It's been standard practice in Cognitive-Behavioral therapy to teach clients that our thoughts trigger our emotions. Thus with training and practice a client can learn to change feelings by changing thoughts. While that is generally true, what CBT specialists sometimes miss is that some feelings actually control our thinking, often in ways that are beyond our awareness.
When we are young, before the age of about 8, much of what we learn, we learn in emotional memory. Indeed, before the age of five, most people remember very little about that time of life. That's because emotional memory records no clear recollection of events, no words, only emotions and the sort of trigger that set it off. Emotional memories might be accompanied by verbal memory, but the connection is far from guaranteed and the trigger for the emotional memory is MUCH broader than the finely tuned and coolly calculated thought based trigger.Thus when a child younger than 5 years touches a hot stove, she will remember that a stove hurts and may stay away until she understands in detail how a stove works. Even then, she might be particularly cautious regardless of further learning until the emotional memory dims with repetition.
We continue to remember emotional memories throughout our lives whenever an experience has such an emotional impact, that our thoughts are impaired, our logic shutdown. Those emotional memories kick in when we become emotionally aroused in a similar situation. Those reactions are tough to change. It generally doesn't work to rationally decide you'll never react emotionally again. When strong primal emotions erupt, they are so compelling, that many think they lose control of their behavior. The angry strike out verbally or physically and the fearful cower or run.
The truth is that we can learn to be more aware of our feelings and stop ourselves from acting until we can muster some rationality to make a reasonable decision. The key here is what we believe. If we think we can't control our emotions, indeed we can't. If we believe we can stop ourselves and make a better choice, then we will.
Little did grandma know, the old advice to stop and count to ten has it's roots in brain physiology.
This is the eighth in a series of articles about emotional intelligence for personal growth.
Emotions give our experiences a sort of color, a dimension of experience very different from other senses, different from even thoughts. Yet many of us find our emotions at times more of an enemy than a friend. Our emotions serve a purpose, one that is not entirely obvious.
Most current theories of emotion share the assumption that emotions serve an adaptive function in human life. Emotions play an important role in how we appraise and prepare to act on current circumstances. There are instances when emotions seem to interfere with what we do. The simplest examples are of anxiety reactions to public speaking, climbing ladders, or spiders. 'Emotion regulation' is a popular way of describing a solution to this problem.
Gross (2002) attributes the roots of the study of emotion regulation to Freud's early psychoanalytic theorizing about the nature of psychological defenses and Lazarus' stress and coping tradition. He describes two forms of emotion regulation. Reappraisal involves changing how we think about a situation in order to decrease its emotional impact. Suppression involves inhibiting ongoing emotion-expressive behavior. The method of reappraisal involves reinterpreting the emotional trigger into something less provocative. Suppression involves catching the reaction after it begins and containing it's consequential behavior.
However, this is a rather simplistic description of a complex process. The very act of suppressing the target emotion evokes more emotions. An emotional response that invites suppression might evoke embarrassment at the intensity of the reaction, fear about the consequences of inadvertent expression, and shame about not having learned from similar experiences in the past. Cognitive reappraisal is strategy that can be useful to head off a response, but is possibly even more useful as a method to review the experience after the emotion has been contained. It seems to me that there are few examples I can think of that don't involve both strategies more or less working together.
Gross & Levenson (1993, 1997) notes that expressive suppression can lead to decreased emotion expression, but interestingly, the body seems to feel the emotion even more intensely as reflected in increased sympathetic activation. Emotional suppression reduced memory for details emotional events, while reappraisal had no effects on memory.
Reappraisal may be related to relabeling and sublimination. Relabeling involves a cognitive reassignment of meaning that changes the qualitative emotional response, perhaps even it's valence. Sublimination is the directing of emotionally based response tendencies (motivation) into constructive problem solving responses that address the situation that elicited the emotion. Relabeling may play an important role in sublimination by redirecting energy into a more productive direction, presumably making it even more directable. Relabeling a suppressed emotion and subliiminating the motivation into a constructive response allows greater adaptive potential, memory, and interpersonal functioning.
Gross (2002) argues that suppression--as a response-focused strategy-- acts comparatively late in the regulation process. Thus, the emotion is already underway and thus the energy implied in the sympathic activation is no longer available to be redirected. The decreasing in expressive behavior has some side effects in terms of cognitive (impaired memory) and physiological costs (increased sympathetic activation). Suppression does not diminish negative emotions. In contrast, reappraisal theoretically takes effect before the emotion response tendencies have been triggered leading to fewer behavioral and experiential signs of emotion without increasing physiological responses or impairing memory. However, it's hard to imagine that a person could have perceived the emotional trigger and selected an alternative interpretation without experiencing the emotion. Emotional processes is known to be much quicker than the more methodical and step by step rational process (Kahneman, 2003). I think it's reasonable to assume some suppression is required to enable the time to reappraise, then the emotion is redirected into it's alternative conceptual context. Since reappraisal is known to decrease emotional activation, one must assume that the energy is redirected somewhere in a way that prevents most sympathetic activation. Redirecting the energy into motivation towards a constructive solution (sublimination) seems a likely explanation. Sublimination may well be regular part of the reappraisal process.
Gross and John (2003) found that the habitual use of both strategies is uncorrelated. That might be explained by a conscious or pre-conscious choice. Suppressing an emotion might be a decision distinct from brief suppression followed by reappraisal and sublimination. Perhaps suppression is used because an obvious reappraisal strategy is unavailable or the person has an underdeveloped reappraisal skill. One has to wonder what happens to the energy. Invitably, the emotional activation will be expressed cognitively. Strong activation requires an explanation. If there is none, then feelings of helplessness and anxiety can spiral into being overwhelmed quickly. Few people will have the ability to supress the emotion with denial, but anger and blame towards some external source might head off a spiraling cycle of anxiety and helplessness. One would expect that such unspoken expression of emotions to be incomplete, even unsatisfying, and create an expectation of more negative outcomes. This would appear to be a largely maladaptive strategy.
Gross and Thompson (2007) describe emotion regulation as one of four types of affect regulation. "Coping" is solely focused on decreasing negative affect across greater periods of time and multiple instances. They define mood as a global more persistent set of affect than an emotion and it's regulation as a means to manage the experience and action tendencies it may evoke. Emotion refers to one single meaningful event. It's regulation is focused on managing the experience and behavior tendency (motivation) it evokes evokes.
They describe five families of emotion regulation.
Situation selection involves planning to minimize any possible distracting or destructive emotions, by taking actions that make the desired outcome more likely. This is an important method used by parents during the life of a young child. A parent might recall a previous fantasy play at home with a toy doctor's bag to explain and distract the child during a visit to the doctor.
Situation modification involves quick actions that change the situation to one in which the outcome is more favorable. Very little planning is involved, though the skill might be developed by practicing and role playing. Supportive and empathetic responses to children's expression of emotion lead to more effective coping. Angry, denigrating, or dismissive responses undermine emotion regulation. An example might include bringing a book or activity to use during a waiting room period.
Attentional deployment involves directing one's attention within a given situation such as distraction, concentration, leaving, refocusing. This is probably how people suppress thoughts. Trying not to think about something is usually an exercise in futility. Replacing the thought with something incompatible is pretty effective. At least some cognitive restructuring is an example of attentional deployment. For example, you can refocus on past successes in solving problems when stuck with a current one. A glass is half-full, rather than half-empty.
