Emotional Permanence & Relationships
Emotional constancy and the out of sight, out of mind phenomenon in neurodivergent folks
What is emotional permanence?
Emotional permanence refers to our ability to believe in the feelings of other people even when we are not with them. For example, to know significant people in our lives love and care about us even when we are not physically together (or connected in other ways).
For some of us this is not something that can be taken for granted. Instead of feeling secure about the feelings of other important people in our lives we may fret about them, mistrust them, and become anxious or insecure.
We may struggle to maintain a sense of emotional constancy, and with our own lack of emotional permanence. Although this might be a problem, we can develop the ability to take stock of our own capacity to maintain emotional constancy.
In so doing, we can so work to improve these experiences for ourselves and for the important people in our lives.
How emotional permanence develops
Emotional permanence is something that we develop, similar to the ways in which we develop emotional regulation skills through co-regulation in our early relationships with caregivers.
We aren’t born with these skills, but we are born with the capacity to attach to our caregivers, and to develop reciprocal patterns of emotional exchange which form the basis for developing a sense of internal emotional stability.
It is natural to miss the people we feel bonded to when they go away, but it is important to develop trust that our relationships will endure separations. This is a mutual responsibility, however.
Trust is something that is earned and strengthened through positive experiences in those relationships, and both partners are responsible for being trustworthy.
If we grew up in a home in which there was a lack of predictable emotional care, if a lack of emotional consistency was the norm, then we may (understandably) have problems having confidence in the emotional consistency of other people.
This hesitancy to trust is a self-protective response. When we are hurt by significant people in our lives, it is a natural reaction to try and protect ourselves from further pain. One way of doing this is by becoming less trustful, more wary, and by putting emotional space between ourselves and others.
When this happens, we are more likely to become prone to emotional dysregulation, instead of acquiring a sense of relational security and emotional regulation.
Why are Autistic people more likely to struggle with emotional constancy (or emotional permanence)?
There could be a few reasons for this.
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