happiness

I Need to Feel Shame

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, Self-Awareness

Many people seem to need to feel shame, however crazy that sounds. Allow me to make sense of this seemingly nonsensical statement. Common sense seems to suggest that shame is a terrible feeling to have and most people avoid it like the plague. But sometimes the feeling of shame is better than the alternative.

Guilt, shame, humiliation and embarrassment

First, I need to define shame and other elements that are cousins to shame: guilt, embarrassment, and humiliation. I have previously written about shame and its feeling-based cousins. These four concepts are related to some degree but drastically different in their cause, operation, and ultimately in their elimination. These four concepts, which we should call “feelings” have different emotions associated with them:

  • Guilt: sadness
  • Shame: fear
  • Humiliation: anger
  • Embarrassment: joy

All of these feelings have to do with the individual but they also have social implications and social history:

  • I feel guilty, which is sadness, when I realize that I have done or said something that has been harmful or hurtful to someone or to some piece of property.
  • I feel shame, which is anger, when I believe that I have done something that is wrong in someone else’s eyes. Shame leads to hiding because it seems to the individual that some unknown person thinks that there is something wrong with him.
  • Humiliation, which is fear, is a purposeful act of denigration that the individual has received, always in a social situation. Humiliation has at its root that there is something wrong with the person.
  • Embarrassment, which is joy, because one can laugh at him/herself for something that they have said or done.

An important fact is that there is some kind of restraint in the expression of the four basic emotions associated with these feeling. In other words, in all of these experiences the individual feels called upon to keep the underlying emotions to him/herself. Sometimes, this keeping these feelings private is for protection because the environment is not conducive to expressing the underlying emotion. Humiliation, which occurs mostly in childhood social situations always produces anger in the individual being humiliated because the social situation surrounding humiliation does not allow for anger. It may be even danger to express anger. Thus, the humiliated person will keep this anger private, which may be to his benefit and safety in the moment but detrimental to him in the rest of his life.

The relationship of shame to humiliation

Shame, i.e. the feeling that something is wrong with me, is not a natural feeling. It comes most directly from having been humiliated in childhood (and to some degree later in life; but primarily in childhood and somewhat in adolescence). Importantly, humiliation is a conscious, purposeful attack from another person who demeans you in some way. This is why humiliation is about a real event, a real person, a real situation. The person who humiliates me usually (but not always) is purposely seeking to demean me in some way, perhaps the way I speak, walk, or my family of origin. I remember feeling humiliated when I was doing a show-and-tell presentation, perhaps in about fourth grade. While I was speaking, someone said that my zipper was down. I immediately zipped my pants up only to be greeted with a classroom laughing at my situation. In this case, the kids did not intentionally humiliate me, but I “felt” humiliated because I could do nothing to prevent their laughter and my consequent thinking that “there is something wrong with me.” A later experience occurred to me in high school after football practice when we were all showing together. While I was showering, I heard a good deal of laughter from the other boys in the shower room, turned around and saw that someone was urinating on my leg. This individual happened to be the strong football tackle on the squad while I was the rather weak football end, and not particuallry good at football. In both of these experiences I felt humiliated, i.e. something is wrong with me” kind of feeling with one of them being unintentional and one clearly intentional.

I just spent some time with a patient about his lifelong feeling of shame, i.e. not being good enough. As we explored the history of his feeling shame, he recalled how his mother was the primary instigator of this feeling. Evidently, she had a distinct tendency to criticize all of her children, whether for being a bit overweight to how they spoke to the grades they got in school. My patient, Tom frequently felt inadequate in her presence. Unfortunately, this experience of being (unintentionally) humiliated by his mother led to a feeling that there was “something wrong with him leading him to a life where he was constantly on guard for potential criticism.

Humiliation in childhood leads to the experience of shame in later life because the person has remained fearful of being humiliated again, which is tantamount to feeling that there is something wrong with the person. While humiliation is real coming from a real person, shame in imaginative and is coming from an imagined person. A shame-inclined person has experienced the feeling of humiliation accompanied by the fear that something is intrinsically wrong with him/her. If I have not been humiliated in life (which almost never occurs), I will not be inclined to shame. With Tom, as we tried to unpack how he developed this shame-based life, it became obvious that his mother was “projecting” her own felt inadequacy (for some unknown reason) onto her children who she saw aa a reflection of herself.