Cognitive change involves altering the emotional significance of the appraisal by changing the meaning or changing one's capacity to manage the emotion. Cultural differences in socialization may play heavily on this skill, it's flexibility and effectiveness. Deciding that someone's inattentiveness caused them to bump into you, rather than a deliberate attempt to disrupt what you were doing would be an example of alternating the emotional significance of the event.
Response modification is the method that is used after the situation is perceived and a response is initiating. This method involves influencing the physiological, experiential, or behavior responding as directly as possible. Drugs, exercise, relaxation, alcohol, cigarettes, medication, and food have been used this way. You can also modify how the thoughts and emotions are expressed. An important consideration is the situational context impacts the meaning of how the emotion is expressed and the consequences of the expression. For example, appropriate expression is different at home than it is at the work place or even in the grocery store.
Most techniques of emotion regulation seem to assume that emotion is a distraction or a nuisance that needs to be managed or suppressed. Someone who has frequented this blog would be aware that the function of emotion is a common topic. Emotions have a purpose, otherwise we wouldn't have them. They have served humanity for a long time, apparently quite effectively. What's new is that we are actively second guessing their influence on our thinking.
Ayn Rand asserts unequivocally:
Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation - or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a bail and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown...
I think everyone would agree that emotions can distort our decisions if we are not aware of their impact. However, I challenge the assumption that we can reason logically. Certainly, we can structure our reasoning to be as logical as possible, but a self aware person will note that the logical conclusion is often in conflict with the personal preference.
Barrett, et al., (2001) describes a study that supports affect-as-information and emotional intelligence perspective.
According to that perspective, specific emotional states have more adaptive value than global affective states, in part, because ... emotions are typically associated with a causal object, whereas global affective states are not. Identification of the source of an emotional state has important consequences. ...emotion differentiation is correlated with emotion regulation.
.... Emotional intelligence is broadly defined as the ability to perceive emotions in self and other, to reflectively regulate emotions, and to access and generate emotional experiences to inform adaptation.... Those individuals with the ability to distinguish among negative emotional states and subsequently regulate their emotions may prove more ''emotionally intelligent'' than those who have less differentiated emotion representations. [Italics are mine.]
With practice, we can learn to influence but perhaps not totally control which emotions we have and how we experience and express them. We can act early in the emotion generation process or we can aim at modifying emotional response tendencies once they have already been triggered.
The purpose of emotion is to "inform adaptation". Emotions have evolved in the context of social relationships and serve as another avenue of exchange of information between and about people and relationships. Emotions reach beyond the logic of the situation to assess the risk in a social encounter and to communicate the nature of the relationship with the other person.
Rottenberg, J., & Gross, J. J. (2003) notes that its very difficult to operationally define 'excessive sadness', or any other emotional excess or disturbance because of the need to integrate a considerable amount of contextual information into research formulations. Excessive sadness about loss of a loved one is not the same as the sadness that comes from being overlooked for recognition. Defining excessive emotion seems a futile endeavor. It would be more fruitful to ask what is it about this episode of sadness appear excessive. Sobbing at work is hardly the same as doing so in the privacy of home. But observing sobbing at work, you still can't describe the sadness as excessive without inquiring as to what the sadness was about.
Our motivations are largely emotionally driven. Negative emotions push us to face and act on those things that make us most uncomfortable. Positive emotions allow us to enjoy success and give us energy to meet new challenges. But negative emotions inspire us to make changes.
Misery is perhaps the most creative force in our lives. Seldom do we make major changes in our lives without considerable emotional pain. Each negative emotion comes complete with an intuitive guide to action. Anger pushes us to stand up for ourselves and speak up when we've been treated with disrespect. Fear makes us hyper-vigilant to potential danger and readies us to duck or run away if needed. Sadness makes us review over and over again what we've lost. That ruminative search is for the knowledge to compensate for our loss [as well as reassess its meaning and purpose. Ultimately, such learning leads us with the wisdom to understand our lives from a new perspective and make our actions more adaptive.] Guilt reminds us of our responsibility in the errors we make and motivates us to work to understand our mistakes and learn how to avoid repeating them.
Emotions are made to be understood by experiencing them, by sitting with them for a time so as to make some sense of them. By trace emotions to their origins you can come to understand what they might mean for you today. That will enable you to make a reasoned decision about what should be done. As hard as it is to sit with a profoundly negative emotion, you will find that emotion an amazingly creative force for change.
Emotion regulation is learned in infancy when the child attunes with his mother. When attuned,
the infant is learning a number of very useful things: (1) that expressing her feelings can bring about positive outcomes--which generates positive feelings about the self and others; (2) that she can have impact on others -- which generates a dawning sense of agency or self-initiative; and (3) gradually, that particular affects elicit particular reactions-- which helps her begin to differentiate and eventually name her feelings. (Fonagy el., 2002 as referenced in Wallin, 2007).
The essence of mothering is providing a holding environment where empathy and devotion offer a supportive relationship for her child's growth. The quality of maternal attention, or attunement, was a key factor in determining how infants thrived. The "good-enough mother" is a mother who is able to adequately attune to her infant's needs and abilities despite the complex and always changing processes of growth and adaptation. In the natural process of infant care, misattunement and reattunement occurs regularly. Within the attachment relationship, the secure mother, at an intuitive, nonconscious level, is continuously regulating the infant's shifting arousal levels. Attachment can be defined as the dyadic regulation of emotion. And thus, emotional expression serves to stimulate a dyadic exchange within the attachment relationship that results in corrective and informative regulation. By being exposed to the primary caregiver's fluxuating attunement, the infant learns an expanding adaptive ability to evaluate on a moment-to-moment basis stressful changes in the external environment. Over time, this exchange with his mother allows infant to form coherent responses to future stressors and prepares him for future relationships. (Dales & Jerry, 2008)
Research in psychotherapy provides us with validation with the common sense notions of what makes a good approach to relationships: acceptance, permissiveness, warmth, respect, nonjudgmentalism, honesty, genuineness, and empathy or empathic understanding. Maintaining long term relationship require similar attunement and repair reminiscent of a mother and her infant.
Other research in psychotherapy has found complex positive emtions are experienced in the aftermath of the processing of intensely painful emotion and are highly correlated with positive outcome. Such "positive emotions may not only appear as a result of successful processing of negative emotions but be an integral, and perhaps overlooked part of modulating and deepening this processing." Presumably, such deepening and repair of attunment would enhance and deepen the relationship. Perhaps this is what is often observed when "kissing and making up" after a conflict.
For adults, as well as children, the amplification and regulation of these positive states by a caring other are critically important to the self's ongoing development, the discovery of new capacities, and the healing of old wounds. (Russell & Fosha, 2008).
Moreover, the regulation of otherwise overwhelming emotional intensity is vital in promoting the required depth of emotional processing. Finally emotion regulation involves not only the restraint of emotion, but at times its maintenance and enhancement (i.e., down- vs. up-regulation) (Greenberg and Pascual-Leone 2006, pp 616-617).
Clearly emotion is much more complex than a problem to eliminate or at least contain. Humans by their very nature are in capable of the cultural ideal of rational thought. Emotional expression is the core of our expression in relationships and evokes a response from the other that helps refine possible responses. Effective communication cannot occur without the emotional referents that define and structure mutual expectations and possible responses. Our awareness of this process is critical to learning effective relationship communication, boundaries, and building a support network. The key to learning how to express ourselves is understanding our emotions and using them to formulate a reasonable response based on an intuitive melding of emotion and rational thought, what Marsha Linehan (1993) elloquently calls "wise mind."
