Have you ever felt happy and sad at the same time? Maybe when you had a baby, you were so happy and
overjoyed, but there was a little pinch of sadness that you would now be a parent for the rest of
your life and you would never be able to really be single and live that old single life or maybe you
have felt love and hate with the same person. You loved them. You felt very attracted and caring and
loving of them, but you would feel a tinge of hate if they had hurt you in some way from the past.
Feeling emotionally ambivalent is something we all do a little bit sometimes, but when you live
your life that way, it limits you and it can destroy your chance for having a relationship.
So, today, I want to talk a little bit about emotional ambivalence. What are some reasons
people live that way? What's going on with them and what it feels like? So, if you suffer from it,
the first thing you're going to notice is that you always have two conflicting feelings. There
are posing feelings at the same time not only with your partner, but many things you feel,
love, hate. You feel happy, sad. You feel clarity and confused. You feel hopeful and despair
and when you live your life that way, always entertaining those, it's so overwhelming. It
clogs up your thinking and so, you’re kind of held back from moving forward. Secondly,
even though those feelings don't, they're not really substitutes for each other. The fact
that they're together makes it hard for you to be happy or sad because there are two opposing
ones. You can't really get into either one of the feeling. You kind of live in this numb area.
It can be part of a psychological disorder, but not all psychological disorders explain
living like this. Some people live this way and they're not diagnosable. They just have this
and the most common situation if you're wondering if you have it,
would be something like your jealousy if you loved your partner, but you felt hateful
because of their past. Maybe they were in love with the love of their life and it didn't work out
and you realize that you are never going to be the love of this person's life, but yet, you're
with them and I think in that sense you could feel a real sense of hate toward their past or
toward that very same person. Basically, what should you do? Is there anything you can do? Well,
the most important thing you can do to get over this is to work on your self-esteem because these
are the consequences. Okay, you aren't going to have a high self-esteem because as I said, you're
always going to present as being cautious or tepid because your mind is thinking these two opposing
things. Most of us, when we're confident, we're clear about which direction we're going. If you're
emotionally ambivalent and you're feeling two opposing forces, it only makes sense that you're
going to stand back and wait. These people are really misread many times. People think of them
as wallflowers. They're not wallflowers. They're very complicated individuals who are basically
entertaining two opposing feelings. Most of the time, they may feel strange about themselves and
if you consider this when you have two opposing forces of emotion, you're emotionally ambivalent.
You really do lack self-awareness on many categories and the reason is because when you're
self-aware, you're able to say, “The reason that I’m feeling this hate toward my partner
is I am jealous.” and you would be able to go to your partner and say, “Listen,
I am jealous of your past.” and your partner would be able to validate that. Do you know
what would happen with your jealousy? It would be minimized then, and it wouldn't be opposing,
but because you're stuck in feeling these two, you don't have the confidence or the clarity
to go to them directly and that's all part of the self-esteem. People will say many times,
“You know, you just look like you don't feel good or you feel like you aren't sure
of yourself.” You're not and these people aren't and that gives them a very bad read
when they must interview or when they're in a relationship. Many times, they come across as
avoidant or that they're just basically not really engaged. People aren't attracted to them right
away and you start to really lose trust in yourself because you feel these two
opposing feelings at once. You don't know which one to go to, so it makes sense that
you wouldn't trust your gut and what is all my therapy built on? I tell people all the time
more than trusting your heart, trust your gut, but if you're emotionally ambivalent, you can't. So,
what I would do and suggest to you, what I suggest to clients is to begin journaling. Get very clear
in that what you feel and why. Ask yourself if you're feeling those two. Why and then keep going
into why. How is this relevant? Because you're going to become clear when you start unwinding
it and many times, emotional ambivalence is a fear of untangling it. When you're brave
enough to start untangling it in your journey and talk about it, writing about it, and then
speaking to others about it, going to therapy, you're going to start trusting yourself more. When
you trust yourself more, your self-esteem goes up and you can rely a little bit more on your gut.
This is an interesting topic and I think a lot of people have it, especially in the dating world,
I work with it, but I will say this. People don't talk about it, so it's kind of taboo. So,
when you recognize it in someone, it's a good idea to bring it up. The more you're able to bring it
up to the surface, you may tell them and teach them something they never knew about themselves.