Living Beyond Fear - The 4 Rs
Fri, 21 April 2017
False Evidence Appearing Real
The 4 Rs - Resistance, Resentment, Rejection and Repression & Suppression. Boy, these guys can get you into trouble if you don’t know what you’re dealing with.
They are the warning signs in every relationship that signal when the emotional connection is weakening and you are proceeding rapidly towards the loss of love in that relationship. The four R’s are the inevitable consequences of not telling the complete truth.
If you want to avoid the loss of love and feeling in a relationship (whether that be a 1:1 partner or friend) and if you would like to keep passion alive, be on the lookout for the four R’s. When you notice any one of the four R’s it’s time to start telling the complete truth about how you are feeling.
The reasons you repress and suppress your feelings
Any feeling that threatens your ability to love or be loved is a sure target for repression and suppression. If you judge your emotions to be incompatible with your self-image, you will end up repressing and suppressing them. You may also suppress certain feelings, which were never expressed by your parents while you were growing up. For instance, a child from a non-demonstrative family may have a tendency to suppress emotions of tenderness and affection. A child who grew up in a family that never expressed anger may suppress his feelings of anger.
The emotions you permit in your conscious awareness are the feelings you feel are “safe” to express. Your values and judgements play a major part in suppression and repression, you will tend to label certain emotions ”good” or “bad”, “right” or “wrong”, depending on your background and experience. For instance, you may feel it is “good to feel grateful but “bad” to feel angry or jealous.
1. Resistance
In any normal human relationship there will be certain levels of resistance between two people. Resistance occurs when you notice yourself starting to resist something another person is saying, doing or feeling. You start criticising them in your mind and you may notice yourself pulling away a little bit. For example; I’m at a party with my partner and she starts to tell the same story she always tells at parties, a story I’ve heard many times before. This time I notice myself feeling resistance to her, a feeling inside like “Oh no, there she goes again with that story! I wish she would just forget it” Or your husband reminds you again to pay a bill and you notice yourself turning off to him somewhat for a minute or two and you may walk away thinking I heard him the first time!
The way most people handle resistance is to ignore it and pretend it’s not there. However the mind chatter has started and you may have thoughts like -
“Oh, it’s no big deal”
“Don’t be so critical after all, no one’s perfect.”
“Just forget it. Don’t rock the boat.”
If you don’t tell the truth about your resistance and take the time to resolve it with your partner (friend, or family member) those little resistances build up and turn into the second R – Resentment.
2. Resentment
This is a much more active level of resistance. It is intense dislike and balance of the other person for what they are doing (truly perceived or otherwise). The other person really starts to annoy you. You may find yourself getting angry over small things, blowing them out of proportion.
If I hear my partner (friend, or family member) tell that story enough times without communicating my resistance, the day will come when I no longer simply resist hearing that story. I will really resent it. I may feel “Oh, I hate it when she tells that story, she is making such a fool of herself.”
Resentment is usually accompanied by an internal experience of anger and tension. You are separating from your partner (friend, or family member) emotionally. Anger, frustration, annoyance, sharpness and hate are all symptoms of stage two – Resentment.
3. Rejection
Unexpressed resentment inevitably turns into rejection;you stop wanting to be with your partner.Rejection occurs when so much resistance and resentment has built up that it becomes impossible for you stay emotionally connected to the other person, and you pull away. You are turned off emotionally and sexually .You may just say: “I don’t want to discuss this anymore.” You may leave the room, you might storm out of the house, or you might just shut down and refuse to acknowledge the other person or pay attention to them.
The signs of rejection are: not wanting to be with your partner; always polarising with whatever point of view they take; fantasising about other people or having affairs. Rejection is the natural consequence of carrying around stored–up resentment. You cannot be near or relate to your partner without feeling your accumulated tension and resentment, so you just push them away in order to get some relief.
During this third stage, your sex life will deteriorate tremendously if it hasn’t already. You may find yourself feeling you still have your partner, but you are no longer attracted to them, you are no longer “in love”. You may feel repelled or disgusted at the thought of sex, or simply feel you just have no interest in sex anymore.
If you believe in divorce, you will probably decide to split up in this third stage. If you end a relationship while it is in the Rejection stage, the breakup will be painful and bitter.
If you don’t tell the truth about your feeling of Rejection and resolve them with your partner, your Rejection builds up and turns into the next level of separation, Repression and suppression.
4. Repression and Suppression
Are the most dangerous of the four R’s. It occurs when you are so tired of resisting, resenting, and rejecting that you have successfully repressed and suppressed all of your negative emotions to “keep the peace” for the sake of your family, or to look good to the world. In this fourth stage, you feel “It’s just not worth fighting over anymore; let’s forget the whole thing; I’m too tired to deal with this.”
Repression and suppression is a state of emotional numbness. The numbness spills over into the rest of your life. You lose your enthusiasm and aliveness. Life may become predictable and boring – it isn’t painful, but it isn’t joyful either. You may feel physically tired much of the time.
The tricky thing about repression and suppression is that from the outside looking in, a couple in this stage may appear to be happy. They probably are nice and polite to each other and rarely fight and you may think they have a great relationship, until one day you hear that they are getting a divorce.
Even more dangerous is the couple – that is so repressed and suppressed that they think they don’t have any problems. They have given – up on their youthful, romantic dreams, and have accepted the status quo. They have learned what to expect and what not to expect.
They have convinced themselves that they are happy. This couple is in trouble because until they admit that they would like improvement in the relationship, the relationship will stay where it is.
What can you expect? We’ve been married 10 years… After rejection, you automatically repress and suppress your frustration and make everything O.K. You stop caring about things.
The Four R’s not only describe the stages of loss of love in a relationship over a long period of time, but also the mechanics of repressing feelings. Every time you repress an emotion, you go through these four stages. By repressing your emotions enough, your relationships move through the different stages, Each time you have an argument you go through the four R’s. You can go through the four R’s in a matter of days, hours, minutes or even seconds.
Some people are such experts at repressing their feelings that they move automatically from Resistance right down to Repression in a few moments without even realising what they are doing. It’s important to remember, the four R’s apply to all of your relationships – not just with a lover, but with your parents, your children, your friends, your boss, and even yourself.
Every time you express the complete truth about your feelings and get back to the love inside, you increase your ability to love. Every time you suppress the complete truth and automatically repress your feelings, your ability to love decreases. From this new perspective, you can see what went wrong in the past. By learning these techniques you can quickly recover your ability to feel and to love. If you are stuck in any of the four R’s you will be able to move right back into feeling “in love”.
In the next blog we will discuss Living in heart space in more detail and how to embrace it more fully in your daily life.
Taken from How to do Life – the secrets to modern living, By Pennie Quaile Pearce
Pennie is the CEO of Acorn to Oak an expert in energetics and energetic medicine, a Life Coach, author and workshop facilitator
To get to know more visit www.acorntooak.org.uk or sign up for the Newsletter.
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