McKinney Therapist Explains: Emotional Debt

Are you in a relationship and find yourself paying someone else's actions? Or maybe you were wronged in the past by a mother or father and now you're taking out that trauma on someone else? If so... there's Emotional Debt going on — and this is fatal!

Emotional Debts get formed when you carry an unresolved issue from childhood into adulthood. Baggage relates more to emotional issues that start from bad relationships, which is a little different.

Examples of Emotional Debt

Say you had a father who was a lazy man, who never helped clean the house, cook, and essentially just worked and nothing else. If you're a woman, you might carry this resentment over to your spouse and maintain a "never enough" perspective over him. Or you might even ignore when they do help, do cook, and assist — and only highlight the times he doesn't.

Another example could be a man who had a mother who neglected him emotionally and now, as an adult, expects obscene amounts of attention from his wife. The moment the woman decides to focus on herself or just simply take a breather, he gets accused of "ignoring him."

You would be surprised how often this occurs to some degree in couples — I would put this number at nearly 100% of all couples I see. In some cases, it's not too serious. In other cases, it can be so serious that it breaks marriages up.

Why Does This Happen?

Some of the reasons for this is denial. Some people simply deny that they are doing this and, rather than see that the debt belongs to someone else, they'd rather just find someone to blame — their spouse.

Another reason is because of unhealthy core beliefs. People hold so many beliefs, and some are unhealthy. Despite them being unhealthy, they would much rather believe in something than change it into something more beneficial.

I guess people hate change, yet they come to therapy seeking it? Interesting...