References
Dales, S., & Jerry, P. (2008). Attachment, Affect Regulation and Mutual Synchrony in Adult Psychotherapy. American Journal Of Psychotherapy, 62(3), 283-312.
Egloff, B., Schmukle, S. C., Burns, L. R., & Schwerdtfeger, A. (2006). Spontaneous Emotion Regulation During Evaluated Speaking Tasks: Associations with Negative Affect, Anxiety Expression, Memory, and Physiological Responding. Emotion, Egloff et al (2006), 6(3), 356-366
Barrett, L. F., Gross, J., Christensen, T. C., & Benvenuto, M. (2001). Knowing what you're feeling and knowing what to do about it: Mapping the relation between emotion differentiation and emotion regulation. Cognition And Emotion, 15(6), 713-724. doi:10.1080/0269993014300023
Greenberg, L. S., & Pascual-Leone, A. (2006). Emotion in Psychotherapy: A Practice-Friendly Research Review. Journal Of Clinical Psychology, Greenberg and Pascual-Leone (2006), 62(5), 611-630. GROSS, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences Psychophysiology, 39 DOI: 10.1017.S0048577201393198
Gross & Levenson (1993, 1997) cited in Gross, J. (Ed.). (2007)
Gross, J. J., & Thompson, R. A. (2007). Emotion Regulation: Conceptual Foundations. In Gross (2007).
Gross, J. (Ed.). (2007). Handbook of Emotion Regulation (2009 paperback ed.). New York: The Guilford Press.
Kahneman, D. (2003). A Perspective on Judgment and Choice - Mapping Bounded Rationality. American Psychologist, 58(9), 697-720. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.58.9.697
Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Linehan 1993. New York: The Guildford Press.
Rand, A. (n.d.). Philosophy, Emotion and Reason from the Objectivist Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Retrieved November 11, 2008, from http://www.skysite.org/philo.html#link
Rottenberg, J., & Gross, J. J. (2003). When Emotion Goes Wrong: Realizing the Promise of Affective Science. Clinical Psychology: Science And Practice, 10(2), 227-232.
Russell, E., & Fosha, D. (2008). Transformational Affects and Core State in AEDP: The Emergence and Consolidation of Joy, Hope, Gratitude, and Confidence in (the Solid Goodness of) the Self. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 18(2), 167-190. doi:10.1037/1053-0479.18.2.167
Wallin, D. J. (2007). Attachment in Psychotherapy. New York: The Guildford Press.
Arguments over who's right may be the most common topic of disagreement anywhere and by anybody. Check out the insights Kathryn Schulz, in her book, Being Wrong, has to offer.
Ask a lie detector professional and you will get a positive answer. But its not as simple as knowing how to work the instrument. The instruments used by a lie detector professional basically measure anxiety and are very similar to the machines used in biofeedback. The fact is that there is little research to support the idea that a polygraph or any other instrument can reliably detect a lie.
Most psychologists and other scientists agree that there is little basis for the validity of polygraph tests. Courts, including the United States Supreme Court (cf. U.S. v. Scheffer, 1998 in which Dr.'s Saxe's research on polygraph fallibility was cited), have repeatedly rejected the use of polygraph evidence because of its inherent unreliability. (American Psychological Association, 2004.)
The truth is that human beings have developed the skills to detect deception over thousands of generations. Deception can be detected with an absence of warmth and genuineness. Human babies grow up in the context of emotional attunement with their parents. Witnessing emotional expression triggers reflexive imitation and a shared feeling of closeness and mutuality. Imitating a smile will inspire a subtle positive feeling. Our every minor feeling is transmitted automatically and unconsciously to facial muscles. Suppressing the expression requires conscious effort and rarely succeeds entirely. The more similar the emotional state between two, the more accurately they can read each other. (Wallin, 2007, p.18.) Thus a mismatch is detectable as misattunement, raises anxiety and is interpreted as a reason to distrust.
People who show the strongest expressions were best at judging other's expressions. Successful lying takes concentration, while facial expression is controlled unconsciously. The prefrontal areas can only control so much before involuntary emotional expression breaks through. A lie is delayed .2 sec in expression and is often accompanied with incongruent emotional expression. (Goleman, 2006, pp 23-26)
I suspect that skilled practitioners use their own finely tuned intuitive perceptions acquired by attachment experiences as well as their instruments to detect lies. Below is an interesting graphic that talks about a number of strategies you might use to enhance your ability to detect lies. Many of these tactics are a natural part of the intuitive lie detector built into all of us. A caution is in order. It's possible that learning these techniques will not be helpful detecting lies. Judgement skills are finely tuned by multiple experiences and work best when fully integrated into our intuitive perception system. In other words, practice makes "perfect", or at least better.
The holiday season is such a joyous time of year. Colored lights adorn houses and business. Thoughts of holidays past fill our minds and conversations. But not everyone can enjoy the holiday season. Some of us inevitably find as the holidays approach what is called the "holiday blues".
The holiday blues are quite common. We expect to enjoy ourselves during the holidays. Those around us expect we will enjoy holiday celebrations and their company as well. We feel that pressure within ourselves and others. But sometimes what we really need is acceptance of ourselves and others.
There are many things that may bother us during the holidays: a death in the family, financial set backs, separations from loved ones due to work, military deployment, or other reasons. There can be losses due to health, a loss of relationship. Even happy changes have elements of loss and disappointment including getting married, or having a new baby. Celebrated changes often include a major change in lifestyle, a loss of choices and freedom.
And of course those of us who struggle with depression and/or anxiety can experience worsened symptoms triggered by the holiday season.
Sometimes memories stir during this time of year. While most of us are drawn to family during the holidays, some of us have had bad experiences in the past that complicate spending time with family. Our mood and behavior may be affected, our ability to enjoy ourselves is complicated by who we see.
We might feel like our feelings get in the way of our holiday. But in fact, our feelings are telling us what we need, unfortunately in a way that is confusing and contradictory. Its like our body is talking to us, telling us what it needs without words, without the sense our mind makes. Sometimes what we need doesn't make sense, it's not logical, it contradicts what we plan and work towards. We might find we get angry at someone we love for something that seems petty. Indeed, it may well be petty, but in the context of our memories and feelings, it will make sense.
One very common scenario happens when a family of origin comes together for the holiday. People find themselves falling into the roles they played years ago when they lived together. Remember the sibling rivalry you had as a kid? How might it manifest in a family gathering today? Find yourself trying to show off in front of your sibling or even your parent? Find yourself caught in a petty argument with a parent that sounds a lot those of the past?
Our emotional or implicit memory provides us with immediate information in familiar situations, or it can provide an instantaneous reaction in a situation that might be risky or even dangerous. Not surprisingly, we react as if there is risk more often than it actually is risky. The cost of a temporary distraction of an emotional reaction is low compared to many risks we face everyday. Thats why we find ourselves reacting with excessive emotion at times. We're just trying to protect ourselves.
When we're really young and inexperienced, our emotional memory dominates. Our judgment and reactions operate with excessive emotion very often. If something bad happens when we're that young, we will remember it on an emotional level, perhaps without a detailed thought and image record like we have when we are older. That is why we are quite capable of reacting in what might be seen as an immature way as an adult.
As an adult, we have learned a lot about ourselves, and most of us can contain an excessive emotional reaction with emotion regulation skills. Some of us, at least some of the time, lack confidence in our ability to regulate an emotional reaction, especially in particularly challenging circumstance. We all have the capability to capture an emotional reaction and consciously redirect it to constructive action. It just takes some practice.
