Emotional Hijacking

For a little bit of back ground, it is important for readers to know that I have had more than my fair share dealing with those who suffer from varied forms of emotional dysfunction. Important things were learned. I may have had a lot of experience with people suffering these things, may have read and watched tons of research on at least some disorders, and taken some psychology classes back in college days, but I am no professional. I hope these things can be of help to others. You just may need my experiences to better frame or endure what ever it is you are experiencing or may one day. 

 

What is Emotional Instability?

When a person depends more upon their corrupted emotions more than their intellect or thinking part of the brain (much larger than the Amygdala or emotional portions I should add), it causes intense and out of proportion responses, thinking and actions. When some form of corruption occurs, usually during childhood, the person becomes emotionally unbalanced. The balanced and regulated emotional part is not in harmony with the intellectual portion of the brain. The small fight or flight portion is trying to rule the stage all too often. The emotional part of the brain is relied upon and trusted excessively. To be well balanced means that the small emotional portions of the brain are working along side with and in concert with the intellectual portions. The intellect or thinking mind should be your control center, not your emotions. It is often said that some people allow their emotions to control them, instead of them controlling their emotions. Emotional hijacking of the intellect can be so severe that it can actually warp the persons mental understanding of events and their view of the world around them. That view or translation of things within them may be different than what actually occurs in their world. Emotions can actually hijack actual reality or truth in the mind. It is true that our emotions can trick us. They can lie to us and sometimes cannot be trusted.

 

How Does Emotional Corruption Occur?

The simple answer is that this world (rather the people in it) is so corrupting that all forms of corruption and especially mental disorders are soaring through the roof. Bad behavior creates more bad behavior. The abused become abusive in some form or fashion, even if they don't realize at times (or all the time). The manipulated become manipulative(whether knowingly or not, they are still using fear or anger to control and push someone else to emotionally respond to their demands). Corruption breeds more corruption. The hurt can cause more hurt. The real answer is that a person becomes emotionally unstable when suffering repeated dramatic and/or traumatic experiences. They can also copy the behaviors from family, even if they do not directly suffer these experiences. These people may or may not have been born with general insecurity or some form of underlying issue in their genes. 

Experienced emotional disruption and then corruption usually occurs as a young child, during the years of 0-3 when a persons view of the world is shaped. A time their personality and mood really begins to be ingrained into them for the rest of their lives. These aspects of the brain develop first, then the greater intellect. Many factors can cause these negative experiences. Obviously frequency and severity matters most. Physical abuse is obvious. Verbal abuse also. Neglect or ignoring children causes problems. Sheltering or spoiling too much can cause children (and later as adults) to rely too much on others, less independence and less ability to cope with and deal with things on their own. Simply not giving just the right amount of validation, comfort and love to a young child can cause problems.

It is estimated that about 25% of the population has a serious disorder. That number grows every year. This is the known disorders found in order to be counted. I have heard many Dr's state that the actual number is probably half of all people, as probably half go un-reported or un-diagnosed. I bet they are pretty accurate in this modern world full of corruption every where we turn. But the greatest corruption occurs within our own homes. If satan wants to destroy any good chance of coming back to God, then surely this is the avenue to best corrupt mankind with.

 

How Does It Manifest?

Well, if you see the ever growing bible that Psychologists use, the DSM IV and soon the larger than ever DSM V (the man made bible for the mental health industry to put labels and billing codes in order to get paid by insurance companies), it contains all kinds of ways emotional deregulation or corruption can manifest. Many mental health professionals agree that just about any body nowadays can be diagnosed with at least five disorders found inside the DSM, as they have put a label and name to so many different manifestations. These labels can range from anger management issues, or mood disorders like Anxiety or Bipolar (long manic and depression states), to personality disorders such as NPD and BPD. I have had experience living with all of these specifically mentioned manifestations. You can do some youtube or google searches on these disorders in order to get a better view of what it is like living with people who suffer these things. Still, you will never know what it is like unless you actually live it with someone. It is draining. It is intense. You can be left burnt out and less productive in all aspects of your life if you are not careful. Especially for those who never actually discover what the heck is going on... as the non-sufferer can become so emotionally unstable and confused trying to figure it all out and dealing with it properly. We need understanding for both those who suffer and those who deal with those that suffer. Both can suffer.

