Development

Feeling Safe in the World

Ron Johnson Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, love, mindfulness, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

The world has seemed a whole lot less safe recently. This increased amount of fear has led to a good deal of anxiety. Lack of safety has at least been caused by the Covid pandemic for more than two years but also by the cultural challenges that the Black Lives Matter movement have brought to America, and the political dissention that has been an increasing element for the last 25 years. Add to these external elements causing fear and ultimately anxiety there are some even more significant internal elements that have only been exacerbated by the externally-caused fears. “Internal” elements are those fears and anxieties that are within ourselves. In this blog I want to discuss how most people deal with these feelings and how we might be able to do a bit better. I will discuss the nature of external factors, the nature of internal factors, the nature of fear, and the nature of anxiety, these elements followed by the ways people tend to cope with fear and a few suggestions as to how to reduce anxiety and fear to zero.

The nature of external fears

This is the easier part of this essay. External fears are like those I just discussed: cultural, political, and biological, Now, of course, we have the fears associated with Putin’s assault on Ukraine and his saber-rattling suggesting that he might use nuclear weapons causing untold destruction. In all of these external elements there is a feeling of helplessness. This feeling of helplessness is central to any kind of fear, but with these external factors, the fear is that something will happen to me over which I have no control whatsoever. What can I do about Putin? What can I do about the destruction of the Black Lives Matter? What can I do about the pandemic that may hit me despite the fact that I have been thrice vaccinated? What can I do about Trump and company if I am a Democrat or the alleged Marxist agenda of the Democrats if I am a Republican? It seems that there is not much I can do with any of these external elements that cause fear, but we will discuss how we can actually reduce fear to zero in these circumstances however impossible and outrageous that seems.

The nature of internal fears

These fears, usually coming in the form of anxiety, are much more difficult to examine. Unfortunately (in my opinion), there has been an increasing use of the term anxiety and its cognates worry and fretting over the recent years. People find some kind of solace in saying that they “have” anxiety, or for that matter “have” depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, a learning disability, alcoholism, or autism. This orientation towards “having” something makes people fear that “something” inside of them is not working and they have no control over this something. Thus, again we see the feeling of no control over something, but this something is not external but internal, which makes the fear and anxiety worse because it is coming from inside. However challenging it is to feel helpless with political intrigue, biological invasion, or physical damage, it is much worse to feel that people have no control over what is happening inside of them. You can completely conquer these internal fears and reduce them to zero.

The nature of fear

This is the crux of the problem with fear and anxiety. Just what is the nature of fear and how can we understand it if we are ever able to “reduce it to zero”: in our lives? Fear is absolutely the most basic emotion that we have as humans. I look at fear from a developmental perspective, namely how fear originates in the human organism, what its normal purpose, and how it should ideally become less and less important as life progresses. Sadly, sometimes as people get older, the exact opposite happens: they experience more anxiety. Importantly, fear is the basic emotion we have because it is in our psychological/neurological structures to keep us alive. There are four basic emotions: fear, joy, anger, and sadness, all of which come to us developmentally, i.e. as we move from infancy onward. Ideally, a child of six should have at his/her disposal all of these emotions as they are necessary, but this same (ideal) child should have much less fear that he/she has had in earlier years. Again ideally, a child should move more into joy, anger, and ultimately into sadness and slowly move away from fear. More often than not, this fails to happen. Let’s look at the natural development of emotions in a young child:

  • The first year of life is where the predominant emotion, often the only emotion, is fear. This natural experience of infancy keeps the infant alive. Infants cry in infancy because they are afraid. Why are they afraid? An infant is truly helpless. She can’t feed herself or change her diapers. So when she feels “something” inside that feels dangerous, she cries. This “something”: is probably hunger, but it could also be some kind of difficulty breathing. The key in understanding fear is to understand that fear keeps us alive, especially in infancy. We cry, we get some kind of attention that we feels is central to living. The infant doesn’t know that she is “hungry” because all she knows is that something is “not right” in her body and she feels helpless. While an infant of one year old may experiment with rudiments of joy, anger, and sadness, these are not the most of what an infant feels. Rather, she feels fear or no emotion at all.
  • The second year of life is when we learn of the second basic human emotion: joy. The 1-2 year old feels joy because of several reasons including being fed properly and being changed from a wet diaper. More importantly, this second year of life is a time when things have exploded because now the infant can walk and talk, and with those elements now beginning to have their place in his life, he can attach to things. These “things” include people, physical objects, and possibilities. He now sees it possible to crawl or walk across the floor. He can see that it is fun to pull out all the tissues from the tissue box. He can talk, he can scream, he can sing, and he can dance. What is the essence of all these things: experiencing joy. What is joy? It is the emotion associated with loving something. The infant enjoys speaking or yelling, crawling or walking, jumping or sitting, all of these in the form of experiencing the wider world. When an infant grows beyond the first year of life, his world has exploded 100-fold from the confines of a crib or a diaper-changing table. The joy that is central, or should be central, in this part of infancy, is the result of the child beginning the rudiments of love, whether of people, things, or perhaps just possibilities and dreams.
  • You have heard of the “terrible twos,” meaning that a two-year old is easily and frequently angered. Actually, the real “terrible” years are not so much the one-year old or two-year old but a child who is three, four, or five. These are the real challenging years both for parents and for the developing child. Why is the toddler (ages 2-5) so often angry? Because she had her first year of life when she had pretty much everything she wanted, then into the second year where she got most of what she wanted, perhaps with a few restrictions. There is nothing an infant in a cradle can really do that is dangerous, and there is not too much a one-year old can do that is dangerous. However, there is a lot that a 4-year old can do that is either dangerous or obstructive in life someway. So what happens? The 4-year old is limited…and limited and limited. And that same child is angry about it. “Why is the world so bad now when it was so good before,” a 4-year old might think not knowing that he now gets little of what he wants compared to the years when he got almost all of what he wanted (first year) or most of what he wanted (second year of life). So these years are very crucial because the task for this child and his parents is to find a way into understanding that you can’t get most of what you want, and ultimately understand that it is not good for you to have most of what you want. But a 4-year doesn’t have this perspective, so he is angry “all the time” because you are limiting him “all the time.” This time of life, however, is central for what we call character development, but this is beyond the scope of this essay.
  • If a child gets through these first three stages of life, she could have some grasp of the necessity of fear for survival, joy for having, and anger for not having. This brings the child to the most important emotion in the human being: sadness. Deb and I wrote The Positive Power of Sadness a few years ago, which explains and underscores our belief that this is the most important emotion we can have, namely because whatever we love, be it person, place, thing, or idea, we most surely will lost it. So, we need to be good at grieving, being sad, being disappointed, and hurt because such things come every day. Unfortunately, most people get stuck in one of the previous stages so they fail to know the centrality of sadness and go to fear, anger, or (artificial) joy.

