{"id":10973,"date":"2017-09-14T01:00:32","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T01:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybestrelationship.com\/?p=10973"},"modified":"2017-09-13T18:55:06","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T18:55:06","slug":"this-fact-will-help-you-love-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybestrelationship.com\/this-fact-will-help-you-love-more\/","title":{"rendered":"This Fact Will Help You Love More"},"content":{"rendered":"
Every year on the anniversary of 9\/11\/01, if you’re like many people, you think about where you were, what you were doing, who you were with…<\/p>\n
We learn with emotion, because emotion tells us something is significant, so it gets etched even deeper into our brains and memories.<\/p>\n
Even though I lived in NYC on 9\/11, I was lucky enough not to personally lose anyone close to me.<\/p>\n
I felt helpless, much like a lot of us may be feeling today in 2017 with political and tropical storms creating havoc and danger in their paths. Uprooting and killing people.<\/p>\n
I tried to give blood but the city had enough.<\/p>\n
So I sat on the roof of our building with my 2 of my friends still in the city that night (several had left) and we watched the skyline.<\/p>\n
The city was like a war zone. It reeked (you know the smell if you were there, I’ll spare anyone else the description), and Alphabet City without any traffic felt like a post-apocalyptic nightmare.<\/p>\n
So I went to work the next day like any other day to do my job, even 75% of my officemates didn’t show up (I worked in the Empire State Building), and went on with my life.<\/p>\n
Like many of our lives, though, it was touched in a way that I never had anticipated.<\/p>\n
I was reminded, in Sting’s 1987 song words, “how fragile we are.”<\/p>\n
I was haunted by the memory of the pregnant woman whose husband didn’t come home from work, and all the other stories I heard, and wondered, how do people cope?<\/p>\n
So in graduate school, I set off to explore that question…and took it a step further because I cannot bear to live in a world that is meaningless:<\/p>\n
I found out, yes, there was such a thing as Post Traumatic Growth, and it just was starting to be studied.<\/p>\n
According to Wikipedia (and not my own dissertation because I dare not pull out that dusty thing), several factors elements that people experience with post-traumatic growth include: “greater appreciation of life; changed sense of priorities; warmer, more intimate relationships; greater sense of personal strength; and recognition of new possibilities or paths for one’s life and spiritual development.”<\/p>\n
That doesn’t make a traumatic event okay, but it does show how we can (and do) grow from it.<\/p>\n
I can’t imagine I’m alone with that one.<\/p>\n
Fearing loss is something that might inspire some to become love avoidant or prevent themselves for falling for someone deeply.<\/p>\n
The fear might erect walls because it feels safer inside them.<\/p>\n
The logic goes: If you’re protected and not connected, it won’t hurt as much when someone dies or leaves you.<\/p>\n
It’s an argument against love, that feels safer.<\/p>\n
I found this part out years later:<\/p>\n