Hurt People, Hurt People

This article has been rewritten in several podcasts (with summaries) on my other blog:



&&




&&

Times When your Brain Shuts off

Even when your subconscious or conscious tell you one thing, you should persist towards your goals and seek after the best opportunities in life.

It starts out simple enough: a guy lacks female interaction for a lengthy period of time [take for instance those who join the military, or serve a mission and spend most of their time without women] and then finally returns home and is looked up to by the opposite sex and given excess amounts of attention. Or perhaps a young lady who is not used to getting attention from guys [or a specific type of guy] suddenly has one shows interest in her. Both the male and female reactions to the above situations are the same: their brains shuts off and emotions take over.
You might find this humorous, but situations like these trigger three specific responses in your brain: 1) Critical thoughts are shut off. 2) Judgment is impaired and decision making skills are skewed. 3) The individual feels an overwhelming level of excitement and euphoria. I describe this as “brain dead behavior” and although it has its benefits, there are also many problems to this behavior. It is a part of infatuation and passion, which people will often confuse with "love". And many love and romance films have been produced about characters who go into this “brain dead” state; but have you ever realized how frequently this happens in real life; maybe it’s even happened to you?

Not everything is bad about this behavior, if we didn’t have this triggered response, falling in love would not be as great or exciting as everyone claims it is. It brightens your life and helps you feel optimistic and hopeful. It gives you a desire to have more of this emotion, which in turn helps you to care for (& develop love for) the other person. Since the beginning of your relationship sets the foundation for the rest of the relationship, having the subconscious ability to shut off your brain allows you to more easily get comfortable with another person and proceed with the important matters of your relationship without interference. It is one of many survival tactics that our human body comes pre-programed with to help us continue socializing even when times are bad.

But understanding the negative side effects of brain dead behavior, and the ability to recognize when it is happening, can help you have a more successful dating life. First, it can help you by keeping you away from unwanted relationships and second, by not entering into relationships before you have the proper foundation in place that will help the relationship last.

The following are symptoms that maybe you have had before:

1) Critical thoughts are shut off – When you first experience this feeling for another individual, your brain finds it very easy to overlook obvious negative aspects of the other person. It can lead you to overlook mental, emotional, and physical flaws that, under normal situations, neither you, nor your friends and family, would see as acceptable flaws.
Take for instance an abusive relationship; when you brain shuts off, you believe that you are going to be perfectly happy with the way things turn out in the future only to later realize all of the verbal or physical abuse that you are bearing in the relationship and you have no way out.

2) Judgment is impaired and decision making skills are skewed – You will find yourself engaging in bizarre behavior that is not healthy for you emotionally, physically, mentally, or spiritually.
You might stop spending time with your friends which will ultimately cause you emotional damage when you no longer have regular friends, or it can cause you to turn against your family. Physically, you could deprive yourself of food or exercise simply because you would rather spend time with this person (who is the cause of your brain death). Mentally, you might find yourself losing focus at work or school because you would rather think about your developing relationship, which in turn causes other problems. Spiritually, you can be led to commit serious sins simply because they don’t seem as bad when you are "in love". *(But what you are really feeling is one form of passion.)
--I know, all of this sounds pretty extreme, but being “brain dead” is THAT powerful and surprisingly it causes all of these problems on a regular basis to most of the world.





3) Being overwhelmed by euphoria and excitement – Although it sounds wonderful to be this happy, it can cause you a few unforeseen problems when the feelings end. Later down the road when your relationship has progressed and the feelings have ebbed, you might sense that “something is missing” in your relationship or that the “excitement” just isn’t there.-–Obviously this is because at that point you will have finally snapped out of the brain dead behavior.
The problem with this is that it can lead you into thinking that you NEED to build excitement in your relationship or else you won’t be happy with one another.--But you don't NEED excitement in a relationship as long as you care for one another--It can lead you into ultimately separating from one another because you think the "magic" is missing, or it can lead you into pursuing addictive behaviors that only temporarily allows you to feel "excitement" and thereby force you to always be looking for exciting things you can try.

Yet another side effect that this euphoric feeling can create is that if your relationship ends, then the extreme high that you get on from your brain turning off will become an extreme low as your body realizes that you can no longer have those feelings.—-in other words it makes you feel and plants thoughts in you mind like "I'll never find someone like them again" or, "My soul mate doesn't exist".

A word for the wise:
Remember that success is how you define it; failure is the opposite of success. Failure can cause you to lose hope and feel as though you will never succeed. It is good to set goals and to define what success is to you. NEVER LOSE SIGHT OF YOUR GOALS AND DREAMS. The reason I point this out is that when you become brain dead, it is easy for you to “settle” for the person, or with their poor behavior because of the psychological feelings you are getting from the relationship. It can cause you to forget about marriage and settle for a live-in relationship because of the confusion it puts you in. It can also cause you to lose hope of ever having a loving spouse and family and from becoming happy; and once the feelings abate you might become “trapped” in a poor relationship.
Going brain dead can cause you to abandon other relationships because you assume that you have found “the one” when in reality you are selling yourself short. It can even cause you to lower your standards (called “settling”) in order to make yourself feel as though you have obtained some success in your dating life. Ask yourself: is this really the person of your dreams, or is it just your body telling you that you are tired of looking for something better?