The severity and frequency of violent words or actions or neglect during childhood are the deciding factors on just how deeply corrupt of disorderly a person can manifest. A person can be so deeply wounded during childhood, that they can actually have a distorted emotional mind that can cause that person to be a problem child and actually become worse when placed into a more responsible station such as adulthood or marriage. More personal responsibility and the large change in circumstances is enough to cause the person to manifest more deeply in early adulthood. This is why most of the major personality disorders are diagnosed in early adulthood, as the emotional dysfunction manifests so strongly at that point in time.

Who Is To Blame?

No one wants to have insecurity of any sort, and definitely does not want to behave and over react the way they do (well, except maybe the socio and psychopaths, but that's another issue to discern). Can we really hold them accountable for something they actually do not want to have? If so, how much? Should society try to make a little elbow room for them in legal troubles they so often get into because of having something they did not choose to have in the first place? Sad truth is, people get these deeply rooted and unwanted manifestations derived from those closest to them. Family in most cases. It is an ugly cycle that must be broken, or it will go on and on, generation to generation. You can try to blame that person acting out, or their parent... but likely each person learned behaviors and/or received some kind of insecure gene trait from their parent(s) who learned it from their parent(s), etc. So think about the next time you want to avoid or judge someone who is more hurt and affected by unwanted emotional corruption passed down to them.

How Can We Help Those Who Have It?

When a person is acting out in some form or other, they are showing others around them that an emotional hijacking is occurring. If you over react to their over reaction, you are only going to cause the situation to become even more difficult. If both the sufferers and the non-sufferers don't research and read up on how to best deal with these issues, the problems may never be corrected or most likely worsen. Bad experiences and problems will continue to be the norm for them and you. A war zone at home will continue, when love and peace at home is what we all want.

Some, such as those with NPD, are so deeply fragile within, that they cannot even accept that they are causing the problems, for fear of shame and guilt that would put them into such a depressed state that they frantically try to avoid at all costs. If they can't even accept they have any issues, how can change ever occur? You simply try to help them see what they are doing, because it is fair on your part and emotionally healthy and you are trying so frantically to get the chaos to decrease or cease, they take that as negative criticism and only over react even more... even to the point that their deeply routed hurt and corrupted emotional mind will alter their views of reality, and begin to see you as the villain and cause and the one to blame for it all. Trust me, you start to question them after hearing it so often, your own self worth begins to be affected. You will frantically search your own self endlessly trying to fix anything within you that needs correction. You will frantically panic at times seeing your own self view becoming distorted, your own emotions getting offended, and fear losing your own good mental sanity. And after trying to deal with all the chaos for so long, trying everything to help the person and have more positive experiences with them, they begin to falsely accuse and blame you for the verbal/physical/emotional abuse they in actuality cause you. It all gets so chaotic, and you are spending almost every hour of the day trying to figure things out and help them and yourself improve, that you get so burnt out that almost every other area of your life is affected. You get less productive in nearly everything. You will fear your own loss of balanced mental state. And if that were not enough to get your mental mind all twisted inside out, your emotional mind begins to suffer to much drama and can become affected in adverse ways. You could actually end up with secondary physical ailments and health issues. More than that, being falsely accused in front of friends, family and police, which is a common practice by severely affected people, could have you sitting somewhere you don't rightly belong in the first place (and for a man to lose his innate ability to protect his family with self defense equipment, that is hard for a man to accept in the case of a false DV accusation to police that could lose his rights to those things). The problems will continue that you will just give up thinking that these types of problems are just too darn big to handle and fix anymore.

So, what is the answer? If you married someone like this, or your have a parent or brother/sister/uncle/aunt/Grandma/etc who has these issues, what do you do? Do you suffer as long as you can and then run? Do you do what most of the videos and blogs about NPD or BPD on the internet tell you, to RUN away or avoid as much as possible as soon as you realize you are around such a deeply emotionally injured person? At what point does all the chaos the person attracts like a magnet start to adversely affect you, or even your children like in the case of remarrying and step kids are involved? When does it become unjust for you or your children to continue a relationship in a marriage with such things occurring? How do you balance properly and weigh these things out in the scales of justice? Are you enabling abuse to continue by the sufferer, just by remaining in a relationship, such as a marriage? When is it right to hold the person responsible or accountable for their choosing to misbehave towards you or others, which is really occurring because of their emotional hijacking and the exploding in their mind causing them to un-wantingly act and behave as they are? If you have a child, step-child and as is very common with an adopted child, you can't just leave them like you can a spouse or ship them to Siberia. What then? What if YOU were the severely suffering injured person manifesting in over reacting ways, what would you want? Would you not already have severe headaches and fireworks exploding every which way in your mind to continue causing you enough drama, how would you feel when you start to worry about those closest to you abandoning you for your horrible (but remember, behavior you don't want and never chose with your free agency to have) behaviors? Would that fear alone not cause more trauma in your already out of order psyche? 

