happiness

Perfect Love Prevents Fear

Ron Johnson appreciation, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, mindfulness, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

In one of the later books of the New Testament, the writer and apostle, John, states this:

“There is no fear I love. But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4.18, New International Version).

Other versions of this passage adjust words to some degree (The King James version has, “perfect love drives out fear, or casts out fear), but the message is the same. You might find it valuable to read the verses before and after this verse, which includes many words about love: God’s love for us, our love for others, and what the essence of love is. John is often cited as the “love apostle” because of his focus on love. He is the only writer to say, “God is love” although other writers describe God with other characteristics like truth, infinite, even beautiful. My task in this blog is not so much to give a biblical examination or presentation but to note that this idea of love “driving out” fear is interesting at the least. And this idea of love conquering fear (among other things) continues to be a position Deb and I have taken in our work and in our writings. In this blog I will offer my take on how “love drives out fear,” other things that loves “drives out,” what it means to “drive out,” a bit about what love is, and a good bit about what fear is. We think more importantly that perfect love prevents fear. The way we see it, fear is a “love problem.”

Fear is one of four basic emotions

Deb and I have been working with the concept of feelings for decades as well as the subset of feelings, emotions. This may come as a surprise unless you have followed our writings on the subjects. In The Positive Power of Sadness we discussed the centrality of the emotion of sadness. In our more recent I Want to Tell You How I Feel, we present a paradigm of feelings and identify emotion as an expression of feelings. We use the term “feelings” as representing the central core of an individual, sometimes called inner self, core self, or even God inside of me. We propose that feelings are expressed in four ways always in sequence: physical, emotional, cognitive, and active. Thus, emotion is an expression of feelings, and thus emotions are not to be equated with core self. We also proposed in this book that people tend to express their feelings in one of these four ways and may express them in another of these four ways. Yet everyone experiences feelings first physically and so on. The problem with most people is that we have not matured in our understanding, valuing, and expressing our emotions, much less the deeper, spiritual nature of our feelings.

Beyond this understanding of emotions being a subset of feelings, we understand that we have four basic emotions that are all related to love in some way:

  • Joy: the emotion associated with having something I love
  • Sadness: the emotion associated with the immediate losing of something that I love
  • Fear: the emotion associated with the possibility of losing something I love
  • Anger: the emotion associated the past loss of something that I love

In addition to this understanding of the current functioning of emotions, we propose that these four emotions are developed naturally in early childhood, e.g.:

  • Fear is the predominant emotion of an infant 0-12 months old. The infant is fearful or calm, but not angry, joyful, or sad
  • Joy is the predominant emotion of the second year of life. The infant discovers the joy of loving something, e.g. person, place, activity or thing. Ideally, the 1-2 year old is less afraid but still has the intrinsic fear that is accompanied by potential danger because s/he can’t yet really take care of her/himself
  • Anger: the predominate emotion of the toddler years, ages 2-6. Anger develops as a means of defense against the frequent “assaults” that toddlers get because of being restricted. Think of it this way: they got almost all of what they needed the first year life; they got most of what they wanted in the second year of life. But now they can walk, talk, throw, yell, and scream. So, they use these things to attempt to get what they want. They do not normally distinguish between wants and needs.
  • Sadness: this is the last and by far the most important emotion that children develop. Ideally by age 6, they have a rudimentary understanding that they don’t get most of what they want although it will take many more years to truly understand that it is normal and ultimately good for them to not get what they want.
  • Few kids get through these stages ideally.

So, what is the “love problem” associated with fear? It is the emotion associated with being afraid of never getting what I want, or perhaps need. Importantly, an infant does not distinguish between wants and needs. (Unfortunately, many adults have failed to make that distinction as well.) If the infant is not afraid when s/he needs food, comfort, or care, s/he will not survive. Fear is the most basic emotion we have, and as a result, fear is the emotion that the brain churns up when the brain feels there is danger. Why does the brain churn up fear when there doesn’t appear to be anything to be afraid of?