The nature of anxiety

Anxiety is not exactly fear but it is fear-based. Anxiety is actually a brain function. Here, I distinguish between the brain and the mind, the brain being biological and the mind being…well, something else. There is a raging debate, as there has been for centuries, as to whether there is even something called the mind as some scientists believe there is no such thing, only a brain. I won’t debate that subject at this point except to suggest that brain and mind are substantially different, the mind using the brain for cognition, emotion, and physical activity. Importantly, the brain doesn’t know anything but survival and pleasure, so it’s entire function is to maintain safety and enhance pleasure. Anxiety is actually an increase in heartbeat and breathing, which is called vigilance, or sometimes hypervigilance. The brain churns up breathing and heartrate when the brain determines that you need to be vigilant for some reason, namely in the face of danger. That’s all fine and good except the brain does not distinguish the past, present, and future. So when you are remember some dangerous situation that occurred in your past or imagine some dangerous situation in the future, your brain kicks into gear the hormone cortisol, which increases breathing and blood flow as well as hypervigilance.  If that were all there was to it, we would rarely feel anxious, but the fears we have, especially about the future are interpreted by the brain as you being in some immediate danger. Think about an exam that might be a challenge, a flight that might be a challenge, a meeting with someone that might be a challenge. In all of these circumstances the brain kicks up cortisol and increases breathing and heart rate to protect you because the brain determines that there is immediate danger. If you could think of something in the future (or in some cases the past) without any kind of fear, you brain would help you figure out what you should do (or could have done). But if you have the slightest fear of failure or loss, the brain goes into hyper drive. Simply stated, anxiety is a brain problem. The brain is doing its job: protecting you and preparing you for the lion coming over the hill. The brain doesn’t know the difference between the figurative lion and the possible exam when you are experiencing some kind of fear. It just sees you in danger and seemingly in need of hypervigilance.

Ways people cope with fear

Consider that fear erupts in someone when the environment is felt to be unsafe, whether this is in the present or in the future (and also rarely in the past). Fear is not bad. Fear is meant to be a natural emotion that erupts when some unexpected event occurs that appears to be dangerous. If that is the case, the brain does its job by protecting you from the danger by creating vigilance (or hyper vigilance if the danger seems imminent.  I am not denigrating fear. I said at the start that it is the most basic emotion we have because if we didn’t have fear, we wouldn’t survive as adults, and we most certainly wouldn’t have survived as infants. The problem isn’t with real danger or immediate danger. The problem is with perceived danger, which is where all anxiety comes from. Recall that the brain does not distinguish future danger from present danger because it doesn’t know that the future exists: all is in the present as far as the brain is concerned.

Let me bring you back to infancy where fear is the only, or at least the primary emotion that we have. The three ingredients that we need in infancy are, in order of importance: safety, nurturance, and comfort. By far the most important aspect of infancy is safety. If I’m not safe, I will likely die. Then we need nurturance (food) and comfort (physical touch). We can survive without nurturance for a few hours or even days. And we can actually survive without any physical touch whatever, although such a situation does some significant damage to the brain. What sometimes happens in infancy is that the infant gets too much nurturance or too much comfort and not enough times of fear, however odd that sounds. Overprotective parents often render too much of these last two ingredients, nurturance and comfort. A normally developing infant actually needs to be scared for a while before s/he is nurtured or comforted so the infant can feel that the environment is safe…ultimately. In other words the infant gets the message, usually after many hours and days of crying, that s/he does get comfort and nurturance and other care, like diaper-changing, but s/he doesn’t get it at the instant s/he wants it. Give an infant too much comfort and s/he will go through the rest of life seeking undue comfort. Give the infant too much nurturance, and s/he will think that s/he has to be nurtured all the time. There, of course, the opposite side of the coin, namely when the infant actually doesn’t get enough safety, nurturance, or comfort. When an infant is deprived of basic safety, s/he will then do the very same thing: seek undue comfort and nurturance in some way. In sum, the origin of anxiety and undue fear comes from infancy originally, and often from too much or too little of one of the basic ingredients: safety, nurturance, and comfort. This leads to all sorts of unfortunate coping that people do in the real world.

