Emotionals and Non -Emotionals in Human Design - a medicine for relationship chaos
from emotional chaos to understanding, empathy and respect
Ever since Human Design has manifested in my life, it has supported me with plenty of awareness, but the one that I am most thankful for is the awareness around my emotions. I have always felt too much in my relationship dynamics because of my emotional intensity. As someone with a Pisces Sun in my 7th house of partnerships and relationships and Venus in my 8th house of transformation and intimacy, I have always found the relevance of my connections to be profound and spiritually transformative. It doesn’t matter what area of my life is found broken or injured, its roots have always led me to study and honestly, wonder, about my relationships.
For those who are not well acquainted with Human Design, this article will be quite helpful. But I certainly believe even those who are, may find a piece of perspective valuable enough to shift their relationship dynamics.
In Human Design, we have 9 energy centers, one of them being the emotional solar plexus center. This is the center that regulates how we feel.
Now obviously, what is the basic fundamental of all relationships?
The emotional bonding and connection we feel with one another, right? So naturally how you are uniquely designed to feel impacts not just you but the person next to you and the relationship you share with them.
Now typically when I say relationships, people think it’s a romantic relationship that we are talking about. I will be quoting my relationship with my sister in this article because she is the one I have been sharing my life and space with in the closest and most intimate way for the last few years. So whoever is reading this article, please know that yes, this applies to ALL close relationships.
Coming back to Human Design, there are 2 types of emotional solar plexus centres: defined and undefined. When you generate your HD chart, you will find your solar plexus center to be either colored or white. If it’s colored, it means you are what we call a defined emotional solar plexus center - or an emotional in HD. If this centre is white or non-colored, it means you have an undefined emotional solar plexus center and we call you a non-emotional. Do not go by the literal names because by no means does it suggest that you’re emotionally available or not - nope! A non-emotional can indeed display a huge variety of emotions, sometimes more than the emotional itself. Let me explain.
An emotional solar plexus is consistently generating and offering awareness about emotions to the world.
A non-emotional or undefined emotional solar plexus is inconsistently receiving, experiencing, processing, and amplifying this emotional awareness from the defined.
We have about 50% of the world defined and 50% of the world undefined in their emotional solar plexus center. This means that 50% of us are generating this emotional frequency and 50% are feeling, processing, and amplifying this same emotional frequency.
Now how does this play out in your relationships? We will discuss different relationship dynamics from emotional and non-emotional perspectives below but I want to first share how it plays out between me and my sister so that you can understand beyond the theoretical implications.
So my sister is a non-defined emotional solar plexus and I am a defined emotional solar plexus center.
This means that I, as a defined emotional, am always going through a wave of emotions consistently. I am always on a wave - I said this to my sister the other day when we were discussing an argument. What I meant to tell her was that I am always feeling and going through a wave of emotion irrespective of where I am, who am I talking to, or whatever I am doing.
The reason I had to explain this to her, which in my mind felt irrelevant, was because my sister’s moods and emotions as a non-emotional are inconsistent and shape-shift depending on where she is and who she is with. She really believes that my mood and emotion can be different if I change things around me. But the thing is, the whole world can shape-shift but if my wave is going in a particular direction, nothing can stop or alter it. I mean trust me, growing up, my family tried, tried really hard, to make me smile on my low-wave days and it never landed correctly.
As an emotional, I can share that it only perpetuated shame around my big waves of emotions as I learned to suppress them, ghost them, or just be scared of them.
Result - I grew up dreading my moods and emotional waves, internalizing that something was deeply wrong with me, seeing myself as too emotional and intense, and isolating myself when in my low wave when instead my medicine was a soothing touch. (There are different ways to soothe emotionals through their waves depending on their circuitry - but let’s leave that for another time).
Now I also understand why my sister and my Dad, in particular, were so disturbed by my emotional waves beside the point that there was no awareness around human design or emotional regulation - they are non-emotionals with an undefined emotional solar plexus centres.
This means that they’d amplify my waves of emotions. So think, if my wave was riding at sad, they’d feel double sad. If I was mad, they’d feel double mad. It’s crazy, right? I know. It is.
The thing is that they felt that if they could make me happy, which no one in this world can, they could also feel happy. This is definitely what many non-emotionals fall into the trap of trying to make their emotional buddies/partners happy and try to fix their sadness or madness. You cannot fix emotions.
You cannot stop a wave of tsunami, how can you, by any means? No. And if you try, there will be repercussions. There always have been costs involved whenever someone tried to mess with my emotional wave. Now of course I wouldn’t deny that it has taken me Human design education to even recognize that I experience something like an emotional wave. At least, now, I know better to feel and process them rather than blaming the situation, people, or circumstances at hand.