One of the best way to develop the skill of redirecting emotion is mindfulness. One of the best courses available on CD is by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It's a complete course on mindfulness meditation.
Negative emotions are not the problem, they are a symptom of the real problem. These feelings are how our body and sub-conscious mind communicates with us. Something important hasn't been dealt with, and our feelings are letting us know. Unfortunately, feelings are not so simple to interpret. But once you have figured out what the feelings are about, you can begin problem solving.
You are not helpless, even though it may feel that way. If your holiday blues is about the extra demands of the holiday, do something different. Decrease your family time. Set a realistic budget for presents. Presents are intended to be symbols of our feelings for each other, they should not break the bank! If you don't know what to give someone, a gift certificate will do just fine, even though it may not feel quite right. Your first priority is to feel better within yourself. You can't make others happy no wonder what you do. If someone you are giving to is demanding, that's their problem.
If you are grieving, honor yourself and feelings during the holidays. Grief is the process by which you review your loss, honor your feelings about it and learn as much as you can about how to make up for your loss and prevent similar losses in the future. Grief is a process of assigning meaning and purpose to your life. A meaningful loss requires time, effort, and reviewing your priorities and values. Accept your process as necessary and important. The intensity of the grief will subside with time, and you will find yourself a better person because of it, more focused on what is most important to you.
This is the seventh in a series of articles about emotional intelligence for personal growth.
Many people are unsure what they feel. Some deny feeling anything at all. Others report boredom much of the time and seek reckless excitement when they can. Still others have never felt like they fit in. They may have experienced being ignored, picked on, or even being treated like scapegoat. Others seem to have an emotional on/off switch; they're either rational or raging.
Some people seem to carry a fowl mood with them where ever they go. All it takes is a bad experience, and they spiral down into an emotional hole. Others get so emotional at times they feel like they're going crazy. They become so desperate to escape their feelings that they'll do anything to escape, even things they'll feel badly about later. Some feel broken, beyond repair and have no idea what to do.
Many people report their life seems to be going no where. They work hard, try their best, but seem to be defeated at every turn. Their life seems to be spinning out of control.
Whenever something goes wrong, they look first at themselves and blame themselves. They expect others to blame them as well. Some feel that others are setting them up to fail. They expect mistreatment from others and it shows in their behavior. They get defensive or provocative increasing the likelihood people will react to them just as they expect.
Some feel as if their life has been a series of failures. They feel constantly on edge as if awaiting the next disaster to occur.
Some people when they look back on their lives, they see mostly regrets, mistakes and failures. They berate themselves for their failures. They punish themselves thinking it will make their future efforts better. But when a challenge presents itself, they feel dazed, anxious, exhausted and/or discouraged. They expect to fail again, tainting their effort and perceptions until it indeed looks like another failure.
If you find yourself struggling with some of these issues, then the problem could be shame. Shame is a self-destructive form of guilt. Guilt is the feeling you get when you make a mistake. You say, "Uho. I made a mistake. I'll have to learn how to prevent that again." Shame goes well beyond motivating you to prevent another mistake. Shame promotes self-punishment. You say, "Here is another example of how I can never do anything right. I'm such a loser!"
Shame doesn't come naturally, it has to be learned. It tends to be learned in early childhood, often before a child has a good command of the language, before the age of 8. Young children learn their lessons in a different way from adults. Young children learn emotionally, rather than with words.
Very young children tend to see the world as revolving around them. Adults appear as all knowledgeable and powerful giants. When an adult mistreats them, they tend to believe that they must have deserved it, that it was something they did or something bad about them. So not surprising, abused children tend to believe on an emotional level that they deserved how they were treated. As they grow up, they may well learn that it wasn't their fault, that their parents were inappropriate. But what they learn in words doesn't necessarily change the older emotional learning.
I often see adults abuse survivors still struggling to meet impossibly high expectations for themselves. It is as if they are still trying to please their parents. Despite being able to verbalize the abuse as inappropriate, they still feel like a mistake.
Such is the nature of shame. Shame is learned emotionally. Even though we know in our heads that we are not to blame, we feel the blame none-the-less. Shame is often learned in childhood from parents and caregivers. Parents may either shame their children with abusive words or behavior, or repeatedly devalue their children through neglect. Even well meaning parents may inadvertently teach their children by example. They model calling themselves "stupid" or other forms of self-abuse. They may throw temper tantrums and rage out loud how useless and incapable they are.
Once children get to school, they have many more opportunities to learn shame. Their teachers maybe inappropriately critical in a mistaken belief that such treatment is motivating. However, a shamed child feels a wound to their self-esteem and believes the adult sees them as defective. It's as if a child must face the challenge with a handicap, an expectation that they are likely to fail. Shame by it's very nature is not motivating, but discouraging.
Peers can be another source of shame. Children too often treat each other in a malicious manner, by teasing, harassing, verbal, physical and even sexual abuse. Sexual harassment is rife on our playgrounds and in the hallways at school. Any child who is notably different in anyway can become a target of abuse from his peers.
Even adults can experience major mistreatment and so learn to shame themselves. Any intensely emotional experience is recorded in emotional memory, while verbal memory is impaired by the emotion. The experience of war, witnessing violence and carnage, being mugged or raped, or beaten by a loved one, can change one's emotional reactions to similar situations. Any sort of severe trauma, such as rape, crime, war, injury, natural disasters can lead to a personal sense of responsibility and lead to a deep shame.
Heart felt values distorted by shaming messages can have a similar effect. An over-emphasis on the work ethic can become a belief that an unproductive person is a leech, leading to a belief that ill, aged or disabled workers are useless and unworthy of respect and support. The workplace is sometimes turned upside down to find the person to blame for a mistake. Workers learn to hide their mistakes or even blame them on others, just to avoid the consequences of being the one to blame.
Persons who have learned to see all of their behavior from a shame-based view point suffer from a tragically low self-esteem with very little hope of relief. Shame becomes a filter through which everything is distorted in a way that makes every action a test of the person's adequacy as a human being. It's like they carry around with them an internal harsh dictator that pummels them with withering criticism at every turn. They may actually believe that self-abuse will motivate them to make a change. But change becomes the first casualty in a shame-based person. Instead, they are locked in a never ending cycle of shame and self-defeating behaviors.
Shame often gets played out in intimate relationships where one pressures one self to perform, setting impossibly high standards for themselves in hopes they can eek out a mediocre performance.
Escape from this self-induced misery becomes a desperate preoccupation. Shame-based people will engage increasingly risky and self-destructive behaviors to capture a few moments of relief. They learn to numb themselves until their intuition-based social judgment is impaired. Feeling unworthy in any relationship, they over-estimate the trustworthiness of people around them. But they advertise their self-esteem with an apologetic presentation, so healthy people see their dependency and are driven away. Predatory people are drawn to the shame-based person because they are easily manipulated and fooled due their own self-doubt and poor judgment.
Exhaustion, discouragement, self-doubt, and a feeling of being trapped in a hopeless rut, prevents any confidence that meaningful change is possible. Life becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
The cycle of shame and self-defeating behaviors becomes a trap. Every mistake is interpreted as proof of a person's unworthiness. A mistake becomes a personal failing, evidence of a character flaw. It becomes so painful to examine the error that any effort to correct the mistake is compromised. Without change, the shame-based person is condemned to repeating the mistake, perhaps many times.