In this paradigm the basic element for which people “cope” is fear of some sort. Listen carefully to people who are stressed, frustrated, challenged, or worried, and you will hear the fear element. E.g. “I’m afraid that he will…,” “I don’t know what I’m going to do with…,” “I’m so frustrated with….because she…,” “What in the world will happen if….” While people saying these things indicate that they are “frustrated,” the real emotion they feel is fear, and this fear is one of helplessness in the face of some impending something. There is “good coping” that we will discuss in a moment, but presently let’s look at typical coping that people do. In a nutshell, they pass over the basic fear that an infant feels and go right into seeking the second and third ingredients of good parenting of an infant: nurturance and comfort. This doesn’t seem so bad on the surface. It doesn’t seem so bad to seek some kind of “support” in the form of some kind of “food” or some kind of human comfort. But when nurturance and comfort are sought in place of facing, feeling, and finishing basic fear, comfort and nurturance only assuage the fear; these things do not finish the fear. People “feel better” when they nurture themselves or find comfort in the arms, physically, emotionally, or cognitively. But they aren’t “better.” They just feel better…for the moment. And then things can easily turn to coping to a fault. I used this expression with a patient recently and he asked me what it meant. “To a fault” means doing something that is intrinsically good in itself but this something is used too much, so much often that this something encroaches on the rest of life.

Seeking comfort and nurturance to a fault actually leads to addiction. Addiction is also a brain-based phenomenon. Recall that the brain only knows safety first and pleasure second. So, if your brain has found that you “feel better” with some kind of nurturance or comfort, you will then continue to seek one or both of these things because your brain is trying to make you feel better. Your brain doesn’t know that if you do anything “to a fault,” you are on a dangerous path. A basic element of addiction is that the substance or behavior is increasingly sought after while at the same time giving less and less satisfaction and security. So, nurturance of some kind and comfort of some kind are first good, then not so good, and then actually bad for you. What is happening in all these circumstances is that you are actually led by craving of some sort but receiving comfort and nurturance less and less. An interesting study done by a neuropsychologist of my acquaintance found that the “craving” that addicts have is chemical, while the liking that addicts have is electrical. The stronger of these two elements is the craving. Most addicts will say that their looking forward to their addictive substance or behavior is much more attractive than their actually liking of it. I defer this discussion at this point but I did a blog on liking and wanting that you might read.

We will discuss what can be done profitably when one fears something, but for the moment allow me to discuss the typical coping/addictive things that people do. Note that in all of these behaviors and substances, people have some kind of short-lived pleasure at the cost of a lot of long-term distress. Addictions fall into two categories: behavior and chemical. They include the following:

  • Behavioral addictions:
    • Gambling
    • Screen time (computer, gaming, TV, Internet searching)
    • Sexual (promiscuity, excessive masturbation and pornography, fetishes)
    • Cognitive (excessive dreaming, imagination)
    • Emotional (excessive emotional expression; no emotional expression)
    • Playing (too much, not enough)
    • Working (too much, nor enough)
    • Sleeping (too much, not enough)
  • Chemical additions
    • Eating (too much, too little)
    • Stimulants (caffeine, nicotine, cocaine)
    • Depressants (alcohol, sedatives, marijuana)
    • Hallucinogens (LSD, mushrooms, etc.)

Note that all of these things, whether chemical or behavioral, are good in themselves, and some of them are essential, like eating, working, emotional, and cognitive. Recall, an addiction is something to a fault, but more revealing, an addiction is something that I do that begins to be life itself rather than enhancing life. Clearly, there is nothing wrong with eating but people who eat excessively, or fail to eat sufficiently, spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about food, eating, or avoiding eating. Then eating is an addiction. Recall that the brain has just two operations, namely safety and pleasure, so when you engage in an activity to a fault, the brain doesn’t know that this excessive activity has adverse effects on the rest of your life and your future. Your brain doesn’t know the rest of your life, much less the future.

The key in all of these behaviors is fear, namely how fear has come to dominate the person. A person who is anorexic fear-based. He can actually become delusional thinking that certain foods, too much of a food, or food itself is dangerous. Then the brain kicks in and protects the anorexic person from food, actually causing physical damage…in the future but not in the present. Fear always starts an addiction but only after there has been a good bit of joy. On the other side of addictive eating we have excessive eating. In this case the second element of the brain is activated: pleasure. I might really enjoy eating a large pizza, but if I eat three large pizzas every day, my joy will lesson, and more importantly, the brain will begin to feel that you are depriving yourself of joy, or worse yet, began to think (loosely speaking) that you are in danger if you don’t eat pizzas every day. If your brain is fear-based and fear-activated, you may be caught in a cycle of quick joy and long lasting unhappiness that can only be assuaged by eating more pizzas.