So if we do choose to move away, or leave a spouse, or even try to avoid/ignore, how much more damaged will that person then become? Sometimes the sufferer can't stand the thought of you abandoning them, so they begin to distort their own reality and convince themselves that you are the cause of issues and turn on you. They will leave you because they sense you having a hard time with their behaviors... before you can leave them. They normally love you with a serious passion you've never experienced before, they normally call you the greatest person on earth, their angel, their everything, but all of a sudden, while you are trying so hard to stay and help the person and fix problems, they hypocritically do to you what they are afraid of you doing to them one day. They never want you to leave them. But oh, they have no problem talking about or threatening to leave you all the time, or actually do it in the end. You were doing all to be there for them and help them, even suffering tremendous hurt to yourself, hoping for a better day. Hoping for enough change to take place so that more positive times can be hard more than the negative. That leaves the non-sufferer in a confused state for a long time with that "love me but don't leave me, and if I think you will, I will leave you first because it will hurt me too much" event. They dread and then cause their own worst fear to occur. They self destruct and actually fight against what they want most in many cases. Add to all this that they are so distracted with their OWN problems, they either cannot see or find it very hard to see the suffering of others. They lack empathy.

You can see why things become so confusing for those who live with sufferers. They don't know what to do. Up becomes down. Down becomes up. You have the hardest time judging what is the most right and charitable thing for all involved. Again, you will never actually completely understand what I am talking about, unless you have walked in the shoes of a sufferer or one who has a relationship with one.

Maybe the New Testament teachings by the Lord are more effective than we think at first glance. Maybe He gave the recipe for success for these very things. Did not the Lord state to overcome "all things"?  To even Love your "enemies". Love those who seem to despitefully use you?

Is not the answer then to return love and compassion even when some one (whether a child or adult) is acting out, verbally or emotionally "throwing up" on you or dishing out the most unloving and un-empathic spew on you? 

Their over reacting or anger outburst is really a sign that they need your help calming them down. We should avoid taking it too personal, but see the negative thoughts and behaviors as a serious expression or way of speaking out for help while they are emotionally "drowining". Instead of taking offense, to instead see that hey, this person has been emotionally wounded as a child and never obtained the proper peace, comfort and love, and has a hard time regulating or coping with stress as an adult?

We need to stay "grounded" and balanced, and improve our own emotions when faced with the emotionally hijacked persons who do not want to behave properly or hurt you as they are, so that we can be of any help to them.

So if your child (or even an adult you have a relationship with) acts out, maybe hitting you, verbally throwing up on you, kicking, screaming, out of control, falsely accusing you of this or that, or any other kind of uncontrolled bout of rage or depression they are under, what can you do? 

Remember this simple to learn 2 step system: 

1: DO NOT OVER REACT YOURSELF. This is easier said than done when someone is actively and often acting out by hurting you. The mortal response when being attacked or hurt is to run or fight. The person over reacting is already in that mental mode, you have to avoid as much as possible to have your fight or flight automatic responses activated. This is extremely difficult and will take time. Do it as soon as possible.

2: Return the hate with love. Take offense but do not return it. This is also WAY harder to do than said. But what is it that the sufferer lacked in childhood? Maybe you lacked some yourself in some way? They were likely abused, neglected and/or ignored. Along with all that obviously comes the lack of empathy or concern from those closest to them, lack of comfort when they needed comforting. Instead of comfort and proper teaching on how to behave or act, they received hate or neglect, yelling, hitting, or some other abusive and forceful tactic. They do not learn proper empathy or care and concern for others because a parent (in probably most cases) didn't teach them or ripped it out of them if they had any to start with. So, the only way to truly help the over-reacting emotional sufferer, is to give them lots of what they did not get as a child. In the face of anger, in the face of serious hate, in the face of serious offense to you, even in the face of false police reports and extreme fear... give love as best you can. When they are acting out, tell them you understand he/she is offended or hurt (validate - something their care giver in childhood probably never did out of neglect), remember they are feeling upset or offended and losing emotional control, AND GIVE THEM A HUG AND ALL THE LOVE AND CONCERN YOU CAN MUSTER UP to help calm them. You will feel the usual human impulse to over react, to return an insult for an insult or to accept a threat to divorce they only spewed onto you out of anger, but avoid it. They need you more than ever. They need your comfort and compassion. They also need to see your example on how to act and behave with others. You can hopefully help to re-install the care and concern for others they had lost long ago. 