There is no value to humiliation and there is no value to the shame that results from either of these experiences. However, when shame gets into one’s psyche, it is very hard to dislodge. Hard, but not impossible. We will deal with this momentarily. Before we examine the cure of shame, we need to look at the very different concept of guilt.

Guilt vs shame

Guilt, sometimes called “real guilt,” results in the feeling of sadness. Guilt looks like shame because of the restraint of emotion, but in fact, it is substantially different. Shame is fear-based, i.e. afraid of being shamed or humiliated, whereas guilt is sadness-based. We try to help people to decrease shame, hence decrease fear (usually fear of judgment) and become more guilt-based. That might sound crazy, i.e. “to help people feel more guilt. Feeling more guilt is simply feeling sad. Feeling shame and the accompanying fear is substantially different from feeling guilt, which is sadness-based. The process of feeling guilty is quite simply looking at what you said or done that was hurtful, harmful, or simply wrong. If that person allows him/herself to feel guilt, namely feeling sad, this sadness might remain silent or it might be expressed. If I am able to assess my behavior, seeing my successes and failures, as well as the value or disvalue of what I said or done, I will most certainly become a better person. My character improves, and quite possibly, I might simply learn to keep quiet, think before I speak, or speak carefully. I might govern what I do in the same way by looking at what I did and seeing small or large errors, thus learning to be a better person.

I have suggested that both guilt (real guilt) and embarrassment are valuable for a person to feel. The important thing about embarrassment is that I laugh at myself for something I said or did that did not hurt or harm anyone else. I just displayed my natural, human tendency to say or do things that look funny. If I can laugh at myself, I will not feel ashamed of what I did. Perhaps had I been able to laugh at my zipper being down and then zipped up, I would have laughed at my myself along with my classmates. I could do no such thing in the shower room when I was attacked by another boy. Embarrassment is like guilt in a way because the experience of guilt is about oneself, not about other people, or their real or imagined judgment of him/her. I laugh at myself at having done or said something that was odd or foolish without feeling odd or foolish. I can look at myself as a normal human being who said or did something that was odd in some way.

Simply put, guilt and embarrassment are about me, what I did, what I said, and the results of my behavior. In both cases, the emotions associated with these two feelings, sadness and joy, are a reflection of how I look at myself. If I feel guilt, I naturally feel sadness, which if allowed to run its course, ends. Likewise, if I feel embarrassment, I laugh at myself, see that I am a person inclined to accidents of all kinds as all of us are. I have written previously about how a good normal day is filled with about equal amounts of joy and sorrow because of the successes and failures I have in a typical day. Most of the time these are simple successes, like pouring coffee into my cup, while others are simple failures, by spilling that same coffee on the floor.

Shame and humiliation and their accompanying emotions of fear and anger, ideally occur seldom in a day’s time. Unfortunately, people with a good deal of shame or humiliation in their system are often unable to feel simple guilt (sadness) and simple embarrassment (joy) without finding themselves deteriorating into shame or humiliation. Both of these experiences have to do with what someone else has said or done to me or what they might say about me. Shame is entirely imaginary, whereas humiliation that caused my inclination to shame was quite real. In summary, guilt and embarrassment are good because they cause me to examine myself and improve. Shame and humiliation are bad for me because they cause me to hide myself for fear of judgment or danger. Importantly, all four of these feelings have to do with love.

Love that underlies guilt, shame, humiliation, and embarrassment

People who are familiar with my writing know that sadness, fear, anger, and joy are the four basic emotions all humans have and they serve different purposes. I suggest that we have pairs of emotions, namely:

  • Joy and sadness
  • Fear and anger

We call joy and sadness “love-based emotions” and fear and anger as “defense-based emotions. But the story is actually a bit simpler than that. Indeed, when we feel anger or fear, we are usually in some kind of defensive posture. It is a little harder to see how joy and sadness are related as “love-based.” Let me explain by suggesting that all of these basic emotions are actually based on love in some way:

  • Joy: I love something that I have in the present
  • Sadness: I love something that I have lost in the present
  • Fear: I love something that I might lose
  • Anger: I love something that I have lost in the past

