“I Just
Want to be
Happy”
Dana Willcox, LCSW-C
|
The
reason for the name of this website is that
this is what most people say
when I ask them
what they really want out of life.
|
introduction
I'm a psychotherapist by
profession. In the course of my work I have had occasion to
discuss the question of what people really want most, with
many people, over many years.
Although there are
certainly a lot of particular individual goals that people have
identified, by far the most commonly-expressed life goals are such
as:
“I
just want to make a decent living and be
happy.”
“I want to have a good
relationship or
marriage.”
“I’d like to have a lot of
money.”
“I want to have a good
family life.”
Then there is the parents’ version:
“I
don’t really care what
my kids do, as
long as they make a living and they’re happy.”
The three basic elements of these
goals are:
happiness
good
relationships with others, (and)
economic
well-being.
This website is about the first element, happiness.
(There will also be a lot that is applicable to the second
element, good
relationships,
and nothing at all about the third element, money.)
This website offers a practical,
reality-based, tested Method for becoming
happier
(over time.)
Like many aspects of life, there
is good
news
and bad
news
about this method:
the good news
becoming happier is
possible
becoming
happier
is learnable
the method is
fairly
simple (an alert 8-year-old could understand it)
it’s
absolutely free
(unless you decide to spend money)
the method
involves only voluntary
change – nothing is forced, or uses
“will power”
it’s
universally
applicable for all humans, regardless of other circumstances
medications
are not required
the effects
are cumulative – each improvement adds to and enhances
previous
improvements
the method
doesn’t
require any belief in religious, supernatural, or psychic
powers
it is not
necessary to meditate, exercise, chant, or repeat mantras
it can
be
forgotten or ignored for
long periods and then resumed without
having lost (any
serious)
progress
the bad news
improvement in
happiness will occur gradually,
over an extended period –
think
in terms of months or years, not tomorrow or next week
progress will
be uneven,
and may even appear to regress at times
it is quite
possible that at some point you will need, or at least benefit greatly
from,
competent
professional help
(which can be expensive)
the Method
This method is the result of
approximately 35
years of experience paying attention to emotional aspects of
people’s lives, primarily as a psychotherapist.
The method consists
of three necessary elements:
1. Understanding
emotional experience
usefully
2. Learning to
follow 4 basic rules
for living with
emotions successfully
3. Patience and
persistence
over
time
There may well be a
fourth element, which we will talk about:
4. Professional help.
This Method is based on a logical
analysis of the realities of human emotional experience,
because –
back to top
happiness
is an emotional state
Did you know that? Do you
understand what this statement means?
If not, then there is a whole new
way of
understanding open to you that can literally transform your life (over
time.)
The questions of “what is
happiness?” and
“how do we get happy?” have been hot topics since our
earliest recorded history. The classical Greek philosophers
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (and others) produced detailed
examinations
of these questions as early as the fourth century B.C. Two
centuries earlier still, around 530 B.C. in India, a man called
the
Buddha addressed the inverse proposition, that life is actually all
unhappiness
(“dukkha”,
or
“suffering”), and
devised marvelous and subtle methods for escaping this universal
misery. The American Declaration of Independence in 1776 famously
listed “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” as
“unalienable rights”, again highlighting the supreme
desirability of the goal of happiness – though in this case the
right is only to “pursue” it, not necessarily to achieve
it. The French "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen"
in 1789 also states the goal of the "happiness of all" as a fundamental
principle. Countless other thinkers and writers have weighed in
over the
centuries, and there are hundreds of current books and websites
available
on different approaches now. My most recent Google search on
"happiness" turned up 76,900,000 responses -- though we all know Google
can find millions of references to almost anything.
Interestingly, the small Himalayan
country of Bhutan now states an explicit goal of governance as
increasing "Gross National Happiness" ("GNH"), as contrasted
with our economic measure of Gross National Product (GNP.)
Lately I've heard that a couple of European countries have
also adopted this statistic.
For the approach I want to
suggest here, we
will use simple, common-sense
definitions of both “emotion” and “happiness:”
An emotion is a
“feeling,” a
noticeable and identifiable internal state, such as
“happy,” “sad,”
“excited,” “scared,” “proud,”
“angry,” etc.
Happiness
is a consistently and
reliably positive
average emotional state
over a period of time.
(Wikipedia, by the way, uses a substantially
similar definition: "Happiness
is a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love,
satisfaction, pleasure, or joy." Note that all these
descriptors
are emotion
words.)
As we will see, these
common-sense definitions are
sufficient for everything we want to do here. They are
“good
enough.”
back to top
the
significance of the statement
“happiness is an emotional
state”
If this most-desired life
goal is in fact
“an
emotional state,” then first of all we can say some things that
it is not:
it is not a thing
that we can acquire,
or an action
that we can perform.
It
is some kind of internal
state of
being. In many ways it is most similar to a “state
of good
health” on the physical level, where the condition is an on-going
pleasurable component of the experience of living, maintained by
healthy living habits and characterized by the absence of serious
pains or problems.
The second crucial point is that
if this most-desired
goal is in fact an emotional state, then it makes a good deal of sense
to learn what we can about emotional states, with a view to improving
our chances for achieving this most-valued objective. After all,
whatever we’re hunting for, it makes sense that we’ll be
more likely to find it if we know where it’s likely to be found,
what its characteristics are, its general features or habits, and so
forth.
And here we find a remarkable
phenomenon of current
human existence – it appears that hardly anybody among the
general public knows anything useful -- even the most basic concepts --
about emotions and emotional states. This ignorance is profound,
even among highly educated, successful people. Clinicians know a
lot, especially collectively, but the knowledge hasn’t gotten out
to the general population much at all. One of the main purposes
of this website is to offer basic education about emotions to
any interested person.
so what is
an emotional state, anyway?
Now we're actually venturing into
tricky territory. On the one hand, most readers
will say, “well,
that’s obvious – an emotional state is just how we’re
feeling at a particular time.” (This we will call the
“common-sense
definition.”) On the other hand, some
readers will say, “well, that’s actually a very hard
question to answer in an exact way. It doesn’t help much to
define emotion in terms of ‘how we’re feeling’,
because then we’ve just substituted the word
‘feeling’ for the word ‘emotion’ – we
haven’t really explained
anything. And what exactly is
a
feeling, anyway?”
Now we’re in real
trouble.
Many great minds of the past – including Charles Darwin and
William James – as well as the entire field of psychology and a
lot of neurology for the
past century or so – have tried to define “emotion”
exactly -- and failed.
It's actually a maddeningly difficult thing to do -- I sometimes
think it may
really be inherently impossible. Scientists are currently doing a
lot of
brain research and are making great advances in understanding how
things happen in there, but the staggering complexity of the human
brain is so difficult to figure out that it continues to be largely a
mystery (or a set of mysteries.)
We’re still very, very far
from being able to actually
explain
any kind of
“mental” process, (such as thinking or awareness or remembering or
emotion or dreaming or imagination,) in terms of actual
brain function. So
we’re going to have to do without an exact biological or physiological
definition.
Fortunately, it turns out that we
can ignore this
entire problem! We can use the common-sense
definition for
everything we want to discuss here. Another term for the
"common-sense definition" of emotion is the “experiential
definition” -- “emotion” is what we call
a certain type
of internal experience, and we know what it is because we do experience
it. In this approach we are following the celebrated principle
stated by the Supreme Court judge who said of pornography, “I may
not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it.” We
may not be able to define emotion, but we know it when we feel
it
-- that’s the experiential definition.
So that’s exactly what an
emotional state is: how
we
feel over a period of time. The time interval may be a few
moments, a few minutes, an hour, a few hours, a day, a few days, a
week, a year, etc. The essential features are that it is a
definable
feeling with some period of duration.
back to top
a
working definition of happiness
But clearly not all emotional
states are happy
ones. In fact, in my observation, unhappy
emotional states are
at least as common as happy ones in current (2012) America,
and nothing I’ve learned leads me to believe that the prevalence
is significantly different in other areas of the world – and may,
in fact, be quite a bit worse. So we need a way to discuss
emotional states that includes this variability.
At this point we’ll just
use what we’ve
already established – that there are “good” (happy,
enjoyable) emotional states and “bad” (unhappy,
non-enjoyable) emotional states – and then add a third category,
“neutral”, to cover those times when we don’t feel
definably either good or bad. Amazing as it may sound, with
nothing more than these simple concepts we can give a practical , and
very useful, answer to one of
the most-debated questions throughout human history: "what is
happiness?"
"Happiness” is simply
feeling good
most of the time.
(Plus a good level of confidence that this experience will
continue into the future.
More about this requirement later.)
This statement is actually the
central proposition
of this website, and its apparent obviousness is very deceptive.
The
actual implications are literally revolutionary.
This proposition is of
course open to the same criticisms as
was our discussion of the nature of emotion -- first, that the
assertion is merely stated in terms of other words that essentially
mean the
same thing, and second, that the assertion is so obvious that it seems
trivial. Both criticisms are certainly valid. But if we go
ahead anyway, and treat this statement as if it is actually saying
something important, we arrive at some remarkable
understandings, well worth considering. Let’s see where it
takes us.
