The Temptations of the Injustice Collector

February 20, 2012 By

Trapped behind the illusion of injustice.

In matters large and small, we all want to see justice done. A lot of us, though, suffer greatly—more than actual situations call for—in seeing injustice, or what we identify as injustice, being done to others and in feeling it being done to ourselves.

We magnify injustices out of proportion, holding on fiercely to feelings such as being wronged, deprived, controlled, criticized, disrespected, or rejected. An example is the unfortunate partisan divide in American politics that is fueled, at least in part, by the willingness of people to complain about all the injustices that the other political side is allegedly inflicting upon them.

If we’re classic injustice collectors, we whine incessantly about the unfairness of life. We’re upset on a daily basis about all the affronts we have to endure. We’re figuratively dangling upside-down in a shaft of self-pity, clutching a charge sheet of outrages, piercing the darkness with night-vision goggles to see more “bad things” to moan and groan about.

Unconsciously, some dysfunctional people amass their collection of grudges the way a miser hoards his gold.

There are two kinds of injustices. The first is actual injustice caused by human folly or the capriciousness of life. Faced with this injustice, we know logically that it’s best to avoid extrapolating emotionally upon the sense of being victimized. If actual injustice is being done to us, we try to respond appropriately, which may include asserting our rights. At the same time, we strive to minimize the conflict or unpleasantness of the situation. We can, for instance, not take personally the malice or insensitivity of others. [Read more...]

LoadingUpdating...
Filed Under: Consciousness, Depth Psychology, Psyche Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Dire Determinants of Divorce

February 17, 2012 By

Thwarted love can be the greatest of all hurts.

The list is long of the sundry ways we can suffer in a marriage or romantic relationship. We can, for starters, feel controlled, trapped, restricted, deprived, refused, criticized, belittled, disrespected, betrayed, rejected, abandoned, undervalued, and unloved.

If we’re really eager for punishment, we can feel many of these painful emotions at the same time, for much of the day and night. This inevitably produces growing resentment against one’s partner because we blame our partner for the strife that we ourselves are determined to experience and act out.

On the surface of our awareness, we all want tender love and intimacy. But deeper down we can have an unconscious program in place to act out negative emotions that are unresolved from childhood.

Of course, happy marriages and romantic unions exist in large number. Yet the more we are dysfunctional or neurotic, the more likely we are to turn our relationship into a turbulent free-for-all that is doomed to end in divorce.

Unresolved issues can converge around marriage and intimate relationships like singles at a love fest. Why? The hurt of feeling wronged by someone we are intimate with can be so much more intense. Thwarted love can be the greatest of all hurts, especially when we’re blind to the depths of our own contrariness. The thrill of new love is often a homing beacon for the desolation of rejection, betrayal, and abandonment.

Divorce is usually a result of our own failure to escape the clutches of self-suffering. We lug into marriage our toolkit for making misery; we stagger way from the divorce settlement unwilling to part with that baggage. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Depth Psychology, Psyche Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Enjoy the Pleasure of Your Consciousness

February 14, 2012 By

Pleasure and consciousness are closely allied.

Why don’t we feel more simple pleasure from being alive and conscious in a fascinating world? That has to be one of life’s great enigmas. We can feel pleasure easily enough when we’re stimulated by art, literature, movies, sports events, relationships, sex, food, alcohol, and racy cars. We have a hard time, though, feeling pleasure from everyday, moment-to-moment experience.

Plain, old everyday moments are often taken for granted. Or they’re overcrowded by worries and considerations, regrets and fears, toils and troubles, and desires and cravings. We chase after stimulation, catching speedy roller-coaster rides while missing the magical-mystery train that thumps out of our station every morning.

Basically, we block access to everyday pleasure because, unconsciously, we’re producing too much displeasure. (I described in some detail how that happens in an earlier post, “Mark Twain’s Mysterious Misery-Machine.”)