We are interested in creasing love in our lives and the lives of the people we serve. Thus, we think it is important to see that love is at the center of all emotions, and if I can get a handle of the love part of emotions, I will be able to understand, value, communicate, and govern my emotions. Furthermore, I will be able to do the same for the people around me. It is easier to see that joy and sadness are love-based, but it is much harder to see how shame and humiliation are love-based. What was happening to me when I was humiliated in the classroom and in the shower room? I lost something in both cases. What did I lose? I lost a portion of myself. We might say that I lo lose a bit of self-esteem, but I want to be careful about saying that because self-esteem is really self-understanding that then migrates into self-acceptance. Humiliation interrupts this process by suggesting that there is something wrong with me. Was anything wrong with me in the classroom with my zipper down? Not really. Furthermore, was there anything wrong with me in the shower room with someone urinating on me? Not really. But these situations caused this almost immediate feeling that there was something wrong with me. In both of these circumstances I loved myself, but quickly when I was attacked (one intentionally, one unintentionally), I immediately didn’t love myself. Had I had the wisdom that I now had, I would have cried in both circumstances, but had I cried in these situation, it is likely that I might have been humiliated even more. I chose to feel shame, however odd that sounds. And then this “something is wrong with me” stayed with me to some degree, the classroom experience for an hour, the shower room experience for years. Feeling shame protected me, however odd that sounds. I thought I “needed “to feel shame.

The need to feel shame

Why in the world would anyone want to feel shame, much less the original humiliation that caused the person to feel afraid or angry? Simply put, it is easier to feel shame than to feel the underlying humiliation and accompanying “there is something wrong with me” feeling. Feeling that there is something wrong with me is devastating. When I feel this feeling, I would truly want to not live. It is, in fact, intolerable to feel this thing. So when I come into feeling this feeling some kind of inadequacy, I protect myself with feeling shame. It is like, “If I feel this shame thing, no one else will be able to shame me.” In other words, I do it before someone else doing it. In so doing, I am in control of the feeling of shame and not the other (imaginary) person.

This is why shame is so hard to root out. It served me when I was a child when I was humiliated in fact and it shields me now when I imagine that I might be humiliated. However visible this feeling shame might feel to me, in fact, it is a way of my hiding from someone else’s potential shaming or humiliating me.

In some cases this self-shaming comes out is some kind of masochistic thing, like self-harm., More often, however, it is simply an internal mechanism where I hide my feelings, go into myself, and try to soothe the attack that I suppose someone is ready to inflict on me. This is a self-protective mechanism that protects me from perceived harm. It comes due to one or more of the following reasons:

  • I would rather shame myself then feel someone else’s shame. In fact, what I am actually shielding is myself from the humiliation I suffered as a child. So, what can I do to get over shame? By the way, if I can get over feeling shame, I will more frequently feel guilt.
  • I feel shame to justify my behavior. A patient of mine admits to lifelong “self-esteem” issues” and readily admits to feeling a good deal of shame. But the shame he feels is not so much from childhood as it is from his irresponsible behavior over his life. Specifically, he has not managed money properly and has had a tendency to avoid being responsible in other practical and professional matters, this despite the fact that he is well liked and appreciated in his profession. Simply put, he would rather feel shame than be responsible.
  • I would rather feel shame than feel guilt. If I feel shame, I can wallow in “there is something wrong with me” rather than feeling appropriate guilt and accompanying sadness for what I have done.
  • I might actually feel shame as a kind of badge or diagnosis, something like feeling, or perhaps even saying, “I’m just a fuckup” rather than actually seeing one or two things that he could actu8ally do to improve his lot in life
  • I might feel shame because it is familiar and has served me for many years. This is a little like having a badge of shame but this operation is continuing to do what shielded me in early childhood.

Getting over shame

It might seem that I have painted a picture that suggests shame is unavoidable and unfixable. It is almost entirely unavoidable because we are living in such a shame-based society, but it is most certainly fixable, i.e. healable. The process is the same for any difficult feeling:

  • Admit to the feeling
  • Understand, best as you can, the origins of the feeling
  • Allow the feeling to be there. Call it what it is: shame, i.e. “there is something wrong with me.”
  • Note your tendency to hide from it because you feel ashamed of yourself in some way.
  • Unfortunately, you will look what you said, what you did, what you didn’t say or didn’t do, how you look together with how you want to look.
  • This is a very painful process, but it is the only way you can get through shame, get over it, and find that truly “nothing is wrong” with you.

Doing this all by yourself is the beginning but it is not enough. You need other people to understand your feeling of shame, ideally person or persons who can hear your feelings without judgment, encouragement, criticism, or suggestion. This is a very hard person to find. You probably need a competent therapist. Talk to this person as much as you can about what you think the origins of your feeling ashamed of yourself is. You might need also to talk to them about less than good ways you are coping with shame that I have outlined above.