The first result that emerges
from this logic is
that we can actually begin to quantify
or measure
our happiness, in a
rough sort of way of course. As I spent years talking to clients
about the things that made them feel good, neutral, or bad, at some
point I would ask, “if you felt good all the time, would you call
yourself happy?” A lot of the people I asked responded with
the
pitying look reserved for those who ask truly stupid questions, and a
few even said “duh.” The others for the most part
responded with a thoughtful expression and said something like “I
never thought about that before,” -- but after thinking it over
they
would also agree.
In fact I’ve
never found an exception to
this proposition.
So -- if people universally agree
that feeling good
100% of the time would qualify as “being happy,” then we
have the beginnings of a kind of measurement system, because the next
obvious question is, “well, how about if you felt good 99% of the
time -- would you still call yourself happy?” In my
experience people have always said yes to this question also --
which is actually crucially important, because it means that the state
of feeling good doesn’t have to be perfect
to qualify as happiness. So about twenty years ago I did a
little
survey among people I was currently working with, as follows:
|
Using your own
definition of the term "happy",
what percentages
of feeling good,
feeling
neutral, or feeling bad
would it
take for you to call yourself "happy"?
feeling good ________
% of the time,
feeling neutral ________ % of
the time, and
feeling bad no more
than ________ % of the time.
|
Interestingly, the answers from about 25 people averaged out to
within
hundredths of a percentage point of these nice round numbers:
feeling good 75% of
the time,
feeling
neutral 20% of the time, and
feeling
bad no more than
5% of the time.
|
So these are the numbers
I’ve used in my work since then.
There has been no need to try to get greater precision from a larger
sample (though I would be interested in any research anybody cares to
do) because it was understood from the beginning that these numbers are
only approximate, and that anyone
who wishes to set different criteria
for his or her own definition of happiness is perfectly free to do so.
What’s really
important is that this way of thinking about the
subject of happiness leads to a very practical and achievable method for improving
our happiness, over time.
That’s what this website is
all about.
back to top
Now we also need to cover
the
“good-enough” principle
Everything about this approach to
human happiness has
been designed to be useful
and
effective,
rather than to be perfect.
A lot of these
subjects
– like the exact nature of emotions, for example – are so
complicated that nobody
has complete answers (as far as I know.) So here we
are consciously deciding to ignore
all these profound mysteries, because
they are not
necessary to answer to achieve our goals.
I’m
fairly confident that some people, including probably some
professionals, will criticize this discussion for it’s lack of
“scientific precision.” So let me plead guilty right
here, ahead of time. My response is that this approach works
without
those answers. It’s good
enough. And good enough is -- good
enough.
I can't resist adding that
I’m in
pretty good company here. Aristotle
himself, over 2300 years ago, wrote in his analysis of happiness, "Our discussion will be
adequate if it has as much clearness as
the subject-matter admits of ..."
Now, a note on printing:
The text on this
website
– currently the equivalent of about 35 standard pages
--
contains the basic information explaining and describing this approach
to becoming happy, and is available to anyone who wishes to read
it. I encourage anyone who wishes to, to print it out or download
it for on-going reference – in my experience it takes a lot
of time
and repetition to
really absorb
these ideas
(see
Step 3 for details.) This material is copyrighted, but you are
free (and encouraged!) to do
anything you want with it, except try to make
money off it or claim
you wrote it.
A NOTE ABOUT COLORED
TEXT: If you do try to
print from this website, some of the colored sections -- such as this
example -- may come out quite faint. It depends a good deal on
your
printer. Also, the
print may
be smaller than appears here.
back to top
NOW --
A
WARNING
|
There are such things as
"emotional problems."
The profession called "psychotherapy"
exists to help with such problems.
It is
quite possible
that a person reading this material, and having his or her
attention directed
to emotional
experience, might react by getting upset,
depressed, frightened, or
seriously distressed in some way, since many people have chronic bad
feelings that they cope with mostly by trying to
ignore them. Often these chronic bad feelings go unattended
to, or even unrecognized
-- possibly for many years -- because of
the habitual ignorance and non-attention to emotions prevalent in the
general population. If this occurs, I strongly
recommend finding a
competent local therapist to get help. There is a
section providing guidance for this at the end of this website.
For the rest of this discussion,
the acronym "FACLT"
(for Find A Competent Local Therapist)
will be used at times to recommend getting
professional help in certain circumstances.
|
Now
we are
ready to proceed to
the 3
Steps of the Method:
back to top
THE METHOD
The three fundamental assertions
underlying this approach are these:
IF WE CAN LEARN TO LIVE WITH EMOTIONS
SUCCESFULLY,
WE CAN LIVE THE REST OF LIFE SUCCESFULLY.
IF WE CAN LIVE THE REST OF LIFE SUCCESSFULLY,
WE CAN BE HAPPY.
OUR GOAL IS NEVER TO BE PERFECT, BUT TO BE "GOOD ENOUGH."
If you want to actually
attempt to use the method described
here, I strongly suggest you copy the following two boxes to your word
processor, print them out, and put them somewhere you will see them on
a daily basis:
THE GOAL:
75% GOOD
20% NEUTRAL
5% BAD
|
THE FOUR
THINGS TO
DO:
NOTICE
LABEL
THINK
ACKNOWLEDGE
|
These 2 sheets will serve as
reminders of the essential elements of the
method. They will help to stimulate your developing understanding
on a daily basis.
STEP 1
Understanding Emotions
Differently
The “Understanding”
part of this method begins with just two fundamental points that we
need to agree on:
1. Emotions
are real.
2. Emotions
are important
enough to pay some
attention to.
If we decide to accept these two
seemingly simple propositions, everything else in this
method follows
logically, as we will
see.
But we need to recognize the
magnitude of the change
in
understanding that these two seemingly simple statements lead
to.
That means we must at least take note of the
current situation
regarding general attitudes toward emotion.
To be blunt, that means:
near-total ignorance
and wrong
beliefs
ignorance
It really is hard to describe
adequately the degree to which emotions are ignored or not attended to
in current American life. Perhaps if you read to the end of this
material, by then you will begin to share this on-going sense of
incredulity, this amazement, that this is in fact the way things
are. But it is so. Emotions are simply not
paid attention
to in any systematic way in usual American life. (And
though I
don’t have much data about other countries, my impression is that
this situation is pretty much the same all around the globe.)
Here’s a simple test to see
where we’re starting from. Pick one of the three answers
for each of these questions:
|
Think
about
your growing-up
experience, say from age 0 to 18.
How often did you
hear anything
like the following statements?
1. “Emotions
are important to pay attention
to.”
frequently
occasionally
never
2. “Relationships
and family life tend to go
better when emotions are
paid attention to.”
frequently
occasionally
never
3. “Whether or
not we are happy depends most of all
on our
emotions.”
frequently
occasionally
never
|
If you’re like me, you
would choose the answer “never”
for each of these statements. If
so, then you can consider yourself as having been raised
in
basic
ignorance about emotions, as I was. Some of you may have
educated
yourselves to some extent since, but frankly most of you haven’t
learned much of anything useful, unless you’ve been in some kind
of effective psychotherapy program. If anyone is offended (an
emotional reaction!) by what I’m saying here, I’ll be happy
to make an exception in your case. Nevertheless, I stand by the
statement that most members of the general public don’t appear to
know much about emotions, and don’t seem to pay much attention to
them -- and even further, people don’t know
that they don’t
know, or that what they don’t know they don't know could
be important. This is profound ignorance on
many levels.
I hope readers here will
understand that
when I
speak about ignorance, I am using that term not
as an insult but as a description of
simple reality. “Ignorance” means
“not to know.” We all start out
ignorant –
every baby is born
ignorant – and we are all ignorant about many more things than we
actually know about. There’s a very
long list of subjects I happen to be extremely ignorant about.
The statement that "emotions is one area that most people seem very
ignorant about" is intended simply as a description of reality -- the
situation
that appears to exist -- not to make anybody feel bad. We
have already demonstrated, through our little quiz above, that
almost all of us were pretty much raised in ignorance about emotions
and
their importance, so it actually makes some sense that this condition
exists on such a widespread basis.
back to top
wrong
beliefs
Since -- as part of the general
ignoring of emotions -- people
in fact rarely talk about emotions or
their beliefs about them, it's actually a little hard to tell what
people actually do
believe about
emotions. So
we have to try to infer
or figure out
their
beliefs from
what we can observe,
meaning
that we have to do our best to figure out
what are the likely
operating principles from studying the observable
patterns of
behavior. When I have considered this question, I come up
with
the following:
Most
people
most
of the time seem to act
as if
emotions are:
unimportant
infrequent
irrational
unpredictable
unreliable
meaningless
mysterious
to be ignored
if possible
a sign of
weakness
and (possibly worst of all) feminine –
or at least, non-masculine
Some individuals actually act as
if they think emotions don’t
exist at all, although this extreme
appears to be a minority (mainly geeky or macho males.)
In
reality,
all these
beliefs
are
factually and provably wrong,
and the exact opposites
are largely
true.
So when we’re talking about
“understanding emotions differently”, we have to begin with
“understanding
them at all.”
So that’s the next
step.
correcting
all those wrong beliefs
The first thing we have to do is
to specifically contradict
all these usually unacknowledged but extremely widespread
wrong beliefs about emotion:
1. emotions are
important, not unimportant.
We’ve already addressed
this point by establishing that the whole idea of
“happiness”
-- which is what most people want most -- is an emotional state and
depends on emotional experience. We
can also point out that since emotions largely control people’s
reactions and attitudes toward us or things we do, relationships with
others – a very important aspect of life for most people –
are greatly improved by even rudimentary emotional awareness, as well
as the fact that being able to understand or predict others’
reactions is greatly enhanced by including emotionality in our
thinking. These reasons by themselves seem sufficient to conclude
that emotions are in fact important, though there are many additional
reasons also, that will become more clear as we go along.