The brain and perceived danger

I have to start by reminding you that the brain is a machine. An incredible machine, mind you, but a machine. The brain doesn’t know anything. It is just like your computer. Your computer doesn’t know anything despite the fact that most people end up talking to (or yelling or swearing at) their computers, which are, like the brain, machines. Your brain knows two things and two things only: safe (or lack thereof), and pleasure (or lack thereof). Your brain doesn’t know people, love, ideas, things, or anything else. Your brain is programed to take care of you, namely providing safety and pleasure. Furthermore, your brain doesn’t know the future or the past, but rather just the present. So, in a manner of speaking, your brain is pretty “stupid” aside from being the most advanced machine in the known universe. So, here’s the picture as the brain sees it: provide safety, and if that’s taken care of, encourage pleasure. The pleasure part of the brain is hormonal, namely endorphins that are essentially happy chemicals (endorphins) that the brain secretes when you are doing something that brings your pleasure. The pleasure orientation that the brain has can lead to addictions but that is not part of our current discussion. I want to focus on the danger orientation that the brain has. So, here’s the picture as the brain sees it when it sees that there is some kind of danger:

  • Your mind thinks of something that is in the future that might be dangerous.
  • Your brain, not knowing the future, thinks there is some present danger
  • Your brain then churns up cortisol, which is the chemical that causes you to be aware, or perhaps hyper aware
  • Your brain churns up cortisol so you can be aware of the immediate danger that the brain thinks exists in the present
  • The brain doesn’t know that you might be thinking of something that might happen in the future, perhaps an hour later or a year later. The brain doesn’t understand the future, so it does whenever it determines that there is danger.
  • You feel some kind of increased vigilance, or perhaps even hypervigilance, which is identified by increased heart rate, increased breathing, and an increased awareness of the problem that is before you.
  • In all this, the brain is protecting you from what it perceives as present danger. It’s doing its job: protecting you. You didn’t ask the brain to do this. It did it all on its own.
  • You feel some kind of anxiety, which is a cognate of fear. The brain has done this for you. You experience it as fear; your brain experiences this as danger and the need to be hyperaware.
  • Think of it this way: you think about an interview that you will have tomorrow. As you think about this interview, you begin to worry that you might know what to say or how to say it. You’re brain hears this message but not the content (because the brain is “stupid” about such things.) The brain thinks something like, “There is a lion coming over the hill and we have to be prepared for fight or flight.) There is no lion, and in fact there is no immediate danger, but your brain doesn’t know that.
  • Your brain sort of “talks” to your mind (because your brain can’t think), and sort of says, “Please mind, figure out how we can protect ourselves from the lion,” even though there is no lion.
  • So you end up thinking more, and the more you think, the more you can’t know what you might say or do, and the more you end up worrying.
  • Sound familiar?

I try to help people understand this mind/brain interaction and get the mind in control of the brain, thus forestalling the brain taking control of the physical process of surviving and getting you to worry. That is also another story that we don’t have time to discuss at the present. Rather, I want to talk about the “love problem” that is at the heart of the fear that the brain churns up.

Fear is a love problem

Fear is the emotion associated with danger. In practical terms, however, we must ask, “What am I afraid of when I experiencing fear (or anxiety or worry). Understanding this phenomenon is central to overcoming 99% of fear and 100% of anxiety and worry. I need to be afraid if I am in genuine danger, like being stabbed by an assailant or being crushed by an 18-wheeler that has moved into my lane, but these things are the 1% of fear that is valuable and life-saving. It is no easy task to overcome the other 99% of fear. Underneath the question, “What am I afraid” of is the more important question, “What do I love that I am afraid of losing?”

There are several categories of things that I love, and hence might be afraid of losing. They are:

  • Property
  • People
  • Social contact
  • Freedom
  • Ideas
  • Self

Normally, we think of losses as having to do with people, like losing a friend for some reason, someone dying or getting divorced. Indeed, these are important losses. But the other elements I have noted could be even more difficult to lose. People that we call “caretakers,” like me, truly love property and the care of property, something that seems materialistic to non-caretakers, but the love of property is quite different from hoarding or acquiring. The loss of freedom for whatever reason, perhaps losing a job or being incarcerated, can be a terrible loss, and all of these losses are related to loving freedom. Likewise, the loss of an idea, perhaps the idea that you could become a lawyer but fail the LSAT, or the idea that you could really change the world in some way…all of these ideas are based on loving something be it abstract.