Misery grows with each mistake, each reinforcement of the perception of being a defective human being. Sufferers get so desperate to escape their misery, the person will engage in any sort of temporary release to feel even a little better.
Every escapist behavior isn't in and of itself self-destructive. Driven by the misery, the person repeats their self-indulgence excessively, even compulsively. Drug and alcohol abuse, excessive gambling, promiscuous sex, over spending, over eating, controlling even intimidating behaviors can be pretty easily seen as self-destructive. Excessive computer games, TV watching, even day dreaming can also be taken to an extreme.
After wasting so much time in self-destructive behaviors, the indulgence becomes another mistake complete with serious consequences. This adds to the list of mistakes the person sees and starts the cycle again.
But it's hard to break the habit. Life is so miserable for the shame-based person, that she will do anything to feel better, regardless of the long-term consequences. The more miserable she feels the more desperate for escape she becomes.
I call these escapist habits temporary feel good behaviors. Many of these behaviors, in and of themselves, are not self-destructive. But all of them, when they become part of an escapist pattern to avoid negative feelings like shame, it not only wastes tremendous time, it saps most if not all of the creative energy we need to make changes in our lives.
Misery is one of the most creative forces in our lives. We all resist any change that appears unwelcome. We will stall until we have to make major changes, until we can't stand how we feel until we make the change. If we work to avoid, escape or subvert the change, at least some of the motivation for change is depleted.
Then there are behaviors that are widely recognized as self-destructive. The feeling of euphoria from these behaviors is a quick fix from misery, but the consequences to lives is huge. The effect on one's self-esteem is tragic. A long life of shame has much the same effect as brainwashing.
To break this self-destructive pattern it is necessary is to fundamentally change one's relationship with oneself. A shame-based person can't afford to ever call themselves stupid again. Any amount of self abuse starts the cycle all over again, and leaves them lacking the energy and belief in themselves to make changes. The problem is that it's been going on for so long, it's become automatic and may even happen beyond immediate awareness. All the person may be aware of is a dull feeling of failure and discouragement.
It is necessary to become more aware of your feelings and self-talk. That will certainly increase your misery for awhile. The next step is to replace that thought with a more constructive one. While you may not be able to readily stop a thought from happening, you can always replace it with another. It's not as simple as filling your thoughts with only positive thoughts. You need to recognize the meaningfulness of the new thoughts. Answer your negative thoughts in a meaningful way.
You may not believe in your new thoughts for a long time. The effect of life long shame-based thinking is akin to brainwashing. You are now charged with reprogramming how you think.
Your emotional memories are where your shame is buried. Changing those memories requires a painful self-exploration. With your therapist, share your oldest most painful shameful memories. Recognize you were a child, and had no responsibility. Likely, your parents or caregivers were directly or indirectly responsible. Even though they meant no harm, they were the adults. Feelings of shame brainwashes your self-concept. You can permanently change your emotional memory by activating your anger at those responsible.
Blaming those responsible and allowing your anger to grow changes your memory and lets you off the hook. Just because you are angry at your parents or caregivers, you don't have to change your behavior towards them. Though you may find it necessary to limit contact for awhile while you reinforce your new memory and start to recover.
Remember you've handicapped your ability to problem solve by punishing yourself for every mistake - it became too hard to look close enough at the mistake to make changes. Start with praising yourself for recognizing your mistake. Encourage yourself to review your actions carefully and thoroughly, but be encouraging and supportive with yourself.
Gently but persistently encourage yourself to make the needed changes. A bad habit, in particular, can require enormous effort and can take a long time to change. Recognize your courage and maturity for recognizing the need to change and remind yourself repeatedly every step of the way. Heap on the self-praise for your work. You are making up for past self-abuse. Carefully examine intense rage or lack of self-concern or self-care. Shame may lie deep beneath. If you neglect your health or fail to follow your doctors recommendations, you not feel you are worth the effort.
In order to recover from shame, you have to repair the damage. The purpose of having a nurturing mother is to learn how to nurture yourself. If you didn't have a nurturing mother, it's all the harder to learn how. But there is no one else who can do this. Even if your mother is around and nurturing you, it just doesn't feel the same, it won't have the desirable effect. You are an adult now. No one else will have the same effect on you. You must do this yourself. Love yourself, make yourself your own best friend. Never mistreat yourself in any way. Put yourself first in your life. Nothing you can feel or think is unacceptable. Remember, you can't stop a thought or feeling from occurring, but you can always replace it with another. It just takes practice and persistence.
None of your behavior is unforgivable by you. Without self-forgiveness, there can be no change. You need all the energy you have to make a major change. Many people feel obligated to forgive others for transgressions. Often, we will take on some of the responsibility for how the act effected us. Perhaps, we think it shouldn't have hurt so much, or we could have avoided it. So, forgive yourself first. You get to decide when and if you forgive others. Giving yourself permission to not forgive someone makes the seemingly unforgivable within reach, but only if you wish it so.
Perfection is impossible.
You are only as good as you are capable; we all have limits. Limits are good. Some things are over our heads. It's good to recognize that and let go. Consciously lower your standards for yourself especially, but also for others. Recognize that when others haven't met your standards, you may have blamed yourself in the past.
Many people who have suffered a lot of mistreatment learn to numb their feelings. It's one thing to be victimized, it's another to feel victimized again every time they remember the event.
If you numb your feelings, you interfere with your ability to make judgments and decisions. We often decide how much we can trust someone based on intuition. Even if we spend a long time reviewing the pros and cons of a decision, we still need to judge what the right decision is for us.
Feelings will not do permanent damage. You may feel like you will never stop crying or go crazy with anxiety. But that never happens. But whatever you do to escape a feeling could have serious consequences, even death. Escaping is inevitably be self-destructive.
We have feelings because our emotions provide us with important information we can't get anywhere else.
Treat strong emotions like a big four foot wave. Bend your knees, let the wave wash over you, then let it go. Repeat as needed.
Emotions can enhance your judgment. An emotion that comes to you that makes no sense is a message from your sub-conscious mind. Review what might have happened to elicit the feeling. The answer maybe one issue, or more likely it will be two or more issues to deal with separately.
If you can't pinpoint the problem issue, file it away. Something may occur later to help you answer the question.
If you can see the triggering event for the feelings, address it as the problem the emotion warned you about. Work at the problem one step at a time. You will uncover the underlying problem even if you start on something else. The benefit of any goal is not the achievement as much as it is what you learn along the way. Self-examination benefits us with irreplaceable information.
If you feel something, assume it's important. Sit with that feeling, don't move to change or avoid it. Observe the thoughts that come to attempt to make sense of the feeling. Let the intuitive solution slowly emerge from the feelings and thoughts as they interact. This could take days or even weeks. Remember, it's important, don't rush it.
Consider your options carefully. If you have a good idea, look again, you may find a better one.
When you feel ready to decide, choose the best option, from both an emotional and a rational point of view.
Try out your idea. Be ready to change to another option if it proves wrong or a poor fit.
The accuracy of your choice is dependent on your self-knowledge and full access to feelings. At first you will be more often wrong than right.
Judgment takes time and experience to develop. Avoid taking major risks based on developing judgment. Find a trusted and experienced friend to help you make an important decision.
Recognize that shame is learned.
Identify the sources of shame in your life, often the people who are most important to you. Write a letter to the shamers to focus your feelings on those who provoked them. Don't send this letter. You don't want to purge your feelings on people with whom you may want a relationship.
