Life’s ups and downs can feel quite turbulent without stabilizing techniques to ground you. Emotional permanence — believing in others’ feelings, even when those people aren’t present — provides stabilization that helps maintain healthy relationships.
But the good news is that changing your brain’s wiring for the better is always possible. Even if you struggle with emotional permanence, you can work on skills that help you find balance.
Understanding emotional permanence
Emotional permanence is vital to healthy, stable relationships and emotional well-being. Learning how a lack of emotional permanence impacts you can improve your life significantly.
What is emotional permanence?
Emotional permanence is much like object permanence — but for emotions.
Object permanence is the concept of knowing something exists, even if it’s out of sight. Also called object constancy, this is something humans learn early in life. Peek-a-boo is a way to teach babies that not seeing someone doesn't mean they're gone forever.
Emotional permanence is similar. It says you are still cared for even if your loved one isn’t present.
If you lack emotional permanence, you may not feel loved without constant caring actions or words of affirmation. You may panic when your calls get ignored or when you have a fight with your partner.
How it impacts individuals
Close interpersonal relationships are hard to maintain without emotional stability. This applies to friends, family members, and romantic partners.
The feelings of abandonment that result from emotional impermanence can create unstable relationships. They may cause you to seek constant reassurance and validation.
If you struggle to feel emotional permanence, you might accuse your partner of cheating or falling out of love. You might feel as though your friends or family members are avoiding you.
Emotional connection requires trust. Trust involves believing someone’s love for you won’t suddenly disappear. You can improve trust and your relationships through self-reflection and understanding healthy boundaries.
Why people struggle with emotional permanence
Anyone can struggle with developing emotional permanence. However, certain conditions and experiences can increase its likelihood.
Borderline personality disorder
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) impacts your ability to control your emotions. It is thought to stem from trauma or neglect and result in a fear of abandonment and unstable relationships.
If you have borderline personality disorder, you may have a fragile sense of self. You might fear your loved ones don’t love you and will abandon you. This is a perfect example of a lack of emotional permanence.
Insecure attachment styles
Attachment theory says early caregiver relationships help determine how you connect with others. An insecure attachment style makes emotional permanence difficult.
Insecure attachment styles include anxious attachment, disorganized or anxious-avoidant attachment, and avoidant attachment. People with insecure attachment styles find difficulty showing an appropriate level of vulnerability.
Understanding attachment styles can help you discover why you act as you do. It can empower you to make helpful changes to your mindset.
ADHD
Neurological conditions like ADHD and autism can make emotional regulation difficult. Social rejection is often common with these conditions, and consistent rejection can make you feel unloved.
Rejection sensitivity dysphoria can go along with certain neurological conditions. It makes you feel you aren’t valued in others’ lives, leading to insecurity.
Emotional permanence: breaking the cycle
You weren’t born with the ability to self-regulate. Emotional regulation is something you have to be taught.
Traditionally, parents teach you how to identify and express feelings with words. However, reactive children often need extra help learning healthy coping skills to manage emotions.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to have parents who teach them emotional regulation skills. If your parent wasn’t taught these skills as a child, they probably didn’t teach you.
Unless, of course, they embarked on a healing journey and made progress themselves.
All emotions are fleeting
The key to emotional permanence is remembering all emotions pass with time. Feelings of abandonment won’t last in such an intense way forever.
Take time to recognize that feelings are temporary. If someone is angry at you, remember anger is a reactive emotion rather than a permanent feeling.
You may have a desire for immediate resolution. Remember that you have gotten through difficult emotions before. You can get through them again.
Reframing your thoughts
Identifying unhealthy thought patterns puts power back in your hands. Labeling certain thoughts as illogical and unhelpful can help you reframe them. Finding alternative ways of thinking can stop you from spiraling.
Two unhealthy thought patterns that arise from emotional impermanence are all-or-nothing and catastrophic thinking.
Believing people either love or hate you, with no in-between, is all-or-nothing thinking.
Catastrophic thinking involves letting fear make something small into something big. It might mean believing an unanswered text shows the person will never speak to you again.
You can reframe unhealthy thoughts like these. Remind yourself that people get busy and forget to answer. They may be dealing with an emergency or overwhelmed at work. You can counteract all-or-nothing thinking by imagining neutral alternatives.
Mindfulness practices
You can place your focus elsewhere when consumed by negativity from emotional impermanence. Practicing mindfulness is an effective method of stopping racing thoughts.