Find guilt, real guilt, guilt that is specifically related to what you said or did, or perhaps didn’t say or do. Feel sad about your actions. The more you find, feel, and finish (real) guilt, the less you will feel shame. Real guilt pushes out false guilt, which is tantamount to shame. You might find it valuable to write your thoughts down in a kind of journal, but you will ultimately need to share these very private feelings with a competent therapist or wise friend.

As your life become freer and freer from shame, you will be able to tackle the mistakes you make in life by feeling guilt instead of shame. Eventually, the “something is wrong with me” will be replaced with the combination of, “I did the right thing and feel happy” and “I did the wrong thing and feel sad.”

The Centrality of Safety

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

The more I do this work of psychotherapy, augmented by daily life experience, I see that safety is central to life, and any abridgement of safety causes alarm in a person’s psychological state, which then causes alarm in one physical state and one social system. In other words, I need to be safe first and foremost. Allow me to discuss this matter of safety, and of course, the lack of safety. When I do not feel safe, I feel the emotion of fear. In a nutshell, when I feel safe, my body, mind, emotions, and social life can work at their best, but when I don’t feel safe, all four of these basic elements of life are harmed in some way.

Where does this matter of safety originate?

Safety originates (ideally) in utero, i.e. in mother’s uterus (womb). Then, when born, safety remains the main ingredient (ideally) for the infant’s first year of life. Infants need three elements to survive infancy: safety, nurturance, and comfort…in that order. If an infant is not safe, that infant will most likely die, perhaps physically as her brain will begin to withdraw from life, or at the very least she will become so impaired in life so as to have a life that is something other than living. I will get back to this “something other than living” in a moment. If an infant feels safe, all else can begin to work and prepare that infant for the rest of life, which means feeling, thinking, relating, working, and playing. The infant doesn’t recognize any of these things, of course, but rather simply notices when she is safe and when she is not safe. Enter the central emotion of fear in human development. The other necessary ingredients of an infant’s life, namely nurturance (food) and (physical) comfort, should naturally follow in infancy because if either of these elements is missing, the infant will also be impaired. We might call these three elements, safety, nurturance, and comfort, elements and expressions of love. No parents are perfect in caring for their infants, so no infant comes out having had the perfect supply of these ingredients of love, no matter how hard parents try to love their children.

We will not fully discuss the matters of nurturance and comfort leaving that discussion for another time as we focus on the lack of safety being so central in a person’s life beginning in infancy. Parents who have watched their infants approach toddlerhood beginning in the second year of life, have observed how the infant can cry out of genuine fear and then later learn to cry when the infant just wants attention. The careful parent learns to distinguish between these cries, while some parents come running every time the infant cries. When this happens, the infant retains the unfortunate “feeling,” if we call it that, that she can get attention by crying. Do you know people, children, adolescents, or adults, who comes to tears every time they don’t get what they want? Furthermore, the child who has received too much attention, does not adequately develop ways to feel safe without the necessity of external safety. The larger problem that occurs with the matter of safety in infancy is the lack of adequate parents providing external safety.

What happens when an infant does not receive the basic ingredients of a successful infancy?

  • If the infant does not feel safe in infancy, she will likely have a dominant emotion of fear, perhaps for the rest of her life. We will discuss what might happens when an individual begins post-infancy without having felt safe in infancy.
  • If the infant not properly nourished, the infant will remain “hungry” the rest of her life, a hunger that then gravitates towards things, people, or ideas.
  • If the infant is not properly comforted, that infant will then be impaired in the matter of comfort. Some people who come into adult life with the condition of not having been comforted become unduly dependent on other people, while others become unable to be comforted.
  • We can conjecture that the origin of addictions, both chemical and behavioral, result from the lack of one of these three necessary ingredients of infancy. Thus, people seek some way of assuaging their lack of safety, nurturance, and/or comfort by finding counterfeits of these elements in addictions.

Addictions as ways of compensating for the lack of proper infantile care

I am using the term “addictions” rather broadly, not specifically as defined by addictionologists. I see anything that takes me away from the good life of feeling, thinking, doing, and relating as a kind of addiction. The addiction serves as a replacement for the missing ingredients of early life, often the life of an infant. Before we examine addictions resulting from this lack, we need to examine some other possibilities that cause a person to feel unsafe in life.

