At the beginning of a recent talk, I asked a member of the audience where she lived. She responded by giving me an address and I asked her if she were sure that she lived there. She looked at me quizzically and said that she was sure, that she had lived there for over ten years. I responded by saying, “I don’t think that is where you live, I think that is where you keep your ‘stuff.’ I think you live in there, in that envelope of skin that you carry around with you.” As I made the last statement, I pointed to her. Then, pointing to myself, I added, “I live in here, I just keep my ‘stuff’ in the box we call our house.”
If you take a moment to reflect, you will find that you are living in the envelope of skin you walk around in. No matter where you are when you read this sentence, you will realize that the center of the universe, as far as you are concerned, is internal and “portable.” Although each of us is the center of our own universe, we seem to forget that we are always “at home.” The place that we typically call home is simply where we spend some of our time eating, sleeping, showering, cooking, etc. It is the place where we store our “stuff,” it is not where we “live.”
As you think about what you have just read, one of the possible conclusions you might reach is that if you are already “at home” no matter where you are located, then you might decide to feel comfortable wherever you are. You could feel at ease within simply because you are “at home.” What a beautiful “gift” to give yourself, simply by operating in the “at home” illusion rather than the illusion of not being “at home.”
I once saw a wall poster showing a kitten playing in a field of buttercups, and the caption was, “When you are at peace within, then any place you are is home.” I know this sounds somewhat strange, but it beats waiting until everything “out there” is the way we want it before we decide to feel at ease.
As you review your life, you may discover that things “out there” are seldom exactly the way you would prefer. Further, even if they are, we are likely to do apprehension, waiting for the next disaster or problem to occur. One of my favorite cartoons depicts two middle-aged women talking to each other with one of the women saying, “I’m really worried, I haven’t felt this good before.”
Back to the notion that you are the center of your universe and that you are already at home, take a look inside that envelope of skin and see if there is anybody else in there. Most likely, you will realize that you are in there alone. I know that there are many facets or aspects of you in there; however, they all add up to you. The diamond has many facets, but there is only one gem
The late Virginia Satir has written a book, Your Many Faces. In which she advances the idea that we have an internal theater where the players are different parts of our personality. At one point in the book, she has a drawing of a mobile where all the parts are represented by various masks such as joy, fear, love, laughter, anger, confusion, surprise, etc. This is an excellent visual image of what we have available inside of each of us. (The joke is that with all this internal variability, we are supposed to be consistent.)
If you are in that envelope of skin by yourself and I am in this envelope of skin by myself, then that is your domain and this is my domain. Further, I have not been able to get out of here and I suspect that you have not been able to get out of there. From this assumption, we might conclude that each of us is quite safe from other people psychologically, another reason to feel comfortable and ”at home.” In other words, I can’t get out of here and affect you psychologically nor can you get out of there and affect me psychologically. You are “doing you” and I am “doing me.” This viewpoint could even result in the disappearance of the concept of vulnerability, an issue where many people do considerable worry (afraid of “getting hurt”). I would like to make a distinction about the preceding paragraph. I look at three different conceptual areas when I talk about our domains: the physical, economic, and psychological. I agree that we can affect each other physically and financially. My wife could hit me over the head with a baseball bat, which would affect me physically in a negative way. Or, she could give me a back rub, which would affect me positively.
In the financial area, she could impact my economic situation negatively if she were to buy a mink coat. On the other hand, if she bought a winning lottery ticket, she could have a very positive effect on my finances. However, nobody can affect me or you psychologically: each of us makes up (and experiences) our own internal reality, although we may not be aware of this. I have discussed this in the booklet on “Self-Talk.”
When clients consult with me about their goal in counseling—feeling better, they are frequently interested in “being helped.” I usually point out that I cannot help them, which is sometimes a surprise, although they usually quickly realize that they are there to help themselves. The reason I say I cannot help anybody is because it clearly leaves the issue of response ability in the hands of the client. Another benefit of this position is that I cannot “hurt” the client by what I say either.
In my view, help and hurt come as a pair. If I am unable to help or hurt my client psychologically, that leaves me free to relax and breathe naturally which is good for me. Incidentally, I am also a much better role model for the client than if I were uptight. Further, this position leaves me free to enjoy my time with the client. An additional benefit is that the client usually interprets my relaxed attitude as acceptance.
What I am suggesting is that you are totally in charge of you (psychologically) and I am totally in charge of me (psychologically). You get to do you any way you want and I get to do me any way I want. In fact, we have been free in this regard in the past, too. If you hear yourself reacting internally and saying, “I’m not doing what I want to do,” it seems to me that you did exactly what you wanted to when you disagreed with my statement.
One of our traditional patterns is to do what we want to do while saying that we don’t want to do it. In the area of emotions, we feel the way we want to, while complaining that it is not the way we want to feel. We charge of ourselves and that we are doing exactly what we want to psychologically.
This has been the case right along. You were doing you yesterday, are doing you now, and will be doing you tomorrow. This is true whether you like it or not. Due to circumstances beyond your control, you have been left in charge of you.
Because you are free to do you any way you want, you can choose to disagree with me, contending that you are not in charge of yourself. That is a peculiar way to use your freedom, but nobody can stop you from taking such a position, which seems to be the norm in this culture. Many of us act as if we are not in charge of some aspects of our lives, especially our feelings.
Generally speaking, we act as if circumstances or other people are responsible for our feelings. Now that I look at the situation somewhat differently, I am amazed that a person who is by himself, can feel anger, and attribute that feeling to someone else who is not present. They act as if they were a victim. How can “someone else” control us from afar? Perhaps there is some remote control involved.