Are you seeing what happens?
In both cases, things go awry when the mind decides to step in. Naming our emotions and journaling to heal them, is great for self-awareness and self-inquiry, but also the very thing about emotions is that they are NOT black and white. They are hues of colors that go from rosy lavender to pink to magenta and to muddy brown real quickly. We cannot judge our emotional frequency. It’s an experience.
Everytime I try to figure out ‘why am I sad’ and I end up driving myself crazy for 2 and a half days in blaming everything and everyone in my life, I rob myself of the very experience of ‘feeling’.
There is something I started doing sometime last year and it worked so much more effectively than thousands of practices I was putting myself under to heal my anxiety for years. (Fun cue: I have an undefined spleen center in human design so most of the time I was simply amplifying and fixing other people’s fears!).
I started going on long walks with music plugged in on my headphones every now and then as a conscious practice and routine. I started baking with the piano playing in the background and really feeling through the waves as the piano went up and down in scale. I allowed myself to watch movies and read books that made me ‘feel’. I cried along when I felt too happy or too sad. I really felt through the waves when they came up instead of pushing them away or seeing them as too much or unproductive.
Was it easy? Hell no! But I truly believe that my healing work in the previous years tremendously supported me to create the awareness, courage, bandwidth and desire to finally FEEL. My mantra was I am safe to feel. My medicine was working with being in my body.
The thing is, by the time I reached 19, I had learned to mask my emotions to fit in, or let’s say, survive in this mad world which is absolutely not a very supportive and conducive place for moods and emotions. If you have an exam the next day, or if you’re meeting someone in an hour, you have to show up anyway. Not in a mood, or in my low wave, or feeling sad, is not a valid reason to skip it. I did not have a choice but to ghost my emotions.
Unfortunately, capping the soda bottle doesn’t do much good to anyone. Feelings are energetic frequency. They cannot lie even if our mouths can.
A non-emotional can feel an emotional so transparently that they’d respond to it at some point and then you’d be so mad that you did not even say anything, what’s wrong with them? So every time I have tried to suppress my feelings (classic Cancer Mars!), it has only ended up in complete disaster for my relationships. VOLATILE DISASTERS!!
The last few years, for the first time, I got the opportunity to really sort these things out with my sister - because you know, you cannot breakup with your sister or ghost them (though we certainly have had moments of blocking each other on the ‘gram sitting in or rooms hehe!)
Now coming back to what happens when I start to take responsibility for my moods and emotional waves, a)I am not blaming anyone. b)I can be honest with people around me about my feelings and they see and understand it and don’t assume that I am mad at them - and hence it saves them from being mad at me :)
In other words, the only work non-emotionals can do in this world is to drift away when it feels uncomfortable. A non-emotional will amplify the feelings no matter what. Sometimes it’s beautiful - like when I am feeling joyful, my sister is squealing in joy - love it! She is such a beautiful reflection to even see my own emotional state being mirrored back. Her best bet is to be aware that these moods and emotions are temporary and inconsistent. She can change her emotional state by going to a different environment or having different interactions or taking a break from the situation. Many times, for example when she’s in public spaces, she may feel overwhelmed and a simple reminder that ‘It’s not mine’ can be so helpful for the mind to not jump to judgments and decision making. It’s nothing personal, it’s energetics.
By no means do I mean to suggest that you are only supposed to hold each other when you’re feeling good. I have felt immense empathy and safety in my sister’s presence when I am going through a low wave, something I missed in all these years of being outside masking my emotions. When the non-emotional can see beyond the discomfort of their amplified feelings and emotions, if they can that is, they are beautiful gifts of empathy.
And well, we all need more of this in this world, right.
As an emotional being, I have always felt misunderstood and judged for my complex emotional nature. But when my sister can really feel my sadness (unlike I as an emotional would never be able to) and instead of feeling mad about it or taking it as a personal attack, she can have the capacity to empathize with me and simply be present with me without the need to fix me, it’s the most relieving and healing experience for me. This is what emotionals desire. They don’t want to be fixed. They don’t even want anyone to take away their low-wave sadness or painful experience. They crave someone to simply witness them and not judge them for something quite literally not in their hands. It’s an energetic mechanic. So many times in my life I wished I could just press STOP on my wave so that I don’t feel uncomfortable, and others don’t feel uncomfortable, but I feel what i feel!! As an emotional, this is what I am offering to the world, and the world gets to process and feel it and form their empathetic or destructive view of it.