Of all the things that can be loved that I have noted (and there are certainly more), by far the most important one is love of self. I believe that one naturally loves him/herself at a deep level, but this love of self does not equate with liking oneself, much having someone else like you or love you. The loss of self-liking is frequent, as it should be, for instance, when I simply make a mistake and end up not liking what I did or even my approach to something. You can never lose your love for yourself because it is endemic to being human, but you can lose track of this love if you end up not liking yourself or you have important people not like you. So what does love have to do with fear, and the prevention of fear?

Perfect love prevents fear

Consider that every time you are afraid (or anxious or worried), you are concerned that you might lose something, namely the things mentioned above, like people and ideas. So, the essence of fear is love-based. Think of fear as love-based, and you will be able to conquer fear, and eventually you will be able to prevent fear altogether. There is no good reason to be afraid of losing anything at any time. Fear does not engender effective care, nor does it help you cope with a loss that you might have sometime in the future. Almost all fear is delusional.

What does that mean? Delusional? What am I talking about here? I suggest that most fear is delusional because fear turns into fretting, worrying, and other forms of anxiety. This occurs because of our “stupid” brain that does not understand the difference between immediate danger and future danger. This marvelous machine that we call the brain “thinks” that if it churns up cortisol and creates hypervigilance in you, you will then be protected from the raging lion that is coming over the hill. So when you are anxious about something, you are “delusional” because you have this brain-mind interaction that acts without your knowing it and feeds upon itself. Fear of the unknown and any kind of fear of the future is delusional because this mind-brain interaction sort of “believes” that if I worry enough about the future, I will change the future. You know better than that. I know better than that. But your brain doesn’t know that and then the brain gets your mind to believe that you can change the future by worrying. The only way to get out of this anxiety-based delusional thinking is to conquer fear or prevent fear by facing the love that you have because “perfect love prevents fear” as the biblical reference suggests. So how do I do that?

I face the fact that I have a “love problem,” namely that I love something that I could lose. When I face the fact that I love something and may lose this something, I will feel what we call anticipatory sadness. In other words, I allow myself to feel the potential sadness that I would feel if I lost this something that I love. And the deeper the love, the deeper the sadness. This is not an easy concept to understand, much less utilize in preventing fear and anxiety, but it works if you allow yourself to go with it. By the way, your brain isn’t going to help you in this process, so you have to learn to get your mind (soul, spirit, self) in control of this machine-brain. In order to prevent fear, you need to actually allow yourself to imagine losing the thing you love, e.g.:

  • Losing your life, your freedom, your idea…this is most important
  • Losing people you love, whether permanently or temporarily
  • Losing property, position, or possibility

What I am asking you to do is very hard. And you most certainly don’t want to do it. Of course, you don’t want to do it. Who wants to be sad? Who in their right mind would actually choose to be sad? Your brain certainly doesn’t want you to be sad, so your brain is of no help here. You have to use your mind. You have to imagine losing the thing you love and allow yourself to feel sad. Here’s the crux of this strategy of “perfect love prevents fear”: sadness ends. Fear doesn’t end. If you feel sad, deep enough and long enough, you will no longer feel sad. You will have faced the potential loss, grieved the potential loss, and finished feeling sad about this potential loss. By the way, eventually your brain will get on board with this program and not fight you in the process of anticipatory grief because your brain will learn that sadness is good for you because sadness is a “love problem.”

So be courageous and consider that you would feel sad (not afraid) if you lost:

  • Your property
  • Your life
  • Your spouse
  • Your child
  • Your idea
  • Your plan
  • Your freedom
  • …and anything else that you love.