I have discussed addictions as a way of coping, but are all people inclined towards addictions? In a word, yes. If we cope with our fear by falling into some kind of personally damaging behavior, we are then addicted to it, whether this behavior is eating, sleeping, thinking, emoting or any of the other things noted above. I don’t wish to suggest that everyone is addicted, like in the sense of being a chronic alcoholic, but rather I am suggesting that most coping that people do fails to assuage the fear and find a way through it. So, what can be done to correct this pattern that is fear-based?

Successful dealing with harmful coping

Be sad. This is the only cure for fear. Let me explain. Recall that fear is the most basic emotion we have and that the purpose of fear is to keep us alive. Also remember that an infant needs safety first, nurturance second, and comfort third. When that infant fails to get enough safety for whatever reason, he then will seek nurturance and/or comfort. The groundwork for overcoming fear and its cognates, anxiety and worry, is in understanding this concept of fear, first that it is basic to human existence, second that it is necessary to sustain life. It is never helpful to see fear as something wrong, nor is it helpful to think of such things as anxiety as “something wrong” inside of me. You need to move your life from being fear-based to love-based, but in order to do that you will need to feel sad. What does this mean? How does feeling sad assuage fear and replace it with love. Deb and I dealt with this concept primarily in our Good Grief book and secondarily in I Want to Tell You How I Feel, where we discussed the fact that sadness is a “love problem,” meaning that if I am sad, I have lost something that I loved. Sadness is not depression or despair. It is the way your soul manages loss, and it is wholly a good thing. More importantly, it is not fear-based. In fact, you cannot be both afraid and sad, which is the key to understanding how to move your life forward from fear to love. Very importantly, fear does not end on its own. It stays the same, gets worse, or is repressed. Sadness ends. I may be sad for seconds or hours but sadness always ends if I allow myself to feel sad.

This is how sadness can replace fear: (1) Notice the fear that you have right now. Notice what you feel in your body that indicates that you are afraid (or anxious or worried). (2) Remind yourself that your brain is taking care of you because your brain believes that “there is a lion coming over the hill” or something just as dangerous. Your brain is doing its most basic job: keeping you alive. (3) Think of what you are afraid of losing. This might be girlfriend, job, tool, opportunity, or house. Consider how you might feel if you would lose this thing. Note that you will begin to feel sad. (4) Allow yourself to feel sad about what you might lose. Note that when you are thinking, just imagining that you might lose this something that you love in the future, you start to feel sad in the present. (5) Let this sadness run its course. (6) Notice that you feels less afraid or anxiety, perhaps not afraid at all. Instead, you feel sad. We call this anticipatory sorrow. Note further that you are now feeling the love you have for this something, whether girlfriend, job, property, or idea. You have replace fear with sadness. Fear is about danger. Sadness is about love. You’ll probably need a good therapist to guide you through this process. Later, you can do it on your own.

You can do the same procedure with something that you have lost in the past if you follow the same path: remember what you had, remember what you lost, and remember how difficult it was for you to having lost this something. Your fear of losing something in the future might well have to do with something in the past. A couple of days ago I dealt with a young man who came to see me because of chronic anxiety. He has been afraid all his life, namely that his father would die for some unknown reason. As we looked at his past life, which had been unduly attached to his father and afraid of losing his father, that he had not ever lived a day without this undue fear. The more we looked at this loss of 24 years of life in fear, the sadder he became. The more he felt sad about this profound loss, the less he felt fear and anxiety. I asked him how much fear he had. He said, “None”…while he was crying for having lost so much of life to fear. He found it helpful to stop using “anxiety” that he “has” but the feeling, “I do not feel safe in the world” added with the statement, “The world is safe”. Talking about his experience with anxiety this way moved him away from something that he has to something that he feels.

The Apostle Paul said, “Perfect love cast out fear” among other things having to do with loving more than fearing. Likewise, Buddha said similar things as have many philosophers over the years. But finding “perfect love” is a life challenge. It is better to seek perfect love, even though we know that we will never have it, than it is to worry about not having something that we love.

Fear less; love more. Along the way feel occasionally sad. Sadness always ends.

Are All Men Selfish?

Ron Johnson appreciation, Children, communication, Connection, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, men's issues, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

What an outrageous question, right? This is just as outrageous as my previous blog about “women never admit that they’re wrong.” This equally outrageous statement about men is not made in jest because men are frequently accused of being selfish, particularly by the women in their lives. I think there is something very important in this question because there is a certain truth to the statement that all men are selfish, or at least look selfish. We will examine several things in this blog, not the least of which are related to my last blog about women seemingly having a difficult time admitting that they’re wrong. Let’s examine what “selfish” means, especially as it compares to narcissism. We will look at the positive aspect of selfishness, the negative aspect of it, and the very opposite of selfishness, selflessness, which can be good and not so good. Then let’s look at how men operate, at least for the most part, that makes them look selfish and act selfish.

What is selfishness?