We automatically start to feel more pleasure from daily life as soon as we stop producing displeasure. The displeasure is produced when, unconsciously, we recycle and replay old unresolved emotions. Once we turn off this inner misery-machine, we feel a higher degree of moment-to-moment pleasure. We also stop taking life for granted because the pleasure attunes us to the richness of the here-and-now.

Stephen Pinker, Harvard psychology professor and author, put it this way: “I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.” In this statement, replace the word purpose with the word pleasure. Also, consider Pinker’s use of the word “realization.” The word denotes an awakening to consciousness and an appreciation of it for its own sake. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Depth Psychology Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Helplessness Trap in Cravings & Addictions

February 10, 2012 By

Addicts can break free of the "helplessness trap."

This post is a revised and expanded version of an earlier post, “The Negative Emotions behind Addictions,” which was published here last October. In this version, I go into the heart of the emotional experience of the “helplessness trap” which addictive personalities experience when (or just before) their cravings strike.

When a craving strikes, we often react with a sense of inner helplessness. Will our intense desire for self-defeat prevail? Do we even have a chance to successfully resist, knowing our history of being overwhelmed by our cravings?

In depth psychology, an addiction is understood to be a self-defeating reaction to unresolved negative emotions. Unresolved negative emotions in our psyche produce inner conflict. Examples of common inner conflict include wanting to feel loved when entangled in self-rejection; seeking success when encumbered by expectations of being seen in a negative light; yearning to be praised and respected when tangled up in self-criticism; pursuing relationship stability when emotionally attached to betrayal and unworthiness; and struggling to self-regulate when undermined by unresolved helplessness and passivity.

In other words, unresolved negative emotions from childhood (including our readiness to feel deprived, refused, helpless, controlled, rejected, betrayed, abandoned, and criticized) produce inner conflict. This conflict in turn produces suffering, self-defeat, and out-of-control emotions and behaviors. We can overcome the disruptive influence of inner conflict, and thereby enhance our capacity for self-regulation, when we see our psyche’s inner dynamics clearly enough. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Depth Psychology, Psyche Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Mark Twain’s Mysterious Misery-Machine

February 7, 2012 By

It rusts away when sprayed by self-knowledge.

We all like to think we’re motivated by self-interest, self-protection, and self-love. Consciously, we are. Unconsciously, though, we operate a misery-machine inside us that churns up self-defeat, self-damage, and self-rejection.

A reference to a misery-machine is made by the character Satan in Mark Twain’s final novel, The Mysterious Stranger. The reference is found in this opt-quoted passage from the book:

Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department the other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain—maybe a dozen. In most cases the man’s life is about equally divided between happiness and unhappiness. When this is not the case, the unhappiness predominates—almost never the other. Sometimes a man’s make and disposition are such that his misery-machine is able to do nearly all the business. Such a man goes through life almost ignorant of what happiness is.

This short novel, while nihilistic and grim in places, presents many insights into human nature. Twain’s savvy on matters of human conduct and motivation is consistent, of course, with his greatness as a writer. Perhaps the novel’s most significant insight is the idea that truth about human nature is not as pleasant as we would like. That in itself is not a popular or pleasant idea. That resistance may account, in part, for why the novel is one of his least popular books.

So what is this misery-machine of which he writes? Twain presents only the machine’s finished products—ignorance, self-serving hypocrisy, violence, despair, stupidity, malice, anger, vanity. He didn’t get to the nuts and bolts of the machine itself, which at the time the emerging science of psychoanalysis was beginning to do. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Depth Psychology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Obesity and the Dopamine Fallacy

February 3, 2012 By

Neuroscience Adds Excess Weight to the Obesity Epidemic

Consciousness is the main factor in self-regulation.

The Flip Wilson Show was America’s second most-watched TV show for its first two seasons in the 1970s. In his role as the sassy Geraldine Jones, Wilson, a comedic genius, had a trademark line, “The devil made me do it,” that his character declared when she needed an excuse for her impulsive or questionable behavior.