It is possible that undue fear displayed in adult life actually originates before birth, i.e. in utero. Many things can complicate pregnancy and possibly cause an undue amount of fear. These include mother’s mood, which most certainly causes hormonal changes in the fetus, but of course, these moods could be joyful, sad, angry, or fearful. There could be some kind of illness that mother has during pregnancy, or the infant might suffer some kind of medical abnormality, maybe just turning around in the womb temporarily limiting the flow of nutrients from the umbilical cord. I have met people who seem to display a kind of fear that seems to predate infancy and might be in utero in origin.

Addictions can be chemical (alcohol, street drugs, and food predominantly) or behavior (sexual, gambling, working, or playing predominantly. Let me provide some examples of how people have compensated for the lack of safety in infancy by finding some sort of addictive substance or behavior. We will not discuss addictions that might result from a lack of nurturance or comfort at this time.

  • Jim had two predominant addictions: alcohol and sex. Sex was demonstrated in promiscuity. As I looked deep into Jim’s background I could not see how these addictions might have come from a lack of safety, but I did see that he seemed “to be at his best” when he was promiscuous or under the undue influence of alcohol.
  • Sally seemingly came from a “good and loving family” but she was “addicted” to fixing her husband, from what he did, to what he wore, to what he said. When she did not get what she thought was “good for him and us”, she fell into tears. I suspect that she was deprived of safety in some way
  • Ben admits to “being addicted to sex (pornography and masturbation mostly), marijuana, food, and attention. His background clearly reveals a lack of safety in his early life.
  • Peter is addicted to having enough money in his life. I was amazed to hear from him that he “could not survive” with less than $200K annual income claiming openly that he “was raised in poverty, came close to being homeless twice, and would never be in poverty again). His wife, children, friendships, and personal satisfaction suffered greatly because of his desire for money.
  • Sam is also addicted to money, but more than money, he is addicted to work and to the approval that he seems to need. He readily admits that he is still striving for his father’s approval even though his father died years ago.
  • Mike is addicted to alcohol, marijuana, approval, and sex. He has been in a female relationship largely because he “doesn’t want to be alone,” and smokes pot or drinks alcohol as a way of assuaging his insecurities. He also has a kind of addiction to play, which means that he would rather do play than work, perhaps because he doesn’t know what he will do when he grows up. He is 35.

These are but a few examples of the adults I see with what seems to be an underlying fear component, possibly coming from infancy but perhaps just as possibly from later years of toddlerhood, childhood, or adolescence. One of the predominant elements of fear coming to dominate an individual is the lack of appropriate freedom and limitation in early childhood. While infancy is a time when fear is the dominant emotion, the four years of years when joy, anger, and sadness need to develop.

Fear that can originate in post-infant years of 2-6

We have four basic emotions. These emotions develop in four stages:

  • Fear: primarily in the first year of life. This feeling keeps an infant alive because when he feels something that is life-threatening, like being hunger, he will cry. Crying keeps him alive. If he didn’t have the ability to cry, he would not survive infancy. Thus, fear is the most central emotion that we have. The rest of life ideally mitigates the centrality of fear, but fear is not something that is wrong with us. It is something that is right with us, at least in its origin, namely in infancy.
  • Joy: primarily in the second year of life. About the time a child turns one, he begins to actually love, something he has not really done during his first year of life. He loves his kitten, his blanket, his parents, or a toy. He loves certain kinds of food, and he loves some kind of physical touch. All of these things, whether alive or not, spur the one-year old and two-year old to love and to enjoy what he loves.
  • Anger: primarily in the years 2-5. These are difficult years for everyone, both for the child and for his parents. Now he can walk, run, talk, sing, yell and scream. The fact that he has a lot more mobility gives him more things to love, and hence a lot more joy, but his mobility and verbal ability also gives him a lot of losses, a lot of limitations, and a lot of boundaries. Where during the first year of life where he got almost everything he wanted, and the second year of life when he got most of what he wanted, now he doesn’t get much of what he wants. Why? Because he wants more. He doesn’t know that he wants more. All he feels is something is terribly wrong with the world because he used to get almost everything he wanted and now he doesn’t get most of what he wants. So, he gets angry. Anger is the real starting point of what we call self. Anger distinguishes us from our surroundings and is very important. “Self” started a bit in infancy and then a lot more in the second year of life, but solid self has to do with me being different from the world, separated from the world, and somewhat on my own. It is not the “terrible twos” of life but rather the terrible threes, fours, and fives.
  • Sadness: starting about age 6. While fear is the most central emotion we have, sadness is the most important one. It is important because absolutely everything that I love in life, be it people, place, thing, or idea, I will lose…eventually. Sadness is central to cope with the losses I have every day, whether the simple loss of coffee spilled on my shirt or the loss of my dear friend in a car accident. I need to learn to be sad, cherish the love that is always underneath sadness, and find ways to “finish” being sad. That often doesn’t happen.

