Feelings

Good for Me; Bad for Me: Part 1 (corrected)

Ron Johnson Discovery, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, mindfulness, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness

This is the first of three blogs regarding the phenomenon of “good for me” and “bad for me” that I have used for many years as I have attempted to help people know when something is, quite simply good for them or bad for them. In this blog I will propose the basic concept of how to know when something is either good or bad for you as well as the variations of “good” and “bad.” Like many other significant psychological terms, these expressions do not lend themselves to exact definitions, which is to suggest that we cannot fully define “good” or “bad.”

Undefinable

The fact that we cannot exactly define “good” or “bad” does not take away from the value of using these terms. It is noteworthy that several other very significant psychological terms do not have exact definitions, like love, truth, feelings, and understanding. Nor do we have exact definitions for the three basic ingredients of the known universe: time, space, and mass. We understand these important aspects of the universe, as well as the elements of psychology by seeing the effects of such things. Furthermore, we can quantify such things as time, space, and mass even though we do not define them. Likewise, we can quantify love by noting how much we love something, and we can quantify truth as well from somewhat true to entirely true. Feelings do not lend themselves to quantification but we can see the effects of feelings as we have discussed at length in previous blogs and in our recently published book, I Need to Tell You How I Feel. In the present discussion we will study the quantification of “good for me” and “bad for me.” We will discuss the effects of good or bad in the forthcoming blogs.

Quantification of “good for me” and “bad for me”

Allow me to first discuss the quantification of “good for me/bad for me” by suggesting a continuum, or spectrum, with “good for me” on one side and “bad for me””

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Bad for me                                                                   Good for me

(very bad)                                (not so bad)          (pretty good)                                      (very good)

My suggestion with this proposal is that there is a spectrum that ranges from very bad for me to very good for me. Before I elaborate more about this spectrum, I should explain what can be good for me or bad for me. Pretty much anything can be good for me or bad for me. For instance, some foods may be good for me or bad for me. Likewise, some life situations can be good or bad for me, like work, relationships, geographical locations, or insertions into my life. Insertions include the finding of $10 bill on the street to a dog barking loudly while you walk by a house, but the more significant and lasting the “insertion,” the more significant the effect on you. If you find a $100 bill, it would be really good for you, or if the dog bit you on the leg, it would be really bad for you. Additionally, something that someone says too you might be good for you or bad for you, or in more extreme circumstances, a person him/herself at tone time might be good for you or bad for you. So, as we continue to discuss this “good for me” and “bad for me,” consider that anything, human or otherwise, living or nonliving, real or imaginary could be good for me or bad for me.

Having proposed that there is a spectrum of “good for me” and “bad for me,” allow me to elaborate about this continuum and suggest a number of terms that might serve as indicators of the strength of “good” or “bad” for me. We might have relatively mild experiences of “good for me” or “bad for me”, i.e.:

Aversive     Unpleasant    Uninteresting                   /                   Interesting    Pleasant    Exciting

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We might also have things that are more extremely good or bad for me, and find the use of stronger terms valuable, i.e.:

Lethal    Toxic    Dangerous               /                   Enlivening    Life-enhancing    Life-sustaining

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Putting these terms together we have a continuum on the “bad for me” side ranging from something that is mildly “not good”, i.e. uninteresting, to something that is lethal, meaning something might kill me. Likewise, on the “good” side of the continuum the range is from interesting to life-sustaining, meaning that I can’t do without it.

I have found it helpful to assist people to know how to quantify things and people in their lives using this continuum starting with the simple “good for me” things be asking them what people, places, ideas, and situations are good for them, and then to help people note relatively good these things are. Then I follow by assisting people to similarly identify things that are bad for them along the negative side of the continuum. I have found that while it is hard for people to describe exactly how good or bad something is for them, they can approximate the good or bad somewhere on the continuum. The idea of a continuum, or spectrum, of good or bad rather than an absolute good or bad is helpful for people to see how things adversely affect them or enhance them in life.

