The Hot Button
The hidden emotional land mines we hold
As a part of life, we inevitably have issues that rest beneath the surface. These come about through our daily lives, the interactions we have with others, and the situations we encounter.
Every event we encounter imprints itself on us to a certain degree. But when we become emotionally invested, say having a relationship with someone, we commit more of ourselves to that experience and therefore emotionally attach ourselves to it. The longer and deeper we feel for it, the more it is imprinted on us.
When we no longer have that situation anymore, say, breaking up with a loved one, we hold within us some of those memories which have formed into pain points depending upon the event and how it ended. These can form emotional land mines that, when hit, set off a storm of pain and usually a knee-jerk reaction to whoever stepped on it.
We also form these emotional land mines from our insecurities and trauma that we have endured. The old adage that everyone is fighting a battle you have no idea about, while cliche, holds true—we all walk around with pain points that when hit, put us in a horrible mood.
Whenever these hot buttons are hit, we snap, we yell, we get into a fight. Sometimes the person knew what they did, other times the person had no idea what they walked into. But in those moments we do not care because we feel attacked.
We are products of the actions we take and the environments we’re in. Sometimes a simple song, if tied to an emotional hot button, can set us off. But this is not fair to those around us. These hot buttons are unresolved issues that need addressing, they’re not just random emotional triggers. To paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, there is reason within madness, and it is up to us to figure out what is going on within ourselves to cure the madness.
Our natural reaction is to want to run away from the pain but these emotions, when they arise, are better to look into, to investigate. An emotion does not arise just to be there, it is there to tell you something. If you become triggered, it is because you have an unresolved issue that needs resolving. You owe it to those around you, as well as yourself, to resolve it. By doing so, you live a better life and those around you do not walk on eggshells. We have to embrace the pain to see the truth in our life, regardless of how ugly it can be at times. By ignoring these issues and letting them stay where they are, unresolved, you set yourself up for future pain that you and someone else will have to endure. Without properly disconnecting the baggage of the past, the past drags you down.
If we attempt to take the path of pain avoidance, trying to leave these unresolved, we will go about life with more and more of these hidden bombs that will just continue to pop up and ultimately weigh us down. If these are due to insecurities, then the people who set them off have no hope of assisting you through the pain as they can’t fix your own insecurity, they most of the time cannot even see that it exists! By coming to terms with the underlying causes of these pain points, of these emotions, you can set yourself free of the chains that bind you to them.
Everyone has their own baggage they carry, their own background with loss and pain, with hot button issues that are only visible to them. There is no quick and easy way to fix these things. There is only working through the pain, putting a mirror up to it, seeing it for what it really is, and making sure you fix it. Just because something is cracked or broken doesn’t mean it is permanently destroyed.
In Japanese culture, there is the art form of Kintsugi, the repairing of broken pottery with gold. This process is meant to symbolize the history of the pottery, showing all of the cracks and breaks it has ever had. Rather than pretend the pot was never cracked or broken at some point, it is repaired with gold to show exactly where it was broken, to bring attention to it, and to show that it is a functional pot and even more beautiful for the flaw or breakage it once had.
Like these pots, we too carry cracks that we can repair and be more beautiful from. It is not simply about trying to hide our pains and past, to run from them and burry them. Rather, it is about fully embracing them, working through what was once there, and repairing ourselves in the process to be stronger than we once were.
As Brené Brown has put it:
“It is in the process of embracing our imperfections that we find our truest gifts: courage, compassion, and connection.”
Thank you again for reading and I hope you found this useful. Please feel free to heart, comment, or ask questions about this post. Suggestions are always appreciated and considered.
Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo