Positive psychology

I Don’t Want To Grow Up

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

I found myself saying something to a patient the other day that was one of those “My mouth said that” statements (note a previous blogs on this phenomenon). In other words, I didn’t know it until I said it. The statement was this: “You want to be grown up. You don’t want to grow up.” This means that the individual wanted to be a person of (emotional) maturity, but he didn’t want to go through the growing pains of growing up; he wanted to be grown up. You can’t just “grow up” in a heartbeat. You need to go through the growing process, which is always painful. It is painful for people to go through the process of giving up an addiction, like alcohol, food, or gambling, but no one wants to give up these things; they want to have them given up. The difference is this: having given up is an idea; giving up is reality. I am not primarily interested in giving up addictions or bad habits in this paper. I am more interested in the whole process of growing, or growing up. More specifically, I am interested in the lack of emotional maturity. The lack of emotional maturity is the heart of the psychological problems that people have. As I see it, no one wants to grow up; they want to be grown up. Furthermore, no one is perfectly emotionally mature. We all have pockets of emotional immaturity. But what is “emotional maturity”?

Emotional immaturity
Most of the people I see have some kind of immaturity. Instead of saying that they are “immature,” I prefer saying that haven’t grown up…in some way. People who haven’t grown up have failed to mature in the arenas of emotions, and ultimately in social engagement. We refer to such people as suffering from “emotional/social” immaturity. In a previous blog I discussed what I call the “4-8-12” phenomenon. Most of the kids who are brought to me have this phenomenon in their make-up. The 4-8-12 phenomenon is this: the kid is eight years old physically, but he is very bright, so he is 12 years old intellectually. In other words, he has the knowledge, vocabulary, and abstract reasoning of a12-year old. Unfortunately, he has the emotional development of a four-year old, and hence he has the social maturity of a four-year old.

I saw one of these kids yesterday. He is actually 14 physically and about 18 intellectually. He doesn’t do homework because it is “stupid.” When I hear “stupid,” which I call the “S word,” I usually am in front of a person who smarter (intellectually) the people around him. He probably feels smarter than the other kids in class and very possibly smarter than his teachers. I met with his mother and him together for a few minutes, and it was obvious to me that he was smarter than his mother. I have never met his father, but his mother reported that this young man’s father is very argumentative and challenging like his son. Thus, it is likely that his father may also have the 4-8-12 phenomenon going on in his life. Maybe the father is 40 physically and 60 intellectually. It also likely that the father’s emotional/social maturity is significantly below these numbers, maybe as low as age four (emotionally and socially). It is very difficult to be smarter than the people around you, something I told this young man in the presence of his mother. After his mother left the office, I invited Tom to play something. He suggested chess, a game he has evidently played once or twice. He remembered some but not all of the allowed moves of the various chess pieces. I helped him a bit at the beginning, but after a very few minutes, he was beating me in chess. Now I am far from a grand master of chess, in fact much less than that, but I have probably played several hundred games of chess over 60-odd years. But this kid beat me having only played once or twice. That suggests that he is very bright: he learned quickly, both from his mistakes and from mine.

Unfortunately for Tom, his emotional/social maturity is far below his 14 physically and 18 intellectually levels. I place his emotional age to be eight at best, but frankly some of what he says and does is more like what we would expect from a four-year old. So this young man is 4-14-18. Can you see how this constellation of emotional, physical, and intellectual development can be problematic? It must be difficult for Tom to be in a class with a teacher who doesn’t have the intelligence that he has but perhaps has more emotional/social maturity. In History class, for instance, he might understand the historical facts quickly, and then wonder, for instance, how America justified the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, Viet Nam, the Philippines, or Mexico. Discussion of the justification for these wars and invasions might be very stimulating to Tom. He might be more interested in the Why of these wars than of the What. So he might ask questions in class that don’t have much to do with what happened as they relate to why they happened. This might be genuine intellectual curiosity. But if Tom is forced to write a paper on what happened in any of these wars, might demur that assignment because it is obvious what happened, whereas it is far from obvious why it happened. So Tom might avoid doing this what assignment or forget it altogether. Or he might ask why questions in class that could be frustrating to the history teacher who thinks it is more important to know what than why.