Another trademark line is being trotted out, this time by neuroscience, to account for the nation’s obesity epidemic. Nobody is laughing, though we should, when they tell us, “The dopamine makes you do it.”

Yes, dopamine, we’re told, has taken possession of the brains of obese people and turned them into sugar and fat addicts, slaves of the midnight snack and prisoners of the cookery. “It’s not your fault,” they’re told, “the dopamine makes you do it.” Hang in there! Great minds are working on a pill.

Professor Gary L. Wenk, author of Your Brain on Food (Oxford, 2010), recently posted the essence of the dopamine explanation at the Facebook page for Psychology Today:

Initially, scientists assumed that obese people were simply addicted to food in the same manner that someone becomes addicted to heroin, i.e. food produces happy pleasant feels, and therefore eating lots of food would produce extremely pleasant feelings. Not so. A few years ago scientists discovered just the opposite was true; the brain’s reward center decreased its response to eating tasty foods. This induces people (and animals in experimental studies as well) to consume ever greater quantities of fat and sugar in order to mitigate the diminished rewards that were once experienced by consuming only one scoop of ice cream or a small donut.

The neurotransmitter in the brain for rewarding us for eating is called dopamine. Everything we do that is pleasurable requires the release of dopamine within the brain. . . . Needless to say, eating fat and sugar induces the release of dopamine. In both obese humans and animals dopamine function is significantly impaired. The key thing to point out is that this dysfunction occurs in response to many years of poor diet; dopamine dysfunction does not occur first. Our behavior leads to the dysfunction in this important pleasure-inducing neurotransmitter. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Depth Psychology Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Four Favorite Ways to Suffer

January 30, 2012 By

Knowing these four ways we suffer helps us to avoid them.

If you’re looking for attention, try wearing a T-shirt with this question embossed across the chest in bold type—Who Will I be Without my Suffering? These words have a thunderous effect on an unconscious level. That’s because we often experience ourself and identify with ourself most profoundly through our suffering.

We all need to make sense of our world and find our place in it. We look for orientation through our beliefs, ego, athletic ability, intelligence, skills, character, body image, personality, sum of knowledge, and possessions. Underneath these external values, though, we can also experience and know ourselves in hidden recesses of our psyche as victims of injustice and malice, as failures or phonies, or as individuals who are insignificant and unworthy.

We have, in particular, four favorite ways to suffer. We can engorge ourselves at the trough of human misery through feelings of deprivation, helplessness, rejection, and criticism. Chances are good that when we’re miserable, we’re entangled in one or more of these negative emotions. Symptoms such as anger, anxiety, fear, procrastination, and depression often have their roots in these four opportunities to suffer.

With a little insight, we can check in with ourselves to determine pretty accurately whether we’ve tumbled into one of these four pits of pain. We can get ourselves out with self-awareness and insight. Most of the time, people in the pits find it hard to escape because they resist seeing their own role in their predicament.

If you’re living a life of relative abundance, yet still feel anxious that something is missing in your life, you’re likely entangled in the first of the four, the negative emotion of deprivation. This means that you are unconsciously determined to see and experience the glass as half-empty. This propensity to see and experience our life through negative impressions is a quirk of human nature. It’s as if we have an emotional addiction to various forms of negativity. We often are unaware of how easily we can slip over to the negative side and stay there, even as we complain about how unpleasant it all is. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Depth Psychology, Psyche Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Deeper Issues that Produce Meanness

January 23, 2012 By

Meanness is a symptom of unresolved emotional issues.

Tired of being mean? Tired of being on the receiving end of meanness? The nasty trait produces a lot of unnecessary suffering, both for the person who’s being mean (the “hell of your own meanness,” a character says in Jane Eyre) and for the recipient of the meanness. Meanness is often a compulsive behavior that’s difficult to remedy without deeper insight.