I do not believe in remote control, which leaves me in the position of being responsible for my own feelings. Although we have been programmed to not be responsible for our feelings (which was true in our childhood), there is a great advantage to being responsible. This advantage results from being in charge, being able to make a choice, and responding differently if we do not like how we feel.
With my clients, I use an example which l call the “hot stove.” I begin by saying that we function quite well and responsibly at the physical level. I will point to a red pillow on my right and ask the client to imagine that the pillow represents a hot stove. When I accidentally touch the pillow, I immediately respond by pulling my hand off, no questions asked.
In contrast, I place my hand on another pillow (white) on my left side, which I indicate represents something pleasurable like stroking a kitten or feeling satin. I am in no hurry to remove my hand because it feels good. Thus, at the physical level we function quite well, interrupting pain and extending our time in pleasure.
Following this physical example, I then focus on the psychological/emotional level. I begin by pointing out that the Puritans were very influential in the early history of our country and that we have many “left over” traditions as a result. Then I ask if the Puritans were a fun loving bunch. This usually brings a smile since their position could be summarized as, “Stomp out joy.” I add that the Puritans were very interested in feeling good, however, they had to wait until the hereafter, an automatic postponement of feeling good now. I go on to suggest that we are still living within the Puritanical framework, a context that promises feeling good in the distant future (heaven), but not now.
As a result, when we feel good psychologically (I place my hand on the left hand white pillow), we will immediately withdraw our hand saying something like, “I know this can’t last,” “Something bad is going to happen now,” “I know I’ll have to pay for this,” or “Am I just kidding myself?” We act as if we are very mistrustful of feeling good psychologically and I illustrate this by withdrawing my hand very quickly.
In contrast, when we experience a negative feeling (I put my hand on the red pillow on my right, the “psychologically hot stove”), we extend our time by asking questions or by attempting to understand. My examples are: “Why am I feeling so bad?” “Is it going to last as long as it did last time?” “I wonder if there is anything I can do about it?”
By focusing on these questions, we simply extend our time on the “stove.” It’s as if we have our hand on a stove physically, experience great pain, but take the position that we can not take our hand off until we understand why the stove is on in the first place. We also want to know who turned it on, who is going to turn it off, how long has it been on, whether it is a G E or a Tappan, a four burner or a two burner, manufactured in Pennsylvania or Ohio, and still under warranty?
We certainly would not delay taking our hand off the stove physically, so why should we delay psychologically? I think our self-management patterns are simply a matter of tradition and early learning. Now that we are adults and left in charge of ourselves, we can make the choice to “get off the stove” early. We always “get off’ our upsets eventually, why not sooner rather than later? There is no need to understand the origin unless you think it is important. Removing our “psychological hand” from the “psychologically hot stove” early in the process would make a nice “gift” to ourselves. Incidentally, who could stop us from changing our self-management practices?
I used the word pattern in the previous paragraph and I think this is a useful concept to explore. I propose that although we are born with a brain but no mind, we develop patterns of thinking, behaving, and feeling during the first few years as we develop our minds that we continue throughout the rest of our lives. I might add that I use the word pattern where many people would use habit because patterns do not have strength and morality like habits. It is simply a more neutral term and it seems that people can change a pattern easily compared to the usual struggle involved in changing a habit, especially a “strong, bad” habit.
To give you some idea of how patterned our behavior is, let me share some “house keeping” patterns that we all have. I would like to invite you to fold your hands. You will notice that one thumb ends up on top. If you assume that you had perfected this pattern by the age of five, then take your current age(say 36), subtract five years and you have the number of years(31) with your typical hand folding pattern.
Now fold your hands the opposite way, interlacing your fingers the other way. What do you experience? Most people use words like awkward, weird, different, unfamiliar, etc. Why does this way feel so unfamiliar? Because you haven’t done it in 31 years, ever since the initial trial and error of the early childhood days. Whether this is due to cerebral dominance or not is unimportant. What is important is that most people have a pattern that they are unaware that they had.
I would like to suggest that we have two regions in our mind, the aware part that is relatively small and the unaware part that is very large. When I asked you to fold your hands, you made the decision to fold them in your awareness. However, you made the pattern selection decision outside of awareness. It is interesting to note that the decision making outside of awareness is very accurate because if we had had a 5 % error rate in the way we fold our hands, you would not have experienced much awkwardness when I asked you to fold your hands the other way.
The way we fold our hands is a trivial matter, however, we can pull some learnings from this example. First, we have patterns that we don’t know that we have. Second, we make decisions outside of awareness. Third, when we change a familiar pattern, we experience awkwardness and perhaps, a little confusion.
Take another example, putting on a pair of slacks. Which leg goes in first? Most people look up and simulate putting their slacks on and then “feel” one leg being lifted off the floor first. Assume it is the left leg. Again, you know that you put your slacks on, but you probably didn’t know that you had a patterned way of doing it. This was a decision that you made outside of awareness. Now, simulate putting the other leg in first. What do you feel? Most people say something about losing their balance or needing to lean against something.
We have a multitude of these house keeping patterns, patterns that we know we are in charge of, but didn’t know that we had. Some more examples could include the way we take off a sweatshirt, button a shirt, thread in a belt, put on our earrings, butter our toast, brush our teeth, step in the shower, towel off, etc. The point is that we operate on “automatic pilot” much of the time. We developed these patterns when we were young and they are all intact today unless we have changed our minds.
If we have all these patterns in the way we manage our selves physically, don’t you think it is very likely that we have quite a few emotional patterns as well’? Patterns that we developed early in life and still do unless we have changed them. I think this is the case. The way we tend to stay on the stove and feel bad psychologically is one example. The pattern of interrupting our good feelings is just another example. We are not stupid or bad, we are simply making decisions outside of awareness. And even though we are making these decisions in an unaware manner, we are still the ones who feel the feelings and are response able to change them if we do not like the way we are feeling.