Quantification: a sign of emotional maturity

While many people find it valuable to see a continuum from extremely good to extremely bad for them, some people are not willing or able to make these distinctions. Such people often use the extreme terms for everything, namely “dangerous” or “lethal” on the bad side or somehow necessary on the good side. People who regularly use such extreme terms often talk more than do, by which I mean they complain a lot about things but do nothing to get out of situations that are not good for them, or they dream about things that they think would be good for them but do nothing to fulfill those dreams. I find that such people have simply not matured in life sufficiently to see that very few things are truly life-sustaining or lethal, but many things are simply interesting or uninteresting. These people are stuck in their helplessness or stuck in their dreams. They have not matured beyond a childlike view of life that they should have everything they want without work or that they are helpless to do anything to enhance their lives. Extremes of any sort are the natural stuff of childhood but not of maturity. As people mature in their understanding of life, they tend to use less extreme terms leaving such terminology for very few cases. When people mature in this way, they are better able to make adjustments in life.

There are at least three elements of maturing in the business of enhancing life with what is good and reducing elements that are dangerous: (1) thinking and feeling to yourself about such things, (2) speaking to someone else, and (3) doing something. People tend to skip item (1), thinking and feeling, and go right to item (2), talking to someone or item (3), doing something. But it is important to first think and feel before talking or doing. If I talk to someone right away or take action right away without first truly knowing how I feel and think, I will not find it profitable and productive because my personal thoughts and feelings will not be the foundation of what I might ultimately do.

You might consider the many other situations that occur in life, like an intimate relationship that is good for you, and then think of how you might enhance the relationship rather than taking the good person in your life for granted. Likewise, you might consider how you might make an adjustment to a relationship that is less than good for you rather than taking leave of the person who might just be uninteresting to you in some way. You could also examine what you eat or drink, what you do for recreation, or what color you would like to see on your house. In fact, if you can examine the less important things in your life, like what you eat or what color you have on your house, you might be better able to honestly examine the more important things in your life, like your relationships, your work, your geographical location, or something that is truly sacred in your life.

You might consider talking to someone about your “good for you” feelings and “bad for you” feelings once you have studied your feelings for yourself. There are equal dangers of keeping your feelings entirely to yourself, which tends to be a tendency of introverted-thinking people, or constantly talking about your feelings that frequently occurs with extraverted-feeling people. If you can be honest with yourself about what is good for you and what is bad for you, you will be in a better position to profit from talking to someone else. After thoughtful self-examination of the goods and the bads of something in your life, and then talking to someone about those feelings, mature people do something.

Sometimes the “doing” doesn’t actually look like doing because the person decides that the best course of action is to stay the course. Equally possible, is the need to actually do something about your life, particularly when you find yourself on the “bad for me” side of the spectrum. People tend to jump to action too soon or avoid any kind of action for fear of loss. In the long run, when a mature person has come to a decision to take action or not, there is always sadness involved in the action. For instance, it might be sad to give up alcohol if you decide that it is largely bad for you, or you might be sad if you decide to keep drinking because the loss of alcohol in your life is worse than then ill effects of alcohol. You will be sad staying with someone who is not always good for you and you will be sad leaving such a person.

Sadness

The universal experience of feeling sad when you have actually done something is important to understand as we have written in The Positive Power of Sadness. People often avoid doing something because they simply don’t want to experience the sadness of losing something. They would rather live in the fantasy that they can have it both ways, like living happily with a person who you find “not good for you” occasionally and simultaneously leaving such a person without any regret of having lost an intimate partner. You can only do this in fantasy, not reality. To honestly stay or leave, and then profit from the staying or leaving, you have to look at the effects of staying or leaving.

In the next two blogs, where I will discuss the effects of something that is good for you or bad for you and how to take action with such things. Consider what might be in each category:

  • Good for you could be person, place, property, experience, or idea
  • Bad for you could be person, place, property, experience or idea

 

 

Self, Selfish, and Selfless

Ron Johnson appreciation, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, Self-Awareness, social esteem, Spiritual

There is much talk in the psychological community about “self,” and rightly so because the idea of self is central to understanding the very basis of psychology. Unfortunately, “self” is not defined, nor should it be, because it is one of those concepts that is so important that it can’t be defined. You might recall that I have written (as have many others) that the most important concepts in psychology are undefined, like feelings, love, wisdom, and perhaps other ones as well. Additionally, the three basic ingredients of the known universe are all undefined: distance, mass, and time. All other physics concepts are based on these three undefined concepts. We can measure time, distance, and mass, and we can combine them, like distance/time = velocity, but we don’t define them. Neither do we define “self.”