2.
emotions are very
common, even continuous,
not
rare at all.
We actually have emotional
reactions all the
time -- a continuous emotional
state
flow
-- identifiable at any moment by simply
asking “what am I feeling
right now?” The two reasons that most of us are not aware
of
the frequency of emotions are that most of these reactions are
fairly mild or minor, and that we have all been conditioned to
ignore or disregard emotion as much as possible. But we can become aware by
a simple act of repetitive attention.
3.
emotions are in
fact “rational”,
meaning that they
“make
sense.”
This proposition is easily
demonstrated for
the great majority of emotional phenomena. Most emotional
reactions make perfect sense if we simply stop to think about the
circumstances and events in which the reactions occurred. For
example, think of two times recently that you’ve had an emotional
reaction to something, one that was enjoyable and one that was
irritating. I’d be willing to bet that for each one you
could say why
that experience
was enjoyable or irritating without much
difficulty. Almost all emotional reactions are really quite
easily understandable.
While it is certainly true that
people frequently say they do not understand some emotional reaction,
either in themselves or in someone else, I
believe that the main reason for this lack of understanding in adults
is simply the general ignorance about emotions that prevails in our
culture. Remember that we all start out as
babies, who
have intensely
emotional reactions without any understanding of what
they’re experiencing, so we all start out with this
combination
of emotion and ignorance. But most people never get the simple
learning that would enable them to makes sense out of their emotional
experience, as they grow older -- so the ignorance continues into
adulthood.
Also,
cognitive therapists would want me to note that a lot of emotional
reactions occur, at least in part, because of particular ways we think
or assumptions that
we make. These types of reasons may be difficult to identify at
first.
Finally, there do occur bad
feelings that seem to “come out of nowhere” or that seem
inexplicable to the person experiencing them. The most common of
these are depression, anxiety or worry, panic, and anger. (Any
reader who frequently experiences any of these should
definitely
consider FACLT.) In my
experience there are three general
explanations for these types of bad feelings: feelings that derive
unrecognized from earlier life experience, feelings that derive from
unrecognized cognitive errors (particularly unrecognized assumptions),
and (least likely,
in my
experience) genetic factors or aberrations in the neurological or
biochemical operation of the brain.
The overwhelming
majority of emotional
reactions, however, are simple
to explain.
4.
emotions are
in fact usually quite predictable.
The demonstration of this point
is very similar to the last one. Take the same two experiences
– one enjoyable, one irritating – that you identified a
moment ago, and ask yourself if the same circumstances and events
occurred again, how likely is it that you would have a very similar
emotional reaction again? Generally speaking, the answer is that
it is extremely
likely – in other words, we can predict most
(though certainly not all) emotional reactions with a fairly high rate
of accuracy.
5.
emotions are
remarkably reliable.
Again use your two experiences to
test this proposition: if the same circumstances and events occurred
a number of times, wouldn’t you have pretty much the same
emotional reactions, each time? The reliability of
emotional
reactions is actually quite phenomenal. Think of any repetitive
experience in your life (there are many!) and examine your feelings
about that experience, each time. You’ll see a pattern of
great (though certainly not perfect!) consistency.
6.
emotions are not meaningless;
in fact emotions
contain vital information for our
lives,
and actually form the real
foundation of meaning in life .
The information content of
emotions is explained in the next section.
Regarding the connection between
emotions and the experience of “meaning” in life, this is a
fairly large subject which won't be explored in detail here,
but, stated briefly, the
way we feel about something absolutely determines how
meaningful it is to us..
If we simply think about whatever is
important to us, and examine the intensity of feelings that surround
that subject, we will begin to see the correspondence that is the basis
of this statement.
7.
emotions are
almost always obvious,
not
mysterious at all.
The support for this point is
essentially the same as the first
paragraph of point 3, that with a little thought most people can
identify their reasons for their emotional reactions without too much
trouble. Test this question by identifying any significant
emotional reaction you’ve had recently and asking yourself, is
this emotional reaction hard or easy to understand? A very high
percentage of the time, the answer will come back “easy.”
8. emotions
are important to take note of,
not to
ignore or disregard.
The general importance of
emotions has been covered several times
already. The value of taking note of specific emotional events
has to do with the information
content of emotional experience, which
is covered in the next section. At this point all I want to do is
to formally contradict this highly prevalent belief that emotions are
not imortant.
9.
emotions are not a sign of weakness.
This wrong belief derives from
the same assumptions
as the “toughness” ideal so prevalent in our culture,
the assumption that
strength of character means suppressing most emotional reactions
internally and not allowing our emotions to be detectable
to others (except anger, usually, which is regarded as a
“strong” emotion.)
It is true that "becoming
emotional" in
public can be an embarrassing experience, and can be made still worse
by some types of reactions from others, so good management of our
emotional reactions is indeed a valuable skill. But questions of
emotional
self-management are fundamentally different
from the question
of having emotional reactions at all.
In reality
-- certainly
in the long run -- the inability to respond emotionally is a great
handicap, whereas the emotionally aware condition actually greatly
contributes to many
strengths, such as productive
motivation, resilience under stress, understanding, and judgment, and
is a strong factor for success in
many areas of life.
10. emotions
are actually equally present
in males and females.
Both males and females have the
full spectrum of emotional responses. You can demonstrate this
fact by referring to the
“Good Enough
Map of the Human Emotional System,” which
identifies eleven
categories of
emotion (the columns) -- 5 positive, 2
neutral, and 4 negative -- and asking yourself whether you can identify
one feeling (such as "irritated", "excited," "sad," etc.) from each column
that you have experienced at some
time. If you can identify even a single example,
it means you
have the capability
to feel
that type of feeling. Both males and
females pass this test equally easily.
It certainly may be true that
females may tend to prioritize
emotions
more than males do, in current American culture at least, while males
may tend to prioritize
“rational” or
“practical” concerns, and it’s even possible that
such a difference in attention is to some extent biological. But
even if so, this difference
in
attention patterns doesn’t change
the fact that males and females have
the same emotional repertoires and
capabilities, and that emotions govern the question of
happiness
just
as much for males as for females. Differences that appear to exist
between male and female emotional patterns are almost entirely learned,
not innate, in my
opinion, though there
certainly may be genetic, hormonal, or temperament
factors. Both male and female infants are highly emotional and
have very similar emotional repertoires, satisfying me that we all
start out essentially the same in the universe of emotional
experience.
back to top
the dual nature of emotions
Now that we have officially
corrected all those common wrong
beliefs, the next crucial point to understand is that emotions
actually
have two separate
and distinct aspects, a fact that is another of the
great “secrets” about emotions that are apparently not
known to the
general public.
What everybody pays attention to
is the first and most obvious of these
aspects, which is emotional
experience – what it feels
like to be
glad, sad, mad, etc. People are usually pretty aware of how good
it feels to be in love or how bad
it feels to be depressed.
Everybody enjoys feeling good and dislikes feeling bad, and if bad
feelings are persistent and sufficiently distressing people sometimes
decide to try professional help (FACLT.)
(Nobody comes to
treatment because of feeling too good.) This obvious experiential
aspect of emotions is expressed in the following two examples:
“I felt really
depressed
when my (boyfriend/girlfriend) ended our relationship.”
“I was delighted when I
got that new
job.”
This experiential
dimension of emotion
is absolutely
just as important as everybody acknowledges it to be. The problem
is that that’s where most people’s thinking about emotion
stops.
The second aspect of emotion,
ignored by almost
everybody, is emotional
information – using our emotional
experiences as data for
crucial life processes such as understanding ourselves and others,
relating to others, choosing, planning,
decision-making, etc. Using this information
requires being able to think
about emotions in a systematic, realistic,
and productive way, which is a central purpose of this website and
something hardly anybody does effectively (as far as I
can observe.)
Consider this analogy:
you’re walking down the
street and you feel a sudden pain in one foot, so you stop and take off
that shoe, and remove a small pebble that had gotten in there
somehow. Your foot immediately feels better, and you put your
shoe back on and walk on your way, feeling comfortable again.
Think for a moment about that pain you felt in your foot.
It’s certainly an experience,
something that happened
to you
and
that you felt
– it hurt
-- in this case, an unpleasant
experience.
But it also
served you as a signal,
to
get your
attention and get you to address a problem
(the pebble) that was
causing distress and possible harm to you. Furthermore, as soon
as you had successfully solved the
problem (removing the pebble), the
signal
– the pain
– stopped,
having
served its logical or biological
purpose.
Emotions give us information in exactly
the same
way, and
also stop (“go
away”) when they have served their
intended function.
Emotions operate to get our attention
and direct
us to address various aspects of our life experience, and give us
continuous
feedback on how
we’re doing, the results of our
efforts, and the states of others around us. Emotions actually
constitute a remarkable assessment and evaluation system, marvelously
detailed, always available to all of us, in “real time” as
the computer folks say, that goes with us wherever we go, because
it’s built into us. It is essential to begin
thinking of
emotional experience as data from our
emotional system, in order to
begin to utilize this information. This understanding is
absolutely
fundamental to
using this Method.
