The You Matter Series

Exploring emotions and the motivations behind our behaviours

An excerpt from Chapter 8

A lot of my healing has come from a consistent desire to understand why I do what I do. I notice when I want to say something, when I feel the urge to help someone, or when I feel anger rising in a situation. Instead of reacting straight away, I’ve learned to pause and ask myself what is driving that response. I stay curious about the underlying motivation behind my behaviour. When I understand that, I begin to understand the need my inner child is trying to meet.

Our emotions and motivations are not random. They are meaningful and informative. They give us insight into what is happening within us. Rather than being problems, they act as signals that point us towards something that needs our attention.

In this chapter, we explore the connection between our emotions, motivations, and our sense of security. When we understand this connection, we can begin to make sense of our emotional world and see how strongly our behaviours are shaped by our need to feel safe. When we start to view our emotions and the motivations behind them as neutral signals, we create space to understand ourselves instead of judging ourselves.

As we begin to approach our emotions with curiosity and compassion, something shifts. Feelings like sadness, anger, fear, jealousy, and hate are no longer experiences we need to push away. They become opportunities to understand what is happening within us. This way of relating to our emotions allows us to build a more supportive relationship with ourselves.

The Body Makes the Private Public

An excerpt from Chapter 7 of the forthcoming book

I bought a bra recently. Nothing particularly remarkable about that. Women buy bras every day.

When I went to pay, the woman serving me apologised because she’d run out of bags. She seemed genuinely sorry that I was going to have to walk through the shopping centre carrying a bra where other people could see it.

I didn’t care. It’s a bra. I have breasts. Presumably anyone who saw me carrying it was going to be particularly shocked by either revelation. What interested me was that she expected me to care.

Somewhere along the way, she’d learned that a bra was something that should be concealed. And she assumed I’d learned the same rule. I hadn’t.

Whatever rules I’d absorbed about bodies, the idea that buying a bra was something I should hide wasn’t one of them. That’s important too. We don’t all learn the same rules. What feels deeply embarrassing to one person can be completely unremarkable to another. We aren’t born knowing which parts of having a body we’re supposed to feel ashamed of. We learn.

It reminded me just how many rules we have about the simple fact of having a body. Not only what our body should look like. What other people should be allowed to see, know or think about it.

I Don’t Want to Be Perceived

I’ve had a number of clients tell me they hate being perceived. I’ve always found that phrase interesting. They don’t say they hate being judged. They say they hate being perceived.

Seen.

There is something vulnerable about having a body because our body makes us visible. Other people can look at us. They can see our size, age, skin, clothes, facial expressions and the way we move. They can notice when we blush or cry. They can see our hands shake. And because human beings make meaning from what we see, they can form opinions about us. So can we. Someone looks at us and we may immediately think we know what they’re thinking.

She thinks I’ve gained weight.

He thinks I’m unattractive.

They can tell I’m nervous.

She thinks I look old.

Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t.