Do remember, that a therapist is likely necessary, but likely won't be able to be there all the time like you are, or may not be comfortable or even able to offer up validation and love like you can.

You are human too, so don't get to hard on yourself when you or the sufferer don't have expectations immediately met. If both can better understand each other's plight ("put yourself in the other persons shoes" – very hard for the sufferer to actually do since they are so consumed in their own emotions and problems), and love is given instead of more offense or fighting, then situations can improve and brokenness can have hope to be repaired. The only hope for them is to give back to them what they should have received when a young child, and have patience on both sufferer and their family/friends who deal with them. If the family member dealing with a sufferer over reacts, they will feel a remorse and shame that can eat them alive inside. They may think to just give up, because they are not strong enough to handle it all or to react in a better way. 

Both parties need to take "inventory" of themselves and do all they can to improve their own mental and emotional states to endure such things. We all need to do these things anyway to "overcome all things"... to be able to better handle and deal with anyone who might come in our path in the future.

Provide an Environment for Change to Take Place

There is a little more to it than the first two simple steps above. In addition to the two steps above, you will need a team of people to support both the family and the sufferer. Find a good therapist who will actually work with and effectively teach the sufferer how to better react and respond to things in life. Beware of drug use by Psychiatrists. Some will get sufferers hooked on a wild concoction of all kinds of meds. Patients can eventually build up a immunity to them, and many have other threatening side effects. Remember that with personality disorders, they are learned behaviors deeply routed within them. And they so quickly fluctuate between love to hate, or anger to depression, that by the time the one med taken to decrease aggression kicks in, they could already be in a depressed state which will adversely affect them, or vice-versa. With mood disorders, they actually suffer a chemical imbalance, and their mood swings usually last longer (aggressive/mad or sad/depressed a long time). Meds can have an actual effect for these patients. Someone with BPD could take the same med, and hardly notice any difference. The drugs side effects outweigh it's benefits. Someone with Bipolar will feel "night and day" differences. 

You will also need to discuss the problems with other very close family members or family friends (not everyone needs to know). You will need their support. They will need to understand what the heck is going on in your home, for both you and the sufferer, so that they don't think you guilty of just not loving your companion/relative properly or wondering why you seem disgruntled or distant towards him/her, or even perhaps they see you over reacting one day and wondering how the heck you impulsively acted like that. One of the hardest parts after the non-sufferer is enduring all the chaos, is that the emotionally unstable can look very loving, friendly, compassionate and outgoing in public or around friends or more distant family (and this is likely why you fell for this person in the first place who covered up the bad by projecting a good show in the beginning)... but at home, in private, is where the chaos is occurring. People feel more safe to unleash their vomit on each other in intimate or family relationships, thinking the other person should "understand me" or will never abandon them. The sufferer does not want others to know about their bad behaviors. And the nons (well they were non sufferers at one point and certainly can suffer too enduring chaos) don't want others bothered by private affairs and usually too busy trying to fix everything to even have time to begin to explain it. When things are out in the open, both parties will feel more satisfied and safe, and will feel better able to get through and conquer what needs done, with the extra support. 

If you suffer from emotional issues, the best thing you can do to begin the path to change, is to admit weaknesses to the people closest to you. Do not be afraid to seek professional help. Don't be afraid of being labeled with a title of how your instability manifests. What matters is that there are people and methods that can help you, if you first admit and accept you have a problem. Then seeking ways to fix the issues can take place. You never can if you cannot identify your own failings. This is the only way for you to have a happier life and for others to be happier around you. You also have the innate desire to not be abandoned by those closest to you, so do what it takes to not lose them. You need help and assistance from every where you can to overcome the corruption from childhood. It is the only responsible thing to do for yourself and those who you do not want to leave you.