This information
concept of emotions in
no way diminishes or cancels
out the qualities of the emotional experience
itself (how good
or bad
it feels
-- the aspect that
everybody usually focuses on); this is an additional way
to
understand emotions, not a substitute.
Emotions are facts. If
we have any
particular
emotional reaction, it is a fact
that we are having that feeling.
These facts
can be used for
“scientific analysis”, the very
model of rationalism and logic in our modern, scientific world.
These facts
can be observed,
collected, examined, compared, sorted into
categories, and used for experimentation and hypothesis formation and
testing – all the requirements of the scientific
method. Results are highly reproducible. Thus in a
very real way we can develop a “scientific approach to
emotionality,” which is of course exactly what I’m
recommending. At this point, though, all I want to get clear is
that emotions do contain information
– about ourselves, others,
and many other things – that can be learned
about, analyzed, and
used to improve ourselves, our lives, and our happiness -- to an almost
unlimited extent.
back to top
Now we need a system for organizing our
understanding of emotions:
THE
HUMAN
EMOTIONAL SYSTEM
As we discussed in the
Introduction, when we first
consider emotional experience in general, the most obvious feature that
strikes us is that some emotions are pleasant
or enjoyable,
while
others are unpleasant
or not enjoyable.
So this is our
first
organizing concept: just “good feelings” and
“bad
feelings.” Then we’ll stick in the
“neutral” category in the middle, to cover situations where
we don’t feel identifiably either good or bad, and we have our
simplest model:
| good
feelings |
| neutral
feelings |
| bad feelings |
We could actually accomplish
a
surprising amount
– such as a practical definition of happiness, as we have seen!
-- using only this
kindergarten-level model, but now we’ll go ahead and add in the
other two necessary factors for a more complete approach.
Emotions
also vary in type
and intensity.
It’s
generally
clear to people (once it’s pointed out!) that feeling
“excited” feels different
from feeling “loved”
or feeling "amused,” (even though these are all "good" feelings),
and that feeling “scared”
feels different from feeling
“angry” or feeling
“embarrassed,” (even though these are all "bad"
feelings.) These are different types of
feelings
within the general categories of “good” or
“bad.” Then there are the differences of intensity:
we can be “pleased” or “thrilled”, or we can
be “irritated” or
“furious,” each example demonstrating a real
difference in intensity within a single emotional type.
Regarding “types” or
“categories” of emotion, after many years of consideration
I
have settled on identifying five
types of good feelings, two
types of neutral feelings, and four
types
of bad feelings, as follows:
good feelings:
enjoyment
affection/appreciation*
safety
excitement
fulfillment
neutral
feelings:
actually neutral / don't care
at all
mixed good and
bad feelings that evenly balance out
bad feelings:
fear
pain
shame/guilt*
anger
(* the
“affection/appreciation” and
“shame/guilt” categories have two-word names
because the single words are not complete enough.)
To review: think in terms of three “variables” of any emotion:
1. enjoyability = enjoyable, neutral, or
not enjoyable
2. type
= the nature or category of the emotion
3. intensity
= the strength or intensity of the emotion
Now, having these three
variables of emotional experience clearly in mind, we are ready to
proceed to:
A
GOOD-ENOUGH MAP OF
THE
HUMAN EMOTIONAL SYSTEM
Good / Positive / Enjoyable
enjoyment
|
appreciation/affection
|
safety
|
excitement
|
fulfillment
|
good
pleased
happy
glad
pleasure
enjoyment
amused
entertained
joyful
wonderful
delighted
overjoyed
thrilled |
(receiving)
(giving)
liked
like
accepted
accept
appreciated
appreciate
understood understand
respected
respect
wanted
enjoy
cared about care about
trusted
trust
admired
admire
validated
value
supported
sympathize
loved love
|
secure
confident
comfortable
relaxed
calm
protected
stable
OK
in control
relieved
safe
peaceful
serene |
interested
curious
motivated
stimulated
hopeful
optimistic
encouraged
energized
eager
challenged
excited
enthusiastic
exhilarated |
contented
rewarded
gratified
competent
capable
effective
satisfied
self-respect
successful
proud
fulfilled
vindicated
triumphant
|
Neutral
actually neutral
|
mixed feelings balancing out
|
don’t care
neutral
indifferent |
mixed
feelings balancing out
ambivalent |
Bad / Negative / Not Enjoyable
fear
|
pain
|
shame/guilt
|
anger
|
worried
nervous
tense
shy
apprehensive
suspicious
insecure
alarmed
scared
frightened
panic
desperate
terrified |
disappointed
regret
discouraged
unhappy
lonely
jealous
sad
hurt
grief
depressed
rejected
horror
despair |
awkward
embarrassed
self-conscious
not good enough
ashamed
guilty
dumb
wrong
humiliated
mortified
worthless
self-disgust
self-hatred |
irritated
annoyed
resentful
frustrated
disgusted
insulted
mad
angry
bitter
furious
enraged
violent
homicidal |
In each category of the good
and
bad feelings, the intensity increases
as we go down the list of words. As far as neutral feelings are
concerned, the question of intensity doesn’t really apply.
The Affection/Appreciation
category, since it is explicitly inter-personal, has two distinct
sub-types: the feelings we have for others
("giving"), and the feelings we get from others ("receiving".)
Please keep firmly in mind that
this Map is not
intended to be perfect
(i.e., to include every possible emotional word or possibility), but to
be good enough
to give us a
working functional vocabulary that will accurately describe the
full dimensions of human emotionality. Feel free to add more
words to any catagory you wish to; if you feel a need to add a whole
new catagory I would be very interested to hear from you!
a
grammatical note: the names of the categories are nouns, for
generality, but the words in the columns of the emotional map are
mostly
in the form of adjectives rather than nouns –
“pleased”
rather than “pleasure”, “worried” rather than
“worry” – because that’s the most common way
people use them. But since language and usage are not entirely
consistent, a few nouns have crept in. Anyone who feels irritated
(an emotional reaction!) by this inconsistency is perfectly free
to translate back and forth.
(a note to professionals:
this organization of the human emotional
response repertoire is congruent with Tompkins’ Affect
Theory, although I have left out dissmell and placed disgust in the
anger column, and greatly elaborated the positive variations. To
my
knowledge this system does not conflict with any current theory or
treatment approach,
though a strict behaviorist might consider it irrelevant.)
Now, having a usable model for
emotions, what do we do with it?
Well, we learn to use the
4 Rules
(as
outlined next
in Step 2 of the method.)
back to top
4 Rules for Emotional Living
This is the section that answers
the question,
“what do I actually have to do,
in this method of yours?”
The short answer is:
learn the 4 rules
and
incorporate them into your daily life.
Good news! There are only 4
rules! (But each one is, actually, revolutionary…)
Rule 1: NOTICE
(emotional
occurrences)
This is the first and most basic
rule because
nothing else can
occur if we don’t notice when we or others are
experiencing emotional states or reactions.
If we do nothing else but begin noticing,
it will be
enough to begin to stimulate change and understanding. Noticing
is actually very powerful
(though hardly anybody notices
this…)
This rule is really simply the
“putting into
practice” of the concept of the importance of emotions that we
have been advocating from the beginning. In order to do
this, we need to develop the habit
of mind of taking
note
of emotions when examples occur (as they do in fact so
frequently!) This means developing the mental habit of
“being aware,”
or
“paying
attention”,
“being on
the lookout for”
or “being
alert for”
emotional occurrences, in ourselves and others.
Different types of interests that
people have foster particular
specialized types of awareness. Birdwatchers are alert for birds,
investors are alert for events on the stock market, musicians hear
music better, medical people are alert for indicators of health or
disease, builders notice how things are built, sports fans notice more
details of play, cooks notice flavorings in food, and so forth.
Whatever we are
interested in, we observe more readily and
accurately. So if we simply develop
an interest in emotions, this
habit of noticing them will result fairly quickly.
If we do take such an interest,
we will begin to develop what I call
emotional awareness
"Being aware" means to know or
know about, to be conscious of, as in "I
am aware of the room I am sitting in", or "I know my home
address." Awareness goes both inward and outward. We can
focus our attention on internal events -- such as our breathing,
our thinking, or our states of hunger, thirst, or tiredness, sensations
in our bodies, or our various
thoughts -- or we
can focus on external events -- such as other people, TV, a book, a
ball game, the road when we’re driving, a sunset, etc.
In the
same way, emotional awareness has two dimensions, internal and
external.
This means both
awareness of our
own emotions and awareness
of others’ emotions or emotional reactions.
Internal
emotional awareness means an on-going internal awareness of
our own emotional state at any given moment, in the present, “in
the now”, as the zen folks say. It is the answer to the
questions "how do I feel right now?" or "what am I feeling right now?"
External
emotional awareness essentially means learning to read --
emotional signals
People actually give off fairly
continuous
indicators of their internal
emotional states – again, all we have to do
is pay some
attention and learn to read these
signals. (This is another of the
“secrets” about emotions that hardly anybody seems to
know.) It seems obvious as soon as we start to talk about it
– “everybody knows this” – but very few people
seem to
take it seriously or think systematically about it.
The most common emotional
indicators are:
facial
expression
voice tones
body language
choice of words
expressive behavior
A little thought will enable any
reader to begin to
identify examples of these indicators, such as “a happy
face” or “an angry voice”. Research has been
done showing the similarity of people’s reactions to facial
expressions around the world, regardless of history, culture, language,
economic
state, background, or education. Each of these types of display can
convey an “emotional impression” that can be very clear and
distinct. The fundamental concept is to practice reading
other people’s emotional indicators as a normal life
function, and then to use the data according to Rules 2, 3, and 4.