Tom might forget to do his what assignment, or refuse to do it. He might even put up some kind of fuss in class, talk to some other kid in class, or look at his cell phone. Any of these things could get him in trouble. He might do the same thing at home, refusing or forgetting to do his homework assignment. Furthermore, he might be irritable, disagreeable, or otherwise difficult because the history/homework is somewhere in the back of his mind and he is fighting off the feelings he has about the what assignment. Likely, Tom doesn’t even know why he is irritable. He just doesn’t like something. He might say that History class is stupid, or he might say that school is stupid; he might even feel that he is stupid because he can’t seem to do an assignment in History class. None of this, however, does he say. He just acts like a four-year old having some kind of tantrum or resistance or avoidance the way four-year old kids naturally do when they have to do something they don’t want to do.

Emotional maturity
So what does it mean to be emotionally immature, and what is emotional maturity? Emotional maturity is this:
 Knowing how you feel
 Expressing how you feel
 Communicating how you feel
 Governing your expressions of how you feel
 Then:
o Knowing how other people feel
o Giving them liberty to express their feelings
o Valuing other people’s feelings…even though you don’t agree with them

The first order of business is to know how you feel. Emotionally immature people rush right into expressing some kind of feeling without knowing how they feel. What happens with 4-8-12 kids, as well as many emotionally immature adults, is that they jump right into some kind of emotional outburst. The 4-8-12 kid (or adult) doesn’t really know how they feel. Rather, they just rush right into some kind of emotional expression, usually anger, although sometimes silence, withdrawal, anxiety, or depression. So knowing how you feel is the beginning. This means knowing the four basic feelings:
 The love feelings: joy and sorrow
 The defense feelings: fear and anger
When you know how you feel, you will notice one of these feelings. It is easy to know and appreciate joy. It is much harder to know sorrow. Most people rush right through the sorrow and end up with one or both of the defense feelings of fear and anger. But if you know that you love something and know that you have lost it, you will know that you are simply sad about the loss. You have a “love problem”: you feel something (sad) singularly because you loved something and lost it. This is where most people get lost. They don’t know that they have loved something and they don’t know that they have felt sad when they lost this something. They just know that they are anxious or angry, usually angry. Emotional awareness starts with knowing what you love and knowing when you have lost something you love.

Note that there is a difference between expressing your feeling and communicating your feeling. Communicating “feelings” is extremely difficult and something that most people fail to do successfully. The problem with communicating feelings is that feelings aren’t words, and they are not thoughts. There are what we call a “third force” of human existence. When I “feel” something, there is always an emotional component, but there is also a physical component. When I feel something, I “feel” it in my chest, or my head, or maybe even my hands. Think of a time you felt “something” in your chest, hands, or head but you couldn’t put your finger on what this feeling was. This was a “feeling”: partly emotional and partly physical. But feelings also have cognitive components, and there is the problem with communicating feelings. We all try to put our feelings into cognitive words, and it rarely works. I just can’t find the right words to communicate my feelings because the words aren’t quite right. So I say things like, “I have this odd feeling but I can’t put it into words.” This “odd feeling” may be very important or just a passing fancy. So when I try to put my feelings into words, it is a struggle. This struggle is what makes human relationships so difficult. If I could magically put my feelings into words that the other person really understood, I wouldn’t be writing this blog. However, putting feelings into words is exceedingly difficult. Unfortunately, most people think it is easy, like, “I feel it, I say it, and you should understand what I feel.” Rarely, almost never. Communicating feelings is difficult and always will be. Keeps me in business.

And it keeps poets, musicians, and all artists in business. These are the guys and gals who really know feelings and don’t try to put these feelings into cogent words. Poets have “poetic license” when they write, and they work diligently on communicating feelings with words. They are the best with the possible exception of musicians who put feelings to words and music. Better yet might be the sculptors and painters who put feelings in clay and canvas. You want to learn how to communicate feelings into words, read poetry. You want to learn how to communicate feelings even better, take a pottery class or learn to play the Irish tin whistle. Or take a karate class, which puts feelings into physical action. Karate, poetry, and music lessons have helped me learn about communicating feelings without words.