After discussing patterns and the stove analogy, I then usually focus on how we create the experience of our feelings. I begin by indicating that whenever we talk about something, we usually visualize it and make a series of internal comments about what we are visualizing. It’s as if we have a little TV in our forehead that only we can see. Incidentally, it also comes with a sound track. Thus, we have both video and audio.
For example, if I were to ask you where you went to school, you would very likely picture the high school or college you attended. If I asked you to name your favorite teacher, you would probably recall what he or she looked like and you would also be able to “hear” what his or her voice sounded like. Similarly, you probably could easily “picture and hear” your least favorite teacher as well.
We can also see or create an image of items we have never seen. For example, imagine an animal that has the body of a hippopotamus and the head and neck of a giraffe. Funny looking animal, isn’t it? You created that image rather quickly, didn’t you?
In a similar way, I would like to invite you to use your TV or “simulator” to imagine the following four scenes. First, picture yourself on your favorite stretch of beach. See the packed, wet sand as you walk along barefoot next to the water where you can see the surf coming in. Listen to the sound of the waves as they wash up on the shore. Feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, the coolness of the breeze. Observe the sea gull suspended in the breeze. Hear the sea gull’s cry. Feel the scrunch of the wet sand under your feet. Now look inside and become aware of what you are experiencing.
Most people will report that they are feeling relaxed, calm, serene, contented, comfortable, or carefree. Probably 95 % will report experiencing feelings similar to these. There will be a few who worry about getting a sunburn so I immediately suggest that they are on the beach early in the morning or late in the evening.
Once in a while, there will be an individual who doesn’t like the beach at all and I invite them to do a float trip in a canoe or visit their favorite mountains. The point is that everybody seems to have a “place in their mind” that they can visit in order to feel comfortable. If I haven’t touched on one of yours, go ahead and visit it now.
After a few seconds, I ask my client to “come back.” Next, I ask them to recall a movie, specifically Hitchcock’s original “Psycho.” Most people have seen it or heard about it and will frequently wince or make some other kind of aversive facial expression. I go on to direct their attention to the scene in the motel shower, the famous stabbing scene. I ask them to observe the knife rising and falling, to hear the sound of the woman’s screams, and to see the blood running down the drain.
When asked what they experienced, most people use words like fear, terror, uneasiness, apprehension, fright, or wanting to get away. Once in a while, a person will say that it is too frightening so they did not even watch it. What this means is that they watched it long enough (a split second) to choose to avoid listening to the rest of my description. The point is that this is generally a very negative image.
Following this, I ask them to “come back” and then I mention that the next scene is from an old Candid Camera show. Perhaps you have seen it. The Candid Camera people removed the motor from a car and then had a lady coast into a gas station for gas. This was many years ago when the attendant put in the gas. She asked him to fill it up as well as check the oil, a very standard request.
When he opened the hood, he exclaimed, “Lady, your motor is missing!” She calmly replied, “Yes, my husband said it wasn’t running right this morning.” The attendant responded, “It’s not missing like that, it’s all the way gone out of here.” Most people are smiling or laughing by the time I end my description and when I ask them what they experienced, most will say something like humor, laughter, funny, hilarious, amusing, or silly. In any event, most people create a chuckle or two although once in a while somebody will feel sorry or embarrassed for the attendant.
After I have them “come back,” I ask them to imagine that it is July 20th in St. Louis and that it is 3 o’clock in the afternoon with the temperature approaching 100 degrees. Imagine that the humidity is high, there is no breeze, and that you are walking in an older section of town. As you walk along in this stifling heat, I ask you to imagine that you become aware of the Goodyear blimp drifting lazily overhead. Because you are watching the blimp, you are not very attentive to where you are walking. Suddenly you step on something soft and when you look down, there is a dead rat. The rat has been lying there for about 4 or 5 days in this heat and is badly decomposed. You have stepped on it with sufficient force to squish it out and you can see the maggots glistening as they crawl about and the stench is up in your nostrils.
Most people have already made some groaning noises and some grimaces. When asked about their experience, most people respond with something like disgusting, revolting, nauseating, sickening, yukky, or some version of—“lt makes me feel like throwing up.” It is clearly a negative for most people. After getting their response, I will ask them to “come back.”
Next, I will indicate that they had two negative experiences and two positive experiences. I will put my hand on the white pillow (velour or satin) and indicate that the calmness associated with the beach was a positive emotion. Next I will shift my hand to the “hot stove” while I recall that the fear associated with the stabbing scene was a painful emotion. Then I shift back to the “satin” and indicate that the laughter they experienced about the Candid Camera show was a positive feeling. Lastly, the dead rat scene was another “burner” on the “hot stove.”
From here, I will ask, “Did you notice how real those feelings were?” The majority will quickly agree. I typically will add that on a scale of 1 to 1 0, many will experience less intensity in this ”artificial” situation compared to the actual experience (which I hesitate to call reality). In other words, an actual walk along the beach (which I use as symbolic of all positive feelings) might be experienced at a level of 8 while the simulation might be experienced as only 5 or 6. The actual experience of stepping on a dead rat (symbolic of all negative feelings) might be a 9 or 10 while the simulation might be experienced at a level of 7.
The point I want to emphasize is that we can have real feelings even though we are simply simulating or imagining or thinking or hallucinating or imaging or fantasizing—take your pick, just different names for the same activity. In fact, all we ever have are real feelings. Or do you have a real feeling that you have some feelings that are not real?