It’s also useful to realize
that we ourselves
are equally sending out emotional signals all the time, that other
people may
well react to, and to spend a little time imagining what we are
signaling to
others through the same kinds of indicators.
back to top
Rule 2: LABEL
(emotions)
Once we have noticed an emotional
reaction in
ourselves or in someone else, the next step is to identify the type and
nature of the emotion. (This follows the classic scientific
sequence of “after observation comes classification.") The
reason is that different kinds of emotions carry different kinds of
data – different “messages” – and without
accurate sorting into the various categories (and labeling for
intensity also), we can not make good use of all the available
information.
As already stated this system
uses 11 categories of
human emotion
– 5 good ones, 2 neutral ones, and 4 bad ones. To review
what we’ve already said:
The five good feeling categories are:
pleasure
affection/appreciation
safety
excitement
fulfillment
The two neutral feeling categories are:
neutral
evenly balanced mixed
feelings
The four bad feeling categories are:
fear
pain
shame/guilt
anger
We need to
learn to use these category labels easily and naturally to be able to
begin to make sense out of our emotional data. Learn to ask
yourself, "what category of feeling would this (noticed event) fall
into?"
If you do this you will often
find there are two or more distinct feelings occurring -- the
experience of "mixed feelings." We in fact almost always have mixed feelings,
at least to some
extent, if we look closely enough. Typical examples are
“being really interested in doing
something (excitement) but also being nervous about it (fear)” or
“I’m depressed (pain) that that relationship didn’t
work out, but I’m also relieved (safety) not to be fighting any
more (anger.)” So we very often have more than one feeling
to accurately label, and the result is a mix of different
feelings at
different intensity levels.
Labeling for intensity
is
accomplished by using the various words in
each category that are found in the Emotional Map. The words
generally get more intense as we go down the columns.
Labeling also has the effect of
making our emotional
experience “more real” to ourselves – that is, it
also works as an “acknowledgment” (see Rule 4 below.)
Here’s a simple test to
give you an idea of where you’re
starting from:
Can
you identify and label
accurately two emotional
reactions
you’ve had
today?
If not, you have a large
opportunity for development in this area.
A reality note: in actual
practice, the "Noticing" and Labeling" steps (that is, Steps 1 and 2 of
this Method) usually occur together as one experience, not as two
separate functions. That is, we
usually experience "I feel pleased" or "I feel irritated", rather than
"I feel a good feeling and that good feeling is feeling pleased" or "I
feel bad and that bad feeling is irritation." So if this
separation into two steps seems unnecessary to you, feel free to ignore
it.
Nothing fundamental will be changed.
The value of
recognizing these two processes as distinct is that it leads us to
think about our emotional experience in more general categories,
as well as to examine it more carefully and to look for less
immediately obvious feelings as well as the predominant reactions.
These less
obvious feelings may also convey important information to use for
guidance
and more complete processing.
back to top
Rule 3: THINK
(about
emotions)
Now, having noticed and
accurately labeled some
emotional occurrence, we proceed to the third rule, thinking about
this
whole dimension of reality.
This rule really could be written
“think some
about emotions”, because even a little thinking will lead to
profound results, over time. All we’re looking for is a
little time spent – on a reasonably regular basis -- thinking
about emotional aspects of living.
We all have so many important
things
to think about
– family situations, relationships, children, work, gossip,
money,
health, social life, hobbies, sex, pets, politics, sports, art,
the environment, what’s for dinner, taking out the garbage
– really a fairly endless list. But we’re now adding
one
more topic. The justification is that this one can make us
happier!
There are many useful ways to
think about emotions and emotional
experience, and thinking itself is a widely variable process. My
guess is that any systematic approach would be productive, based on the
principle that any such thinking is at least paying attention, which is
better than nothing, and may well lead to progress. The approach
that I’m going to recommend here is stripped down to those
elements I have found most useful. As with everything else in this
whole discussion, what I’m presenting here is based on the
“good enough” principle – it’s not intended to
be complete, just good enough to get us started with this type
of thinking and to begin practicing the approach of understanding
emotions as data or information.
We need to differentiate between
the experiences of
observing emotion in ourselves and observing emotion in someone
else. (To be more precisely accurate, this second category would
be called observing emotional indicators in someone else.)
emotions in self
Here we are seeking to take note of our own
emotional reactions and utilize these interesting phenomena as
significant data. I recommend asking ourselves – and trying
to answer – any of the following 6 questions:
“What is this feeling trying to
tell me?”
“What do
I think is (are) the reason(s) for this feeling?
“Is this feeling part of a
repeating pattern or is it a unique event?”
“Does this emotion bear on
any decision I need to make?”
“Does this feeling remind
me of anything, and what does that
tell me?”
“Do I want to repeat this
feeling?”
Any of these questions will
stimulate useful
thinking. (The single most useful question is the first one,
“what is this feeling trying to tell me?” This is the
basic question for interpreting
emotional experience as information, and actually constitutes a
revolutionary shift in operating reality for most people. And
actually, every
feeling is trying to tell us something!)
When we begin thinking in any of
these ways we are using
emotional information
in our thinking, understanding,
and decision-making processes.
emotions in others
When we notice indications of an
emotional reaction in someone else, I recommend asking any of these 4
questions:
“Do I understand this
emotional reaction?”
“Could I imagine feeling
that way in that situation?”
“What is my emotional
reaction to their emotional reaction?”
“What does this (observed
feeling) tell me about this other person?”
Again, the purpose is not to
cover all the
possibilities – more will certainly occur to you yourself, if you
begin thinking in this kind of way. The purpose of these
questions is to stimulate a certain type of thinking by the use of
these examples.
There are some other issues
raised by this kind of thinking that we need to address:
complexity
Many people have complained to me
that life seems
much more complicated
now that they have all these emotional
considerations to take into account. This is a fair
complaint. To the extent that emotion had previously been
ignored, adding it into living certainly does increase the number of
factors that need to be considered. Each of us is internally
quite complex and variable,
both emotionally and cognitively, and when there are two or more of us
interacting these complexities and variabilities do compound. So
it’s understandable to feel unable to keep track of everything
simultaneously. Furthermore, emotional experience is actually
happening all the time, so there’s a continuous flow of new
data. So there is a great deal to think about, and it’s
actually fairly easy to get overwhelmed and feel discouraged (an
emotional reaction!).
The good news is that we can just
do a little, from
time to time even, and we will gradually get
used to this kind of
complexity. As odd
as it might sound to some readers, I believe that this type of thinking
is actually a natural way for us to think and that our brains are in
fact well adapted for it, so that we will “get the hang of
it” in a natural developmental manner within a reasonable amount
of time. Remember that it originally took us years to learn to
talk, read, write, and do arithmetic – cognitive tasks that now
seem pretty automatic. Anyone who mastered those skills can
master these.
There is another fascinating
factor that also
helps enormously
with this very real complexity problem – emotions
themselves! Our emotional systems are designed to give
relatively
simple read-outs on extremely complex situations – that’s
what a feeling is! Our emotional systems react to enormous
numbers of perceptions, sensory impressions, thoughts, associations,
memories, and so forth, and synthesize immediate signals giving us
“summary
statements” in the form of emotional reactions,
incredibly rapidly and usually in “real time” (though there
are
plenty of “delayed reactions” also.) The emotional
system is actually an amazing sort of analog computer in its
functioning, with a capability that becomes even more amazing the more
we pay attention to it. So we can learn to use our own emotions
very efficiently to deal with complexity of all sorts – including
emotional complexity! Isn't that amazing!
A few other
guidelines for thinking about emotions:
Think of each person -- of
whatever age – as having an
independent
emotional process or flow, that may agree with or interact
with others’ emotions but that remains fundamentally distinct and
independent. If
there are five people in a room, there are five
separate continuous emotional processes occurring in that room.
It’s surprising how common it is for people to not realize that
people in the same place at the same time can have entirely different
emotional states or experiences.
When in doubt, give it
more time. This
thinking-about-emotions process works over time, and the more time we
can give to a particular consideration, the more likely we are to be
right (as defined in the evaluation process below.) So if we can
learn patience with this process, we will be greatly rewarded.
USING
EMOTIONAL INFORMATION
We can also use emotions as data
for specific
cognitive functions, as follows. Again, the emotional
considerations of each function take the form of a question.
evaluating
– “how
do I feel about it
afterward?” This question asks the emotional system
to give
a “bottom-line” read-out on a specific topic or experience
after it’s over, which the emotional system is biologically very
well
equipped to do, and the answers are remarkably reliable.
Our emotional systems automatically adjust for our individual
values
systems, priorities, and sensitivities, so the read-out is uniquely
relevant to ourselves, regardless of our personal
characteristics. In this approach, “success”
is defined
as “feeling good about it afterward” and
“failure”
as
“feeling bad about it afterward.”
decision-making
– “what
are my feelings
telling me to do?” This question explicitly asks the
emotional system for guidance, which is (I believe) one of its
original biological functions. The answer will almost always come
in the
form of a “mix” of feelings, so we’re looking for the
“majority” or “stronger” side of the mix to use
for guidance. (Note that this approach does not mean simply
“doing whatever I feel like doing at the moment”, which is not
recommended, but rather just consciously thinking about emotional
data in addition
to other considerations, such as the practical, moral,
legal, or financial factors.)
anticipating
– “how
do I expect to feel?” This
question organizes us to prepare for the various possibilities of any
particular future situation. Again, the emotional system is
superbly designed to assess multiple factors simultaneously, including
uncertainties, and will give us a “best-guess” read-out
before we venture into new situations. (Usually one result will
be to remind ourselves how many variables are actually impossible to
predict, meaning that there are many possible outcomes -- often a
useful caution!)