This is an unfortunate word that has creeped into the English vocabulary over the recent decades, perhaps centuries. On the surface selfish means one is oriented towards oneself. So, at least at this level, there isn’t anything particularly wrong with being selfish if it means that he (or she; but let’s stay with “he” for now) is aware of himself and looks at the world as a person who is independent from everyone else. John Donne said, “Every man is an island to himself” 400 years ago, but Donne’s intent was to deal with the isolation that so many people feel. So, we could say that there is at least some value in being selfish while there is a danger. This will be the main point I wish to convey in this essay. In other words, you need to know who you are in order to do anything in the world.

This “knowing who you are” ideally coms early in life, starting about age two but blossoming during the years 2-5 or 6. These toddler and early childhood years when ideally the person has received the security, nurturance, and comfort one needs during the first year or two of life, and is now ready to engage in the social world. The heart of “self” as we discuss it in psychology is having a sense of security that can only come from a secure environment. So, if the infant has received these basic three elements (security, nurturance, and comfort), s/he will be able to then bridge safely and confidently into the world. And this is very important because the rest of the world will not provide these three basic elements. The individual needs to find a way to find his or her (now let’s just go with “his”) way in life by his own wits. This is the positive aspect of “selfishness,” i.e. knowing who you are and going through the rigors of the toddler/early childhood years when you still think that you should have everything you want. You don’t know that at age, say, four, your wants have accelerated 100-fold while your needs have stayed the same: security, nurturance, and comfort. During infancy your wants were quite simple as they were essentially needs, i.e. food and safety. So the positive essence of selfishness is having sense of self, where I provide most of my security, nurturance, and comfort. I look out to not fall off a cliff or run in front of a car, I feed myself, and I take care of myself for the most part. I should not need the same amount of comfort as a 4-year old that I needed as a one-year old. But what happens when I don’t get my infantile needs met? I remain “self-less.”

The two aspects of selflessness

Unfortunately, many people do not adequately receive these three basic elements in infancy and are not prepared to engage the world that does not care for them as their parents did…or should have done. When this happens, the individual (we’re talking mostly about men, so let’s use the masculine pronoun from here on) does not have the groundwork to enter the years 2-6 where he needs to find himself, be himself, and exert himself in order to make it in the world. If the person does not get a foundation in infancy, particularly of safety, nurturance, and comfort, he will not be ready for the journey that begins in these early childhood years and never ends. Such a person will then be seeking these basic infantile needs from other people, or perhaps by some kind of addictive substance or behavior to give him a sense of self. Chemical addictions give the man an artificial sense of self as he finds a chemical way to feel safe and productive. Behavioral addictions do the same thing because they give the man a sense of purpose: gamble (and hopefully make a million dollars) or work all the time, and hence give the man a sense of safety, eat excessively (and serve the need for nurturance), or engage in some form of sexual addiction (and give the man a sense of comfort). All of these addictions are attempts to find a sense of self because the man didn’t have an adequate sense of self when he was four.

The other aspect of selflessness is what we normally think of with the term: a tendency to take care of others and serve the world. People who do, indeed, focus their lives on service can be people who have a good sense of self, so good, in fact that they forget about themselves in their charitable work. People who are truly generous are people who have a good sense of self, so good that they are able to spend hours or dollars without needing or seeking any kind of reward beyond the satisfaction and pleasure of taking care of people or the world in some way. My first therapist and life’s mentor, Dr. Vernon Grounds, was such a person. He had a very solid sense of self, so solid that he didn’t have to prove himself to anyone and could spend 18 hours a day caring for people like me and other students and faculty in the seminary where he was president and professor.

These are two distinct kinds of selflessness but they can seem to appear together, which actually never happens. Many people who are apparently quite generous and positively selfless are seeking approval and attention. They have not found the intrinsic value of giving and the satisfaction of improving the world in some way. Many good men work too much and give too much because they are unable to say “no” to the needs of the world, often the seeming needs of people in their lives. True positive selflessness is demonstrated by the man who “let his nay be nay and his aye be aye.” In other words, the man who can say no just as easily as he can say yes. Many men struggle with this.

Selfishness and narcissism

Deb and I wrote a chapter in a book a few years back where we unpacked the word narcissism. Unfortunately, in contemporary society, this term has been used to a fault and without a real understanding of what the word narcissism means and what narcissism comes from. In our paper we proposed that there is a natural narcissism and an extensive of natural narcissism into adult life. On the surface narcissism seems to suggest that the individual is selfish, i.e. cares only about himself and thinks only about his own needs and wants. There is some truth to this with people who we might dare to call narcissistic, but there is great danger in using this word without knowing what natural narcissism is.

