Emotional poverty video series: Ways to build emotional wealth

I recently had a great question on Facebook. Someone who saw one of the videos on emotional wealth posted below wrote to ask about emotional abuse in childhood. When the questioner was very young, the father died, and the mother became blaming and controlling after that.

In answer to the question of how to move beyond it, until you are eight or nine years old, the earliest memories are stored in the amygdala of the brain because you didn’t have words to assign to the experience. The amygdala has a long-term memory for the feelings and a short-term memory for the incident. So you act on your feelings all your life, even though you don’t always know why.

Because your memories are from such an early time, all your life you have probably struggled with a sense of inadequacy. What the questioner’s mother did is called transference. She transferred her feelings of anger to the child and blamed the child. One of the things you can do is to change the voice inside your head (the self-talk) that comes from your “mother.”

When you hear your mother’s controlling and angry voice, you can see your mother as a small child and just say to her, “I’m so sorry you feel that way. I am a wonderful, capable human being. I am so sorry your worldview is so small.” In your mind you can reframe your mother as a small child who was emotionally damaged herself and was simply unable to deal with the situation in which she found herself.

Watch the videos for more tips on building and maintaining emotional resources.

Ruby Payne, Emotional Resources Video 1

Ruby Payne, Emotional Resources Video 2

Ruby Payne, Emotional Resources Video 3

Ruby Payne, Emotional Resources Video 4

Ruby Payne2020-06-26T14:56:09-05:00July 31st, 2017|Community|

About the Author: Ruby Payne

In her two decades as a consultant on education and economic class, Ruby has published more than a dozen books and spoken extensively around the globe. Ruby empowers educators and community leaders to address issues of poverty in classrooms, communities, businesses, hospitals, churches, and social services. Through aha! Process programs and conferences, Ruby has certified thousands of trainees in her Framework for Understanding Poverty and Bridges Out of Poverty models. Her book Emotional Poverty won an IPPY Award from the Independent Publishers organization, which named it one of the best educational resources of the year. Over her distinguished career, Ruby has worked as a teacher and principal, written K–12 curriculum in all subject areas, and assisted in strategic planning and staff development programs for multiple organizations. Ruby’s work guides educators and community leaders through her extensive library of resources. She aims to equip everyone she meets with the tools to write a future story full of hope.