Try listening to a meditation recording or video. Meditation offers many positive benefits for your mental fitness.
Another mindfulness method is engaging the senses. Pay attention to the physical space around you and name things you can smell, hear, see, taste, and feel. Breathwork techniques engage the senses by calming the body and mind.
Writing in a journal allows you to keep track of your emotions and their causes. Getting thoughts out on paper can feel therapeutic. Recognizing triggers will also help you identify when unpleasant thoughts could be forthcoming.
Tools for developing emotional agility
There are healthy ways to remind yourself that negative emotions don’t last and assure yourself of your self-worth. Regulate your emotional state with self-soothing techniques and healthy coping mechanisms.
Self-soothing techniques
When consumed with anxiety or catastrophic thinking, you can soothe yourself and stop the negativity spiral. Some techniques to calm yourself include things like:
- Taking a walk
- Listening to calming music
- Coloring
- Going for a drive
- Inner Work™
- Doing yoga poses or stretches
- Taking a warm bath or shower
- Hugging a pet or loved one
- Feeling a soft blanket
- Giving yourself a massage
- Smelling essential oils or candles
Healthy coping mechanisms
Unhealthy coping mechanisms like substance use and self-isolation can negatively impact you or your loved ones. Replacing harmful coping mechanisms with positive ones creates healthy relationships.
Instead of resorting to self-destructive behavior when feelings of abandonment are triggered, recognize the feeling and let it pass through you.
Try open communication rather than resorting to self-sabotaging coping mechanisms. You can also use the previously discussed self-soothing techniques or mindfulness practices.
Building resilience
You build resilience by overcoming adversity. Experiencing loss or heartbreak for the first time feels very intense.
As you grow and endure more hardships, you gain strength by knowing you’ll get through life’s challenges. Remind yourself that you’ve overcome difficulties before and can handle them now and in the future.
Advanced strategies for emotional balance
If you can’t achieve emotional permanence on your own, there are mental health specialists who can help. Therapy provides a listening ear and an unbiased perspective to help you see things clearly.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
If you are interested in evidence-based talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy is a popular and effective method. The foundation of CBT is acknowledging how your thoughts impact your feelings. Recognizing your thoughts better positions you to challenge unhelpful patterns.
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)
Acceptance and commitment therapy focuses on gaining control of negative emotions by viewing yourself as an observer of your thoughts.
Separating yourself from your thoughts allows you to think about your feelings logically and objectively. ACT involves accepting the full range of human emotions.
Emotion regulation therapy
If you want to take a deep dive into emotional regulation skills, emotion regulation therapy may be for you. In this type of therapy, you work with a therapist to gather a variety of emotion regulation techniques.
You can then focus on how to manage intense feelings. Emotion regulation therapy incorporates elements of CBT, ACT, and other therapy methods.
Clearing a personalized path to emotional permanence
Once you’ve decided to commit to a journey of healing and self-improvement, the next step is figuring out how it looks.
Experiment with different techniques
Every person is unique, so what works for one person might not work for you. You may find that breathwork isn’t helpful or cognitive behavioral therapy doesn’t feel right.
There are plenty of methods for building a sense of emotional permanence. Try out different things until you discover what’s best.
Build out your toolkit
Once you discover which emotional regulation techniques work best, you can apply them daily as needed.
Remember your self-soothing skills and healthy coping mechanisms whenever you feel overwhelmed with intense feelings of abandonment or low self-esteem.
Knowing you always have these regulation tools can make you feel safe and grounded when experiencing emotional dysregulation.
Building a supportive community
It’s essential to have a community of trusted people to reach out to when overcome with negative emotions. But if you don’t currently have vulnerable, close relationships, there are other options.
Joining a support group or group therapy sessions is a healthy way to express your feelings. It can be cathartic to confide in others who have similar struggles.
Therapy and coaching
Having someone who holds you accountable and provides a judgment-free space is immensely productive for personal growth. This can be a professional therapist.
It could also be with a life coach or communication coach. The important thing is that you have someone you connect with who understands what enables you to thrive.
Grow your mental agility with BetterUp
BetterUp coaches strive to help you become the best version of yourself. Feelings of self-doubt are normal, and you have the power to manage them. Make achieving improved emotional permanence your goal.
Coaching sessions can build confidence, teach interpersonal skills, and provide tools needed for emotion regulation techniques. Get started with individual coaching sessions and begin working on your well-being today.
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