Not all psychologists use the term “self,” preferring “core self,” “soul,” “spirit,” “inner self,” and other such concepts that all refer to this essence of being human that is not only undefinable, but also fraught with implications according to how people use such terms. I will not debate the values and dangers of these terms but simply state that my preference is “core self” for the most part, but for this blog I will be using “self.”

What is self?

When you have an important concept like self, or time, distance, and love for that matter, you can understand the concept not by a definition but by three ways: (1) observing the absence of the concept, (2) observing more complex concepts that are comprised of self in combination with self, and (3) observing the effects of the concept. Note that the operative word is observing. Let’s look at these three ways of observing self.

The absence of self

We can understand self to some degree when we see what we call an “absence of self.” This terminology is not the best, I grant you, but it does communicate something of what apparently happens with some people: they have failed to develop a clear concept of who they are, that they are important in some way, or even that they exist. A related phenomenon exists with some severely impaired autistic people, or perhaps more accurately, they don’t have a concept of their actual existence.

But this is not what we are talking about with people who have an absence of self, or more accurately don’t have a good sense of self. The primary symptom of such people is an undue attachment to something other than oneself. There is some truth to the theory that people who become addicted to something, whether person, property, substance, or behavior, might not have a good sense of self. So they find a kind of attachment to one of these things (or behavior), which then gives them a sense of existence. This is tantamount to a person feeling such an attachment to, for instance, gambling, that s/he feels a real sense of self when s/he gambles. More often, however, the attachment is less to a behavior, person, property or whatever, as it is to the endorphins that are churned up when the individual is attached to this thing. It is like the person feels, “I feel real when I…(gamble, drink, or fuse with someone else, etc.).”

Most people have at least some sense of self, and hence “absence of self” is not quite right, but when someone has failed to develop a sense of his basic existence apart from anything, we do have this lack of a good sense of self.

Self combined with other elements

People who fuse with something so much that this thing, whether person, property or whatever, becomes what the person is rather than attached to the thing. There is a much healthier and profitable experience than fusion and consequent lack of identity: attachment. There is a literature on several kinds of attachment, but for our purposes here, we are talking about secure attachment. This is typified by the person who can separate him/herself from the behavior or product but finds that the use of something makes him/her a better person. Thus, a person who has a good senses of self can develop a passion for swimming and see swimming as a reflection of one’s self rather than swimming being the essence of oneself. In fact, the best competitors, whether in swimming or playing chess, are people who can attach to the sport and then detach from it without discomfort. To some degree, you can observe a person with a good sense of self engaged in some activity, do well with it at one time, do poorly with it at another time, and have other activities that assist the person to display his/her “self” in the activity. People who have to win at everything do not have a good sense of self, neither do people who simply do not try or give up too easily.

Aside from attaching and detaching from a sport, people with a secure sense of self can truly enjoy something like reading, writing poetry, painting, working, playing, singing, and many other elements of life. Common among people with a good sense of self is their being able to attach and detach from several things, which also suggests that the individual is able to love more broadly, say love swimming, love being alone, love being with people, love playing checkers, and love reading.

The effects of having a good sense of self

In all of these ways of attaching and dethatching to things, the person with a good sense of self is appreciative of the many aspects of life. The primary effect of having a good sense of self is that the individual appreciates life and has a sense of gratitude for living. People with less of a good sense of self do not feel such gratitude. Rather, sadly, they feel that they have not had enough and need more. This effect of having a good sense of self yields a deeper and deeper appreciation for what the world provides them, sometimes as simple as air to breathe and water to drink, but also property, people, and position in life.

In addition to feeling a sense of gratitude the second effect of someone with a good sense of self is that s/he has a passion to do something for humanity. You don’t have to be a philanthropist or a tree hugger to do something for humanity. You can be that cheery cashier or the honest attorney who both feel a passion to do something good for other people. When these things happen, namely feeling grateful and feeling a passion to give to the world, an interesting thing happens: you forget about yourself.