If necessary, find a diplomatic way to clear the air between you. You'd be amazed how little you say will feel validating. Plan what you will say to be true to yourself. Recognize that the shamer may never respond as you like. If the relationship is important to you, be satisfied with saying only what is necessary. Expect you will not get the response you want. You might be surprised.
Shame is not a personal conflict, it is something acquired and maintained in your relationships. Return your conflict with shame to relationships where it belongs. Recognize shame as inhibiting appropriate risk taking in trusting relationships. Look for shame impeding sharing, trust, and making you defensive or on-guard.
Decrease your tolerance for discomfort! We all accept much more disrespect than we need to. Shame-based people put up with way too much crap from others.
Business relationships are often seen as reflected on an accounting ledger, debit vs. credit, in pocket vs. out of pocket. Keep your social relationships on the credit side.
Give only when it feels good, and never expect anything in return. When you are generous, people will notice. But when you say no, healthy people will recognize this as self-respect. They will admire you for it. Trustworthy people are generous out of appreciation, not out of obligation. People who wish to exploit you will eventually go away. You will be rewarded with many loyal friends.
A Shame-based Person's Bill of Rights
You have the right... To say no; To not tolerate disrespect, and say so; To not be sorry; To be without self-doubt; To have limits and limitations; To have a punishment and blame free life; To not fear power in yourself or others;
You have the right... To be who you are without comparing yourself to others; To be less than perfect; To privacy; To speak up, or not; To change situations to meet your needs, even if it imposes on others; To praise yourself without fear of conceit; To be angry; To feel overwhelmed; To recognize feelings of vulnerability as a form of strength; To give only when it feels good;
This is the sixth in a series of articles about emotional intelligence for personal growth. In keeping with the idea that emotional intelligence is one of the foundational concepts of mental health, I dedicate this installment to May, Mental Health Month.
It is often said that life is suffering. Some of that suffering is unavoidable. Life has a way of throwing us adversity. The pain of physical distress and illness as well as the psychological pain of loss is unavoidable. This is the first "Dart" and might be called pain. Pain serves an adaptive function in human life and allows us to appraise our experience and prepare to act in ways to maintain favorable conditions or to change unfavorable conditions (Egloff et al., 2006). Positive emotions encourage us to maintain that which evoked our pleasure. Negative emotions motivate us to avoid or solve the problem that triggered the pain.
Much of our suffering after the initial pain is voluntary. How we react to things, how we talk or think about our experiences often complicates and prolongs the pain. This is the second "Dart". Second darts often trigger more second darts through feelings and thoughts about one's first reaction. For example, you feel guilty about your anger about the first dart. Or perhaps you feel sad about having been hurt again. (Hanson & Mendius, 2009).
The concepts of the two darts of suffering come from the "Pall Canon", one of the earliest teachings of Buddha.
There is a further distinction implied in the metaphor of the Two Darts: that reaction and response are distinctly different modes of behavior, the former a pattern rooted in clinging [to reality as it is] and the latter a spontaneous meeting of phenomena free from impatience and judgment. The first dart refers to the ability to be present with what is arising, unfolding, and passing away in present experience. The second dart is characterized not just by fight or flight, but by the entire self-constructing mechanism of the mind.... Whenever there is clinging, there is a story about "me" that arises from one's reaction to what is occurring in that moment. (Thera, 1983)
Pain signals an abrupt change in our environment, one we at least initially do not like. The pain, in a way, represents the reality we cling to being ripped from our grasp. We then perceive a sense of loss, that slows and focuses our thoughts, prolongs the experience and allows us to mourn and make sense of what's happened to us. What we learn from our losses builds our skills of coping with loss. As we age, the frequency of loss accelerates. Our children grow up and move away, grandchildren grow and no longer need the attention of the grandparents. Our friends and older family members die off ever more frequently. If we fail to master the painful process of grief, it will threaten our mental health with a mind numbing depression, increase the stress on our internal organs, shorten our lives and perhaps threaten our very existence (Goleman, 1995).
How we react to our experiences, how we think and feel about them, largely determines how we extract understanding and meaning from them and how they are recorded in memory. All of the thoughts and memories are recorded in bits and pieces that amount to little more than a skeleton of the actual event. Each time we re-experience this memory, it's recreated from the remaining memory traces, and our more recent experiences fill in the detail. The experience of old distress in the presence of new information, permanently changes the memory, adding the new information. However, without our intervention, the overall structure of the memory and it's accompanied emotions will see little change.
This process of recreation allows us an opportunity to change memory permanently. Our experience over time and the support of those around use who are wiser in this regard, can teach us about this experience us, allowing us to modify the experience and direct how the memory is changed (Hanson & Mendius, 2009).
We have many ways we manage our emotions. Two have been widely investigated: expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal (see Gross, 2002, for an overview). Expressive suppression is a reactive emotion regulation strategy: It aims at inhibiting ongoing emotion-expressive behavior. Cognitive reappraisal, in contrast, is a planned strategy: It aims at changing how we think about a situation such that the resulting emotional response is modified, e.g., by construing the event as a challenge rather than as a threat (Lazarus & Alfert, 1964). In a typical loss situation, we have both strategies available to us. It's probably best if we suppress some rather dramatic expressions of our pain, lest we scare those around us, damage our relationships or our belongings and distract us to the challenge before us. Shock immediately and sadness subsequently manage our reactions. The shock we feel immediately gives us time when we "know" what has happened to us, yet we are not feeling the emotional effects yet. Presumably, we have a bit more judgment to prepare for a prolonged period of impaired judgment. When we are sad, the perception of time and our reaction times slow. Our grief dominates our experience so much that it is difficult to think of anything else. We find ourselves repeatedly re-appraising about our loss, its consequences, and its implications.
This process is a necessary part of grief. We must feel the distress, experience the emotional arousal as a bodily felt experience, accept and tolerate it as a necessary part of integration and resolution. We must also understand that experience as information, explore, reflect on, and make sense of it, and access other internal and external emotional resources to help transform it to something less distressing. This processing of our experience creates a new perspective reflecting acceptance, making sense of difficult and painful events and creates wisdom in the form of future flexibility and mindful adaptability.
An individual's capacity for emotional processing is not an inherent skill. We learn this skill in the process of early attachment experiences. The more secure the attachment, the more effective our ability to tolerate, understand, integrate, and transform an emotional experience into a new perspective that enables us to better cope with the future. Even if we've not had a healthy attachment in childhood, we are able to acquire that skill as an adult in healthy adult relationships, such as a transformative relationship with a counselor (Greenberg and Pascual-Leone, 2006, pp 614-615).
After we have dealt with the initial pain and begun the process of grief, we will experience other less adaptive emotions. These secondary emotions are at best distracting, at worst maladaptive and may need to be regulated. For example, feeling hopeless can be secondary when there is an suppressed feeling of anger. Maladaptive emotions obstruct and the process of grief and can leave the person feeling stuck, often hopeless, helpless, and in despair. These emotions are inevitably a part of grief adding detail and texture to the assessment of our loss and the envisioning of our future. But they also add to the stress and can prolong the experience without appropriate regulation.
Regulation of emotion essentially involves gaining some psychological distance from overwhelming feelings such as despair and hopelessness, in the short term, and developing self-soothing capacities to calm and comfort core anxieties and humiliation, in the longer term. When one feels a maladaptive emotion such as core shame or a feeling of shaky vulnerability and self-doubt, one benefits from regulation in order to prevent becoming overwhelmed by those emotions, thereby creating the opportunity to make sense of them. Forms of meditative practice, mindfulness and self-acceptance are often very helpful in gaining a working distance from overwhelming core emotions.