Ok, so an environment is now established where the emotional sufferer can now have a chance to succeed. But it is still only a chance for them to change. THEY must do what it takes to change. You can give them every tool they need and the time to make the change, but they have to choose to understand and make the changes. They must have the desire to do so. That desire cannot be just to appease you at the time. You cannot really convince them to change by teaching them all the skills and coping techniques they need to succeed. They have to understand and digest what you are telling them. And since their emotions have run the majority of behaviors and decision making most of their lives, it is going to take some time to make adjustments. Even if some change or enough change occurs, some can relapse even after years of therapy and having a decent environment where change can be a possibility. Some may enter a mental hospital for a time. Some may take decades to be able to react and behave on an acceptable level, but may never really remove all of the fireworks of emotions that may still go off in their minds. Some can change completely that no one will know they even have or had emotional issues. But if they give up at some point, or at many points, or even finally push you or throw you out of the marriage, just know that YOU did all YOU could to provide an environment where change could take place. You need to make sure that you are not held accountable before God for some failure on your end. Try your best and make things as comfortable for both of you and do all you can to help them improve. At the same time, you must also consider that you cannot allow yourself (or your children as in the case of remarried families) to be emotionally damaged or enabling abuse to go on forever. If a time comes that you just cannot physically and mentally handle it anymore, than prayerfully consider if you have done all you can for you and the sufferer first, then do what ever is necessary for you (and/or your children). This is something between you and God to decide.  Remind yourself that some disorders even the well experienced therapists never really understand it unless they live with someone who had it, and that even they sometimes cannot remain with some patients for long. If the well trained and experienced professionals sometimes fail, do not be so hard on yourself if you do. How long a person can stay the course with a really abusive sufferer varies for each individual person. Not everyone is emotionally or mentally strong enough to handle some disorders or situations. Someone who has researched and understands a great deal about emotional disorders and how to best handle it all, will be a much more effective assistant. They will also suffer less drama within themselves as they understand how to handle stressful events better and learn to not take the rough events directed towards them so personally. Some situations may become too unsafe or too violent to remain in for too long. You surely cannot be expected to enable or allow excessive abuse to continue to the point that it begins to damage yourself or loved ones. The risk for remaining in that environment for too long (for you and possibly others) may outweigh the necessity to try and save/help the one sufferer. My only advice is to make sure you do all you could to lessen chaos on your end, create an environment for change and give as much time as you can for them to change. We need to make sure we are justified and prayerfully consider what is the best course to take in such cases were removal is necessary.

If you are one of the emotional sufferers since childhood, DO NOT get so depressed if your partner feels that he/she cannot mentally and emotionally deal with it all at some point. If he/she needs some space for a few weeks or even moves on at some point, try to be understanding on their part. Be sad for sure, but it is not the end of the world as you may feel. Try not to overly fear that such a possibility can happen or become so negative and actually cause it to happen, but be understanding with that person in case it ever does. After today, you should have learned that we cannot always trust our emotions, that we have to get all the intellect and understanding we can on anything really important to us, and that we have to be understanding of the other persons mortal weaknesses in case failure does occur on either end. What matters is that both sides tried all they could to make things better.



The best thing ALL OF US can do is logically see things through with our intellect (and ask God to improve our intellect through the usual course of events than you may not even notice He is using to teach you and/or direct revelation), and not through or only through our emotions. Then act accordingly. 

 

A Gospel View Of Emotions:

Some times our emotions can trick us. They can alter our perceptions of reality. Our own emotional mind can lie to us. We could misjudge an emotional feeling within us, for a revelation that should only be directed into your intellect. What you hear from God might just give you a negative feeling in your body. Some words/understanding/visions from Heaven cause us to rejoice or be comforted. Good times in deed. Just realize that sometimes our emotions are felt based upon our own current logical understandings as well. OUR understandings may be correct or incorrect. It could be a certain gospel topic that someone does not want to think is possible. And when we go to pray on the matter, instead of looking for understanding into our intellect, we are more concentrated on the emotional responses we are feeling. If it is out of order for the emotionally unstable, it can be out of order in this sense as well. This is also necessary to "overcome all things" in this regard. You will need to know the difference between revelation and feeling answers coming from your emotional mind (felt in different parts of your body) or even your sub-conscience portions of your mind. I have mistaken often these things. Still working on knowing the difference myself. That is just a part of the journey we all have to go through. So, understand that if you find yourself going through some serious hard things with others, just realize it may just be exactly what YOU need at that time. You have things to learn by experience to really understand and change yourself. We all do.

These mental corruptions are taking place every where. Even among the LDS remnant gathering, these things I have seen among us too. I am more understanding of the signs and characteristics of many of mental disorders, and can see some affected in one way or another. I am not going to do the judgemental thing and point you out or try to fix others publicly or in some incorrect manner, but hopefully this post can help everyone be better understanding and better prepared to handle those who do suffer. For they truly suffer mentally, emotionally and usually physically too. 

The best balanced mind is one where the intellect rules and is in concert with the emotional mind, and also with your spiritual mind which receives the words and understanding the Spirit of God. They all must work in unison, or be "perfect in all things". At least as perfect as a mortal can become. This is the closest thing to perfection that we can obtain. Even then, we still fall short and only HE (the Father and Son working together) will carry you the rest of the way.