After expressing feelings, and doing the hard work of communicating feelings, the job of emotional maturity is not done. Once you know your feelings, express your feelings, and get better (never perfect) at communicating your feelings, you need to learn to govern the expression of your feelings. I just spent a weekend with several family members. During these various visits I keep most of my feelings to myself. Why would I do that? Because it would not be possible to express my feelings when someone else was expressing theirs. Furthermore, the expression of my feelings would have been hurtful, or even harmful to these people whom I love. I was often sad because I so wanted to say how I felt, but I knew that I could not do that successfully because these family members would have misunderstood my feelings or concluded that I didn’t care for them. So my “containing” my feelings meant just that: I knew what I felt; I could have expressed it; but I concluded that I couldn’t adequately communicate my feelings; so I kept them to myself. Then I felt sad…because I couldn’t/shouldn’t express my feelings. And then I got over feeling sad. And now I can just love these family members.

Finally, if I contain my feelings (after knowing, expressing, and communicating them on earlier occasions), I can then move into social maturity, where I learn how to actually relate to other people. Psychological growth and emotional growth is not all about me. It is ultimately about other people. When I truly care about other people, I am socially mature. But this is another topic for another time.

Further reading:
1. The 4-8-12 Child, hopefully published this year, or you can read my blog
2. The Positive Power of Sadness, published this month (Praeger Press) written by Deb and me.
3. Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman

America Depressed and Distressed

Ron Johnson appreciation, emotional maturity, Feelings, Mental, political, Positive psychology

It is remarkable that the popular media has properly identified President Trump as a person with a narcissistic personality disorder. Sadly, this is certainly an accurate diagnosis for Mr. Trump although I prefer avoiding all such diagnoses because they just look at what is “wrong” with someone, which is never helpful. Instead of identifying someone with some kind of psychological diagnosis it is more valuable to understand the mechanisms with which someone operates and possibly the causes of these operations. Then it is important to know how to relate to those people. Diagnosing someone does not help us understand how to relate to people. Diagnoses only tell us what is supposedly wrong with someone. Let me propose to identify the psychological mechanisms that Mr. Trump uses in life, how they affect us as Americans, and how we might survive and thrive over the next four years.

President Trump most certainly fits the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, or we might say he is “narcissistic.” Ultimately, we should be thinking about how we might be affected by what he says and does instead of simply calling him names and giving him a diagnosis. People with so-called narcissistic tendencies seem to act in selfish ways, and they seem very self-centered. But this is only their surface functioning. Inside such people is a much different operation. Selfish self-centered people do not have a sense of “self” inside. They are focused on external things, i.e. outside of themselves, instead of internal things that are inside of themselves. Sometimes we say that people with a narcissistic personality disorder, or any of the other personality disorders, lack a “core” of what it means to be a person. Lacking this “core” or “self”, people who act selfishly need these more from the external world because they don’t have a solid internal world. There is a deep psychological hunger inside people who are selfish. Because they feel “empty” inside, they need to “fill” up with as much external “food” as possible. Their hunger is insatiable; they are rarely satisfied. Furthermore, when they don’t get constant refreshment from the outside, they feel this deep hunger and become afraid. In a way, they are afraid of dying. They feel like they need to be “fed” by external rewards to keep them alive.

Narcissistic people, or more accurately selfish self-centered people, feed on many things that are “external,” mostly other people’s approval. Because they do not approve of themselves at a deep psychological level, they need almost constant approval from other people. The result of this constant seeking others’ approval works when everyone approves of them, but it doesn’t work when even one person disapproves of them. This constant demand for 100% approval from all people is what we see with people like President Trump. It is painful to see such a brilliant and successful person as he obviously is find it impossible to admit that everyone didn’t vote for him. His recent ludicrous assertion that there was some kind of conspiracy of “voter fraud” with millions of illegal immigrants voting against him is almost delusional. I think that if there had been only one person who voted against him, he still would be upset because he is not capable of managing the disapproval of anyone. He is deeply “hungry” inside and craves constant external rewards of some kind.