Mindfulness treatments have been shown to be effective in treating generalized anxiety disorders and panic, and chronic pain and in preventing relapse. Mindfulness allows for flexibility in affective meaning processes and the interruption of automatic, habitual processes. In short, acknowledging, allowing, and tolerating emotion are important aspects of helping to regulate it. Soothing of emotion can be provided reflexively within one's self or with the help of another person. Among other processes, self-soothing involves diaphragmatic breathing, relaxation, development of self-empathy and compassion, and self-talk. Soothing also occurs interpersonally in the form of another's empathic attunement to one's affect and through acceptance and validation by another person. Internal security develops through the feeling that one exists in the mind and heart of the other, and the security of being able to soothe the self develops by internalization of the soothing functions of the protective other (Greenberg and Pascual-Leone 2006, pp 616-617).
And from David Wallin:
...suffering is largely a psychological construction that is largely unconsciously self-generated. Embedding in our experience, we are victims to our own self-constructions. Mindfulness lifts us out of embeddedness and gives us the perspective to see our self-constructions as separate from our selves and our environment. Mindfulness is:
Non-conceptual. Awareness without absorption in our thought processes.
Present-centered. Always in the present moment. Thoughts about our experience are one step removed from the present moment.
Non-judgmental. Awareness cannot occur freely if we want it to be different than it is.
Intentional. Attention is directed, returning attention to the present moment gives mindful awareness continuity over time.
Participant observation. Mindfulness is not detached witnessing, but rather experiencing the mind and body more intimately without immersion.
Nonverbal. The experience cannot be captures in words, because awareness occurs before words can arise.
Exploratory. Mindful awareness allows investigating subtler levels of perception.
Liberating. Every moment of mindful awareness provides freedom from conditioned suffering. (Germer et al., 2005)
Mindfulness fosters integration of the social-emotional right brain and the interpreting left brain. Feelings can be informed by thought and thought by feelings. By repeatedly becoming aware of awareness, we shift the locus of subjectivity from representations of the self to awareness itself. Self becomes a continuous flow of aware experiences. Our reified images of self serve only to constrain the limits of potentials for understanding and growth.... Mindfulness allows us to make sense of our awareness of feelings and thoughts and offers a calm spacious meta-awareness [...as well as a perception of] centerness that makes us less vulnerable to confusing our internal experience with who we are (Wallin, D. J., 2007, p 165).
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is largely voluntary. Suffering can and must be used judiciously to improve future coping. We can minimize our suffering by emotion regulation strategies, but we must do so with care. Too little review of what happened limits our learning, too much distorts our judgment.
We are truly not the victims of our experience. While we cannot control external events, we have considerable control over our reactions, both emotional and behavioral, and significant influence on future events. That future influence is, in part, the result of our deliberate review of the source of our pain, using our suffering as part of the information reviewed, while managing the excessive emotional reactions to prevent distortion of our perceptions and conclusions. This is the essence of judgment: balancing our emotions with thoughts.
To be continued....
References
Egloff B, Schmukle SC, Burns LR, & Schwerdtfeger A (2006). Spontaneous emotion regulation during evaluated speaking tasks: associations with negative affect, anxiety expression, memory, and physiological responding. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 6 (3), 356-66 PMID: 16938078
Germer et al., (2005) cited in Wallin, D. J. (2007). Attachment in Psychotherapy. New York: The Guildford Press, p159
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence. Goleman 1995. New York: Bantam Books. Greenberg LS, & Pascual-Leone A (2006). Emotion in psychotherapy: a practice-friendly research review. Journal of clinical psychology, 62 (5), 611-30 PMID: 16523500. Gross JJ (2002). Emotion regulation: affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39 (3), 281-91 PMID: 12212647
Hanson, R., & Mendius, R. (2009). Buddha's Brain - The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc.
Lazarus & Alfert, 1964 cited in Egloff, B., Schmukle, S. C., Burns, L. R., & Schwerdtfeger, A. (2006). Spontaneous Emotion Regulation During Evaluated Speaking Tasks: Associations with Negative Affect, Anxiety Expression, Memory, and Physiological Responding. Emotion, Egloff et al (2006), 6(3), 356-366
Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Linehan 1993. New York: The Guildford Press.
Thera, N., (1983) cited in Stone, M. (2006, September 22). The Two Darts: meeting pain with mindfulness practice. ReVision. Retrieved April 11, 2010, from http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-164947526/two-darts-meeting-pain.html
Wallin, D. J. (2007). Attachment in Psychotherapy. New York: The Guildford Press.
This is the fifth in a series of articles on Emotional Intelligence for Personal Growth.
Probably all of us have asked our self from time to time if our thoughts, feelings, or behavior at any single moment is "normal". Actually, there are different answers for each one of these.
Normal behavior is, like it or not, defined by our legal, community (family, neighborhood, social group) and religious institutions. The law is enforced by our local police, and sanctioned by our courts. Religious values might be said to be collectively defined by our church going population and it's leadership. If we are observed behaving outside of legal boundaries, we may find ourselves in a court room facing a judge. If we stretch our community or religious values, we might be ostracized, and separated from the kind of support we have been reliant on through our life.
Our internal life, our thoughts and feelings, that which goes on within ourselves may be our last real privacy. And that is indeed fortunate. Our internal creativity is uncomfortably broad. We are capable of thinking and feeling most anything from time to time. Under provocation, we are capable of thinking about things we would never do. Angry enough, we may think of assault, even murder. Seeing a pretty woman, a married man might think about cheating on his wife, but never act on that thought. Shocked about a death in the family, our first thoughts may be directed at the inconvenience of disrupting out usual routine and our feelings might be closer to annoyed. Our thoughts and our feelings often contradict each other. In a real sense, we live a dual existence.
Duality
Our body speaks to us through our feelings. Messages are typically fast, automatic, effortless, associative, not available to reflection, and often emotionally charged. Messages are also governed by habit and are therefore difficult to control or modify without time and significant effort. Curiously, since the messages do not require conscious awareness, they do not cause or suffer much interference when combined with other tasks.
Our thoughts, however, are relatively slower, serial, effortful, more likely to be consciously monitored and deliberately controlled. Compared to feelings, thoughts are relatively flexible and thus change readily and can be directed by conscious or habitual rules. Because thoughts are effortful, they tend to disrupt each other. Thus monitoring mental operations for quality interferes with monitoring overt behavior. People who are occupied by a demanding mental activity are more likely to respond to another task by blurting out whatever comes to mind.
Intuitive judgments combine the function of feelings and thoughts. The perceptual system and intuitive about perceptions generate impressions of the attributes of objects. These impressions are neither voluntary nor verbally explicit. Judgments are always intentional and explicit even when they are not overtly expressed. Thus, thinking is involved in all judgments and can be reflected upon, whether they originate in impressions or in deliberate reasoning. Monitoring of intuitive judgments is normally quite lax and allows many to be expressed, including some that are erroneous (Kahneman, 2003).
We perceive reality by these two interactive, parallel processing systems.