The next step is for me to point out that none of what I described is here in the room and yet we can have real feelings. Thus, it would be easy to conclude that real feelings are based on simulations. That may be a startling statement, especially when we are in what we call a real situation.
In other words, does the beach actually cause our relaxation or do we make it up because of our simulation or imagination? If it were the beach that produced the relaxation, then everybody would have the same feeling to the same intensity, would they not? Of course, our tradition is to attribute the feelings to the beach rather than our simulation of the beach. Or in the interpersonal situation, to experience our feelings as being caused by the other person—even if they are not there. I am reminded of a Miss Peach cartoon in which one little girl is saying, “Why do you love Ira?” The other little girl says, “Because….because he’s Ira.” The first little girl then says, “That’s funny, that’s the same reason I hate him.”
Back to feelings and the four vignettes, I next will ask if you had any trouble changing your feelings from one scene to the next. Most people will immediately shake their head, indicating that they shifted feelings from one scene to the next with no problem. Interesting information that we can use if we are aware that we are in charge! If we do not like the way we are feeling, all we have to do is change our mind and think about something else.
If we ran our mind the same way we run our TV set, we would experience much less psychological pain. If we were watching a horror movie and we did not like it, we would simply use the remote and go through the channels until we found something that we enjoyed. Of course, that sounds too easy, which is a good reason to discard the idea, right?
What I am suggesting is that because we live in a Puritanical context, where we believe the slogan “No pain, no gain,” we will run our minds very differently than we run our TVs. Being interested in “gain,” we spend our time in “pain.” Our pattern is to dwell on past disasters or worry about future problems, examples of “staying on the hot stove.” We have a pattern of looking askance at anything that is “too easy.” Our pattern is to “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.” I am not saying that we are stupid, simply that we have patterns or traditions in the way we conduct the business of our mind and feelings, especially in the portion of our mind that is out of awareness.
I might add that we are not “bound” by our actual or “real” experiences. For example, I rarely find anybody who has actually stepped on a decomposing rat and yet I have not had anybody have any difficulty simulating that situation and experiencing the disgust that they create. Amazing!
Back to the way we function, I point out that we feel our simulations, that we not only have video and audio, but that we also have “feelio.” I made that word up. It is a variation of Albert Ellis’ Rational-Emotive orientation. Rational (what we think of)-Emotive (what we feel).
To illustrate this point, I will hold up my hand with three fingers (index, middle, and ring) extended saying, “These three fingers look separate but they never separate. They always travel together and they represent video, audio, and feelio.” While saying this, I move my hand around to illustrate how they move together. I also add, “I have never had one finger (index) in North Dakota and another finger (middle) in Florida while this finger (ring) was is California. They have all three been in North Dakota at the same time, Florida at another time, and California at still another time.”
Similarly, while you were on the beach, you were there totally—visually, auditorily, and emotionally. At that moment, you did not know whether you had a job or not, or where your car was parked. Do you notice that as you read that last sentence you immediately simulated each of the situations that I referred to? And you were no longer on the beach! I think of the mind as being similar to a TV in that we can only watch one channel at a time insofar as our awareness is concerned. We can run through a number of channels very quickly while we are looking for a particular program, but we only see one program at a time.
Just as there are many more channels in the air waves, there are many, perhaps millions of channels to choose from that are in the area of the mind that I refer to as the part we are not aware of. I prefer the word unaware to unconscious.
Another point that I want to include is that when I relate these vignettes to my clients or to an audience, I invite people to create a particular experience or feeling. Please be clear that I am not the one creating the feeling. There is an interpreter in you that listens to what I say and tells you what kind of experience or feeling is appropriate for you. You did not have this interpreter when you were born (you wouldn’t have understood what I was saying), but gradually created one while you were learning language—while not being aware of learning language.
Another way of viewing this could be that we each have an interpretive framework or “map of reality” that we developed as children that we use to orient ourselves and determine the “meaning” of things and events. I have covered this topic more completely in the chapters on “Maps of Reality” and “Self-Talk.”
What I am proposing may sound very unfamiliar (also awkward) to you. I am not as interested in whether the idea is right or wrong, simply whether it is useful or not. Does it have utility? In a way, whatever we describe is what we experience. As we describe, we create our experience.
Think of a coin. Can you move the heads without moving the tails? Obviously, they move together. Similarly, as we think or rationalize (heads), our feelings or emotions (tails) accompany or move in synchrony with our thoughts. How do you think-feel about that? Notice that you are creating both—the words on the paper do not care what you are making up (creating). You can easily see that you are free to create your own reaction, including attributing your reaction to the words written on the page in front of you.
I imagine that some of you will find (create) these ideas as being very useful while others will find (create) these same ideas to be ridiculous and see no application. It’s up to you, as usual! This bunch of words (booklet) is not a “good” or “bad” booklet; you will decide that for yourself on an individual basis, probably outside of awareness.
Next, I am going to describe another “demonstration” of how I share my concepts with my clients or with my audience. Before taking any action, however, I point out that we have two classes or categories of behavior, voluntary and involuntary. When we talk about the former, we use active language and we are clear that we are in charge. For example, if I have a pebble in my shoe, I simply take off my shoe and shake out the pebble. No problem since I am in charge. For most people, when we focus on the involuntary category, we use passive phrasing and act as if nobody is at home. There “seems” to be little I can do about the “emotional pebble.”
After saying this, I raise my right arm to symbolize all my voluntary behavior. Every action that I initiate is represented by this one action. I know that holding my right arm in the air looks a little goofy. However, I want to make the point that it is my choice to do this. Nobody else is making me do this. I have chosen to do this and I do not need your permission to do this.
