Feelings

Seeing Unicorns

Ron Johnson appreciation, Discovery, Feelings, mindfulness, Spiritual

There was once a small village in a mountainous region of the world. There lived in this village a wise man. He had seemingly always been both old and wise as no one could remember him being anything else. The people in village went about their normal responsibilities taking care of their property, persons, and purposes in life without complaint. It was quite idyllic and the village was not easily located although it had an interesting reputation in various parts of the region and in the world. There were stories of people who tried to find the village without success, often coming back from arduous journeys without ever finding the village, while occasionally a simple wanderer seemed to find this village without difficulty. There didn’t seem to be a logical reason why some very experienced adventurous people could not find the village while others less sophisticated in the business of exploration seemed to happen upon the village.

One such wanderer came upon the village one late night and found the village residents warmly welcome him. They quickly found him a warm place to stay and a nutritious meal before he retired for the night. The wanderer was a relatively young man who had been wandering for some time and had had both warm receptions and hostile ones. He couldn’t seem to understand why he sometimes found some people so accepting and others so rejecting, but it had been on his mind for a long time. His night in the village passed without incident.

Our wandering young man rose the next morning to discover that his hosts had prepared a sumptuous and nutritious morning meal for him. There was simple chatter at the breakfast table among the host family and other guests with young and old seemingly quite interested in one another. The young man found it interesting that all in the family respected one another despite differences in age, gender, or station in life. It didn’t seem appropriate for him to ask about the demeanor of the family and the guests. He was quite taken, however, with the respect and demeanor that this group of people seemed to have for one another. There was discussion of philosophical and spiritual matters as well as matters of care of property and people. There was even debate and discussion without an argumentative spirit. There was expression of emotions, sometimes joyful, sometimes sad, but never expression of anger or fear.

About the time that our young man was about to leave this gracious host family the wise old man of the village happened to walk into the house. The old man walked in with a staff that he placed by the entry door, leaning it almost as if it belonged there. He was greeted warmly by all in attendance and was offered what appeared to be his standard choice in hot tea. He sat at table with the others and listened intently to all who spoke, only rarely speaking his thoughts and feelings. Then, to the surprise of the young man the older man asked him if he knew why he had come to the village. This question bemused the wandering young man because it hadn’t seemed to him that he had come to the village purposefully. It had seemed to him that he had quite accidentally stumbled across the village on his wanderings. The old man saw the young man’s uncertain countenance and suggested that they take a walk together. It seemed the right thing to do for the young man but he continued to wonder about this whole scene: the pleasantness of the village, the graciousness of the people, and now the mysterious nature of the old man. Yet, he felt both privileged and compelled to accept what appeared to be yet another act of graciousness that seemed to be the nature of the whole village.

The old man took the young man on a walk that fairly quickly became a bit of a brisk hike, quickly out of town and then up the closest mountain to the village. The trek up the mountain was, for reasons unknown to the young man, long but not arduous. He felt compelled to trail the old man who clearly knew the route up this mountain demonstrated by his taking carefully orchestrated steps as if he had taken this exact route many times before. When the two men reached the summit of the mountain, the young man admired the view. He could see the village quite a bit below as well as a vista of other mountains in the distance. There seemed to be so much to see that he was taken aback by the whole scene. He expected that the two men would soon descent to the village shortly, but was surprised by a question the old man asked him. It was a simple question but at the same time it was the most invigorating question he had ever heard.

The old man asked him, “What do you see on that farthest mountain?” The young man looked at that far mountain expecting simply to see a mountainscape, but then felt a strange feeling come over him, so much so that he was quite unsure as to how to respond to the question put before him. He answered the old man’s question with hesitation and with some concern because of what he thought he saw but dared to answer, “I think I see a unicorn.” The young man felt a bit awkward by saying what he had said so he quickly added, “…but know that unicorns don’t really exist, so I must be mistaken.” The young man felt a mixture of feelings at that point including a kind of exhilaration at seeming to see something so wonderful. He had learned in his personal study that unicorns are symbolic of purity. But in addition to the exhilaration he felt some embarrassment, or was it shame that he felt? He waited for the old man’s further comment. He didn’t wait long.

