Are You Racking Up Emotional Debt?  

Some of you know what it’s like to have ever- increasing financial strain, and feel the need to spend to keep debt at bay (e.g., using a credit card to pay off a loan). This slows the problem in the short-term in exchange for a greater measure of pain later on. Not a good trade-off. Sometimes you need a financial consultant to help you out. 

Mental health and relational issues often become extreme enough to get a consultant once the emotional debt gets out of control. The emotional principal of your debt includes all the emotional pain you have ever experienced, but have not processed. You can tell a trauma is unprocessed because it evokes a painful emotion when you let yourself think about it (in the same way that your financial debt doesn’t stop causing hurt, even if you can distract yourself from it). 

The unpaid emotional debt begins racking up interest if unaddressed, often in the form of anxiety, depression, conflicts, addictions, anger issues, or somatic pain disorders. Some examples: 

-A woman feels hurt by a stray comment her husband made. Instead of expressing the emotion in a healthy way (paying off the debt), she stuffs it and it takes the form of resentment (increasing interest). Later that week, the husband asks for a favor, and the woman snaps at him for being lazy and needy, which causes a fight. This adds to both of their emotional debts, which they either need to process, or keep racking up interest. 

-A man was physically and sexually abused as a child and as a result feels intense relationship anxiety. He refuses to think or talk about the abuse, so it goes unprocessed (debt). He racks up emotional interest with his string of failed romances and rejections. 

-A woman develops a fear of imperfection from the shame-inducing critiques of her perfectionistic mother, which results in a critical interaction style with her own children. She transfers her emotion debt to her children with her criticism, which they must now pay off by dealing with their own emotional and behavioral problems that develop as a result. 

-A college student suffers from depression characterized by low self-esteem, incurred from bullying and feeling misunderstood by family members (debt). The depression keeps him from participating in classes, resulting in him dropping out and feeling like a failure (increasing interest). 

What are the pains in your relationship or your past that are affecting the present? What “water under the bridge” or attempt at “leaving the past in the past” is clogging the stream and rudely intruding in the present? If you find yourself paying off emotional interest by coping with symptoms, but making no long-term progress, you might need to pay off the principal by treating the source of the problem.