As I continue to elevate my arm, I begin to experience some fatigue. It is clear that I am creating my own fatigue, you are not doing it to me. In order to create the experience of fatigue, I have to do something, i.e., continue to elevate my arm. If I did nothing—another way of describing relaxing—my fatigue would disappear because gravity would bring my arm down Or put another way, the moment I do nothing about my fatigue (cease creating my fatigue), I will “disappear” it.
When I am clearly the creator of my fatigue, then I am in charge and there is simply nothing to the act of disappearing it. The moment I stop creating my fatigue (doing nothing), I disappear it. At this point, I ask my client to watch closely and I will demonstrate disappearing my fatigue. I relax (do nothing) and the force of gravity brings my arm down and my fatigue is disappeared—no longer created. Although this demonstration may not cover all behaviors, it may be a useful principle regarding many of our behaviors. I also point out that I did not need any “help” from somebody else.
Progressing further, I next focus on feelings or emotions, traditionally thought of as in the involuntary category. To illustrate how we conceptualize this domain to be different, I raise my left arm to symbolize a negative feeling, such as anger. Next, I put my right hand next to my left cheek, palm outward, to function as a “blinder.” By blocking my view with my right, hand I cannot see my left arm. In this way, I illustrate my lack of ownership in regard to my feelings. The language that I choose (outside of awareness) to use, if I am “normal,” is passive. For example, I might use the sentence, “You upset me.” By using passive phrasing, I have inadvertently placed you in charge of my feelings—at least from the logic of the linguistic form.
To illustrate this point, I refer back to the time when we were studying sentence structure in grade school. For example, if the sentence were “The boy hit the ball,” then the boy is the subject, the actor, and the ball is the object of the verb, the recipient. My question is, “Does the ball have any choice about where it is hit?” Of course, the answer is no, it goes where it is hit. Similarly, in the sentence, “You upset me,” I am logically in the same position as the ball, no choice.
Once I choose this passive form of language (a pattern that is outside of awareness, although still my choice), I “apparently” have no choice, I am being acted upon. Since you are the subject of my sentence, you are the source of my upset, the active agent, so the tradition is that I begin yelling at you to apologize or otherwise change your behavior. If you are “normal,” you will create anger (outside of awareness) and attribute your anger to my yelling. In fact, you are more likely to leave than to apologize or otherwise placate me.
As I demonstrate this, I keep my left hand in the air with my right hand “blinder” in place. In this imaginary scenario, let’s imagine that you have already left. However, I am stuck with my anger (and my left hand in the air). Since I am not in charge, there is little I can do about it.
What are the possibilities? I can go to see a therapist although this is expensive and the norm is that it will take a long time for me to feel better. Unfortunately, most therapists are operating in the same model of reality as the client (not response able for their feelings) and as a result, there is little potential for value in this interaction. I am not trying to denigrate my fellow “shrinks” (I used to operate from the same map of reality when I was “normal”). The therapist is sincere but tends to focus on the search for the original cause (Why is the stove on?), which usually results in a lengthy detour and distracts from the focus of what can be done differently now.
An even more frequent activity that is used in an attempt to deal with negative feelings is the use of chemicals. We self medicate with alcohol, we will smoke (legal or illegal), use injections, take pills, or “snort” to tranquilize ourselves. Unfortunately, the chemicals wear off rather quickly and there are frequently very negative “side effects.” Also, once we come out from under the anesthetic, we still have the same issue.
As I talk about this, I keep my left hand in the air with my right hand “blinder” in place. Of course, this looks ridiculous but it leads to my next point which is why not operate my left arm as I did my right? What I say is, “It worked so effectively on my right side when I was aware that I had created my fatigue, I could disappear it by doing nothing. Who could stop me from acting as if I were responsible for my own feelings?
What I need to do first is to take down my blinder (I remove my right hand, an act of ownership) and ‘see’ that my anger or upset is my choice. I am the person who chose (admittedly outside of awareness) to get angry about what you said or did. Thus, I am the creator of my anger just as I was of my fatigue. As the creator, I can disappear my anger by doing nothing or simply “changing my mind”. At this point, I lower my left hand and exclaim, “That feels a lot better.”
This demonstration may not follow the traditional thinking, but it may have a great deal of utility. I like the motto “Do What Works.” If you do what most people do (waiting for others to change or getting away from them—the only choices for people who think they are victims), and it doesn’t work or doesn’t feel good, why not change your mind? The immediate beneficiary of this thinking will be you. Further, when you are feeling better more of the time, your family and friends will be the secondary beneficiaries. What a deal, a “gift” to yourself that is also a benefit to others!
As a consultant to people who are interested in feeling better more of the time, I frequently see people who are very practiced at feeling bad. They can accomplish this by watching “horror shows” on their internal TV. For example, I see people who are sad, mad, or scared. (For some reason, I have not seen any clients who come in complaining that they are feeling too good.)
When they tell me about their background or their experiences, it is clear that they are not enjoying themselves. Frequently, they will cry during this initial part of the interview and I keep a box of tissues handy. In order to tell me about their situation, they have to visualize and hear themselves in the situation. Thus, they recreate their experience in the present, right in my office. What’s more, this is not the first time that they have recreated their anguish. In fact, they are likely to have spent a great deal of time on these negative images and sentences.
Some examples of the more common themes are that my client was molested, abused, raped, adopted, or the product of a broken home. Sometimes there has been a death or an abandonment early in the client’s life. Not infrequently, one or both of the parents were alcoholic or one or both of the parents were involved in affairs. Sometimes one of the parents was very remote or one or both of the parents had terrible tempers. These are not all of the possible scenarios, but I think I have covered many of the possibilities that would qualify the client as having come from a “dysfunctional” family. The longer I live, the more I wonder what a “functional” family would look like.