Emotion in the rest of life.

If I get through these stages adequately, I have all these emotions in place in my soul, feel them naturally, value them explicitly, express them appropriately, and govern them carefully. Our present concern is for the basic feeling of safety that is so important in life, which would ideally lead to a life where I feel a minimum about of fear, a minimum amount of anger, and a great deal of joy and sadness. Most people have not properly migrated through these stages of emotional growth so that they can get to a place where they feel joy and sorrow. Rather, they are riddled with fear or they are too often angered. Anger is hard to manage, reduce, and ultimately conquer, but fear is by far the most difficult emotion to govern and also to manage and reduce in life. A daily life should ideally be something like this:

  • I get up in the morning:
    • I didn’t sleep well, so I am disappointed (sad) that I must proceed with the day not having had a good night sleep
    • I slept well and feel joyful, ready to approach the day.
  • I eat breakfast:
    • I spill coffee on my pants and have to change quickly (sad)
    • I am hungry and breakfast is truly satisfying (joy)
  • I drive to work:
    • I get stuck in traffic and am late for my first obligation (sad)
    • I listen to an interesting NPR broadcast and feel enlivened (joy)
  • I work:
    • I have to do several cold calls and receive 90% rejections (sad)
    • I make more sales that I have made in a year (joy)
  • I come home:
    • I hear on the radio that Russia has invaded the Ukraine (sad)
    • I somehow just feel good about the day and decide stop for a quick end-of-the-day espresso (joy)
  • I watch a bit of TV:
    • I realize that I forgot to record a program that is important to me (sad)
    • I watch a really fun comedy that makes me feel wonderful (joy)
  • I get a call from a friend:
    • He tells me that his son has been in a serious accident (sad)
    • He tells me that his wife and he have just won the lottery (joy)

This is the ideal way to face these joys and sorrow in life, but what can happen instead?

I get afraid or I get angry. By the way, all anger is precipitated by fear in some way: I hear, see, or think about something untoward, get afraid of what might happen, and then get angry…in about a half second. So, in the above circumstances where I should have ideally simply been sad, I got afraid or angry. Angry at myself because I spilled coffee on my pants, angry at Russia, angry, etc. Then, I get scared. Scared that I have ruined my pants, scared that Russia invade Minnesota, scared that I will lose this or that. Whether scared or angry, I have avoided the feeling of sadness.

How these emotions work together

Sometimes we have a predominant emotion that works alone, but that is not usually the case:

  • We may feel overjoyed at winning a game, being at a human birth, or seeing a wonderful rainbow
  • We may feel profoundly sad at a loss of a good friend
  • We may feel genuine fear when we hear a loud noise while walking in a dark alley
  • We may feel genuine anger when we are accosted by someone in that alley

More often, however, these emotions come in pairs:

  • Fear and anger are always a pair and are often felt simultaneously. The guy who accosts me in the alley scares me but my anger takes hold at the same time and I fight back
  • When I experience an important loss, say, a person, I feel both joy at having loved the person and sadness at having lost her.
  • Importantly, I cannot feel both sadness and fear at the same time
  • Neither can I feel sadness and anger at the same time

I have learned many times that a patient of mine feels anxiety (fear) when they come into my office, and then after a few minutes of good therapy, they feel sadness, they no longer feel any anxiety. This is quite a remarkable phenomenon, and they are often surprised at feeling no anxiety. Thus, I can honestly say, sadness cures anxiety. Anxiety is always about the potential of losing something, so if I can feel that potential loss, I will feel anticipatory sadness. This is an odd experience feeling sad now for something that I might lose in the future. It works.

Likewise, sadness cures anger. Anger is about something that I have lost in the past, the past being a few minutes ago or years ago. If I can feel the sadness of having lost what I loved (person, place, or thing), I will feel nostalgia, which is the two components of love: joy and sadness. I will not feel anger, but this, of course, is hard to do because a part of me wants to stay angry.

We say that anxiety are “delusional.” If I get angry, I will delusionally change the past. If I worry, I will delusionally change the future. Both are delusions. Unfortunately, they are delusions that are quite common with our culture and with most people.

What can I do to effectively use these four emotions?

