations from each other that someone will do more in terms of responsibility. Moreover, if one constantly takes it upon himself, he feels the insult “why me?” and will feel unsafe. And the other one at the same time will also feel unsafe, because “if I do not make decisions, then I can’t influence anything, I’m nobody”, the partner’s responsible behavior is perceived as aggression and a desire to suppress.

If partners in such relationships are perceived, able to agree, they can say all the moments of interaction aloud and strengthen each other. To do this, we must share the responsibility: “I’ll do this, you’re doing that, I’m free at this time.” You need to say everything. If you arm yourself with this honesty and clarity in relationships, everything becomes cool. But if a person is not conscious, he is not ready for sincerity, because it is very unsafe. In the pattern, a person with a need for security lives a little bit secretly, just in case there should be workarounds: “I’m kind of with you, but I have hidden the waste routes. “I have 5 rubles, and I don’t tell you that there are 10 more in the back pocket”. There is always a desire to protect yourself even more.

There are three main strategies to satisfy the needs for security. As the strategies differ, values also may be different.

Strategies of getting values:

• Get support.In order to feel security and self-confidence, a person stocks up with the support of others. “I want to be friendly with everyone, I want to answer expectations of others so that I can count on reciprocal support and be in an environment that is well disposed towards me.” In this case, support will be a high priority value.

• Do not get involved. In order to feel security and self-confidence, a person tries to the maximum to not get involved in any relationships, so that others do not have any expectations of him. In this case, we are talking about the high priority of the value of freedom. “My safety is in my freedom, in the decline of responsibility for other people. I want no one to have any expectations about me. Let me not have support, it doesn’t matter. I can provide for myself, take care of myself, I can manage it. The main thing is that people around me do not press me and do not expect anything of me.”

• Get information.To feel security and self-confidence, a person constantly learns, reads, studies, watches popular YouTube channels, reads news sites, loads his mind with various kinds of information. “If I know, I’m safe. I’m prepared for any situation, I know a lot and can maintain a conversation on any topic using specific linguistics, give the impression that I understand the subject (even if not very deep and in theory).” Information is a high priority value.

What is valuable when the need for love is important right now? This is what will bring to life the attention and acceptance of other people – relationships, close ties, sincere interest, compliments, praise, a sense of personal worth and uniqueness.

If I need love (this is a need), I want close relationships, so I need to find an exceptional person for such relationships. To achieve this, I need to attract him (even if we are not talking about relationships in a couple, but about a group of interesting people, which I want to belong to). What do we do to get attention? We are starting to decorate ourselves, we want to look in some interesting, attractive way, to fit into society, to please some specific people. We can decorate ourselves in different ways: through the appearance or through creativity we can express our inner world. Both these things in this case become values for satisfaction of need for love.

Values from the need for love and acceptance:

• Close relations. It is important to find the very one person among a million others who will become the most important for me, to whom I can discover something very sincere, secret. Intimacy here also means. In close relationships, we can touch each other, hug, kiss. Sex is the ultimate closeness of man and woman. A strong desire for intimacy often leads to complete loss, to the loss of a sense of own boundaries.

• Feelings.Feelings are a criterion of intimacy, so they are also very important if the need for love is significant. Of course, it is more preferable to have such feelings as tenderness, desire, joy, but if we do not have such feelings, so at least it is better to have any rather than to have nothing. Indifference means a lack of communication, a lack of love, so people with a leading need for love provoke a partner to show vivid and bright emotions, they can get hysterical in order to knock out at least some kind of emotions.

• Self-expression.Usually people with a leading need for love are very creative. Creativity is an opportunity to express your inner world and present it to others to receive attention, recognition, praise, understanding, emotional reaction, etc. Criticism or indifference to creative products is experienced very painfully, as it is perceived personally “If they didn’t like my poem, they didn’t like me.”

• Personality. As love is a feeling of exclusivity in the lives of other people, individuality becomes a high order value for people with a leading need for love. “In order to be loved, I need to be special, have my own distinction, uniqueness, and be different from millions of other people. Having a bright personality, I will have more chances to get love.” However, in this quest for individuality, a person can fall into another trap. Love implies a feeling of unity, similarity and individuality emphasizes the difference. Therefore, an imbalance in favor of individuality leads to a feeling of loneliness: “I am different, different, there are no more such people”.

• Sincerity.Sincerity is another criterion of intimacy. If we are close people, we should know everything about each other, we can and should share sincerely all our thoughts and feelings, talk about all events in our life. It also has some traps. A strong desire to get love often makes you talk about yourself only pleasant things, it is essentially a lie or not complete sincerity, which creates an internal conflict: “Sincerity is very important to me, but I’m afraid to lose your love, so I embellish myself.”

What strategies do people use to get values and satisfy their need for love?

Strategies for getting love:

• Deserve love.In order to feel love and connection with others, a person constantly pays attention to the object of his sympathy, fits into his problems and tasks with some help, constantly strives to be near. “I want to be so necessary and useful to you that you cannot live without me.” Such behavior greatly stresses the other person with the amount of help, attention and love that is given to him. In this behavior, values of the highest order are closeness and dependence.

• I am a delicate flower.To feel love and connection with others, a person demonstrates his uniqueness, beauty, weakness and vulnerability in order to attract his “parent”, who will fulfill all desires, because the parent must take care of his “tender flower”. Such a person constantly requires attention: “Put on all your matters, devote all your time to me, do something good for me.” This behavior of a capricious needy child aggravates a loved one. Such a strategy is often based on the manipulation of resentment. Here the values of the highest order will be individuality, feelings, beauty, creativity.