The old man quietly and carefully said this: “There are three things about seeing a unicorn. First, not many people ever see unicorns because it is very hard to see a unicorn. Secondly, it is very hard to believe that they are seeing a unicorn. But the hardest thing of all is to remember that you believed that you saw a unicorn. Having said that, the old man quietly and simply took a step on the path leading to the village. The young man followed equally silently. Having returned to the village, he gathered his simple pack and left. Though he never saw the village or the old man again, he remembered.

 Comment

I heard this story from the person who has been my most important therapist, Dick Olney, perhaps 40 years ago. I have no idea where he heard it or if he actually created it. I have found myself compelled to tell this story to a very few people whom I deemed ready to hear the story. One of these men having spent an intensive week of therapy with me wrote to me when he returned to the UK: “there have been several sightings of unicorns here in England.” I was glad to hear of such a thing because not many people see a unicorn because they are hard to see, it is hard to believe that you are seeing a unicorn, and it is really hard to remember that you believed that you saw a unicorn. I remain grateful that I have helped a few people see the unicorns in their lives, believe it, and remember it.  I’m certainly old, but not always wise, but occasionally I help people see unicorns. What a wonderful moment it is

The Cure for Anxiety

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

Sadness. That is the cure for anxiety. But let me explain. Or you can read our book that devotes a whole chapter to the “cure for anxiety.” In this brief blog I will attempt to do several things:

  • Explain what anxiety is along with its cousins: worry, fretting, fear, and outright terror
  • Explain why anxiety is without a doubt one of the most resistant of all psychological difficulties people have, like depression, relationship problems, vocational problems, and general living problems.
  • Explain some of the underlying neurological functions that cause, create, and maintain anxiety once it gets into one’s psychological system

The neuropsychology

I distinguish the mind and the brain as I have explained in Mind over Matter blogs before. I use the term “mind” to describe our thinking, feeling, and acting. The brain is the machine the mind uses to do such things. There is great debate about this matter, however, with some very good neuropsychologists suggesting that the mind is the brain, while others, like myself, believe that there is an as yet undefined element in the human condition that we consider to be the operator of the brain. I’m afraid you’ll have to be content with the fact that we are all theorizing about how things work in the brain. But let me defer this discussion to previous blogs and other psychologists’ writings.

Aside from whether there is a real mind/brain difference, some things are quite well known. The brain (in my understanding) engages in only two operations that keep things going in the body: safety and pleasure. We discussed the pleasure side of the brain when we discussed “liking and wanting” as different operations of the brain, both related to pleasure. So this function of the brain seeks pleasure, mostly through chemicals, such as dopamine, and sometimes through electrical operations. The more important of the two things that the brain does, however, is safety. In other words, your brain works most diligently and constantly on keeping you alive. Central to this keeping you alive is the brain’s fantastic operation of keeping blood flowing in the body, originating in the heart and then to the rest of the body. Blood oxygenizes the body’s cells with blood and simultaneously cleanses these cells from material that needs to be dispenses. While the brain looks to pleasure when possible, something like 99% of the brain looks for safety. Our wonderful brain is doing this protection all the time, every second of our lives.

The brain is wonderful in protecting you and finding pleasure for you, these 100 neurons (brain cells) operating sometimes with trillions of connections to one another. But the brain is sort of stupid in anything else than pleasure and safety. For instance, the brain (again, not the mind) does not know what the mind knows, like love, trust, honesty, work, play, and the many other elements of character, relationships, and daily living. Importantly, the brain does not have an understanding of time. The brain does not know any difference between past, present, and future. In the brain, these three elements of time are all conceived as present. So when the brain senses that something might happen in the future, that future is right now or at best, a second or two in the future. This fact, namely that the brain doesn’t distinguish future from present is very important in the cause, maintenance, and ultimate cure for anxiety.

