I propose that in our social/cultural conditioning, the gravity of emotional stability is provided by mutual nurture. That is, the experience of caring for others and being cared for. (I will return to the importance of mutual nurture in our evolution in the Chapter on Attachment and also in the Chapter on Anthropology).
We are emotionally drawn towards mutual nurture just like we are physically drawn to planet Earth, i.e. grounded, by physical gravity. In its most positive manifestation our tendency towards mutual nurture is the root of compassion, empathy, generosity, care-giving and our concern for others, that is a universal facet of the human experience. Most importantly, it gives us a feeling of well-being, sense of belonging in a greater order, and security. It follows that its absence leads potentially to lack of grounded-ness as well as uncertainty.
Identity is, I believe, the most obvious and immediate manifestation of emotional gravity. And people will give up a lot, even freedom, for identity. For example, one of the reasons why we Irish looked to the Pope for leadership was that it gave us a separate identity to that of the English.
One factor that enhances children’s sense of emotional stability is their sense of history – in particular their immediate history, i.e. parents, grandparents, siblings, and extended family. This gives children an identity, belonging, and attachment to something close to them in the great ocean of humanity which is often an uncertain environment. (The well-known film, Philomena, explores the link between mutual-nurture and identity very well, and also the angst that arises from lack of same).
It might be helpful here to refer to new developments in our understanding of gravity which has changed significantly over the past century.
That with which we are most familiar, and which is observable to us in our day to day lives, (e.g. the apple falling on Isaac Newton’s head) has been superseded by the general theory of relativity that Albert Einstein proposed in 1915. This is an intricate area of study – best of luck – but from our point of view it is enough to say that Einstein’s theory suggested that gravity was not constant in the Universe (as Newton and scientists of his day had thought) but changed over space-time.
What I refer to above as emotional gravity is not an unchanging constant either, but rather a variable (constantly changing) entity that is analogous to Einstein’s description of gravity. I propose that emotional gravity changes over time from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day etc. and over space, our environment, stretching from that which is at closest proximity, relationally and physically, to the farthest away point that we can imagine. (We can say that emotional gravity changes temporally and spatially).
For instance, if I fall in love with another person, and, perhaps, have a child or children (or don’t have a child or children) – once again, as we say, start a family – the centre from which I sustain myself changes, (gradually, of course) from my mother, father and siblings (my family of origin) to my new family; i.e. my partner/spouse and, if we have any, my child or children. That is, my emotional centre of gravity (i.e. my centre of mutual nurture) changes from my family of origin to my new family.
In the good enough scenario two people who are secure in their identity meet and in time a new identity emerges where the best of the old is grafted on to form the new one. (This, of course, is also emergence in practice). So it is normal – and healthy – that, over time, my identity will be defined more by being in my new family than in my old.
Of course, emotions are complex and enduring phenomena, so my emotional centre of gravity might take a while to move. It may be that my family of origin will be important to me for a long time and the change will be very gradual.
That is, my need for my own identity might be so strong that it eventually bubbles through, though when I fell in love at first, I may have – almost always unconsciously – hidden certain parts of myself and projected a false self to make myself as attractive as possible to the other. Then, when my real-self bubbles through, if my identity is insecure, I might feel threatened by the behaviours and norms that are different from those in my family of origin, and rather than make a mature decision as to whether or not they are beneficial or useful in the new relationship, I reject them because they are not mine.
On the other hand, if I have secure identity, it is a lot easier to make the decision as to what or what not to adopt.
The relevance of this to family support is that it is helpful to be aware of changes in what I will call the emotional gravitational field of people in distress in different settings and/or at different times when designing effective responses.
One way of exploring the phenomenon of emotional gravity is to compare how we feel when ten thousand people die in a war or a famine half a world away with how we feel if one close friend or relative dies – space – or how we feel about the death of our great-great-grandparent to the death of our parent – time.
In terms of what are important to us emotionally and what we gravitate to (and getting away from family, because not all of us will choose to start a family), there are almost always other attractions in our emotional gravitational field such as our job, our friends, clubs, neighbours, activities, etc. all of which ensure the varying of both the centre of our emotional gravity, and how we experience it through space-time. What we are drawn to contributes to our identity – i.e. who I am as defined by me.
All those in our emotional gravitational field, to whom we are attracted, satisfy different (emotional) needs at different times of our life and the ones that we chose to be closest to in space will usually have the strongest influence – often unbeknownst to us. The amount of influence that we assign to one or others is also influential in our social/cultural conditioning, and, perhaps, determines changes in our identity over time.
This, of course, tallies with Systems Theory which we have discussed at some length in the last Chapter.