Finally, thinking about emotional
aspects of life can be a fascinating
hobby, and in fact will be found to be also applicable to whatever mix
of other interests or concerns we may have. This hobby is
absolutely free, requires no supplies or materials, can be done
anywhere at any time, never runs out of material, and frequently leads
to the unintentional acquisition of wisdom.
back to top
Rule 4: ACKNOWLEDGE
(emotions)
Acknowledging
means making it
real.
According to my dictionary,
“to
acknowledge” means
“to admit
the existence, reality, or truth of; to recognize as
being valid or having force or power; to express recognition
of.” That covers it pretty well.
Acknowledgment is the
opposite of
denial. For this reason
acknowledgment is very powerful, though that might not be obvious to
many readers at
first. In any case, it is the fourth rule because it fixes the
reality of the emotional experience into our awareness, in a
formal
way, that makes it part of our operating consciousness. It is
very helpful to do this because it progressively incorporates emotional
realities into our daily lives. When acknowledged, the emotional
reaction will have a substantially greater chance of remaining in our
consciousness, getting thought about, and having its data used
productively. Also,
acknowledgement enhances our credibility with others and is very
powerfully positive in enhancing relationships of all kinds.
Rule 4 is the first time
we’re going to talk
about actually doing
something that somebody else could detect.
So far everything we’ve discussed involves only internal
activities
– questions of feeling, thinking, understanding, awareness.
Now we’re going to consider “going
public” with this stuff (or at least to begin to think about
maybe doing it a little... )
Remember that emotions are facts. If
a person is feeling
some
emotion, that is just as much a fact
as whether or not it is raining or
whether it is day or night. So an acknowledgment of an emotional
state is just as legitimate, logically, as an acknowledgment of any
other fact.
Keeping
this fact
in mind helps a lot to make doing
emotional acknowledgments seem normal, natural, and perfectly
legitimate.
Again for this Rule we need to
differentiate between cases of self
and
other, but
this time there are
really five categories. The first
two are still entirely internal, and therefore private, which makes
them easier for most people. But each category needs to be
considered
separately.
A. acknowledging our own emotions to
ourselves
This and the next one are the easiest
forms of
acknowledgment, because they are absolutely private, so
nobody else has any way to know about it.
By the time we’ve noticed
and labeled an
emotional reaction, we’ve pretty well acknowledged that we have
it, but it’s still valuable to be formally conscious of this
emotional fact. This means a conscious act of
internal
recognition. We have already learned to recognize internal
states
such as fullness or hunger, being thirsty or not, being hot or cold,
needing to pee or poop, or being alert or tired. We can equally
readily learn to recognize internal emotional states. But for
many people, in my experience, learning this awareness does constitute
a major
innovation in awareness (which is simply evidence of the ignorance
about emotionality so prevalent in our current culture.)
The philosopher Descartes
famously wrote, “I
think, therefore I am,” using it as a fundamental philosophical
proof of his
own existence. We could start with an equivalent statement,
“I feel, therefore I am.” This statement represents a
general acknowledgment of emotionality. Other versions would be
simply, “I am frequently emotional,” or “I am an
emotional
being.” When a particular situation occurs, we can say to
ourselves, “this is an emotional reaction” as a
general universal formula for acknowledgment.
Specific examples are such as,
“I really feel
bored by this TV show,” or “I’m enjoying this
conversation.”
B.
acknowledging others’ emotions to ourselves
This second form of
acknowledgment is also essentially private, but it
does involve some other person that we’re observing and reacting
to, so it’s a little more complicated.
Whenever we’re observing
emotional indicators in someone else,
there’s always the question of how accurate our
perceptions
are. Sometimes, of course, the answer may seem obvious, as when
we decide that a person with a beaming smile is “happy,” or
someone’s who’s red in the face and yelling is
“angry.” But in many cases we’ll get a less
obvious signal, from a slight change of expression or a subtle change
in tone of voice, for example, and then we’re left with a degree
of uncertainty, as to whether the emotional reaction we may have
observed is real or not. So in this category of acknowledgment,
we do need to keep this “accuracy question”
in mind also.
Again, the noticing and labeling
operations by themselves will pretty
naturally lead to an internal acknowledgment experience, but it’s
still
useful to do the formal thinking.
C.
acknowledging others’ emotions to them
This is the first point at which
we’re talking
about doing something that somebody else will know about – in
other words, something that’s not entirely private. Because
of that, this form of acknowledgment is actually a social or
inter-personal action, which raises a bunch of additional issues
(remember our discussion of complexity!)
First let’s understand
clearly what
we’re talking about. The textbook form of this type of
acknowledgment is simple, being just a statement to someone like
“You seem to
be (happy, sad, excited, angry, relieved, embarrassed,
etc.) about (whatever).”
There is also a wide range of
less direct or obvious
acknowledgments, such as the “sympathetic look”, various
facial expressions, non-specific verbalizations like “wow”
or “really”, and non-verbal sounds (we can do a lot with
grunts! And therapists are famous for the generalized "I
understand" response of “uh-huh”, as in
“I’ve decided to murder my
mother-in-law”, “uh-huh.”) There are also
actions like the shrug, the slap on the back, the high-five, the hug,
or the pat on the shoulder. Empathizing and sympathizing are
acknowledgments. So understand that external acknowledgments of
others' feelings can take many different
forms and vary in specificity; we actually hardly ever use the full
formal statement in regular life (though many therapists use it fairly
frequently.)
Regardless of what style of
acknowledgment we use,
we need to consider the other
person’s possible reactions,
because we are now in the arena of inter-personal events.
It’s helpful to think in
terms of 3 general categories of reactions by others:
1. Welcoming /
appreciative.
These are the friendly or
positive responses that generally let us know
that our acknowledgment was experienced in a way that is enjoyable to
the other. Good relationships are substantially built on these
experiences.
2. Neutral / ignoring.
People in general are often
uncomfortable, or at least not used to,
having others notice and react to their emotions, which is what
we’re talking about doing here. Even some people who
display a lot of
emotion themselves may in fact act as if they don’t expect
anybody to
notice or react to these displays -- that is, they expect people to
react with the "ignoring" response, and are surprised when they don't
get it. So some people may act as if they
literally didn’t hear our acknowledgement. Changing the
subject is also a
common
avoidance. So be prepared to be ignored!
3. Disapproving /
antagonistic.
Sometimes emotional
acknowledgments can
receive a
definitely
hostile or attacking response. We need to understand that
this
can happen.
The reasons
for this phenomenon are too complex to go into here. We just
need to know it's a
possibility
and be prepared to handle it if it happens. This kind of reaction
to an acknowledgment is usually unpleasant to experience, and
therefore I recommend that it be treated like any other unpleasant
experience – not to be repeated if possible without a strong
reason.
Take note of the reactions of
particular individuals. They will
tend to fall into
patterns – welcoming, ignoring, or hostile --
which are generally quite reliable and stable, and you will want to
take note of these patterns and enter this data into your
future decision-making processes.
Since we will get various
responses to our
acknowledgments to others, we need to consider when to do it.
This question involves a decision, not a feeling, but it will have a
lot of different feelings attached to it, which are the emotional
data. Use this data in forming your decisions. We will
arrive at different answers at different times, with different people,
in different situations. We are absolutely not required to
acknowledge any feeling at any time, if we don’t choose to.
Decisions about when to
acknowledge are greatly
influenced by the nature of the relationship with the other, which can
vary from complete stranger to dearest loved one. People usually
understand intuitively that acknowledging usually
invites further interaction,
so we need to consider whether we want to do that or not. This
requires development of a capability generally called
“judgment”, which is actually a very complex function that
develops over time and with experience, and relies greatly
on emotional data.
Finally, just to make things even
more complex, we
generally have reactions to others’ reactions! That
is,
when we get a welcoming response we tend to feel good about it, and if
we get a hostile response we tend to feel some form of bad
feeling. (When we get a neutral or avoidant-type response we may
have
virtually any reaction, including none at all -- our own
neutral!) So we can note
our own reactions too, and add that data to our operations and
decision-making.
And remember to keep in
mind that we always have an
“accuracy
variable” affecting our confidence in our perceptions of
others’ emotional states.
One final note here: I strongly recommend that
parents do
this form of acknowledgment with their children -- that is,
making
statements to children about how they appear to be feeling at
different times -- because it will train
the children in both emotional self-awareness and in being used to
having their emotional reactions noticed and reacted to by others, both
of which are very good for the child’s emotional and
social development.
D. acknowledging
others’ emotions to a third person
This form is the same as the last
one, except that we’re making
the statement or other acknowledgment to some third person, rather
than the person we observe having the reaction:
“(Jack/Jill) seems to be (happy,
sad, excited, angry, relieved, embarrassed, etc.) about
(whatever).”