Sometimes my client will have a more recent situation such as getting fired, divorced, or passed over for a promotion. Again, this does not cover all the possibilities, but simply gives you, the reader, some feel for the range of external possibilities.
Of course, there are other reasons for not feeling good. For example, many clients are “doing” compulsions, addictions, or phobias. Some of the compulsions include nail biting, hair pulling, excessive gambling or shopping, and hand washing. The “addictions” include smoking, drinking, and eating as examples. As for phobias, there seem to be no limits on what people can create phobias about. For example, there are individuals who fear thunderstorms, crossing bridges, driving on interstates, being alone, talking on the telephone, or leaving home.
One could make a distinction between the examples in the last paragraph and the previous examples. The latter examples are more clearly self-administered and current while the examples in the previous paragraphs seem to be the result of past or present environmental factors that are being reviewed in the present. Even so, the re-creation is current.
In other words, the client is reliving the past or present situations in my office, thus also self-administered. I might add that there are a number of clients who are good worriers, people who do present apprehension about future possibilities, an excellent (and time honored) method for feeling bad most of the time. There’s the puritanical pattern again. I once heard a definition of worry which stated, “Worry is interest paid in advance for troubles that haven’t happened yet.”
As I use the phrase “self-administered,” you may quickly conclude that I am “denying” the past or present situation. That certainly is one possibility. However, there is also another one. We can acknowledge that we were unfortunate to have the particular background experience that we had and then decide to live our lives positively rather than drag that shadow with us throughout the rest of our lives. If we look at self-administered as equivalent to response ability, then we are in the position to make a different choice in the present.
There are two questions to be asked: does what we are doing feel good and does it change the situation for the better? If not, why not change our mind? Going over and over previous traumas does not feel good, and it certainly does not change the past. There is no way that we can “unmolest” or “unrape” ourselves.
Doing upset and anguish about past parental behavior while we were growing up only means feeling bad at the time that we recreate it, hence the use of the term, “self-administered.” Similarly, doing upset about being fired or passed over for a promotion does not change your job situation although upset certainly seems to be the traditional (and legitimate) activity in this culture.
Incidentally, I am not saying that a reaction of upset is inappropriate. I am simply saying that “staying on the stove” for a lengthy period of time is unproductive and does not feel good. We may be “blind” to our role in creating our response simply because we are unaware. Also, the language we use (“Losing my job devastated me.”) unwittingly places us in the victim position. Recall the sentence, “The boy hit the ball.” What I am suggesting is that it is entirely appropriate to do upset about losing a job, but do it and then “get off it.” There is no need to spend a great deal of time “on the stove.”
When it comes to the area of compulsion, addictions, and phobias, once again there are advantages to taking the position that they are self-administered. If they are not self-administered, then how is it possible to “do” anything differently? Yet we all know that some people stop their addictive behaviors “cold turkey.”
A Medical School smoking cessation program phrases the issue by saying,”How to stop smoking.” The next line states, “The first step: admit you are hooked.” Isn’t that a great line? The implication of the word, “hooked,” is that, like the fish, we are not in charge. Can you see the “blinder” in action, blocking our view of our own response ability? No wonder many people “successfully create” such a difficult time when they “try hard to stop smoking.”
When one considers that there must be some kind of thought process involved for a person to light up and smoke (“brain dead” people do not smoke), then it is clear that the kind of thinking (neurological activity) that initiates and results in smoking is not the kind of thinking that will result in the “disappearance” of smoking. That may not be entirely clear. Let me clarify with a previous example. As you may recall, when I held up my right arm in the air, I created fatigue. I had the kind of thinking that supported holding my arm up. When I changed my thinking (did “nothing” about continuing to hold my arm in the air), I “disappeared” my fatigue by discontinuing the creation of my fatigue.
Similarly, whether I admit to it or not, I am the “creator” of my issue regarding smoking and therefore, I can “disappear” it by doing “nothing” about it, another way of saying, not lighting up. Of course, this is too simple and easy so most people will automatically (outside of awareness) reject this option. How do we account for this widespread position of not being responsible for ourselves emotionally?
Let me share how I explain to myself the almost uniform position of not being responsible for our emotional behaviors. Imagine an infant. He or she is not responsible financially, legally, religiously, physically, or emotionally. We have a universal experience of having been cared for when we were young (if we are still alive) as well as having been moved about. Thus, we experience being “environmentally operated.” As an infant grows older, he is trained or educated in certain ways and not in others.
Let me begin by addressing the financial area. Usually a young child is given some sort of piggy bank as the first step on the ladder to adult financial responsibility. Next, the child will get an allowance and later, an allowance that he can spend the way he wants. The next step typically occurs around adolescence when the youngster begins to mow lawns or baby sit for spending money. During high school, there is frequently part-time and summer work. Following graduation (either from high school or college), there is usually a full-time job with the individual getting a paycheck with his name on it. The point of this recounting is to illustrate how the child has gone through various stages of “education” ending in becoming financially responsible, at least theoretically. The way he spends his money now is up to him.
Next, let’s look at the steps that we pass through on our way to legal responsibility. From the time of our infancy to the age of 14, we are not legally responsible. At 14, we are expected to get a work permit if we are to work part-time, although this is not always observed. The important step (especially for the teenager) is 16 when the individual acquires a driver’s license. I might add that 16 is an arbitrary age since it varies from state to state.
The next step is when we move from juvenile to adult court status at the age of 17 (at least in Missouri). At 18 we can vote. After some changes back and forth, most states now require an individual to be 21 in order to buy booze—legally. The traditional thought is that we have climbed the ladder to adult legal status at this point. Whether he votes or not and how he votes is up to the individual.