Natural narcissism, or childhood narcissism is what we have been discussing in the 2-6 year old time of life where I have the opportunity to develop a sense of self so that I can effectively engage the world. So, the 4-year old is “narcissistic” because he is looking to get his needs and wants met (even though he doesn’t really distinguish wants and needs). Then he meets some kind of resistance or limitation, puts up a fuss, and finds a way to get around the limitation, or hopefully adjust to the limits of life. This finding and fighting limits during these early childhood years is where most people fail in personal development. They either continue to fight so much that the world around them (usually parents) give into him, go their own way and trust no one, or they give up trying and find ways to accommodate to what everyone wants of them. Ideally, the boy finds a way to accept some limits and challenge others in such a way that he learns that he can have want he needs but not necessarily what he wants. What generates out of this crucial time of life is that the individual develops a sense of self from which he can engage the world successfully. When the boy has been indulged with getting too much of what he wants, he will continue to retain the natural narcissism of childhood into adulthood. If he has not been given enough freedom and encouragement together with appropriate limitations, he will also retain a narcissistic view of life but hold onto the belief that he needs to find the right place, people, and parental substitutes to give him what he wants. These are two different forms of narcissism in adult life, one “selfish” (I get what I want by demand), and one “selfless” (I’ll never get what I want so I have to depend on others to give it to me).

The bottom line is that adult narcissism is not selfishness so much as it is a lack of self, namely a self that knows that he can get what he needs, mostly by his own hands, but he can’t get most of what he wants because we all, quite simply, want more than we can have. These are the two holes that so many people fall into: I have a right to get what I want all the time or I have to find people to give me what I want. Most men tend to fall into the former group. Most women tend to fall into the second group. Both forms of narcissism are dead ends in life. But before we end this diatribe on selfishness, let’s look at another aspect of men’s apparent selfishness that has more to do with their independent nature…to a fault.

Independence to a fault

There is an interesting passage in Genesis, chapter 3 where God speaks to the metaphorical characters Adam and Eve after they have discovered the difference between good and evil when they ate the forbidden fruit from one tree. God said that the man would “work by the sweat of his brow,” in other words working hard. God said to the woman that she “would look to the man.” We dealt a bit with the “looking to the man” with women in our last blog. Notably, in this same chapter God said that he kept them from eating from the Tree of Life. We might conjecture that had Adam and Eve been more obedient to the limits (of childhood?), that they would have matured into Life more successfully. Regardless as to whether you believe this story as fact or myth, or disbelieve its value altogether, it does provide an interesting view of what a male needs to do in life: work. Carol Gilligan in a marvelous piece of psychological literature suggested that women are more naturally “communal” while men are more naturally “agenic.” This means that men might be more inclined to do their own thing while women being more inclined to do something with someone else, often with the man. Some biblical theologians have suggested that in Genesis 1, where Adam and Eve are created together, both worked side by side and both were communal, but in Chapter 3 these dimensions of humankind were separated. Let’s leave the Bible and go into how men actually operate with this work thing.

I propose that it is more natural for men to be independent and women to be more communal. Note that I do not suggest that women are the opposite of independent, i.e. dependent, but rather that they are more communal. We discussed the value and angers of communality in the previous blog, namely women tending to tell men what to do in an attempt to find communality. But the men’s side of the phenomenon here is their tendency to be independent to a fault, i.e. do what they want without regard for the other people in their lives, especially the women in their lives. Let me give you some examples.

Jack is an independent guy. He, like most of the men who come to my office, came with the figurative “female handprint in his back,” namely because his wife thought that he had some kind of problem. I talked about Jack’s wife in my last blog, but here I want to talk about Jack. He has been a successful tradesman and businessman for many years and has been in various businesses over time largely because he works hard and he works smart. Unfortunately for Julia, his wife, she has not always been a part of his business decisions and directions. He has, simply stated, gone on his merry way doing what he has thought is the right thing to do. And he has done quite well as he has looked at the business landscape. The difficulty with Jack, as he relates to Junie, is not his work or his decisions, but he going on with it on his own. Nothing wrong with doing things that seem right to you, but if you’re in a marriage where your wife wants to be a part of your life, you might want to converse with her about what you’re planning to do. This just doesn’t occur to Jack. Hence, his wife sees him as “selfish,” or worse yet narcissistic. There is a lot of truth her allegation but I have to be very careful with dealing with Jack’s independence because he has taken care of himself all of his life and has never really trusted anyone.

Sam is quite like Jack, i.e. independent to a fault. A physician, he has also chosen many directions in life, some having to do with his profession, some having to do with his philosophical and theological orientation to the world. He has spent thousands of dollars, much of it unwisely, investing in one thing or another but hasn’t consulted with his wife about these decisions. She sees him as selfish and narcissistic. Like Jack, he does not have a good sense of self and has, indeed, been independent because he needed to be that way to survive the shaming father in his life. Unfortunately, now he has also suffered the shaming of his wife who doesn’t know any way of dealing with the fact that he doesn’t consult her on his decisions.

Jack and Sam are representations of many men who have this biblical directive, “work by the sweat of your brow” without knowing that they are doing it. It just doesn’t occur to men who are exceedingly independent that there is a danger of going it alone. There is nothing wrong with independence, just as there is nothing wrong with communality, but there are dangers in both.

