Behaviours, emotions and unmet needs

Dame Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.

In a reel on communication skills*, the advice was that there are no good behaviours or bad ones, only those which serve you or don’t serve you. The behaviours which may have served you in the past, may nowadays be hindering rather than helping you.  He was talking about communicating but the same is true of how we relate to people generally.

With regard to flower remedies of course, it is not the actions of the person consulting us for help which are of importance, but the emotions behind them. However, often it is our emotional state which leads to certain behaviour – such as a Heather type talking incessantly about their own concerns – thus giving us a clue as to what is going on with that person.

In soothing and recalibrating our emotions the flower remedies also prompt us to adjust our behaviours.  This occurs because when we are at peace we learn more about ourselves, which in turn contributes to our spiritual evolution.  When we think of people we know who are energy vampires, or self-pitying, or who can never make up their minds, do we think they have full self-awareness?  Probably not. But once we become more self-aware and can see we are monopolising the ‘conversation’, or criticising people, or neglecting our own needs for rest and self-care (for example) then we start to understand that these behaviours or actions arise from a negative mental state.

These emotions evolved because we were trying to fulfil an unmet need – for affection, connection, autonomy, safety and so on – and are perfectly justifiable and understandable at certain times of our life.  However, by taking the flower remedies, our emotional balance returns to a healthy state of tranquillity, and with their help, we learn to appreciate that those emotions (and the concomitant behaviours) no longer serve us.  We are evolving to a stage where we no longer need them: the Winter of our past is giving way to the flowering of a new Spring.

* @askvinh is a teacher of communications-skills, on Instagram and YouTube

#WorldMentalHealthDay