People often find this type of
acknowledgment
easier to make because the party being discussed is usually not
present, thereby avoiding most of the inter-personal issues identified
in the last section. Obviously, this category occurs frequently
during that activity called “gossiping.” There are
still questions of what kind of reaction we expect, what kind
we
actually get, and the significance within our relationships to the
person we're talking to and the person we're talking about.
Again, remember that we always
have an
“accuracy variable” affecting our confidence in our
perceptions of others’ emotional states.
E.
acknowledging our own emotions to others
A lot of people find this
category of
acknowledgment the most difficult, for a number of serious
reasons. Therefore the first guidance for this category is to go
slowly and test out this concept gradually and carefully.
We can get any of the types of
responses described
above. It is perfectly possible -- even standard in some
environments -- to get attacked or be made fun of
for "showing feelings", so be warned.
The formal versions are analogous
to the form for acknowledging other’s feelings:
“I feel
(happy, sad, excited, angry, relieved,
embarrassed, etc.)”
or
“I feel
(happy, sad, excited, angry, relieved, embarrassed,
etc.) about (whatever).”
Again, there are many less formal
and even
non-verbal means for expressing feelings, similar to those discussed
above, and these are much more commonly used in everyday life than the
formal statement of acknowledgement.
This type of acknowledgment
requires deciding to let some other person
know what we feel about something. Many (maybe even most) people
have been conditioned to hide their emotional reactions to the greatest
possible extent. In part this conditioning derives from the
(incorrect) belief that emotions are a sign of weakness, as discussed
in Step 1. This style has been exemplified by such models as John
Wayne, Clint Eastwood, or Rambo, and people of this type might well
make fun of or disapprove of any acknowledged emotion other than
anger. (It is
useful to understand that this conditioning is basically deeply
embedded in
our culture and is transmitted by the modes of operation of our
families in raising their children; it is essentially never
acknowledged openly and therefore operates largely unconsciously, that
is, without the person being clearly aware of what is influencing his
or her reactions.) However, we have to be able deal with these
kinds of attitudes if we encounter them, whatever the reasons for are.
Other people will be more
receptive, and when we
receive a welcoming response it generally makes us feel good and can
operate to counteract some bad feeling we might have been having. (This
is one of the basic ingredients in the phenomenon known as
"comforting.") Again, such
experiences
are an important part of positive, enjoyable relationships.
A very useful acknowledgment
exercise is to learn
the mild
emotional words (the
ones near the top of each column on the
Emotional Map) and see how many times we can work them into normal
conversation, to describe either our own feelings or the perceived
feelings of others. Examples might be, “I’m disappointed
that (my sports
team) lost that game,” or “you
seemed
pleased that
your boss
asked you to do that special
project.” Using only the mild emotion words usually
prevents any extreme reactions to what we are saying, making this a
fairly safe exercise. Furthermore, we can use modifiers with the
emotion words to make the statement either weaker or stronger, as in
“I’m a little
worried about that funny noise my car is
making,” or “I’m very
interested in that job
possibility.”
back to top
STEP 3
Patience
and
Persistence Over Time
Okay, that’s all the hard
learning
stuff!
If you learn and absorb the
information and understandings in the material in the first two Steps, that's all you need to
learn!
(Of course, you can always learn more, and indeed you will,
through your own experience if nothing else. One thing emotional
awareness does very reliably is stimulate personal growth...)
Now we need to just relax
and let these processes operate
as time goes forward. Remember that I said from the beginning
that this process works,
but
it
works slowly.
(That’s its major drawback as a treatment
approach.) I’ve had a lot of people express a lot of
impatience (an emotional reaction!) with this slowness. This
impatience is completely
understandable, but it doesn’t change the facts. Growth
does take time, and since
almost all of us have been raised and have experienced life in a
state of profound ignorance about emotions, it takes considerable
time and living to actually internalize these emotional understandings
and rules. Though people in treatment -- people who feel bad
-- are understandably in
a hurry to feel better, I actually believe that, since it’s a
growth process, it takes its own sweet time. As I frequently tell
clients, a tree doesn’t grow any faster if we yell at
it. So my advice is to relax, not put pressure on ourselves, and
see what develops over time. Personally I’ve been working
on this stuff for over 40 years, and I’m still learning it better
every day. So don’t expect your life to change
instantly. But do expect change over time.
That’s the main message of this section, on
“patience
and persistence over
time.”
But there are some very nice
features to this method too. One of the ones I like
best is we don’t actually have to do very much,
other than just
pay some attention to what’s going on inside us and around us,
and think a little. Since it’s fundamentally a growth
process, it’s almost no work at
all. Once we really
understand these facts about our emotional selves, that knowledge
functions as a steady influence,
like gravity. Every moment of our lives progressively
incorporates more fully these dimensions of reality, that were ignored
previously, and this gradual incorporation produces incremental –
but very real – changes in our thinking, our decisions, our
responses,
and our whole way of experiencing life. An analogy I use
frequently is that turning someone's life around is like turning around
a
super-tanker out on the ocean -- it only turns gradually, but when it
does get on a good course it's just as hard to knock it off that course
as
it was to turn it around in the first place.
If you do decide to engage in
this self-growth process, keep clearly in mind
that the goal is never to be perfect (you won't be -- I'm
certainly not), but
to be "good enough"
-- good enough to be happy and successful. Since we will never be
perfect, we will have failures -- experiences in which we feel we do
not perform well or get a satisfactory outcome. Our ever-reliable
emotional systems will of course give us marvelously accurate read-outs
on how we did, each time. When we do well it feels really good,
sometimes in profound ways. But many times we won't do well, or
do as well as we wished, and we will certainly have emotional reactions
to our failures -- imagine that!. We may well experience regret,
sorrow, discouragement, frustration, even hopelessness.
These are understandable unhappy reactions, but
they are also in fact our read-outs in those situations, to be
reflected upon and understood for future improvement.
Keep in mind that considering the
ignorance we were all raised in, just to get it right some of the time
is a major accomplishment! And we definitely do get better over
time.
Another advantage is that this
knowledge and evolution can apply to any
aspect of our lives at any time: relationships, family, parenting,
work, socializing, recreation, even time alone. It’s also
absolutely free, involves only voluntary change, is useful at any age,
and has all the other advantages listed back in the introduction.
It can greatly enhance relationships and family life, as well as
provide useful subjects for conversation. Also, the gains are
cumulative – each improvement adds to and enhances previous
improvements. So there’s actually a lot going for it!
why it works
The four rules of this method are
in fact the core
behavioral elements of what I call “emotional processing”,
which is a method for dealing with emotional experience in a productive
and progressively improving
manner. For our purposes here, it is sufficient to understand
that one result of emotional processing is “developmental
stimulation”, which causes people to grow. We
don't have to know why we're growing in order to grow. So even if
we
don’t know why following
these rules leads to positive changes,
it does. Following the four rules will make sure that emotional
dimensions of life are more and more fully integrated into everything
we do, think, and experience. By following these rules we
(gradually!)
make emotions “normal.” Then the
emotions themselves progressively exert their natural influences (as
they’re supposed to!) in all areas of our lives. As a
result, there evolves a general tendency to
value emotional elements of
life more highly and to make decisions that are
better aligned with our
actual emotional priorities, which leads to feeling better, making
better life decisions, and getting better results in interactions with
others.
These are basic ingredients of happiness, as we have defined it.
Furthermore, these tendencies strengthen over time. As
these tendencies solidify and generalize, we progressively
get happier. Sooner or later – and it may well take years
–
we get to the point where we can say we satisfy the 75% - 20% - 5%
criteria that we set up in the Introduction (or whatever you set for
your personal goals.) That’s the theory. My
experience, both professional
and personal, demonstrates -- at least to my own satisfaction -- that
it works.
This knowledge is a permanent
acquisition.
Once we’ve learned it, we don’t have to learn it again, or
continue to study anything. (Of course, we can if we want
to!) But I really mean that if you’ve read and understood
the material up to this point, you’ve essentially done all you
really have to do. No more learning effort is required,
though if we follow these rules learning will occur
because conscious
systematic processing of emotional experience is inherently stimulating
and will produce on-going growth without
actually working at it.
forgetting and remembering
It is quite likely that many
people reading this
material will have a period of initial enthusiasm for these ideas,
followed by a loss of interest, and then even completely forgetting
about it, (usually when there aren’t immediate results.)
Oddly enough, this is not a problem! In fact, I expect it, and I
can even guarantee it for a lot of people. Forgetting certainly
will
happen, for a lot of
you. Don’t worry about it!
It’s actually not important
that you remember what you’ve
read, or that you remain enthusiastic about it! Once this
information is absorbed into our minds, it remains there,
even if it’s not thought about for a long time, often in a sort
of dormant form, like a seed that may wait a very long time to sprout.
Sooner or later, you
will be reminded –
usually by some strong
emotional event, either positive or negative. This
forgetting and remembering process about emotions goes on a great
deal. It literally doesn’t
matter if you forget about it
all for six months, or a year, or even five years (though I’d be
quite surprised if it actually took someone that long.)
Emotions do
exist, they
do occur
constantly in our
lives, sometimes at very high intensity, we
can observe
emotions in other
people, and emotions do
control whether
or not we are happy! Once we’re truly informed of these
facts, it becomes quite difficult to continue to ignore emotions
forever. Even leaving out any emotional “problems”,
there
are powerful emotional issues involved in every phase of life: infancy,
play,
school, dating, work, forming relationships, marriage, parenting,
retirement, aging, mortality. As the old joke puts it,
“it’s the only game in town.” So don’t
worry if you get discouraged or lose interest –
it’ll be
back!