Dealing with men’s selfishness

  • Point one: value your orientation to life as an independent entity. You are good at doing your own thing and good at taking responsibility for your successes and failure
  • Realize that independence to a fault is selfishness, built on a lack of a clear sense of self. If you re in this category, you must find a way to get a better foundation of your self that is not only what you do and not only doing something on your own.
  • Admit to your significant other, or if you don’t have one, to a trusted friend, what you think, what you feel, and how you look at what you do in life. You will find that you don’t so much need advice as communality, i.e. a feeling of togetherness.
  • If you’re a person, say, a woman in this independent man’s life, tell him how you feel. Don’t tell how you feel about him. Tell him you miss him, enjoy his company, and enjoy hearing about what he does and where he’s going in life. He doesn’t know that he needs you, that he needs someone in life. Be careful to avoid telling him what he should do. Instead, tell him that you love him and want to be more a part of his thinking, feeling, and doing.  By the way, you got together with him in the first place because you liked his independence.

References

Gilligan, Carol. In a different voice.

Johnson and Brock, I want to tell you how I feel

Johnson, blog: “Why Good Men Lie”

Do Women Ever Admit That They’re Wrong?

Ron Johnson communication, Connection, Development, emotional maturity, family, Feelings, love, marital, men's issues, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

Do Women Ever Admit That They’re Wrong? What an outrageous question, it must seem. I would never have thought of asking such a question, which of course, is not a question, but rather a rhetorical question suggesting that women don’t ever admit that they’re wrong. This rhetorical question came to me from the even more outrageous statement underneath it when he frankly said, “I don’t think women ever admit that they’re wrong. It made me think, and the more I think, I have come to believe that there is some important truth in this statement, however outrageous it sounds. Let me discuss a number of things that might relate the thinking that many (certainly not all) women don’t seem to admit to ever being wrong. I want to start with a short essay on the whole concept of being “wrong.” I will discuss some cases that I have had over my years, some very recently, some many years ago where I encountered women who couldn’t seem to see, much less admit that they had done or said things wrong. Then I want to consider possible causes of this phenomenon, how men contribute or perhaps even cause this phenomenon, how women indeed know that they are wrong but fail to communicate that fact, and finally what men and women might be able to do in order to deal with this phenomenon.

What does “wrong” mean?

There are at several ways of understanding the simple word “wrong”:

  • Saying or doing something that you determine is wrong
  • Saying or doing something that someone else says is wrong
  • Doing the right thing despite there being a law against it (like Gandhi challenging British rule in India and MLJ challenging white rule in the South)
  • Doing something that is right one day and wrong the next or vice versa
  • Doing something that is wrong even though you didn’t know it was wrong
  • Doing something wrong because you don’t know how to do it right
  • And probably lots of other kinds of “wrong”

Examples

Most of my practice is devoted and dedicated to men, namely performing psychological evaluations with men, helping men understand and communicate themselves, and generally helping men be better men, fathers, husbands, workers, and friends. A modest amount of my work is with couples, some of whom I have seen off and on for years, some of whom I saw just once or twice, and some of whom I have more recently seen. Positions, ages, and other identifications of these people have been changed but I have endeavored to keep the essence true to the people as well as this outrageous consideration that women can’t admit that they’re wrong.

Jim is a pastor, which his wife, Patty, has been largely pastor’s wife with all the duties that that role requires, mother, housewife, and grandmother. These folks, both people of immaculate character, originally came to see me some 25 years ago, worked with Deb and me collectively and individually for a few years and then didn’t return until a couple of years ago. I won’t describe the marital challenges that were presented but theirs was not the terrible phenomenon of yelling and screaming that sadly so often typifies unhappy marriages. They had, however, not found a way to actually understand each other and deal with much that was truly in need of repair, both individually and then collectively. Importantly, Jim suffered a modest amount of sexual abuse as a child even though he came from a pretty good hard working farm family (the abuser was a coach and relative of the family). Patty came from a very repressive family where emotions were almost never spoken and her mother was probably schizophrenic as well as frequently threatening suicide. When Jim told Patty that he loved her during their later dating years, she said that she didn’t “understand why” he would say something, then saying that she had never heard such a statement from anyone. There has been much that we have discussed during our recent hours together but perhaps the most common talk has been that while this pastor has been in very significant pastoral and administrative positions, he has failed to keep Patty informed as to their consistently declining financial status to the point that they would file bankruptcy aside from his ethical/moral reaction against that action. He continued to feel terribly ashamed of what he has done over these years, much of which has been to afford Patty way too much liberty in spending, both on herself, traveling to be with her adult children, and giving to her children and grandchildren. So, as a result, much of our conversation has had to deal with Jim’s feeling bad about his lack of financial scrutiny and Patty’s disappointment in him. I once asked her if she felt any responsibility of the excessive expenditures, many of which came at her hands. Her response: “I left all the financial matters to Jim,” which meant that she took no responsibility for their financial dilemma. We might call this a bit of old school mother/housewife view of money, but it turned out to be more than that the more I questioned Patty. We might call this kind of “wrong” one where the person (Patty) didn’t actually know that it was irresponsible of her to spend money that they really didn’t have. Hearing Patty’s taking no responsibility knowing how much money they had in the bank, I asked her if she could tell me of any time where she had been wrong. To my immense surprise, she said that she couldn’t think of such a time. I heard, “Of course, I know that I am a sinner,” but this was soon qualified when I asked her if she could actually think of a “sin” that she had committed. She couldn’t think of one. This still amazes me, but I know that Patty worked diligently and successfully not only keeping all her feelings to herself but being carefully guarded on “not doing anything wrong” when she was growing up so as not to disturb her mother.