This is a process that takes a good deal of time, effort, and generally good therapy. The process is quite simple but very hard to do because there are forces within you and outside of you that work against this process:

  • Notice what you feel, whether fear, anger, joy or sadness. Remember that all of these emotions have to do with what you love.
    • If you are afraid, note that you are afraid of losing something that you love.
    • If you are angry, you have lost something that you love
    • If you are joyful, you have something that you love
    • If you are sad, you are experiencing the loss of something that you leave
  • When you have these emotions:
    • Allow joy to last as long as your soul wants to last
    • Allow sadness to last as long as your soul wants it to last
    • If you are angry, realize that you have lost something that you have loved. The more you do this, the less you will feel angry.
    • If you are afraid, realize that you might lose something that you love. Allow yourself to think of that possible loss and allow yourself to feel anticipatory sadness.
  • If it is the right time and the right place and you are with the right person, tell that person that you are experiencing a “love problem” in the form of joy, sadness, anger, or fear

The ideal life is one with about equal amounts of joy and sadness. The more you get under fear and anger, the more you will feel both joy and anger, whether about the past (instead of anger) or the future (instead of anxiety). Joy and sadness always end. Fear and anger can go on forever.

The more you practice seeing the love under all these emotions, the happier you will be. And the sadder you will be.

Surviving or Thriving

Ron Johnson appreciation, Development, Discovery, emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, love, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Some years ago I asked to talk to an African American man who had written a number of pieces in the local paper. In my email I said that although I had two Black sons in law and had Black men occasionally come to my office, I often felt that I was missing something important about the Black subculture, namely how Blacks actually engage in conversation, friendship, and intimacy. Intimacy is the heart of any good therapeutic alliance between therapist and patient. I was to meet him in a local café. I had been interested in some of the things he had said about his work, which was essentially with primarily Black kids. When I entered the café, he waved at me and invited me to come to the table where he was sitting with a friend/colleague (who happened to be White) with whom he had been working for a few years. As I approached the table and had not yet sat down, he volunteered something that has stuck with me since our meeting although I have not had contact with this man since. He said something like, “I want to start by saying that you look confident and a man who is thriving in life. If you want to know that your very appearance suggests thriving and it is off-putting. I have lived in an environment that has been one of surviving, not thriving.” I was not offended by his comment, but I did take a figurative step back from the conversation because I had never heard of the difference between thriving and surviving, and I immediately knew that I had not been raised in a survival context. This matter of surviving has continued to be an important aspect of my understanding people, to some degree the subcultures of America like the African American culture, but in a larger context of how many people engage life: they are surviving. Let’s look at the whole business of thriving and surviving that people do. There are many people who survive terrible ordeals, like physical illness or even war, but my focus will be primarily on people who survive through emotional challenges.

People who are surviving

  • People with physical limitations
    • Blindness
    • Debilitating illnesses like cancer and heart disease
    • Physical disabilities
  • People with household difficulties
    • Financial limitations or challenges’
    • Deteriorating living quarters
    • No living quarters
  • People who interpersonal difficulties
    • One partner is seriously physically limited
    • One partner wants out of the relationship
    • One partner is unfaithful
    • One partner is addicted to some behavior or chemical
    • Partners have substantially different religious/philosophical orientations
    • Partners have a cognitively impaired child, which causes them to frequently be at odds with each other
    • Partner one does not like the biological family of partner two. Makes Christmas celebrations difficult
  • And many other difficulties that people need to manage by surviving

People who are surviving long term personal and interpersonal challenges

  • Jack is unable to conquer his addition to one of the following: alcohol, drugs, food, promiscuity, gambling, video game playing, other screen time, working, playing, toxic relationships, or sleeping (too much or not enough)
  • Marge is generally not happy with herself. She thinks she is stupid.
  • Peter is not happy with people. He doesn’t know how to admit that he is smarter than most people.
  • Both Marge and Peter are lonely
  • Stan continues to pine for the woman he thinks he should have married, a feeling that makes life difficult for him and secondarily and unconsciously for his wife
  • Dad doesn’t really like his son. Thinks that he is too much like his wife
  • Mom really favors daughter # 1 over daughter #2 because Mom is more like #1
  • Martha loves, or thinks she loves Sam, but Sam is quite neglectful of her. She has tried everything to accommodate to him and to change him without success
  • Anthony just went through radiation treatment for prostate cancer but his PSA numbers are even worse than before treatment.
  • Anthony’s wife is surviving his illness and imminent death by worrying about how she will make it alone given their current financial disaster

The ways people survive these difficulties

In a nutshell, they avoid them. This means that ignore the feelings associated with their lives. What happens then? They turn to anger, avoidance, addiction, or some kind of fruitless activity.