There are other ways that typify people who are narcissistic, but they all have the element of being external to oneself. People find different ways of attempting to satisfy their deep hunger. Hoarders are people who have found a way to feel satisfied only when they keep everything, whether of practical use or not. Many obese people have found excessive food to satisfy this deep psychological hunger, but only briefly. Extraverted people with this lack of inner core tend to talk too much and demand constant social engagement hoping to keep from feeling this internal hunger, while introverted people feel marginally satisfied only when they say nothing and keep to themselves. Working and dreaming are both good elements of life but if people are deeply “hungry” inside, they might work all the time to avoid feeling this hunger, and dreamers might dream all the time for the same reason. All addictions are essentially outgrowths of narcissism and the accompanying feeling of emptiness. Addictions include chemical (alcohol and drugs) as well as behavioral (sex, gambling, buying, exercise). All of these addictive elements are natural and useful, but when they are used to satisfy deep inner emptiness, they fail. An important aspect of an addiction is that the individual needs more of the substance or behavior to reach the same level of satisfaction.

Allow me to describe the cause of narcissism, that deep seated hunger that many people, like President Trump, suffer. Simply put, selfish narcissism in adults derives from natural narcissism in early childhood. Think of it this way: when I am an infant, or approximately until I am about two years old, I get most of what I want. It is a challenge to take care of infants’ demands and needs but infants get most of what they want because they don’t want much more than food, clean diapers and a bit of physical contact. But from about the age of two, things are very different. Because they can now talk, walk, and run, they see that the world is much bigger and there is much more interesting. Their wants now multiply by a hundredfold. They want more than they can have. If children of the ages two through about six receive good parenting, these children are routinely limited. They should hear “no” a hundred times more than “yes” because they simply want 100 times more than they can have. If children are not given their basic needs, they remain deeply hungry, sometimes for the rest of their lives. More common, however, is that children in these toddler years are given too much, and given to, rather than limited. This creates the 4-8-12 child that I have discussed elsewhere.

Narcissism is natural for children of the ages two through six: they want everything and feel “hungry” for everything. The task for parents during these years is go give to their children what they need but not much of what they want. Parents and children who have migrated these challenging years well lead to these children understanding that they do not get everything they want. If they learn this important lesson during the toddler years, they are then prepared to engage the social world during the elementary school years where they learn how deal with other people. They learn the importance of sharing, and the intrinsic value of giving. Most importantly, they learn to care about other people because they have been cared for and they care about themselves. If they do not adequately get through the toddler years, they lack self-care and certainly care for others.

No one gets through the early childhood years of natural narcissism unscathed. As a result we all suffer some remaining narcissism, i.e. wanting more than we can have. This adult narcissism shows itself in undue anger when we don’t get what we want, selfishness, and jealousy of what others have. It is very important to understand that we all have at least some of this leftover childhood narcissism if we are to deal with the narcissistic self-less people in our lives. It is not just President Trump who is narcissistic. We also are all narcissistic to some degree. And we know plenty people who suffer from the same lack of development. Being around anyone who is narcissistic is a challenge. Children who are psychologically undeveloped are a challenge because they throw fits when they don’t get what they want. Adults throw different kinds of fits. You can deal with a four-year old’s natural narcissistic demands by saying “no” and taking the consequences: he hates you. But it is much harder to deal with the adult who wants everything, whether your time, your property, your money…or your vote.

Mr. Trump wanted my vote. And he is angry that he didn’t get it. He is throwing a temper tantrum because he didn’t get what he wanted: everyone’s vote. He will continue to be angry. He will continue to be demanding. He will continue to be selfish and self-centered because he does not have a good sense of self and personal core. We will hear him whining about one thing and another, all of which amount to the fact that he can’t have everything and he can’t have everyone like him. There will be more tweets and public statements, the substance of which will be how he isn’t getting everything that he thinks he deserves. He is not capable of accepting loss, disappointment, mistakes, and people’s disapproval. And he will be in our faces about it. He is a man of 70 who has a brain and life experience that is certainly well beyond those years. But he has the emotional structure, and hence the social ability, of a four-year old. We need to accept this phenomenon, which I called the 4-8-12 phenomenon in another blog. But the real task is how to feel, what to think, and what to do over the next four years dealing with his four-year old temper tantrums without being angry or afraid. This is no easy task. It will be distressing. It already is distressing. It could easily be depressing.