This might seem like an extreme case, but it is not. I have often found that women can admit to “not being imperfect and making mistakes” on the one hand but not being able to admit to anything specific that they said or do that was untoward.

Jan and Sam came to me recently, but more accurately, Jan came to me voluntarily and Sam came to me with the proverbial female hand in his back as he entered my office. Jan’s complaint was that Sam simply did a lot of things without her knowledge, much less approval. She noted that he made a “major change in profession” that affected the family finances (positively, have you) but he hadn’t informed her of the change. Sam, like many men is exceedingly independent having grown up in a family where he was ignored and rejected by his stepfather, so he learned to do things on his own, quite successfully for the most part. Jan grew up in a family where “everything was perfect and the family was always first.” These differences having been said, what ensued (and is yet ensuing) is Jan’s singular interest in Sam’s “problems” while admitting that she “is not a perfect person, I know.” When I do an intake assessment on a couple, I meet first with the couple, and then individually with each partner, the latter meetings devoted to their individual social histories. But in this case, Jan evidently informed my secretary that “one hour simply won’t be enough” even though I usually can accomplish what I need to learn about one’s social background in an hour. When I met with Sam, we hardly needed the whole hour but I learned of his history, not nearly so much, however, about any kind of problem in the family, but how he coped with it. When I met with Jan, I couldn’t keep her on the topic of her life because she spent the entire hour talking about what was wrong with Sam, and because I needed a second hour regarding her own history, I had a hard time getting anything substantial because of her desire to tell me more things that were wrong about Sam including her concerted belief that he suffered greatly as a child and had “issues” because of the suffering. When I met with the two of them together to give an interpretation of my findings and the psychological test results, it was functionally impossible for Jan to admit to any kind of error, even the tendency she has of seeing only what was wrong with Sam. Again, I was amazed that she, a very intelligent professional person, couldn’t see that she might be a bit “wrong” in being overly critical.

I see another professional couple, the woman a physician and the man a successful salesman. Simply stated, I have had to work diligently to get the woman to see that she has any significant part in the breakdown of the marriage. Granted, the man, like so many men, has a tendency to get angry at a drop of the hat, but much of his anger is his wife’s relentless telling him what to do, what is wrong with him, and otherwise criticizing him. When I was recently with them, I couldn’t get by her saying, “I am only telling the truth. Why can’t he hear it? Why is he so “defensive?” Why is he “defensive,” I thought? Because you are criticizing him all the time. Interestingly, the woman admits that she has “an anxiety disorder,” but is unwilling for me to tackle the origin of that anxiety even though the origin is her obviously seriously dysfunctional family. She comes from a family where, like Jan with whom I just spoke, where she couldn’t say anything of how she felt, whereas the man comes from an alcoholic, angry family where he learned to drink and be angry from his father.

Enough about what is “wrong” with women not admitting that they’re ever wrong. What about the men in their lives?

The men who contribute to women’s inability to admit that they’re wrong

Most of this has to do with the fact that we men have not been raised in a social environment where we talked about feelings, particularly feelings that were hurt, disappointment, discouragement, and sadness. These words, and the important concept underneath these words, were simply not part of the male environment in which we were raised. The typical male environment is one of some kind of competition, often academic or athletic and sometimes social. It is very hard to be raised as an introverted boy because boys are supposed to be extraverted. It is hard for a boy to be in school where the 3 R’s are all hard for him. It is hard for a boy to be raised where he’s got the 3 R’s but not the athletic interest, much less the ability to play sports. And importantly, it is very common for the emotions of joy and anger to dominate a boy’s emotional environment, thus abandoning the emotions of fear and sadness. Girls grow up with fear and sadness all the time especially in middle school (junior high) and are not good at being angry. This social environment leads to men being openly angry with everyone potentially and women taking a more circuitous route of channeling anger into criticism, not unlike the drama and gossip they learned about in middle school.

So we have a kind of unconscious conspiracy among men and women with the whole business of feelings and the subcategory of emotions: men get angry and feel joy; women get sad and feel fear. Granted, this is a blanket statement, but more true than false. And when men really find sadness, they become profoundly depressed leading to the fact that men are six times more likely to suicide than women despite the fact that women are 10 times more likely to threaten suicide. And when men find fear, they are quite overwhelmed with it. When women find anger, they turn it into vitriol neglecting their own part in whatever the discussion was.

My work with men, which as I said is my primary work, is almost always about helping them know the breath of their feelings, like hurt and disappointment, and then the underlying emotion that is always sadness. I have heard many men say, “I’ve never told anyone this before, but….” And if I am really helpful with men, I help them conquer anger…entirely helping them understand that anger is always secondary behind hurt, disappointment, and sadness. And all of these feelings are based on something that one loves…and has lost. So, the task in helping women get over their seeming inability to admit to being wrong lies primarily with men getting over being angry all the time and admitting that they have a “love problem,” as I say, namely having lost something that he has loved but also having skipped the sadness that should always result from any loss.

My singular suggestion to women about being wrong is this: You might be “right” with what you see but wrong in saying it, which can then tend you to see primarily what is wrong with him more than what might be wrong with you.