By the way, remember, perfect love prevents fear and drives out fear. You are not perfect. You do not love anything perfectly. Therein lies the real task: to get better at loving, looking for perfection in loving, which means by the way, that you know that you will most certainly lose everything you love, but in the meantime you can enjoy loving what you have. Love everything with an open hand knowing that you could lose it at any time. Do this and you will find that get better and better at loving…and losing…and loving again.

The Last Half of Life

Ron Johnson appreciation, Development, Discovery, Feelings, grief, happiness, men's issues, mindfulness, Opportunity, Self-Awareness, social esteem, Spiritual

I’m in the last half of life. Perhaps, I should put quotes around that statement because I am not speaking concretely and practically but abstractly and metaphorically. I just flew by my 77th birthday a bit ago and now I’m well into my 78th year of life. Who knows how long I will live: a day, a year, 10 years, or 30 years? Yes, I suppose I could live to 107 but that seems quite likely. I am actually at the average age where Americans people die, and actually a couple years beyond the average lifespan of men, which is 75, so it behooves me to examine such things. Let me get to the point of this “last half of life” business.

The last half of life

I have come to use the phrase, the last half of life, metaphorically, not as a chronological measure. Half of the typical life of an American is about 38 years. But many people never see their 38th birthday and many see years well beyond 76. I am using the last half of life to mean the period in a person’s life that s/he might make a lasting contribution to life, perhaps something substantially different from the “first half of life,” whatever that period of time might be. I am presently seeing many men who are in “the last half” of their lives, but their ages range from 35 to 78. I will be gathering some of these men together for a day of reflection, encounter, and forward-looking even though the challenges and dilemmas of these men are substantially different. What remains the same for them is finding meaning in the rest of their lives. These men are quite seriously looking at what the past, the present, and the future in order to go forward with self-confidence:

  • They are looking at what they have done right, what they have done wrong, what they could have done, what they should have done, and what they shouldn’t have done. These men are looking at the past with what we might call “the wisdom of age” or “the 20-20 vision of hindsight.”
  • They are looking at the present with a certain perspective, namely what they are now doing including what they should be doing, what they shouldn’t be doing, and what they want to be doing.
  • They are looking at the future as to what they could do, what they should do, and even what they feel they have to

Who is looking at the last half of life?

Let me tell you about some of these men. (And permit me to use the masculine pronoun from here on because I am just talking about men. There may be some great similarities with women or perhaps some profound differences, but that is another piece of literature that I am not qualified to write.). Of course, all the names are fictional as are some of the professions and situations in life so as to protect the privacy of these men. Nevertheless, the thoughts, feelings, and actions of these men are wholly factual.

  • Jack is the 78-year old, and my only patient who is actually older than I am. He has been a very successful person in his trade, which has been social work. He has continued to work until just recently when outlived his usefulness at the agency he worked for. Previous to that work he has had some very responsible and successful people and is a person deeply committed to his work, and also to his faith. Unfortunately, over the years, including the 50-some year of marriage, he has not managed his money very well and is in an almost dire financial situation. He is looking to the “last half” of his life free of this financial burden but also have a life with genuine meaning.
  • Sam is a 35-year old very successful businessman who owns a trade-based company. He has been quite disturbed by the recent election and the many changes in the culture and politics and wants to “make a difference” in the world in some way. He has considered selling his business and moving on but has no idea where, when, and how he would “move on.”
  • Peter has been successful in human resources for many years. He has made a significant amount of money, but now has been “downsized” as many companies now do. But he has taken the huge step of working on a master’s degree in psychology and hopes to enter the field. By the way, he is in a very unsatisfying marriage, has three adolescent kids one of whom is going to college this fall. So not only is he changing professions, he is also changing his parental role and possibly his marriage situation.
  • Tom of 63 but you wouldn’t know it because he so spy and active. He has had a couple of professions over the years, including a good stint in ministry, but he has been quite successful in sales. He, too, like Peter (and another man as well) is looking into the field of psychology or counseling. By the way, his marriage is also on the rocks to his great dismay because his wife left him having discovered that 33 years ago she shouldn’t have married him.
  • A man who may soon be inheriting a very successful professional business from his father, a business for which he is trained but not interested. His interests seem to lie more in teaching and coaching.
  • There are several others in situations not unlike these, where men have been making tons of money but not happy, have been in difficult marriages, and other challenges.