Forgetting about yourself

Now this must seem quite contradictory to what I originally wrote, namely that ideally a person has a good sense of self. So what do I mean suggesting that one “forget about him/herself?” I mean that when one’s sense of self is truly solid, s/he doesn’t worry, doesn’t fear, rarely gets angry, and spends a great deal of time thinking of how to serve the world. Such people are not defensive because they know their limits and their flaws. They are not critical because they know that everyone is doing their best to survive in life. They do not worry what other people think of them because they know that most people don’t care about them whatsoever, while there are probably an equal number of people who do like them and don’t like them. In their doing, they make mistakes and quickly come out with a “my bad” expression. They listen to criticism, whether right or wrong; they know they are hurt, but they don’t let their hurt lead them into anger or fear. Most importantly, they are more interested in other people than they are in themselves. They don’t live through other people, but rather have a life orientation of service. You can’t serve, give, and sacrifice if you are constantly thinking of what you want, which is so common among people with an inadequate sense of self.

Be yourself. It is the best thing you have. When you really know that, you will be able to “forget about yourself” without losing yourself. It is like having such a good foundation that the upper stories can collapse but never damage the foundation.

The Joy/Sadness Dyad of Love

Ron Johnson appreciation, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, mindfulness, Spiritual

Do you ever feel “emotional”? Yes, just “emotional” without any real kind of definition to what this means. The symptoms of being emotional are often a tearing up in some way. You might feel something physically in another part of your body, probably depending on your personality type and temperament. You might have an immediate thought or take some course of action, but there is a predominance of emotion. I have come to think that this feeling “emotional” is a very important experience, one that needs to be noticed, allowed, understood, and possibly expressed because I’m quite sure that this experience has love written all over it.

Previously, I have written about how sadness is “a love problem,” which means exactly this: when I am sad, I am in a state of grief for having lost something that I love. This “thing” that I have lost usually will be a person, a piece of property, or an idea. There are other losses that lead to sadness, like loss of opportunity, loss of a game, loss of some physical ability, and perhaps other forms of losses, but the primary losses that stir our emotions are people, property, and ideas. Deb and I wrote extensively about losses and the centrality of sadness in any kind of loss in our The Positive Power of Sadness book published a couple years ago, yet we continue to find new and important things related to this whole sadness matter. In this blog would like to take apart this “love problem” thing that includes sadness but also includes joy because I think there are many times, often when we feel “emotional” that we feel both joy and sadness simultaneously.

As often happens in therapy, I often feel “emotional,” i.e. tearful when I am working with a patient. I have found that if I can carefully speak of my feeling emotional or tearful, the man in front of me says something like, “Yes, I feel the same thing.” People familiar with psychoanalysis will note that this kind of encounter has to do with transference and countertransference that are both frequent and probably essential ingredients of any good psychotherapy. Simply put, transference is the feeling the patient has for the therapist, while countertransference is the feeling the therapist has for the patient. These feelings can often turn into emotion (note the distinction, by the way between “feelings” and emotion, with emotion a subset of feelings). The emotion can be any of the four basic emotions of joy, sadness, anger, or fear, and these emotions, often triggered by physical sensations, can lead to some kind of thought or action. (Forgive the complexity of this matter as this sentence is a summary of two chapters in our forthcoming book, I Need to Tell You How I Feel.) There are many times of everyday life that are like this, namely when a person has an emotional moment (erupting out of one’s feelings, of course). Before we look at some examples of these important times of emotional experience, allow me to set the stage with a bit of theory.

The experience of love always has both joy and sorrow in it

Well, probably not always…but I could make a case for “usually.” My point is this: when I feel this emotional moment, I feel some kind of true love, be it person, property, or idea. Very often, this love is for a person, and perhaps people bring these emotional moments more than property or things. My point is that when I feel this emotion that brings tears, this experience is so basically loving that it is simultaneously joy and sadness. When people try to explain what they feel at these moments, they usually use the term emotional, or perhaps sadness, but rarely do they see that joy is equally a part of the experience. I have come to see that these emotional moments are quite important in life and need to be recognized and treasured. They may also need to be expressed, but any expression of the emotion (and the feeling under the emotion) might actually take away from the feeling because we are inclined to explain why we feel something more than just feeling it.