"The rational system , a relative newcomer on the evolutionary scene, is a deliberative, verbally mediated, primarily conscious analytical system that functions by a person's understanding of conventionally established rules of logic and evidence. The experiential system, which is considered to be shared by all higher order organisms (although more complex in humans), has a much longer evolutionary history, operates in an automatic, holistic, associationistic manner, is intimately associated with the experience of affect, represents events in the form of concrete exemplars and schemas inductively derived from emotionally significant past experiences, and is able to generalize and to construct relatively complex models for organizing experience and directing behavior by the use of prototypes, metaphors, scripts, and narratives. Although the experimental system is generally adaptive in natural situations, it is often maladaptive in unnatural situations that cannot be solved on the basis of generalizations from past experience but require logical analysis and an understanding of abstract relations.
[B]ehavior is guided by the joint operation of the two systems, with their relative influence being determined by the nature of the situation and the degree of emotional involvement. Certain situations (e.g., solving mathematical problems) are readily identified as requiring analytical processing, whereas others (e.g., interpersonal behaviors) are more likely to be responded to in an automatic, experientially determined manner. Holding such situational features constant, the greater the emotional involvement, the greater the shift in the balance of influence from the rational to the experiential system (Denes-Raj & Epstein, 1994). "
One might ask, why are there two systems? Many of us have at times wished that our emotions could quiet themselves or even go away. Our culture has a bias towards logic and is suspicious of our emotional side. To quote Ayn Rand:
"A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation - or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a bail and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown..."
Not matter how much we wish we could be logical and rational, there is a burgeoning literature that says otherwise. Our decisions are evident in our brain activity long before we are consciously aware (For example, see Libet et al., 1983 and Dennett, 2003). We have a dual system of decision making because it works. Think about it. How often to we make decisions where we have all the information we need to be absolutely sure that our logical deduction is correct? I would venture to say that being sure is limited to only our most simple and concrete decisions. Most every other decision involves weighing facts, impressions, intuitions, and feelings and making as best a decision as possible.
Phineas Gage is perhaps the most famous neurology patient of all time. After a gruesome injury in which he was impaled through his skull by a metal rod and then miraculously recovered, poor Phineas retained all the logic he ever had, but was completely unable to make a decision. He was also left without any awareness or expression of emotion (Demasio, 1994). The very act of making a decision is an emotional process. We choose our decisions among competing alternatives based not only the evidence, but what feels best to us, our "gut level" reaction.
The story behind this dual system is most evident in normal social development.
The Attachment Relationship
John Bowlby (1969/1982) is credited as the founder of Attachment Theory, based on his observations that the quality of a child's social development was largely determined by the quality of the child's relationship with her caregiver. Mary Ainsworth and Mary Main began the research that would ultimately follow children over their first 20 years of development demonstrating Bowlby's concepts to be true and elaborating that theory to account for how, as a child and adult, how freely and effectively she can think, feel, remember, and act (Ainsworth et al., 1978, Main et al., 1985 & Fonagy et al., 2002). Fonagy went on to find that a parents style of attachment before birth predicts their one year old child's attachment style. The parent's ability to mentalize strongly predicted their child's subsequent security. Perhaps most importantly, the the strength of the adult's ability to mentalize enables her to strengthen their attachment style.
"Attachment is not an end in it's self; rather it exists in order to produce a representational system that has evolved, we may presume, to aid human survival. The quality of our attachment enables us to understand, interpret, and predict the behavior of others as well as our own behavior. It is the cornerstone of social intelligence (Wallin, 2007)."
It is through attachment experiences as a child that she develops rudimentary affect regulation. In the loving care of her caregiver, the child senses that connection to others can be a source of relief, comfort, and pleasure. The child ultimately learns that she -- in expressing its full range of bodily and emotional experiences and needs -- is good, loved, accepted, and competent.
One of the more interesting parts of the process is the role of imitation, mirroring and empathy. There is growing evidence that the same brain areas involved in the execution and observation of motor actions also become active when people listen to sentences that describe the performance of human actions using hands, mouths, or legs, or when people imagine performing an action without actual movement. It would appear that the processes of motor control, mirroring, and mental simulation (or imagination) rely on shared neural circuits (van Gog et al., 2009). While a mother interacts with her child, they interact in a largely non-verbal body-based union. This process of attunement builds within her child a largely emotional communication system that becomes the foundation of intimacy in all future relationships.
"[T]hrough a kind of "social biofeedback," the child comes to associate the initially involuntary expressions of her emotions with the responses of the caregiver. That is, the infant comes to "know" that her affects are responsible for evoking the caregiver's affect-mirroring responses. Thus, in the most desirable scenario, the infant is learning a number of very useful things: (1) that expressing her feelings can bring about positive outcomes--which generates positive feelings about the self and others; (2) that she can have impact on others--which generates a dawning sense of agency or self-initiative; and (3) gradually, that particular affects elicit particular reactions-- which helps her begin to differentiate and eventually name her feelings (Fonagy et al., 2002) A relationship of secure attachment can thus be seen as a school in which we learn to effectively regulate affects not only in early childhood but throughout our lives (Wallin, 2007)"
Through the secure attachment experience, the child learns to reflect on her feelings and thoughts. Her sense of security, flexibility, and internal freedom becomes very much enhanced. Secure attachment embodies a quality of attunement and contingent responsiveness between mother and infant that is close but imperfect. By the very process of attunement, distraction and reconnection, the child learns that her own internal states are sharable and, at the same time, distinct from those of her caregiver, she recognizes herself and her caregiver as a separate persons, rather than objects. From the loss and regaining of attuned connection emerges from the discovery that the other, and the relationship itself, can survive anger and conflict, and learn to balance the needs for self-definition and relatedness. The parent must reflect on emotion, her's and her child's, so as to make sense and inform her responses. She effectively regulates her own emotions while modeling how the child can regulate hers. Raw feelings become namable and integrated in interaction with her. The child creates representations of her emotion, then the parent names those emotions through her body, feelings and finally words.
Much learning is acquired in non-verbal form while the child acquires language skills. Some learning may be stored unconsciously, for example, when thought, felt, or spoken, this information could threaten vital relationships, especially formative and traumatic experiences. The center of verbal memory, the Broca's area of brain doesn't come on-line until 18-36 months, remains a secondary process until after a child enters school and continues to mature well into adolescence. Traumatic experiences cause overwhelming emotions, which effectively shuts down Broca's area, limiting verbal learning. So much emotional learning happens after childhood during highly emotional experiences.
Explicit memory, the verbal memory of Broca's area of the brain, can be consciously retrieved and reflected upon. This memory can be readily turned into words, it is symbolic, and it's content is information and images. Implicit memory is present from birth and includes reflexes that are not learned as well as emotional learning acquired in childhood or traumatic learning at any age. It is largely nonverbal, nonsymbolic, unconscious in the sense that it can't be reflected upon. The content includes emotional reactions, patterns of behavior, and skills related to knowing how to do things without thinking. These memories cannot be recalled, but they can be recognized, for example, like deja vois. From implicit memory comes our personal style, implicit relational knowing (gut-level knowledge) and some relational expectations. Perhaps most significant to this article, implicit memory includes the internal working model of attachment. Our attachment style is often enacted without awareness, especially in non-verbal communication.
Ultimately, through our early intimate relationships, we make sense of ourselves and others in terms of a "coherent autobiographical and biographical narrative", a personal story (Wallin, 2007).
Adult Experience - Duality Integrated
We have a built in need to be around people. Our social nature has been built in for thousands of generations with genetic and biochemical support. We feel pleasure just being around people with whom we feel safe. Our social group also influences our behaviors and values. We are reminded by our knowledge of social expectations within the
Continue reading The Essence of Human Experience: What is Normal? Emotional Intelligence for Personal Growth, Part V.
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