It’s also not really
important how hard we work at this stuff.
However much or little we do, it’s more than we were doing
before, so
we’re moving in the right direction. Also understand that
the general variability rule of all developmental processes
applies:
that is, “2 steps forward, 1 step back.” So progress
is very likely to be intermittent or uneven – again, don’t
worry about it! If we’re moving in the right general
direction, eventually we’ll get there. It’s good
enough! As a bare minimum, we’ll move forward if we just
remind ourselves of the absolute
basics:
Emotions do exist.
Happiness is an
emotional state.
Happiness is what
most people want most.
and the 4 rules:
1.
Notice
2. Label
3. Think
4. Acknowledge
back to top
To have read this material this
far, you must be at least somewhat
persuaded that emotions might be at least somewhat important and might
be at least somewhat understandable. After a certain point (of
thinking seriously about emotionality) it becomes hard to choose
consciously to continue to ignore them. If you’ve
read through this material to this point, you may well already be past
a “point of no return,” meaning it may not be easy for you
to return to a state of “not-thinking-at-all” about the
general question of emotionality as it operates in our lives. The
only real alternative is an attitude of denial or ignoring, which is
not really intellectually defensible over the long run.
the difference between this website and
therapy
Learning this information here
without the personal
relationship and on-going personal human supervision that occurs in the
therapy
process makes it quite different from actual therapy.
That’s one of the main reasons that I recommend finding a
therapist (FACLT) so frequently in this discussion – you’ll
probably be safer and make quicker progress if you do, though you will
have to pay for it. The
countervailing factor is that any therapist can work with only a
limited number of people – maybe 50 or so – at any given
time, while – through the magic of the internet -- this website
can be available to the whole world simultaneously. So there is a
trade-off here. But don’t think that reading this is a
substitute or equivalent to therapy.
Although I have a lot of
experience with presenting
this material to people in treatment, I have little experience yet with
what happens if someone absorbs this information by reading it (as
here) without the stimulation and guidance of treatment. So far
(as of June, 2012), usage of this site has been
minimal. Obviously, I believe that this information can
exert influence on its own, without the personal connection of therapy,
and that whatever overall effects there are will be benign, rather than
harmful, or I wouldn’t be writing this. We’ll judge
by results, over time.
back to top
FINDING A
COMPETENT
LOCAL
THERAPIST
As I said back in the "Warning"
section, it is perfectly possible that -- as a result of reading
these recommendations to pay attention to emotions -- some individuals
may discover or realize that they themselves feel bad
all or most of the time. Again, the most common chronic
bad
feelings are depression, anxiety (worrying), panic, loneliness, and
boredom or lack of meaning in life (what the sociologists used to call
"ennui.") Explosive temper can be a chronic episodic problem.
If you decide you do have chronic bad feelings, my strong
advice is to find a competent local therapist to work with.
The
profession of "psychotherapy" has existed for about a hundred years to
address such problems (dating from the publication of Freud's
"Interpretation of Dreams" in 1900, though precursors certainly existed
before that time and there has been tremendous development since then.)
Currently (2012) there are therapists available in all 50 states,
certainly in any town or urban area. Extremely rural areas
may have some scarcity.
Quite a few therapists currently refer to themselves as
"counselors" and to therapy as "counseling", so if you run into these
terms, they mean essentially the same thing.
Therapists come in a number of
different professional categories:
psychiatrists
psychologists
social workers
counselors
marriage and family therapists or counselors
pastoral counselors
certified addiction counselors
Psychiatrists
are the only therapists who are also medical doctors, and therefore the
only ones who can prescribe medications. They have the most
schooling (through medical school and psychiatric residency.) and also
tend to be the most expensive. All the others are not doctors and
can not
prescribe
medications. Educational requirements vary from two
years of college (for some types of counselors) to four
years of college and two to four years of post-graduate work (for a
Ph.D.
psychologist or social worker.) Pastoral counselors combine
religious or spiritual dimensions with therapy. Addiction
counselors are primarily oriented toward substance-abuse problems, but
may address other issues too.
Unfortunately, the
"credential"
(the kind of degree or license) that a particular therapist has is no
real guarantee of competence or skill. I have known good and
not-so-good therapists of all types. So be warned.
embarrassment about seeking
treatment
In spite of the fact
that therapy (it's formal name is "psychotherapy") has now been
around for over a hundred years, many people still
feel a degree of embarrassment
(an emotional reaction!) about letting
other people know about an interest in trying it out. This
feeling is understandable though regrettable, since it can operate to
prevent
some people from getting help they might otherwise benefit from.
Like all bad feelings, if we label
this embarrassment feeling clearly, think about it
some, and acknowledge
it to ourselves, we can
often overcome it or get past it.
ways to find a therapist
As with any other
type of
referral, such as for a plumber or a car mechanic, the best referrals
for a therapist are "personal referrals" from
somebody we know who has already worked with a particular therapist and
recommends her or him.
If we can't get a
personal
referral, there are many other ways to find a therapist. Any
online search would likely produce the usual huge number of responses.
Most
insurance plans now have referral lists for therapists. Any type of
doctor may know
of therapists in the area; many attorneys do also. My
local Yellow Pages has sections on "Counselors," "Drug Abuse and
Addiction Services," "Marriage and Family Therapists," "Marriage
Therapists," "Mental Health Services,"
"Psychologists," "Psychotherapists," and "Social Workers."
"Psychology Today" Magazine has started a national
referral service.
There are Community Mental Health Centers in many counties
in the U.S.; there are also many private, non-profit local agencies
(such as the Family Services Agency I used to work at) in many areas of
the country.
Therapists are not all the same -- in fact,
they vary widely! The
best approach would be to interview or meet at least three
therapists at least one time each before deciding whom to work with.
Understandably, many people find it very hard to do this -- they
find it hard enough to get themselves to go see the first one! So
people really have a strong tendency to just work with whomever they
first see. While it's completely understandable, this tendency
can frequently lead to less than optimal results.
Some
additional points of
guidance:
1. look for at least 5 years full-time experience in
your therapist, or the equivalent in
part-time experience, or
regular (twice-monthly minimum) supervision by a more
experienced
supervisor.
2. ask
yourself frequently, "do I feel understood accurately by this
therapist?" If the answer isn't
consistently "yes", change therapists.
3. if you don't feel that you're making
some progress within three
to six months, change therapists.
questions to ask a new therapist
"What is your credential and license?"
"How many years of experience do you have?"
"How many people like me (or with my problem) have
you
worked with?"
"Were you successful in helping them?"
"How do you measure success?"
Pay attention to the
answers to these questions. The answers
should make sense.
medications
It is very
likely -- in today's "mental health" or "behavioral health"
environment -- that if you
discuss an emotional difficulty with a therapist you will get a
recommendation that you at least consider taking psychiatric
medication. While
I am not a psychiatrist (my degree and license are in social work),
I have
worked many times in collaboration with psychiatrists and treated many
people who were
taking these types of medications, sometimes for many years.
What I say in this section
is what I tell clients when this subject comes up:
Regarding medications, there is good news and bad news:
the
good news
Medications can produce
nearly miraculous
results -- stopping
bad
feelings that have in many cases gone on for years and made people
really miserable. I have known quite a few successful cases like this,
particularly involving severe depression, panic, and temper
problems.
Furthermore, medications can do this quickly -- in a
few days to a few
weeks, in the best cases. These results are much faster than
psychotherapy,
at least the way I practice it (there are some therapy approaches that
claim to work faster, but even these usually take longer than
medication does
if it works ideally.)
the
bad news
Sometimes the first medications
tried aren't effective, or produce unacceptable "side effects."
Sometimes no
medication
seems to work for a particular person. Reactions
to medications are highly individual -- any medication may work
well,
poorly, or not at all for any particular person. The degree and
severity of side effects is highly variable also. A good
psychiatrist will be prepared to discuss all this and to try one
medication after another to find one that works well for a particular
person, but unfortunately this process can sometimes be prolonged,
unpleasant,
frustrating, and expensive.
Make
sure you see an actual psychiatrist for psychiatric medications!
Believe it or not, many other types of doctors are often
perfectly
willing to prescribe these psychiatric medications without having the
specialized training and experience that psychiatrists get. I
have
known many cases of medications like Prozac or Xanax (to name two
common ones) being prescribed by family doctors, internists,
gynecologists, and in one case by a dentist who lived next door!
I strongly
advise
anyone considering trying psychiatric medications to be sure to work
with a psychiatrist, rather than any other type of doctor. Any
doctor will know a psychiatrist to refer to.
insurance
People who have medical
insurance usually have some "mental health" or "behavioral health"
coverage in their plan
that can be applied to therapy. The nature and extent of these
benefits varies enormously from one plan to another, so all I can say
is look at your plan's explanation book or ask your company's "human
resource" department or your plan's "customer service" people.
Larger companies also frequently have "Employee Assistance Plans"
("EAP's") that offer a few initial services.
a final note: No treatment program should disagree
with what I've written
here, though certainly many other therapists will use different
approaches, and many professionals nowadays will suggest medication as
the
first approach. As far as I know, what has been presented
here does
not conflict
with
any established treatment system, though a strictly behavioral approach
might
consider the emotions irrelevant. If any clinician has some
objection to what I've written here, I would be happy to respond to it.
back to top