If we happen to be born into a religious community, we are frequently initiated with a ceremony such as baptism or circumcision. We are not responsible for this, our parents are. Later, we are typically sent to some sort of Sunday School and that is followed by some form of religious instruction that results in a confirmation or bar mitzvah, for example. The point of that ceremony is that you are now an adult in the eyes of God, your parents are no longer responsible for your religious well-being. It is up to you to continue your attendance.
Physically, we cannot dress ourselves to begin with, but by the time we enter kindergarten, we typically can. We may have been brought to kindergarten, but we are likely to have been sent to first grade. By the time we are in junior high, we will often be on teams or working on projects and becoming more responsible for our physical wellbeing. By high school, we are likely to be very involved in school activities or part-time work so our parents will have less direct contact with us. When we are away at college, we are responsible for our own laundry and the cleanliness of our living quarters as well as our own hours and how much we choose to study. I usually end this sequence by saying, “You know you are on your own when your mother doesn’t make your dental appointments anymore.”
The result of this progress through the various stages and sequences is that we have learned that we are responsible for our selves in the areas mentioned above. As adults, we choose how we spend our money, whether we vote or not, what religious institution we choose to attend, if any, and how many times we brush our teeth.
Because of this training, we operate in the active voice linguistically. I is the subject of sentences like: I spent $14 for this belt, I voted, I went to services, and I brush my teeth twice a day. It would sound strange for me as an adult to say: the store made me buy this belt, my mother made me vote, my neighbor made me go to church, or my dad made me brush my teeth.
The use of the “passive language” in the latter sentences certainly sounds peculiar because we are only familiar with the active sense as illustrated in the earlier sentences. When we use the pronoun “I,” the subject of the sentence, we are clearly in charge and certainly responsible. We call this category of behavior voluntary. As a result of being in charge, we can change our minds easily and quickly which is not the case when it comes to the passive phrasing. Also, we tend to label the other area involuntary, which for most people means that they were not involved in deciding.
What I am leading up to is that we are not trained to be emotionally responsible. There is no educational process involved with our developing our own emotional responsibility. Thus, we have a blind spot for our response ability. We say: you upset me, the movie made me laugh, you make me feel so good, or traffic frustrates me. Thus, outside of awareness, we choose the passive phrasing where we become me, the object of the verb with no awareness of choice. Just as we choose how we fold our hands with unawareness, we also choose the form of our language. Language that we use to “sentence” our selves! Thus, we are left with “the pebble in our shoe,” emotionally. We “blame” others for our feelings. It seems to me that blame is a synonym for negative cause and when we put the blame “out there,” we put the solution “out there.”
When we were infants, we did not have much of a choice. We were picked up and put in a high chair, put to bed, or put in a car seat and it did not matter much whether we wanted to or not. We were “environmentally operated.” We all have this universally similar experience. Our parents lifted and carried us when they chose. Also, it is clear that we did not ever lift and carry them.
Since we will continue whatever physical pattern (hand folding) we learned early in life (until we change it), similarly we will continue mental/emotional patterns. What I am referring to is that we continue to fold our hands in the same way or put the same leg in the slacks first just as we did as a child. We have the potential to change, but typically the choice is made outside of awareness so we are not aware that we are choosing. Similarly, we continue to “language” and “create” our experience in the same emotional patterns as we did as a child. It may have been 20, 40, or 60 years since you were picked up and put in a high chair, but you are likely to still utilize passive phrasing when it comes to feelings.
Further, since this is the norm in this culture, the tradition of using the passive phrasing with our emotions is practically invisible to us. If I were to say, I chose to do anger about what you said, that would sound ‘as peculiar as, the store made me buy this belt. If I say I decided to laugh at that joke, it would be in marked contrast with you made me laugh. What is peculiar is that we have ample evidence that people differ in what they do anger about or what they laugh at, however, we still think that it is the external world that is running us.
In the case of humor, one of the examples I use to illustrate individual differences is the riddle that goes, how do you get a one-armed Polock out of a tree? The answer is, you wave to him. I have used this in large groups and I notice several different responses even though everybody heard exactly the same sound waves.
Perhaps half of the group will laugh heartily. Maybe a third will smile and chuckle; 10% may say that it was not funny; 5% will say they don’t understand. Lastly, there may be a small number that will want to chastise me for telling an ethnic joke. Although the percentages may vary from one group to another, there will be a variety of reactions.
Amazingly enough, what will be almost universal is that no matter what the reaction is, each person will attribute their reaction to the joke or to my telling it—something outside of them. They will not be aware of their role in creating their experience. They may go so far as to say it was their perception although they will conceptualize perception as a process that “happens” to them rather than something that they “do.”
If it were the riddle and not the individual, then every person’s perception would be the same. Since there is so much variability, there is likely an internal process that is somewhat unique to each individual. Each person is likely to have an interpretive framework or map of reality that is the basis of their “perception.”
Think of a person with a paranoid orientation. His “interpreter” keeps telling him to watch out, people are out to get him, no matter what group he is in. If one were to attempt to reassure a paranoid person that one is not trying to take advantage of him, the paranoid will hear that as clear evidence of a “set-up.” How about the person whose interpreter keeps telling him that situations are funny. We will likely experience that person as light-hearted. The individual with a sexually oriented interpreter will read sexual overtones into most conversations and situations. And so it goes, each person has an interpreter that tells him what is going on “out there” and what is being said. Yet this activity is basically “invisible” to us and is lumped under the word “perception,” in a way that masks our authorship of our experience.