The brain’s resistance to threat

If you keep in mind that the brain is spending most of its time taking care of the body and protecting the body from harm, you get the picture as to why the brain needs to do this and how it does this. The brain (not the mind) has a startle reflex, for instance, that overrides anything else on your mind when you are started in some way, usually with a loud noise, but also sometimes by something visually that startles you, or perhaps even something that startles you in one of the other three senses (smell, taste, and touch). You don’t have to think, much less feel, when you touch a hot pan by accident while you’re cooking. You don’t have to think or feel when you see fire in that same kitchen. Your startle reaction operates in your olfactory lobe (smell) if you smell something odd in the kitchen. Startle reaction is just one of the ways the brain takes care of you by taking immediate action when the brain perceives something that is dangerous or could be dangerous because it is not within the norm of daily living.

The brain’s protective mechanism operates wonderfully all the time and keeps us alive. Unfortunately, this same protective mechanism also operates when there may not be any immediate or actual threat because the brain doesn’t distinguish a current threat from a future threat. When your brain senses some kind of threat, it goes into hyper drive in order to protect you from danger. This hyper drive comes in the forms of increased heart rate, higher blood pressure, increased breathing, and increased sensual awareness. Increased sensual awareness is in all five senses: sound, sight, smell, taste, and touch. In other words, when the brain senses some threat, it garners all the defenses: chemical, electrical, and sensual to protect you from this perceived threat. These increases are much like what it may have been like for primitive humankind to be faced with the sight of a lion coming over the hill: the brain sees the lion and immediately does the chemical and electrical changes in your body so that you can run. Hopefully, the brain churned up these defenses in time for you to protect yourself. If a lion were chasing you in the Serengeti, for instance, you would be experiencing a pretty high level of anxiety, like life-and-death anxiety. Thank you brain for keeping you aware of possible escape routes from the charging lion.

The cause of anxiety

Anxiety is devastating. It is a well-known fact that that many, if not most, visits to the ER have at least some anxiety driving these visits. Millions of people have thought they were having heart attacks, raced to the ER, and had all kinds of expensive tests, only to find out that there “was nothing wrong with them,” often to their great disappointment. Anxiety has many forms, including the rather popular current diagnoses of PTSD and OCD, but more often anxiety is what is called “free-floating.” In other words, people “just feel anxious for no apparent reason.” Well, there is a reason but it is not that they are having heart attacks or making this stuff up to get attention. Nor is it true that “nothing is wrong with them.” Something is “wrong,” but it has nothing to do with their bodies or minds. What is wrong is that their brains have somehow concluded that the lion is coming over the hill, or something equally dangerous. Why would the brain think such a thing? Most of us don’t roam the Serengeti and few of us have to contend with lions around. The brain should know that, so it seems. The brain does not know that. The brain thinks something very much like “the lion is coming over the hill, so you have to be hypervigilant.

How does this happen. How does the brain think something crazy like the lion is coming after you when there is no lion? It does so because the brain has heard a message from the mind that there is some immediate danger. So, the brain goes into its normal operation of increasing heartrate, blood flow, breathing, and hypervigilance to keep you hyperaware of your surroundings. Anxiety is essentially hyperawareness. Why?

The brain creates what we call anxiety for you to be hyperaware of your surroundings and “protect you from the lion coming over the hill.” The brain does not distinguish different kinds of dangers. The brain does not distinguish dangers: danger is danger, whether it is the spider or the lion. So anything that the brain determines is some kind of threat will start the chain reaction in the brain of upping the various elements of the body to protect you, primarily by making you hypervigilant.

Not only does not brain fail to distinguish kinds of threats, the brain does not distinguish the present from the future. And this the crux of the problem with anxiety. When you think of something aversive that might happen in the future, it is your mind that is doing this thinking, not your brain. Let’s say your boss has called a meeting with you on Monday morning but she didn’t tell you what she wanted to talk to you about. This kind of situation can cause “anxiety,” namely worrying about what your boss might say to you, or God forbid, that you might get demoted or fired. So it seems natural that you would worry about this future meeting. Unfortunately, your brain does not know any of this: it does not know that you work, it does not know you have a boss, it does not know about the meeting, and it does not know about the future. So, when you brain hears from your mind that you have a potential meeting that could be deleterious for you, your brain assumes “the lion is coming over hill,” and wants to send you into hyper drive.