If we are to avoid the anger that is the essence of depression, and the fear that is the essence of anxiety, we need to attend to how we really feel. That feeling is sadness. Narcissism, like its cousins anxiety and depression, is contagious. When I am around a depressed or anxious person, I will tend to become depressed or anxious. When I am around a narcissistic person, I will tend to become narcissistic. It is something like, “He is getting everything he wants. I want to have everything I want.” This is real dangerous. It is dangerous enough to be angry at him all the time; it is more dangerous to be afraid all the time of what he might do; but it is much more dangerous to become narcissistic, i.e. become more selfish, self-centered, and self-less. We can do better.

My suggestions for your mental health, your social health, and your physical health:

  • Note the incipient narcissism that occurs in you when you are confronted by Trump’s narcissism. I could say, “Don’t stoop to Trump’s level,” but that would be wrong because it would suggest that you are superior to Trump.
  • I prefer to say, “Be mature in the face of immaturity,” “Be honest in the face of dishonesty,” “Be generous in the face of selfishness,” and “Be yourself. Don’t let yourself be dragged into thinking and feeling that is childish.” You are a mature, honest, and generous person. Be that way. Stand tall.
  • Be sad. It is sad that Mr. Trump has been elected. It is sad for me. It is sad for many people. It is sad for the country. It is sad for the world. If you can continue to feel sad, you will avoid the tendency to be angry and anxious, which are simply the result of repressing the feeling of sadness.
  • If you are a person of faith and prayer, do as Jesus said: pray for your leader. If you have a different philosophical perspective, you may profit from meditation and personal reflection. If you are a person of wit, use it carefully and constructively. If you are one who writes, write. If you write poetry, write. If you sing, sing. If you dance, dance. Be yourself. You will be well. Stay well.

Further reading:

  • “Narcissism as Evil” by R. Johnson and D. Brock. In the three volume set on Evil edited by J. Harold Ellens published by Praeger
  • The Power of Positive Sadness by R. Johnson and D. Brock to be published in March, also by Praeger
  • The 4-8-12 blog, and the forthcoming book

Liberal’s Moral Dilemma

Ron Johnson morality, political, Positive psychology, Spiritual

We liberals are not as moral as we might think. Worse yet, conservative America has just voiced their belief that the Republican Party has the corner on morality. Certainly, most liberal readers of this document will wonder how I could possibly suggest that conservatives are more moral than liberals. Well, it depends on the definition of morality, and to some degree ethics.

I recently read The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor who integrates psychology, morality, religion, and politics. Importantly, he has been a lifelong political liberal and served for a time on the Bill Clinton staff. I was put onto this book by the editor of The Week, a center left periodical that remains a mainstay of my weekly reading. Haidt admits that he found himself dragged kicking and screaming to a very important understanding of how morality is at the core of our current political divide. He comes to the painful conclusion that many Americans, not all of them conservatives, find the liberal moral platform lacking. His conclusion is based on a brilliant examination of the concept of morality, an examination that in a broad definition of morality liberals are found surprisingly wanting.

Haidt proposes that morality has five, or perhaps six pillars: (1) care, (2) fairness, (3) loyalty, (4) authority, and (5) sanctity, possibly adding (6) liberty. Simply put, liberals value care most and fairness next, while conservatives value authority, sanctity, and loyalty. Liberals give lip service to these last three values, but frankly not much, while conservatives give lip service to care and fairness, but not much. We liberals think we have the corner on the market of morality because of our care/fairness orientation. What could be more moral, we think, than taking care of the needy and giving everyone a fair chance at success and life satisfaction? What we have seen in the recent election should wake us up to see that we do not have such a corner, and more importantly, morality, and to some degree ethics, is much broader than care and fairness. This is, so I believe, how the Republicans have taken over so much of the country recently: they have cornered the market of morality, or perhaps more accurately, they have taken over at least three of these five corners leaving Democrats to cry in our wine about how immoral these Republicans are.