Perhaps one of the reasons this “last half” of life has interested me is the fact that I have seen many deaths over the past year, including many deaths of young people, who might not have found a way to truly engage the “last half” of their lives. These people include the children of several friends, my own daughter, the children of several men that are current patients, three cousins, three in-laws, and one patient who wrote three blogs about his life with me as his amanuensis. This man, 75 when he died, often said to me, “I don’t know what I’m going to do when I grow up.” Now he doesn’t have to worry, but I think he really wanted to find some meaning to the “last half” of his life but never did. These many deaths have only been aggravated by the “war” that I spoke of in a previous blog (biological, political, and cultural war) in the world together with the 550,000 people who have died of Covid and the millions who have been damaged in some way by the war. All of this has given me the opportunity to look at the “last half” of the lives of these men as well as the last half of my own life.  Truly looking at this last half takes an honest look at what has happened, what is happening, and what might happen in life.

Honestly looking at the future

The theme with all these men is this: what can I do in the future that will be meaningful? Perhaps, what can I do that will be of lasting value? Perhaps also, what can I do that will be of value to the world? Unfortunately, but understandably, these men want to bring all the past into the future. They want to bring along all the good of the past, leave all the bad, and have more good in the future. You can’t have all three, and this fact is difficult for every one of these men. Simply put, you can’t bring all the past into the future.

Examples:

  • One man wants to stay married even though his wife says that she doesn’t like him, never has, and she is seemingly very happy without him
  • One man wants to continue to make $100,000 but in a new profession that will barely give him half of that amount
  • One man wants to find a way to continue to love his former wife in the same way he always has even though his current female relationship is far superior to his former marriage
  • One man wants to stay living with his wife primarily so he can have an “intact family” even though he doesn’t love her, and possibly never has
  • One man wants to have some kind of magic that will eliminate the debt that he has acquired over many years
  • One man wants to get back with the woman who just might have the most important woman in his life even though she says that is impossible
  • One man wants to continue to engage in ideational figuring out new ways of looking at life although he never seems to be able to put anything to real practice.
  • One man wants to be able to drink as much as he always had even though his drinking has certainly damaged his marriage and possibly his life
  • Another man wants to continue to smoke pot as a primary means of coping with life
  • Many men want the people in their lives to understand the psychological principles that they have learned without these people going through the rigors of years of therapy that they have gone through

Slowly and painfully, men often have to learn to let go of much of the past, many sad and challenging things like mistakes of relationships, school, and work. Just as often men have to let go of the good things that were a part of the “first half of their lives” because these good things are no longer available. The poem Desiderata said it this way: take kindly the counsel of years gracefully surrendering the things of youth.” But what do we need to surrender? And what can I expect positively out of a good perspective of the second half of life?

Surrendering and expecting

If I am to truly face the future and seek to find meaning and make meaning in life, I have to give up so much of what “the first half” of life has been. Then I need to focus on what I can do, how I do it, and why I do it.

Primarily, what has to be surrendered is fear, namely:

  • Fear of mistakes
  • Fear of failure
  • Fear of rejection
  • Fear of correction
  • Fear of being alone
  • Fear of being ill or dying
  • Any other fear

Secondly, you have to surrender some expectations:

  • Of visible success
  • Of appreciation
  • Of recognition
  • Of money

But you can expect

  • An increasing realization that you are doing something for you, for other people, and for the world all at the same time
  • Being more truthful, first to yourself, and then to others
  • Continuing to get better at thinking, feeling, and doing
  • Finding people who share your interest in doing something meaningful
  • The freedom that a fear-free life gives you
  • Success in doing something meaningful
  • A lasting purpose in the days, years, or decades you have to live
  • Recognition of your work by some people

There are many people, at least so it seems, that do not need to look at the “last half” of life.

