Becoming Emotionally Available for Your Loved Ones
Posted by Improving Lives Counseling Services, Inc. | Family Counseling
Emotional availability determines the capacity of two individuals to share an emotional connection and enjoy a healthy and mutually fulfilling relationship (Biringen & Easterbrooks, 2012).
But when your loved one is emotionally unavailable, they may find it challenging to communicate with you emotionally and end up feeling misunderstood or confused.
How can you provide emotional support to your loved ones, especially when they’re experiencing adverse circumstances like financial challenges?
How can counseling help your loved ones make better decisions and improve their lives?
This article discusses how you can be emotionally available to loved ones experiencing challenges in life and explains how counseling can help manage your loved ones’ decisions and uplift their lives.
Continue reading to learn how to be emotionally available when your loved ones need it most.
How to Be Emotionally Available to Loved Ones, Including Those Experiencing Financial Difficulties
You may or may not know it, but your loved ones experience various challenges in life that can affect them psychologically and emotionally. Learning to become emotionally available can help you provide the appropriate emotional support your loved ones need.
Emotional availability is when two people share a healthy emotional connection (Saunders et al., 2015). This connection builds upon attachment behaviors that include a relationship’s emotional, structural, and dyadic (group of two) characteristics.
Financial difficulties, in particular, can be a headache for some people. Providing emotional support and having the right financial solutions, like low-rate home loans provided by this site, may help address these issues.
If you’re committed to becoming a reliable emotional support for your loved ones—especially those undergoing financial challenges—consider the following ways:
- Encourage your loved ones to practice opening up: Your loved ones may need time to comfortably share their emotions with others.
For instance, your loved one may be going through a challenging financial situation that they don’t want to reveal to you yet, so they end up bottling their feelings.
Instead of rushing them, ease them through the process by encouraging them to practice sharing their feelings through alternative means. Once they’re prepared, they may become more willing and comfortable to speak with you.
Consider the following ideas for your loved ones:
- Allow them to keep a diary of their feelings
- Let them participate in music or the arts so they can project their emotions
- Encourage them to talk to family members, close friends, or other trusted people
- Allow your loved ones to talk about their emotions: Some people back down immediately when topics involving emotions arise. But being emotionally available means giving your loved one a safe place and time to talk about their emotions.
You also need to acknowledge that their emotions are a valid subject to talk about, especially when you have a close interpersonal relationship.
- Allow your loved ones to associate their emotions with physical feelings: Emotions can manifest as bodily sensations that you may need to pay close attention to.
For instance, sensations in your upper limbs may be connected with approach-oriented emotions, like anger and happiness (Nummenmaa et al., 2013).
So if your loved one feels a heaviness in their chest or a tingling sensation in their fingers, let them associate those feelings with their emotions. Doing so can help them become aware of their internal emotional experience.
- Spend time with people in healthy relationships: Some people may develop emotional unavailability because of unhealthy relationships or attachment issues. Observing healthy relationships teaches you how such people express emotions.
You can also encourage your loved one to spend time with friends or family members in healthy relationships. How your loved one interacts with these people can give you an idea of how you can be emotionally available to them.
While these suggestions may help you become more emotionally available to your loved ones, there are times when you can’t do all the work by yourself.
Despite your efforts, your loved ones may continue to struggle with emotional vulnerability and the challenges it causes. In such situations, consider asking a therapist for professional support.
How Counseling Can Help Manage Decisions and Improve Lives
Some conversations can be challenging to have even when you know you’ve given your best. Getting help from a therapist can give you a different approach to addressing your loved one’s issues.
Seeking help from a therapist and attending counseling sessions with your loved one can help you identify the root causes of emotional unavailability. This way, you can learn to address this unavailability from the core and become more open with each other.
Through counseling and therapy, you can take steps to help break relationship patterns hindering your loved one from becoming more emotionally open.
The University of Kansas mentions the following ways counseling can help individuals (Counseling and Psychological Services, n.d.):
- Identifying illogical or negative thinking patterns that cause you to develop feelings of helplessness and hopelessness
- Developing a more positive outlook
- Exploring learned behaviors and thoughts that create or maintain problems
- Regaining your sense of control and pleasure in life
Conclusion
Being emotionally available for your loved ones may help improve your relationship with them and allow them to become more open to you regarding their feelings.
But remember that you don’t have to do everything by yourself, and that’s all right. Counseling and professional help from a therapist can help you address your or a loved one’s emotional unavailability and strengthen your relationship with them.
References
- Biringen, Z., & Easterbrooks, E. (n.d.). Emotional availability: Concept, research, and window on developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22292989/
- Saunders, H., Kraus, A., Barone, L., & Biringen, Z. (2015). Emotional availability: Theory, research, and intervention. Frontiers. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01069/full
- Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R., & Hietanen, J.K. (2013). Bodily maps of emotions. PNAS. Retrieved from https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1321664111
- Counseling and Psychological Services (n.d.). How counseling helps. The University of Kansas. Retrieved from https://caps.ku.edu/how-counseling-helps