Just feeling something can be done quite easily once one realizes that an emotional moment is really a love moment. If you can do that, you will be able to tear up, cry, or perhaps even sob as you allow yourself these moments to be a part of you. Extraverts will be inclined to want to share these moments, while introverts will want to keep them private. Nothing wrong with either pose, but it is important for extraverts to know that there not everyone wants or needs to hear their feelings all the time, and it is equally important for introverts to know that they can too easily hide their feelings for fear of being misunderstood. My main point is: feel it first; value the feeling second, and then decide whether it is valuable for you and your audience to express this feeling.

 

Examples of feeling emotional

I am not an animal person as compared to almost everyone else in my family. You will never see me cuddle up to some dog or cat that happens to be in the vicinity, nor do I take any kind of great joy in seeing deer cross the road or geese flying overhead. My grandson sees all of God’s creatures, large and small; my sister has always had at least one dog, and for a time had a room full of birds…jut normal birds that somehow ended up in the house; my daughter, Krissie, loved dogs. Animal people can easily have an “emotional moment” when they see some animal. I watch as these folks seem to necessarily touch their chests while simultaneously coming out with a verbal or nonverbal expression of joy. Good for them. They are experiencing love, usually the joy side of love, but I have also seen the sadness side of love when they see an animal is in distress.

I see many examples of this sadness/joy experience with clients. Recently, I was with a man who is quite a “caretaker” by temperament and also a thinking-based person (INTJ for those of you who know the Myers-Briggs). Jim has been working diligently to suffer through and get through a serious depression, which he is doing marvelously, almost entirely by recognizing what he feels, predominantly the feeling of emotion. When was with him the other day while hearing his thoughts and surmising his feelings, I felt somewhat “emotional,” and after a moment, I told him so. This led to more than 30 minutes of his simply feeling “emotional” replete with a few teardrops. Throughout this period of time the mainstay of his experience was, in his words, “God’s comfort.” This led him to conclude that he needed to trust God more, and along the way, trust people more. Thus, Jim noticed what he felt physically, stayed with what he felt emotionally, thought what he felt cognitively, and then felt led to do something about this feeling. Thus, it was the emotion that was so important for him that led him into thinking and doing.

I have had many such times, often daily, where I feel this amorphous joy/sadness experience, sometimes alone, more often with someone, rarely with nature. Nature people, often simultaneously animal people, feel this joy/sadness/love experience quite frequently, whether sunset, sunrise, full moon (last night by the way), or even rough weather. I had a friend years ago who was hunter and a real naturalist who just loved it when his hunting weather (usually fowl) was “nasty” as he said it. It just moved him to tears.

While not a naturalist by any means, I can read about nature, or history, or theology, or psychology, and become quite moved, not always, but sometimes to tears. I just love to learn something in one of these genres. Making sense of some piece of history, theology, or psychology is truly a love moment for me. I never could see how kids thought history was boring. Why would a person, like me for instance, come to tears with some new insight about psychology, history, or theology? I doubt that I am the only one.

By far the most predominant emotional moments occur with other people. Not long ago when writing about the loss of our dear daughter, Krissie, now nearly nine months ago, I noted how the sharing of her loss in some circumstance led to various people coming to tears. What were these tears about, especially with most of these people had never met us before, much less Krissie? They were tears of love replete with both the emotions of joy and sorrow. There was the woman at the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the woman in the shoe repair shop who had lost her boss, the woman at the headwaters of the Mississippi, and more than a half dozen people at various Starbucks’ counters where Deb prefers to get espresso. Note, all women, but it doesn’t end there. I had an encounter with a man in my office during my very first Intake Assessment with him where we were talking about feelings in the larger sense, and emotion in the smaller sense. I mentioned the loss I had had with Krissie as a point of reference to emotion, and this guy was fraught with uncertainty as to how to handle his emotion. I had to help him allow himself to cry because, as ye said afterward, he “didn’t want to appear emotional.” In fact, his felt emotion was an act of love: both joy and sorrow. What was the joy? He loved Krissie, and at that moment he loved me although he is not emotionally mature enough to feel the “L” word, much less allow himself to express it

I encourage you to notice these “emotional moments”, allow for one or two tears, or more if necessary, and then note the love you have just experienced shown in this odd admixture of joy and sorrow.