There are times when we come close to recognizing our role. For example, if we hear somebody say something that is not in agreement with our position, we are likely to say, “Well, that’s just your perception.” That statement usually is meant as a put down, meaning, “You are wrong, you obviously don’t know what is really going on.”
This reminds me of the fable about the blind men and the elephant. There were six blind men on their way to a picnic lunch when they chanced upon an elephant. Since they were interested in what they had encountered, they began “brailling” the animal. The first one grasped the tail and said, “Listen guys, the elephant is obviously a rope.” The second who had his arms around one of the legs, said, “You’ re full of crap, the elephant is a tree trunk.” The third one, who was feeling the side of the animal, said, “You’re both wrong, the elephant is a wall.” “What a bunch of idiots,” exclaimed the fourth, holding unto the ear, “the elephant is a giant fan.” The fifth one, who had his hands on the trunk, snarled, “You’ re all out of your tree, the elephant is a giant snake.” The sixth blind man, who had a grip on one of the tusks, said in an even more disagreeable manner, “I’ve never been with a more stupid bunch of people in my life, the elephant is obviously a spear.” Whereupon they promptly got into a big fight—and the elephant ate their lunch.
That is the competitive or adversarial version, which seems very traditional in our culture. After being raised in an educational system where the debate model is king and where the grading is contingent on only one right answer, is it any wonder that we have adopted this style of thinking? When we hear somebody say something different, we do not see it as an interesting viewpoint, only that it is obviously wrong. Both the local and national election campaigns in 1992 seemed to be based on, “The other guy is a bigger crook than I am.”
Fortunately, there is another version of the fable, the cooperative or complementary version. A group of blind men were on their way to a picnic lunch when they encountered an elephant. The first one happened to grab the elephant’s tail and said, “Hey guys, it seems that the elephant has some similarity to a rope.” The second said, “That’s interesting because it also has qualities similar to a tree trunk.” The third responded, “I too, am interested because it also seems a little like a wall.” The fourth man commented, “Isn’t it amazing that it also seems a little like a giant fan.” The fifth responded, “I, too, amazed because it also has qualities like that of a snake.” The sixth blind man then stated, “Isn’t it fascinating how the same thing can be perceived in so many different ways because it also seems to be similar to a spear.” Having completed their exploration of the elephant, they enjoyed their lunch together.
Life is an elephant. No one can get their arms around the entire elephant. Each person has a perspective that is unique. This makes everybody “right.” If everybody is “right” (as far as they are concerned), then the uniqueness can be seen as difference rather than being “wrong.”
Unfortunately, much of what we see as efforts to communicate amounts to person A telling person B that he (person B) is wrong. Further, A goes on to “educate” B by telling him what is “really” going on. Sounds like the blind men in the first version of the fable. After B leaves, A is likely to say, “I just can’t communicate with somebody who is so stubborn that he won’t ever admit when he is wrong.”
What we fail to recognize is that although we have an internal activity of some sort that we can experience, we cannot put the experience into words. Just as you can point to a person in a picture and say, “That is my spouse,” when it is not your spouse (simply a picture of your spouse), you can talk about your experience when the words are not your experience. What you pointed to in the picture was a representation of your spouse at the moment the picture was taken, not your spouse. Similarly, the words that you utter are not the experience you are talking about, simply a verbal representation.
To make it more clear, I can describe the taste of chocolate ice cream in great detail to you; however, you will not have the experience of tasting the ice cream no matter how detailed my description. You can only experience chocolate ice cream by tasting it. Then you will have your experience, not mine. Further, our experiences may differ considerably. Knowledge about an experience can be transferred, but not the experience.
Communication may turn out to be a rather sloppy process. The words we use to describe something is not the “something.” In addition, each of us has a unique perspective (position on the elephant of life) and an “invisible” interpreter (with no way of checking the degree of accuracy in the “match”) that tells us what everything means. Perhaps it is a miracle that we can function collectively at all.
In addition to the uniqueness, there is also the sameness. I referred to this at the beginning when I said that each person inhabits and operates their own envelope of skin. We all have this in common. “Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have been left in charge of me.” I might add, whether I like it or not.
Getting back to the invisible interpreter and our sameness, I would like to point out a background that we have in common. As I mentioned earlier, we were all born small and spent our first years being environmentally operated. We were trained to become responsible in several areas but not in the area of feelings and emotions. Thus, it is easily understandable that we do not function responsibly in that area as adults. If we were to become aware of our response ability and the “hot stove” analogy, we certainly could feel better more of the time if we simply “changed channels” from the “dead rat” pictures to the “beach” pictures.
We can feel guilty about the past, which is fruitless (although it benefits therapists and clergy). As to the future, most of what we spend our time worrying about will never happen. It is simply a way of feeling bad during the present—good Puritanical form. I am not against planning, I think it is important. It is also not necessary to add worry while planning. If you say, “I can’t help it,” then you are deciding to worry outside of awareness and are blind to your response ability.
I am not advocating what many people call denial, I am simply saying do what you can to be productive while treating yourself as if you had value. Just like me, you are alone in that envelope where you live, you might just as well treat yourself as if you were your own best friend instead of your own worst enemy. Just the other day, I had a client who said he was his own worst enemy. He went on to say that if the results of his internal beatings were visible on the outside, he would be totally black and blue.
If you have read this far, you have seen what I have made up (written), from your unique perspective. I hope you have made up something of value for yourself. You will know if it has value for you when you use it to feel better, a “gift” to your self from your self. What I have covered is the “how to” of gentle self management, a way to feel good in spite of it all. I hope you use these basic thought tools for your advantage.
BE YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND!
Thoughts Marlowe Thought 