Then, to make matters worse, your brain sort of “talks” back to your mind about this potential danger because the brain can’t think. It is the mind that thinks. The message from the mind to the brain started this cycle moving by telling the brain that there is some danger. You brain assumed this danger was immediate and started the hypervigilance, but it didn’t stop there. The brain then sent the mind the message that the mind needed to figure out what to do. Now we have this ongoing cycle with the mind telling the brain that there is danger and the brain talking back to the mind asking the mind to figure it out. So the mind tries to figure it out. How does the mind do that? By worrying about worst case scenarios like, “If he fires me, where will I get another job?” or “if he criticizes me for my performance, how can I defend myself” and the like. Of course this fretting does no good but, all the while the brain is sort of insisting that the mind come up with a solution to the problem it perceives as “the lion coming over the hill.”

Unless there is some way to stop this cycle of considering danger (the mind), reacting to danger (the brain), and then fretting (the mind again), anxiety will stay present and very possibly increase. If the brain determines that there is no immediate solution to what it perceives as the lion coming, it will do what it does: create more hypervigilance. How do we break this cycle?

The cure of anxiety

Read the first word again in this blog: sadness. The cure for anxiety is sadness, however odd that sounds. This is what I mean: you have to face the potential loss, feel this potential loss by feeling sad, and resolve this sadness. Easily said, not easily done. Anxiety in all its forms (fear, worry, fretting) keeps therapists busy trying to calm people down and physicians busy prescribing anxiolytics to treat the symptoms of anxiety. But neither really works to cure anxiety. There is no “settling down” someone who is in a state of anxiety because the brain perceives “the lion is coming over the hill.” You can’t talk to the brain about jobs, meetings, and the like, and you certainly can’t talk to the brain about the future because the brain, this wonderful machine, has no capacity to understand such things. You have to get the mind involved. You have to get the mind and the brain to work together the way these two elements work together 99% of the time. How do you do that?

You cure anxiety by considering the loss you might have, feeling sad about this potential loss, and allow this sadness to end. This is what you need to do: truly consider the worst case scenario. In our theoretical case, you need to consider that you would be fired. Then you have to feel sad about possibly being fired. This is what we call anticipatory sadness because you are anticipating some important loss in the future and allowing yourself to feel the sadness about this possible loss. It sounds crazy, I know, but this is the only way to cure anxiety, namely feeling sad in the present about something that might happen in the future. Note the tenses here: feeling sad in the present for something that might happen in the future. You can learn to do this with a little practice, but let me warn you, you don’t want to do it. You don’t want to feel sad about losing a job that is important to you; you don’t want to consider that your daughter with cancer might die; you don’t want to consider that your house will be robbed. And you don’t want to feel sad about these things because they haven’t happened. You know that they haven’t happened. But this “you” is your mind, not your brain. Your brain thinks that something really dangerous is happening and needs to be fixed. The only way out of the cycle of anxiety is to feel this anticipatory sadness. The sadness will end.

The interesting thing about sadness is that it always ends. Anxiety does not end. It can go on for years or a lifetime and get worse in the process. But if you lose something you love, you will feel sad for a period and eventually finish feeling sad. An even more devastating phenomenon that occurs with people is depression. Depression is the collections of many losses that have not been felt and finished, and have collected to such a degree that your brain shuts down interest in life in order to cope with the fact of these many losses.

So try it out. When you feel anxious about something, ask yourself the question, “What might I lose?” Then you will discover that you might lose something that is important to you, something that you love. Then allow yourself to feel the sadness you would feel if you would actually lose this something. Dare to feel this sadness now about what you might lose in the future. You will feel sad for a moment or two, maybe longer, but eventually, your anticipatory sadness will end.

Further Reading

Previous blogs on feelings

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2017). The Positive Power of Sadness. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger

LeDoux, J. (2015). Anxious: using the brain to understand and treat fear and anxiety. New York: Viking Press.

Guilt and Shame

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

Guilt is good for you. Shame is bad for you. Guilt makes you a better person. Shame makes you a scared person. Guilt is good. Shame is bad. Period. Allow me to explain. I intend to describe these two very important experiences, which are quite different but are often conflated together.