A good life in the past leading to a good life in the future

I know of several men who are quite pleased to be retired. One of them spends a good deal of time golfing, another a good deal of time water-skiing, with both of these activities being spent with other people. I can only surmise that there are many people who are snow birds in order to live their remaining lives in parts south, at least one in Costa Rica and many in Florida. I see Facebook posts by some of these men who are very content to philosophize, share pictures, tell stories, tell jokes, remind me of things in the 50’s, enjoy the spring flowers, and spend time with their grandchildren. I am happy for these men. Most of them have lived honorable, productive, and honest lives and now are using the fruits of their labor. While I appreciate their pleasant retirement, such is not my lot in life, so it seems. I look favorably at the past but look even more favorably at the present and the future.

Personal

So, what, you may ask, is my second half of life? The answer, quite simply, is teaching, namely teaching people what I have learned over these 77 years of life, and more specifically what I have learned over the 55 years of my professional career. The forms that this “teaching” seem to be taking is in writing, conducting seminars, and doing meaningful therapy. I have finished with several elements of therapy that constituted as much as half of my working years, namely psychotherapy with children, seeing people who are chronically ill, whether with mental illness or physical illness, doing evaluations to determine if someone is “disabled,” and very possibly severely limiting evaluations in general. My focus now, aside from reading, writing, and teaching, is to work with people in therapy who are truly ready to enter the second half of their lives. There are many people who think about such things, feel about such things, and dream about such things, but I think I can be of more value to the world helping people who are willing to step out of the past, into the present, and towards the future. This is somewhat of a painful change that I have been making in my own “second half” of life, but it yet seems right to do.

Dealing Effectively with Challenges: The Four A’s

Ron Johnson Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

 

We can effectively meet the challenges of the day, of the year, or of one’s life. Likewise, there are four ineffective ways of facing the challenges of life, which are

  • Avoidance
  • Anxiety
  • Anger
  • Accommodation

 

I will briefly describe each of these ways that people frequently deal with the challenges they face in their daily lives and then offer another alternative to facing such things. Before I engage in this process, allow me to remind you of what I previously called “the war” that is occurring in America and all of the rest of the world.

The challenges of “The War”

We are all in the midst of the “war” as I called it in a previous blog, namely the biological, political, and cultural challenges that together have made life quite difficult. My life certainly is a whole lot better than it is for most people, but I have found it “challenging” to deal with:

  • Finding a balance of reason and necessity with Covid, i.e. mask-wearing, social distancing, and the strong differences of opinion about such things
  • Hearing a daily report of a dear cousin who was functionally dying in a hospital in Minneapolis where she lives. Indeed, she was in the ICU for 38 days along with her husband, and then for a period of time, also her son. Her daughter-in-law also contracted Covid. The “dying” has put her five children in a difficult place for sure, although there was a joyful end to this saga, if we can use this term, when Sue and her husband died within minutes of each other “holding hands as they went to heaven” given that the hospital graciously put then in the same room as they faded.
  • So, Deb and I took another Covid test with the results of my being negative (again, having taken a test a month ago), but Deb being “positive.” It seems likely that I got Covid, gave it to her, and then got better, now being negative. (We both have now tested “negative” twice since this initial positive test for Deb.
  • The many challenges of the people I see hourly in my office, all of whom are suffering from severe emotional distress now being complicated by “the war.” This requires me to give my best knowing that my best is often insufficient.
  • Staying vigilant with my own physical and emotional health without paranoia or distress

Challenges that I meet

You can see that these challenges are not so severe nor life-threatening or terribly distressing compared to many other people whom I see in my office who suffer:

  • Spouse unpredictably asking for a divorce (one after 7 years and one after 30 years)
  • Man who has never grown up, now feeling like a 3-year old in a 38-year old body
  • Man, while a person of fine character, intelligence, and deep faith suffering from a severe depression that won’t seem to abate (despite my best efforts…and his)
  • Child who lives in a truly dysfunctional (not a word that I cherish, but there is no better word) family composed, again, of parents who are bright and good people. How do I help a 14-year old find her way in life when she, seemingly, is the most adult-like in the family of four?
  • The many people who come to me for neuropsychological evaluations seeking some kind of “answer” to their life’s dilemmas, often looking for a “diagnosis” that will make sense of why life does not make sense to them.

