Reaction To Emotional Risks

If you take an emotional risk there are three phases you can expect to experience within hours, or days following that risk.

The first reaction is an implosion, meaning self-criticism, the opposite of an explosion.  However, you take yourself down is the first, often painful reaction to an emotional risk.

The second phase is a pervasive sense that something is wrong, or you have done something wrong.  People report looking around to figure out “what’s wrong”.

The final, and often most difficult phase is a sense of impending doom, you are convinced that something dreadful is about to happen.

As nothing dreadful happens the feeling will dissipate, but not before the process is complete.  Then you can take another risk, but not before.  What we call the child in you has to see that he has lived to tell the tale.

If you put a child’s thinking and words to the sequence, it would sound something like,

“oops”

“uh-oh”

“Now I’m really gonna get it”.

Many people have trouble enduring these phases because the feelings are so intense and disturbing that it is difficult to keep going.  That is because the person is experiencing what it was like as a child when they took that risk.

Arleah Shechtman