Guilt and shame “feelings”. Readers of this blog may have seen my previous blogs on Feelings in which I have noted that all feelings are a central ingredient of human existence and even more central in human relationships. That having been said we must also note that while feelings are central to life, feelings are undefinable. We can understand them, talk about them, and attempt to communicate them, but we can never define them. Feelings are just too important to be simply defined, just like the three elements of the universe, time, distance, and mass, which are undefined.  Allow me to review a couple things we have noted in previous Feelings blogs. We discussed emotions as a part of feelings:

Emotions

There are four basic emotions, all of which have to do with love in some way:

  • Two emotions that have to do with having or losing something that I love:
    • Joy when I have something I love (in the present)
    • Sadness when I lose something that I love (in the present)
  • Two emotions that have to do with losing something that I love:
    • Anger when I have lost something that I love (in the past)
    • Fear when I might lose something that I love (in the future)

Various psychologists have described as many as 50 basic emotions (or feelings as they are sometimes called), but we will not debate this subject here. Important for this discussion is the experience of these four emotions in shame and guilt, our main discussion in this blog.

Shame, guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment are often used interchangeably. We hear people say that we “need to get rid of shame and guilt” as if they were the same thing, or they might say that they are embarrassed when they actually feel shame. So let me parse out these feelings and how they can be harmful…and interestingly…helpful. In all these feelings (guilt, shame, humiliation, and embarrassment) the emotions we feel are not completely expressed. Rather, they are hidden or partially hidden while we go through these feelings.

Guilt, shame, humiliation, and embarrassment

Consider the basic emotions and other matters associated with shame, guilt, humiliation and embarrassment:

  • Basic emotions associated with these four feelings:
    • Guilt: sadness
    • Shame: fear
    • Humiliation: anger
    • Embarrassment: joy
  • The person causing these feelings
    • Guilt: yourself
    • Shame: an imaginary other person
    • Humiliation: a real other person
    • Embarrassment: yourself
  • The element causing these feelings
    • Guilt: activity (something you have said or done)
    • Shame: yourself (you fear that something is wrong with you)
    • Humiliation: yourself (you believe that something is wrong with you)
    • Embarrassment: activity (something you have said or done)
  • The result of these feelings:
    • Guilt: personal improvement
    • Shame: hiding
    • Humiliation: hiding
    • Embarrassment: personal improvement
  • The effects of these feelings:
    • Guilt: ends
    • Shame: continues
    • Humiliation: continues
    • Embarrassment: ends

What is guilt?

Guilt is the feeling of sadness that I have when I have hurt or harmed someone by something I have said or done, or something that I have not said or not done. Note that the key in guilt is the feeling of sadness. I feel sad when I feel genuinely guilty because I have caused some hurt or harm to someone as I look back at my behavior. Simply put I think, “I should have said (or done)” or “I shouldn’t have said (or done)” something. When I feel sadness, I can then correct my mistake, offer an apology, and/or make amends for my misdeeds. The important factor here is that I judge myself. The even more important factor is that I then have the opportunity to improve myself in the future.

So, to the surprise of many people, guilt is good for me…if we understand guilt in the way I have described. Not so with shame.

What is shame?

Shame is essentially the fear of someone else’s disapproval. I feel shame when I think that someone will judge me harshly for something that I have said or done (or again, not said or not done). The key factor in shame is that I imagine that I will be judged, not what I have done. Simply put, I think, “Person A or B might think that I am somehow a bad person or a stupid person for what I have done.” In shame I imagine that I am judged as somehow inadequate, not that I have done something inadequate. As a result of shame, I hide: I hide what I have done from others, and I may hide it from myself.

So, while guilt makes me a better person, shame prevents me from becoming a better person. Shame is bad for me…always. It is always harmful to think there is something wrong with me instead of examining my behavior and seeing that I have actually done something that is wrong. Shame is much like humiliation as noted above.

What is humiliation?