The challenges that people face may include personal (like depression), interpersonal (like deteriorating marriages), vocational (being unemployed, underemployed, or mal-employed), financial, or medical. And there are the challenges of meeting one’s daily needs, perhaps caring for an old house, looking for a new house, or getting the TV, Internet, or cable fixed. There is no end to the kind of challenges people meet, usually daily, sometimes multiple times a day. I meet people every day of my working day who functionally say, “I wish I weren’t alive” in various forms, like, “I wish the Lord would just take me home;” “I can’t bear this anymore,” “I don’t see the point of living,” or perhaps just, “I have no interest in anything.” When people have challenges, however difficult they are, they often turn to one of the following:

Avoidance

This is something like, “If I just ignore it, it will go away,” or perhaps, “If I ignore the problem, I won’t feel the burden of facing it.” Avoidance, like all malfunctional ways of dealing with difficulties is learned early in childhood and then reinforced throughout adolescence and into adulthood. People learn to avoid. Indeed, some challenges actually need to be avoided, if by avoiding we mean understanding the challenge but knowing that the challenge has to be endured for a bit. More often, however, avoidance lasts for days or years, which only makes doing something increasingly impossible.

Anxiety

Deb and I wrote about anxiety extensively in our Good Grief book noting, “Anxiety is delusional.” Let me explain. When I worry about something, I set up a dynamic between my mind, which thinks and feels, and my brain, which does neither of these things. Anxiety, and its cognates of worry, fretting, and nervousness, is delusional because it does absolutely nothing for the future. There is never any need for any kind of anxiety. For that matter, there is almost never any need for any kind of fear. When the brain “hears” your concern about some potential danger in the future, the brain immediately goes into preventive mode by raising your level of awareness, which we call hypervigilance. The brain thinks “the lion is coming over the hill and you need to be aware of the potential lion threat. The brain does this because the brain doesn’t have a sense of future. Any kind of “worry” that you might have translates into the brain’s belief about the lion coming. As you certainly know, “the war” has created massive amounts of anxiety, which is only aggravated by politicians who stir up unnecessary hypervigilance by outlandish claims or threats. By the way, anxiety tends to be a young woman’s tendency, and an older man’s tendency.

Anger

Anger is also delusional. As anxiety is delusional because it is a function that seemingly can change the future, anger is delusional because you think you can change the past. Of course, you can’t change the past, but the brain doesn’t know that the past exists any more than it knows about the future. The brain churns up anger because, again, the brain thinks (figuratively) that “the lion is coming over the hill” so you need to get prepared to fight. The brain doesn’t know that you are angry at something that happened to you, something that someone did to you, or something that you did to yourself. Anger is common for young men and for older women.

Accommodation

Accommodations are those things that we do that make us feel better. Nothing wrong with feeling better, but when we accommodate to a challenge, we tend to avoid facing the challenge head on. Accommodations are all potentially addictive. Addictions, again, are a brain function, not so much a mind action. The brain has two operations (I spoke of this in a blog some time ago): pleasure and safety. So when you are not happy in some way, perhaps thinking of something that is happening, has happen, or might happen, your brain acts like this thing is happening in the present. Then the brain sort of “remembers” something that makes you feel good, and “tells” you to go to this thing. (I wrote a blog on the “go to” tendencies we all have.) These tendencies are not bad in themselves, but the brain doesn’t know the damage some kind of excess can do to one’s body, social life, or emotional life. We identify accommodations (or addictions) as chemical or behavioral. Chemical additions are primarily eating, alcohol, or drugs, while behavioral addictions include gambling, sexual activity, buying, hoarding, working, and playing. Note that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these accommodations, and in fact, we have to do some of these things, like eating and buying. Some activity (chemical or behavioral) as a relieving or enhancing activity, becomes a habit, and then may move into being more of an accommodation.

So what can be done to avoid the tendencies towards avoidance, anxiety, anger, and accommodation? There are four other “A’s” that might work: Awareness, Acceptance, Adaptation, and Adjustment.