Advice for emotionals dealing with non-emotionals
As an emotional, our responsibility is to FEEL and ride the wave instead of projecting the emotions on others or blaming others for their moods, emotions or even their presence or absence. Know that they are allowed to take space and come and be present when they feel okay. They cannot fix your feels so expecting that is a futile attempt from your brain. Know that feelings are transitory, your wave will pass, your lens will change as the colors on your canvas change back from midnight blue to purple haze. Don’t rush into decisions. Wait, and the clarity will come, over a period of time.
An advice for Non-Emotionals dealing with Emotionals
As a non-emotional, your responsibility is to lean into your empathetic nature through learning emotional and nervous system regulation instead of trying to fix the emotional in your life or yes, blame them for ruining your mood. You are meant to experience the emotional richness and energy through the emotional in your life, so pushing them away to feel calm and collected always, is a futile attempt to escape the human emotional experience. Know that you are allowed to take space when needed and whenever you feel overwhelmed by all the emotions, you can ground yourself in your energetic space and you will feel calm and collected all over again. Know that feelings are transitory, your mood will change as the colors change like those of the midnight sky. Don’t rush into hasty decisions when you’re simply overhwlemed by your environment’s emotional intensity. We don’t make decisions when we are bathing in someone’s colours. Use your inner authority in Human Design to make all your decisions.
An Advice for Emotionals dealing with Emotionals
When we remember that we are the source of the emotional wave, we learn to stop blaming anyone around us for making us feel the way we do. Sometimes an emotional can get triggered by another emotional experiencing and honouring their emotional wave because they never knew it was allowed to feel the feeling so freely. This is not equal to you amplifying their emotions because as an emotional defined solar plexus, there is no scope for amplifying. It’s important to discern when you are experiencing your own emotional wave or when you are truly upset by someone’s words or behaviour. The best bet is, as always, to wait and avoid initiating any heated conversations at the peak of your wave. Consciously include emotional releasing exercises and rituals in your daily routines (like listening to music, painting, journaling, or a deep, honest conversation with someone you trust).
An advice for Non-Emotional dealing with a Non-Emotional
If you are a non-emotional who is dealing with another non emotional, you have to be practicing cleansing and wringing your emotional solar plexus centres individually. At the same time, the emotional richness or experience could be missing in the connection and hence it’s important for both to have interactions and experiences outside the connection equally to balance it out. It’s important for both to develop empathy in their everyday lives and to enjoy the openness. Know that at the core your emotional state is usually calm, cool and collected. So if there are chaotic emotions interfearing in the connection, it’s likely coming from outside the connection. Some downtime together and you will be able to shake it off.
In the end, nothing is personal. It’s all energetics.
Now, I want to add this for everyone, when you are first learning about it, be gentle with yourself because most likely you don’t even know if what’s troubling you is an emotion, a thought, or a fear. Our minds love to interfere and most of us do not have that strong mind-body connection to have emotional awareness. In fact, as a humanity, we are all learning about emotional awareness for the first time in our lives unlike any of our ancestors ever have - how cool and disturbing is that fact haha! (no really, we are literally mutating in our solar plexuses all till 2027!) Self awareness and self-attunement will help to recognize ‘feelings’ and ‘moods’ and ‘emotions’. And I really hope this information at this time can save you from the emotional destructive chaos that we and all our relationships are suffering from right now.
Writing this I am listening to a garden piano piece and it is making me feel so much in a way that I kind of have that sweet lump in my throat and tears in my eyes thinking, “This is the core of my living human experience, why would i ever shun it? “
Emotions, all kinds of emotions, are beautiful and have a frequency, just like art, poetry, and music. Creativity has been birthed from the cradles of emotional melancholy. Truth is, I kind of died when I learned to mask my emotions. That’s depression when you feel nothing. Sadness is not depression, loneliness is not depression, and melancholy is not depression. I might have told myself a lie that it was safer to not feel anything instead of feeling too much, but it’s like pretending to be dead even when life is pulsating beneath your skin. I am a living breathing woman, and I feel, and gosh, after having the worst mental health phases of my life last year, I told myself I WANNA LIVE, even if it means I am gonna feel everything, every ugly icky emotion I buried deep inside the fascia of my body, I wanna be human. I have a lot to talk about this phase of my life though, so let’s chat about it in my next substack :)
If you desire to learn more about your Human Design, you can purchase *Your HD Mechanics* recording - or book a 1:1 in-depth HD Reading with me.
Did this post spark up a resonance? Leave me a comment below - or chat with me on the gram! 🧜♀️