As you can read in the abbreviated the paradigm I have laid out above, shame and humiliation are nearly the same except in shame there is often an imaginary person, whereas in humiliation there is a real person. When I am humiliated, a real person has humiliated me. Humiliating experiences occur when I am unable or unwilling to exercise the anger I feel when someone has assaulted my character. The result of humiliation is just the same as it is with shame: I hide. And when I hide, I do not improve as a person.

Most humiliation occurs in childhood. The most common perpetrators of humiliation are siblings, sometimes with intention to humiliate, sometimes with unintentional humor or teasing that has the same effect: something is wrong with me and I need to hide from everyone. Humiliation occurs with girls in school often in regards to some kind of body image or presentation, and occasionally with “drama” that asserts some girl is somehow inadequate or unacceptable. Humiliation occurs with boys usually from other boys, often with some failure in competition, perhaps academic or athletic.

So, like shame, humiliation is never helpful…never because it always leads to hiding from rather than self-examination and improvement. Furthermore, humiliation can bleed into shame experiences in adulthood because the essence is the same: there is something is wrong with me.

You will note that shame and humiliation are quite similar, the difference being that true shame is the feeling I have about possibly being criticized while humiliation is the feeling that results from by actually being criticized. When some “shames you,” this is actually humiliation because this is a real person who has assaulted you. So when you are shamed (by some real person), you feel humiliation. You hide, just like you do in shame.

What is embarrassment?

It must seem odd that I suggest that the basic emotion in embarrassment is joy. This is because most people equate embarrassment with shame or humiliation. But true embarrassment is a time when you laugh at yourself for some blunder, whether something you said, didn’t say, did wrong, or didn’t do right. So, true embarrassment can occur when you can’t remember the name of your favorite tool or the name of your grandchild. I remember Grandma Ostlund calling out to me with a stream of names like, “Billy, Margaret, Lloyd…I mean Ronny.” We would all laugh as Grandma would have cited my brother, my mother, and my uncle before she finally got around to me. This simple failure to remember a name occurred to me a couple days ago in therapy when I lost track of what I was saying, and then in the same hour when my patient forgot the name of something. In both cases we laughed. I also might laugh at myself) when I choose to have that second piece of pie, but so enjoy the indulgence.

Like guilt, embarrassment is good for me. In both cases I am dealing with something that I love. In guilt I am dealing with having lost something that I value: I did something or said something that brought harm to something or someone I value. In embarrassment I did something or said something that was simply wrong but not very important. But with true embarrassment I can recognize my action, chuckle at it and even be teased about it without feeling shame or humiliation. Whereas guilt is often felt privately, and ultimately leads to personal improvement, embarrassment is often felt publicly, and can also lead to personal improvement. In embarrassment I am humbled but not humiliated.

Aren’t these feelings mixed up?

Yes, they get mixed up. I mentioned that childhood humiliation can bleed into shame; in other words the fact that I have been attacked in character can lead to the feeling of fear that I might be attacked in character.

Furthermore, people use these terms in the ways that they have learned them, so they may say they are “guilty” when they actually feel shame as I have defined it. They may use embarrassment when they feel humiliation. The words for these four feelings are not particularly important, but the concepts are dreadfully important.

We can, indeed, feel two of these feelings at the same time, like humiliation and shame. Importantly, we can also feel guilt, which is good for me, and shame, which is bad for me, at the same time. Unfortunately, if I feel the sadness that is implicit guilt for what I have said or done, but I also am afraid that someone will challenge me, shame will unfortunately override guilt, and I will probably hide.

See if you can distinguish these feelings and the emotions that occur with each of them. You will begin to see the value of guilt and embarrassment and find ways to feel these things more and feel shame and humiliation less.

Further reading

Johnson, R. (2018). Feelings I and Feelings II blogs

Lewis, H. (1971). Shame and guilt in neurosis. New York: International Universities Press

Narramore, B. (1984). No condemnation: rethinking guilt motivation in counseling, preaching, and parenting. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan

Nathanson, D.L. (1992). Shame and pride: affect, sex, and the birth of the self. New York: Norton

Tangney, P. (2002). Shame and guilt. New York: Guilford

Tournier, P. (1958). Guilt and grace. New York: Harper and Row