Be wise about who you are building relationships with and in what way they are developing. The more control you have over yourself, the easier it will be to ensure that your relationships progress towards what you really want, and need to have, and not just what your body tells you.

A Brief Explanation of Mating and Dating Psychology

To make our process of dating and finding a mate simple, we subconsciously classify people into groups based on our needs and their ability to fulfill those needs.

There are three general, basic needs that everyone is trying to fulfill: Physical needs, such as having food, water, shelter, filling your appetite, etc.; Mental needs, such as the using of our mind, the gaining of knowledge, the sense of accomplishment, obtaining a greater understanding of life, etc.; and Emotional needs, such as being happy, loving and being loved, feeling successful, fitting in, etc.
We seek activities and companionships that can fulfill these desires in our everyday life. For instance, we obtain employment in order to gain food, water, and shelter; we have friends so that we can be happy, and we read the newspaper because we wish to gain a greater understanding of life around us.

Of course there are some activities that you will do that fulfill multiple needs all at once; and there are also times where you will have to choose between fulfilling one need or the other but not both. Life is a complex collection of your past and present experiences and your desires for your future. When you are placed in a complicated situation, your mind will engage in a process to simplify the information it is presented with in order to make a decision.

Relating this to dating and mating, your mind makes a complex process (finding someone to enter into a relationship with who will fulfill your physical, mental, and emotional needs), into a simple one.

So, to make your dating and mating life simple, you both consciously and subconsciously classify people.--Ever been hit on by someone you didn’t particularly want to be around? How do you know you don’t want to be around that individual—because you pre-classified them as non-dating material.
The classifications you make become based on various observations of the five senses, especially those related to body-language, and can be based on cognitive associations. For instance, if you perceive someone as 'weird' or 'awkward' when comparing them to the rest of society, you will attach a classification to them that they aren’t your “type” (because they can’t fulfill your basic needs of 'fitting in' very well), and you won’t feel attracted to them. On the same note, you can perceive someone as being attractive (and capable of fulfilling your needs) and you will classify them as your “type”.

Primarily, this classifying happens subconsciously—you won’t typically think about it while it is happening and you will do it automatically with everyone you meet.—The objective your subconscious tries to achieve through classifying is to narrow down your options to the candidates who can fulfill your needs better than the rest.

Again, whether you are consciously trying to judge people or not, your subconscious will do so for you in order to make your decisions simpler.

Pertaining to dating, there are essentially four categories that you will classify people into who you come in contact with and will generally develop relationships around those categories:

1. Short-Term
2. Long-Term
3. Out of League
4. Below League*

Short-term relationships are relationships that usually fulfill some of your needs, particularly the physical needs. As the name implies, they are short-term; the end is foreseeable. Examples of this type of relationship are sugar daddies/sugar mommas (an individual who is used for their money or skills), or especially a make-out/intimate partner.

Long-term relationships tend to last longer, more is invested in them, and they have greater payoffs over time (e.g. you fulfill more of your needs, especially emotional needs), however, they still take time. Examples of this type of relationship include husband/wife and courting relationships.

Out of League relationships fulfill emotional and mental needs, such as the need to love and to feel excitement; however, they do a poor job at it. Those who are “out of your league” are people who you wish you could form a short or long-term relationship with, but feel as though the chances of that happening are very slim. Over time you lose interest in these people and they slip from your sphere due to lack of contact. Examples of this are your secret crush, or the guy/girl who you suck up to frequently but don’t go anywhere with. [If you’re thinking of a specific person right now, you should consider signing up for my dating coaching services as I can help you with this problem.]

Below League relationships are relationships where you perceive that the individual cannot fulfill your needs. It is the flipside of the above situation; you have someone who you aren’t interested in and who won’t leave you alone; or it could be someone who you just want to be friends with because dating them really wouldn’t fulfill your needs.


As I mentioned earlier, you will come into situations where you have to value your needs and determine between two actions that fulfill different needs. In some situations this can be quite honorable, but in other situations it turns out sad: some people have such a strong emotional need for acceptance and to be loved that they will give up their physical well-being to do so and offer themselves to an individual in a short-term relationship in order to fulfill that need and their physical desire. I call this trading, as usually the individual gives up one need in order to seek after another need.

There is actually a fourth set of needs that not many psychologists mention: Spiritual needs. You have a desire to be connected with God and to be founded on the moral truth. Some people are fooled by Satan into seeking after other “gods” in order to fulfill this need. They will go to great lengths in order to justify their behavior morally when the only true way to fulfill that need is through repentance.
Although this set of needs can only be fulfilled personally, you can develop relationships that help you to fulfill these needs for yourself.

When you are developing relationships, it is important to consider your basic needs: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. You should seek long-term relationships that can potentially fulfill all of those needs.**


-------------------
* I merely use these terms; they are referred to differently by different people and encompass a lot more than the brief description I give of them.
** I devoted this article to the dating application of these principles, but for reference, there are certain situations where short-term relationships are acceptable.