Awareness

Grand therapist, Fritz Perls, once said, “Awareness is curative.” We don’t think awareness is curative for two reasons, the first being that we don’t seek to “cure” people from what ails them, but help them mature emotionally, intellectually, ethically, and practically. Secondly, we think that awareness is the first step, but not sufficient for achieving personal maturity.

Awareness is quite simply and quite basically being aware of what one feels. Our “feeling book” makes this point foundationally, namely that people need to know what the feel before they do anything else, noting that “feelings” are so profound, so spiritual, so deep within our souls that we can’t define them. It is first necessary to be aware of the challenge you are facing, but it is then much more important to know your emotional reaction to the challenge, and in doing so avoid the tendencies to go to anxiety or anger. However, being aware is not enough.  We must accept.

Acceptance

This might be the hardest thing to do emotionally because it is always hard to accept “feelings” that may seem wrong, silly, irrational, or unnecessary. To accept the existence of a challenge is not to like it, not to approve of it. You don’t approve of someone firing you from your job, but you can accept it as a fact. Equally importantly, one needs to accept how one feels, which is not to agree with these feelings, much less the feeling words we speak. Acceptance of one’s feelings is not approval, quoting from another wise therapist (Dick Olney), but rather seeing what is. The difficulty with acceptance is to start with the physical feeling that is always first in feeling awareness, allow this feeling to migrate into emotions (the second process of experiencing feelings, thinking clearly (once the emotions have past), and then taking action. Most people have trouble with the words that are attached to feelings, which are always approximate and sometimes quite outrageous. To accept is to be, not to agree with, not to speak, not to think, and most truly not to act. It is only when people have been able to accept what they feel that they can move on to adaptation.

Adaptation

Adaptation is a Jungian term that I learned from yet another grand therapist (colleague, Boris Matthews). To adapt is to find a way to see what is and find a way to adapt to it. We have had to adapt to Covid most recently, which has been a challenge. I find it even harder to adapt to the political wrangling that have been going on over this past six months. To adapt is essentially to be sad, first, and then allow the sadness to run its course so that one can find a way to move beyond awareness and acceptance to a place where one is not bothered, much less stressed, by whatever challenge is in one’s life. To adapt to losing the use of his entire lower body, like a friend of mine has had to do, is not to like it, not to change it, but to be sad so that he can find a way to have a life ahead. Failure to adapt to challenges is usually where some kind of accommodation and addiction occurs, which are always ways to avoid being aware, accepting, and adapting to some tragedy or situation that you don’t like. However important adaptation is in life, it is not enough because you have to do something. You have to adjust your life in some way.

Adjustment

When I am with my friend who has lost the use of most of his body, if often think of the many people who have lost some or most of the use of their bodies and yet have found ways to have meaningful lives. He has not yet found a way to adapt to the lack of the use of most of his body, particularly challenging because he is a tradesman by profession. Most people, however, don’t have to adjust to such profound losses or other such terrible losses like the 12 people I know who have lost children. The challenging situations that most people meet are very often simpler, like finding a way to deal with the slow driver in front of you on the beltline, the misstatement you made or was made to you, the mistake you made or someone made with you. Adjustment to such challenges requires that you something, which is particularly hard when it is much easier to accommodate in some way. Some people “just do something,” which is often premature, but not truly an adjustment, while other people avoid doing anything at all because doing something seems so hard and so imperfect. Doers do things in a hurry to avoid the loss while dreamers avoiding doing to avoid potential loss.

Summary

Adjustments can be made in the following situations:

  • Loss, whether of person, place, or product:
  • Challenge by an external source, say spouse, friend, or employer
  • Mistake or misstep you have taken
  • Personal unhappiness with one’s life
  • Unhappiness with one’s social or intimate life
  • The current political assaults that we hear every day
  • The deaths and dangers of Covid that we hear every day
  • The seemingly overwhelming task of getting things done
  • The lack of anything to do that is meaningful

Adjustments to these and others is always the same: Awareness (of feelings), Acceptance (of feelings), Adaptation (to something that requires change), and Adjustment (by changing something)