  • Philip on the cruise boat holes himself up in his cabin coming out only to eat when he is desperately hungry
  • Alex spends 85% of his day playing video games
  • Francis takes Tylenol every two hours
  • Craig does his best to ignore the mess his dogs makes and covers the smell with incense
  • Frank talk about doing something on the house that pleases his wife but never actually does anything
  • Anthony’s wife goes silent for the most part, occasionally throwing barbs at her husband for not managing their finances well
  • Anthony indulges in a good deal of self-hate, which seems to be a way he can atone for his mistakes.
  • Some people start projects and abandon them because they are tired or bored. This leads to a lot of clutter in their lives, like property, relationships, and projects half-done.
  • Many people go to doctors and hospitals to have yet another blood test or CT scan to find the magic bullet

What has gone wrong with these people, many of who are intelligent and kind, and been productive in life?

In a nutshell, they haven’t grown up. But what does that mean? Almost all of the people I have noted above (all of whom have had their presented situations altered for privacy) have had pretty good lives and then got stuck somehow. They got stuck because they stop growing, which means that never learned to adapt, adjust, compromise, and find a way to adequately meet the new challenges of life. They might have had good marriages and jobs to start with. They might have successfully raised children. They might have even made a great deal of money along the way. But somehow, they never were able to move from one element of life to the next, from one need to the next need, from one job to another, from one house to another, or maybe even from one spouse to another or to being alone. They didn’t adapt to the changes that occurred in their lives thinking that the old things should still work.

Secondly, they didn’t learn how to feel, particularly the feeling of disappointment and hurt that comes in life, usually every day, allow themselves to feel sad for a season, and then take stock of what lies in front of them.

Thirdly, because they haven’t grown up and haven’t found a way to deal with disappointment, they have fallen into the avoidance, anger, avoidance, or fruitless activity that used to work but no longer works.

Fourthly and most importantly, they haven’t found ways face the paradoxes of life. They want the old things to work rather than finding new ways to succeed in life. They haven’t found ways to love you wife but not like some things about her, like your job for the most part but not like the 20% that you don’t like, love the house and hate the housework.

So, what can be done to do more thriving and less surviving?

  • Admit to your feelings. If you have read any of our blogs, you have already heard this call: admit to what is there, particularly how you feel. You will feel some combination of:
    • Hurt
    • Disappointment
    • Sadness
  • Then note the quick transformation of these basic feelings hurt and disappointment and the natural emotion of sadness quickly transfer into something else:
    • Anger
    • Fear
    • Avoidance
    • Addiction
    • Undue activity
  • Tell someone how you feel, ideally a person who doesn’t give you advice or “get over it” or “just do something.” Such a person could be a good friend, family member, or a therapist-like person.
  • Consider that there might be drastic action, like divorce, moving to a new house, quitting your job. Most of the time you won’t have to do such things. Just give these thoughts some room
  • If you are really in an intolerable situation, whatever it is, find a way out of it.
    • Leave your wife or job or house
    • Find a way to live the life you have left on this earth
    • Go to the country you have wanted to see all of your life
  • If drastic action is needed (it usually isn’t), note your feelings
    • Admit to the feeling of disappointment. Life at this point in your life is just not what you expected
    • Admit to the sadness
    • Allow your sadness to run its course. Sadness always ends
    • Work diligently to prevent anger, avoidance, addiction and fruitless activity
  • Do something that you really don’t want to do
    • Work out
    • Fix the garage
    • Clean up after your dog
    • Dare to look for a job even though you don’t want to work at “some stupid job.”
  • Then sit back and realize you did something you really didn’t want to do and appreciate your small effort.
  • Take a break from doing what you didn’t want to do and indulge yourself in video game laying or eating a donut.
  • Take a bit of stock of the other paradoxes in your life. Maybe read a snippet or so from the Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius.
  • You will find that much of your life, perhaps most of your life, is pretty good for the most part and enjoyable. Allow yourself a few moments to appreciate and enjoy.
  • Then, and only then will you be able to slowly move beyond surviving to thriving. Thriving takes time and a lot of work. It is not about money, property, or even relationships. It is about seeing what is, accepting what you can, changing what you can, and trusting yourself.
  • You will notice that you will begin to have a very positive effect on the world around you: people, places, things, and ideas