Let me look a bit closer at this concept of morality. Take, for instance, the concept of authority. We might think that Hillary spoke with authority, which she certainly did, but she did not speak as an authority, nor did she speak as someone who would use her authority as President. Donald Trump, for all his brashness and profound narcissism, spoke as an authority and spoke of using this authority as soon as he would gain office. Yes, there are significant dangers of being the authority and abusing authority, but we must admit that it is attractive to many Americans, not just conservatives, to have someone speak of setting things right with authority, however impossible it might be to do so. How silly it was for Trump, following Scott Walker and other Republican candidates to speak of doing something “the first day in office” but it was attractive to many people. These people felt a certain safety in the fact that finally someone would just do the right thing even if it offended many people.

Of course we, as liberals, might challenge what is right to do and whether a President even has the right to do the so-called right thing, but that doesn’t matter to people who daily hear of the danger of ISIS, the lack of healthcare for millions of Americans, and the exploding national debt. People just want the magic bullet that will cure these ills, and Trump provided it for them. We can complain that Trump was elected by “uneducated white males,” but this minority of Americans was not the only element in his victory. It is too easy for us to sit back and wine (sic) that people should have known better. We need to see what Republicans and other conservatives are saying about morality, particularly about the value of authority. My favorite President, Republican Theodore Roosevelt, “carried a big stick” in many ways, spoke and acted with authority but was more progressive in many ways before his time. His Democrat cousin FDR also spoke and acted with authority and not always within the rule of law. He just did the right thing with lend lease and other measures to subvert the liberal pacifism of the 1940’s. Kennedy acted with authority, often against a significant element in his own party fighting for racial equality on the one hand, and with the threat of war against Russia during the Cuban missile crisis. Liberals have forgotten the value of moral authority and focused on care and fairness.

The majority of Americans might give lip service to care and fairness, but the larger majority want the freedom to do what they think is right. The hallmarks of the Clinton campaign has been on these two laudable elements of morality. Unfortunately, most Americans care less about care than they do about the freedom to do what they want to do. I am fully behind a woman’s right to “care for her own body” (freedom to choose abortion) but most Americans don’t care much about this element of morality. Clinton also focused on the fairness element of morality speaking frequently and wisely about the great and increasing disparity between rich and poor in this country. So why would most under-waged Americans vote for Trump the billionaire? Because he said that everyone could be a billionaire if government would get out of the way and let them do what they want to do. Thus, the focus of the Clinton campaign was on this fairness element of morality while Trump trumped the other moral element: freedom. Which is more attractive to the person on the street, if we dare to admit it? We can complain that the freedom element can lead to narcissism so clearly displayed by Trump, but if it is a choice between what I have and someone else needs, we will always go with the first…and then hopefully the second.

Not only have Republicans garnered the corner on authority and freedom, they have added the sanctity element suggested by Jonathan Haidt. I find it truly remarkable that such a despicable person such as Donald Trump could secure the majority of evangelicals and many other peole with lesser strict religious convictions. The only vaguely religious element in his campaign was his exaggerated talk about “tearing babies out of the womb.” Otherwise, he was almost completely devoid of anything objectively religious. But we must consider that his statement about restricting Muslims coming to America, and perhaps even his threat of deporting 11 million Latinos seemingly spoke to a kind of sanctity, namely the sanctity of our allegedly Christian nation. As a recovering Christian fundamentalist, I recall the safety and sanctity of the absolutes that fundamentalism of any kind provides. Note the success, if we call it that, of ISIS based on similar absolutism. But aside from Trump, the Republicans have made great hay in espousing quazi-religious elements in their programs over the recent decades. I found it interesting that in her concession speech Clinton used a biblical reference, but never before in her campaign. Rather, she spoke of fairness and care, but little of the religious element. There is a strong element among liberals to belittle much that is religious, often for good reasons, but not with an understanding that sanctity is very important to Americans, including those who rarely darken the doors of church.

So I close with the suggestion that we liberals need to be more moral, or perhaps more broadly moral and understand the sanctity, authority, and freedom corners of morality finding value in these pillars. Authority is not authoritarian, freedom is not licentiousness, and sanctity is necessarily theistic.