External Emotional Supports

Our quest for emotional health takes huge amounts of time and energy.  For that reason, we need anything we can get that makes it easier.  External emotional supports fulfill that need.

External emotional supports are a mandatory part of a healthy emotional system.  They are things, people, situations, etc. that support a person by allowing them to not have to be completely responsible for every portion of their life.  For example, you have a caveman, living outside, naked and alone.  If you give him a pair of pants, he no longer has to worry about protecting his nether regions.  He doesn't have to worry about keeping warm.  He will now have a pocket in which to place objects.  On and on and on.  All these things the pants now do for him.  In the same way in modern life, money is a great external support.  If you have lots of money, there's all sorts of stuff you don't have to worry about any more.  If you take the time and energy that the money is saving you and spend it on your emotional health, then that money is functioning as an external emotional support for you.  But it's key to use the support in a way that helps you create and maintain positive emotional health.  That's one of the reasons that people say "money doesn't buy happiness" and I always say, "it would for me".  Many people would just buy jet-skis and be broke in a few years.  But because I understand the importance of external emotional supports, I would use the money in a way that would cause my family and I to be supported.

It's important to recognize that external emotional supports come in an infinite array of forms.  Money is just an obvious one.  A less obvious example is that we moved into our home over a year ago.  This home is smaller than the last one we lived in.  For that reason, we have more things than easily fit into this house.  So there's stuff everywhere while we're figuring out where to put it all.  I've found that it makes me feel overwhelmed. I constantly feel beset by things.  Every time I put up a shelf, it gives me an organized place to put more of our stuff.  It makes me feel great!  Those shelves are external emotional supports because they remove responsibility from me and that allows me more time and space to deal with my emotions.  I love external emotional supports because once they are in place, they can just continue to function without maintenance for ever in some cases.  To me, that's of primary importance in my fight for emotional health.