Puzzled by his meanness, a fellow wrote, ”Every time I see a girl I like I always end up being mean to her. I try not to, and I know that I’m doing the wrong thing, but I just can’t help it. I don’t know why. I mean I’m really nice to my friends who I know really well, but to people I’m attracted to I end up being mean. Can someone give me some tips on how to fix that?”

“Tips” or advice won’t usually help that much in resolving an emotional problem such as meanness. Insight is a better tool. Mean people have psychological issues that can be resolved with insight. People who are frequent targets of meanness also have their issues, since unwittingly they can be attracting aggressive behavior from others.

Let’s take a deep breath and dive into the issue, using as an example the situation described by the fellow above. His meanness could be a symptom of his unconscious expectation that he is going to be rejected or seen in a negative light by others. More is at stake for him emotionally when the problem involves a girl he likes. If she sees him in a negative light, he feels the rejection more deeply. Consciously, he wants her to like him. Unconsciously, he likely expects her to reject him or to see him as inadequate or defective. He is psychologically entangled in the feeling of rejection, which means that, even though it’s painful, he’s attached emotionally to rejection or to being seen in a negative light. Instinctively, he feels the need to deny (defend against or cover up) this emotional attachment. By acting mean toward her, he can claim that he caused the rejection to happen: “I’m not looking for the feeling of being rejected—the problem is I get mean and cause it to happen.” Now, however, he feels bad and guilty for being mean. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Depth Psychology, Psyche Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Panic Attacks Arise from Within Our Psyche

January 17, 2012 By

Panic attacks emerge out of unconscious conflict in our psyche between aggression and passivity.

The public is not getting the best insight into a wide range of psychological ailments, including panic or anxiety attacks. Books on the subject downplay the role of the psyche or unconscious mind, and ascribe the problem, as one author wrote, to the intrusions of the conscious mind.

Sufferers from panic attacks are typically offered “solutions” that include relaxation exercises, breathing exercises, and behavioral strategies. These approaches overlook essential self-knowledge related to the problem. Deeper insight can help those sufferers who are willing to learn some basic facts about our psyche.

The description of panic attacks provided at Wikipedia includes this following statement:

Lack of assertiveness—A growing body of evidence supports the idea that those that suffer from panic attacks engage in a passive style of communication or interactions with others. This communication style, while polite and respectful, is also characteristically un-assertive. This un-assertive way of communicating seems to contribute to panic attacks while being frequently present in those that are afflicted with panic attacks [my bold italics].

As this passage suggests, passivity (or what I call inner passivity) clearly plays a role in panic attacks. Individuals can free themselves from these intense, painful attacks by understanding the inner passivity that dwells in the human psyche. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Depth Psychology, Psyche Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Our Psyche’s Battle to Tame the Ego

January 12, 2012 By

A painful identification lurks behind our ego

Will big egos be the death of us? Thousands of Big Egos patrol the boardrooms of corporations and the halls of Congress, guarding against infiltrators called Reason and Sanity. Sometimes one’s ego is so big it “takes possession” of the individual and creates the psychopathic character type. We’re in big trouble when these people, who often possess charming personalities, rise to positions of power.

Carl Jung once said the egocentric mind “inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead.” Hopefully, this egotism will collapse before too much more damage is done to our planet and our progress.

Spiritual teacher and best-selling author Eckhart Tolle says the human ego is the primary cause of human dysfunction. “Unhappiness,” he writes, “is an ego-created mental-emotional disease that has reached epidemic proportions.” While I agree with much of what Tolle writes, I disagree with his contention that our ego is the main cause of our dysfunction.

I believe our ego is a symptom of a deeper issue that we need to address. The ego is a mental-emotional adaptation to our deep, repressed personal sense of having no value and being insignificant in the world. The greater our repressed sense of being hollow at the core or of being inferior, the more egotistical and narcissistic we can become in compensation. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Depth Psychology, Psyche Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts