Free Yourself from Inner Conflict

December 13, 2013 By
The dynamics of inner conflict come into focus when we look beneath the symptoms.

To bring inner conflict into focus, we must look beneath the symptoms.

Inner conflict is a private war within oneself. People tend to think it’s about making a difficult decision. According to conventional thinking, that decision can range from choosing a style of shoes to more serious considerations such as a career move to another city or the compromise of one’s integrity over an ethical issue.

But these examples illustrate only conscious inner conflict. Much more significant are the unconscious varieties. These deeper conflicts are the roots of our suffering. When we expose the roots, we can resolve the conflict and end the suffering.

One way to expose the roots is get a shovel and start digging. Here we penetrate the ground beneath eight common emotional experiences: 1 – loneliness; 2 – envy; 3 – depression; 4 – greed; 5 – guilt; 6 – sadness; 7 – boredom; and 8 – indecision.

I’m talking here about chronic conditions, meaning, as in this first example, not occasional loneliness but chronic loneliness. Keep in mind that I’m trying to expose the essentials of the deeper conflict behind each of these varieties of suffering because of the importance of that self-knowledge.

1—Loneliness, when chronic, is the result of wanting to be in the friendly or loving company of others at the same time that the person is prepared, unconsciously, to experience old unresolved feelings such as separation, rejection, abandonment, or unworthiness. [Read more...]

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

Curbing Our Appetite for Brutality

December 6, 2013 By
We become liberators, too, when we free ourselves from the darkness within.

We become liberators, too, when we free ourselves from inner darkness.

Nelson Mandela’s greatness was most visible in his power to overthrow—through his courage, compassion, and peaceful manner—the brutality and murderous ways of the Apartheid regime. He was an ordinary man, he said, as he counseled us to find our own greatness.

How do we acquire greatness? Mandela’s power to do good was rooted in his charisma and love. If we are to be liberators like him, we presumably have to shed our negativity, fear, anger, malice, and violent instincts. We have to liberate our self from the darkness within.

From where in human nature does such negativity arise? A recent article in The New York Times tries to comprehend the human capacity for the slaughter of innocent people. Citing examples this year of horrific bloodletting by terrorists in Kenya and government security forces in Egypt, the article asks: Do we all have the capacity for such wanton murder?

Experts interviewed in the article say yes. But they don’t get to the core of the question. Instead, they blame the readiness to kill on “a culture of authority and obedience that supplants individual moral responsibility with loyalty to a larger mission . . .” Also blamed are “a routinization of violence, as well as injustice or economic hardship . . .” One expert says the most important ingredient in the willingness to murder for a cause is “the dehumanization of the victim.”

These explanations are superficial. Mandela, who died yesterday, would have more to offer. He would want us to ask ourselves: “What is it about me that would cause me to forgo moral responsibility? Why do I allow myself to see the enemy as less than human? Are there people who I hate, and do I have some hidden need to have enemies?” [Read more...]

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

The Futility of Compulsive Approval-Seeking

November 29, 2013 By
Approval-seeking is often a psychological defense.

Approval-seeking is often a psychological defense.

Using brain scanners, researchers have discovered that pleasure is activated in the brain when people get positive feedback concerning their reputation or character. These researchers do not appear to understand that such pleasure is not necessarily genuine or healthy. A psychological defense, for instance, feels good when it successfully covers up something important that an individual does not want to see about himself.

Few people, experts included, know or address the hidden reasons why we generate such pleasure in receiving praise and validation. Typical is this superficial explanation:

These results [from the research cited above] may explain why Facebook is so popular. It likely isn’t Facebook itself . . . it is all of the self-promoting features that it offers: posting what you are thinking, posting pictures of yourself, giving your opinion on what others post via “likes” . . .  throw in a little intermittent reinforcement (e.g., not knowing when the next time someone will “like” or comment on your post) . . . and Facebook has a winning formula . . . Or at least one that gets us hooked.

Yes, but why do we get hooked? Why in heaven’s name do so many of us feel the need to go through the day constantly assessing ourselves and looking for validation. This emotional neediness often shows up as inner dialogue in which we’re trying to establish our importance either to ourselves or to others. [Read more...]

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

How Worriers Unconsciously Chose to Suffer

November 22, 2013 By
Worriers are good at using their imagination to conjure up problems.

What, me worry for nothing!

These days people are snapping a lot of selfies, those close-up self-portraits taken with a cell-phone camera. Could this activity foretell a coming trend in which more of us turn inward to take close-ups of our psychological self? When we penetrate our psyche, new intelligence about the nature of our suffering is disclosed.

Let’s take a close-up of the mild-to-serious form of suffering known as worry. Worrywarts abound, and many of them are highly skilled at picturing worst-case scenarios. They’re good at taking snapshots of things that are happening only in their imagination.

Not only do they worry, they worry for nothing much of the time. The things they worry about frequently never happen. So worriers suffer for nothing. That’s at least as bad as working for nothing or crying for nothing.

Worriers produce expectations or visualizations of future problems or calamities. They anticipate being harmed, helpless, defeated, overwhelmed, hurt or disadvantaged in some manner should those problems arise. Worriers also tend to believe that their worry is appropriate because, as we all know, bad things do happen on occasion.

Uncertainty is built into the DNA of life. Unpleasant experiences likely do await us. It’s also possible some disaster or tragedy will befall us. Yet the healthier we are emotionally, the more we’re able to flourish in the present, confident we can handle what life has in store. But some people see the uncertainties of life (or vagaries of fate) as opportunities to suffer right now, in this moment, long before anything bad has happened. [Read more...]

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

Get to Know Your Psychological Defenses

November 15, 2013 By
Our psychological defenses keep us from an understanding of why we are suffering.

Our psychological defenses keep us from an understanding of why we are suffering.

We’re often the dupes of our defenses which render us blind to our emotional life and mislead us about the sources of our suffering. For starters, we don’t see that common varieties of suffering are both symptoms of mysterious dynamics unfolding in our psyche as well as defenses covering up our participation in our suffering.

To understand this, take a look at the following painful experiences (List 1) and see if you can tell what they have in common:

Anger and rage; sadness, grief, depression; worry, anxiety, guilt, and fear; envy, jealousy, and loneliness; resentment, humiliation, and shame.

These painful experiences are all symptoms and defenses of deeper dynamics in our psyche. Our ability to avoid these unpleasant states is hampered when we fail to understand the deeper processes that instigate these forms of suffering.

What are we defending against? Deeper down, we remain entangled in unresolved negative emotions first experienced in childhood. Through psychological defenses, we cover up our willingness to remain entwined in these painful emotions. The emotions (List 2) include the sense of being:

Deprived, refused; helpless, controlled, and dominated; criticized, rejected, and abandoned; unloved, seen as unworthy. [Read more...]

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

The Love Song of the Self

June 17, 2013 By
The greatest human accomplishment is to connect with the self.

The greatest human accomplishment is to connect with the self.

The character Prufrock in T.S. Eliot’s ironically titled great poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” personifies the painful plight of people who are unable to connect with their authentic self. Contemplating “a hundred indecisions,” Prufrock saw the moment of his greatness flicker: he “lingered in the chambers of the sea” and drowned in his self-doubt.

Prufrock lived in the shadow of his self, measuring out his life “with coffee spoons.” What then is this self—or Self—that supposedly rescues us from a life half-lived? We catch glimpses of it when our mind clears and life feels like silk upon our skin. Yet it’s not always easy to describe this core or essence that makes us feel at home in our body and in the world. So let’s heed Prufrock’s summons (though not his fate): “Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’ Let us go and make our visit.”

We can note, for starters, that the role of the self tends to be overlooked in mental health treatments. Writing recently in The New York Times Magazine, Linda Logan describes her treatments when hospitalized several times over a period of many years for a debilitating mood disorder: “Everything was scrutinized except the transformation of my self and my experience of its loss.” If anything, she writes, “it seems that psychiatry is moving away from a model in which the self could be discussed. For many psychiatrists, mental disorders are medical problems to be treated with medications, and a patient’s crisis of self is not very likely to come up in a 15-minute session with a psychopharmacologist.” [Read more...]

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

Finding Inner Longitude

June 5, 2013 By
Self-knowledge serves as our instrument of emotional navigation.

Self-knowledge serves as an important instrument of emotional navigation.

The marine chronometer invented in the 18th Century made ocean navigation much more precise. The chronometer determined longitude, and it enabled sailors to avoid ramming their ships into unexpected reefs and shorelines.

Emotionally, many millions of us still crash upon life’s hard rocks. Often we’re not sure why or how it happens, just that we somehow drifted badly off course. Each of us, metaphorically, is captain of a ship that can start to sink when unruly emotions surge against our hull and waves of negativity crash upon our deck.

We have instruments of emotional navigation to keep us afloat and on course. These include the methods, techniques, and knowledge of applied psychology. Unfortunately, experts can’t agree on what constitutes the basic axioms, principles, or truth of human nature. Psychological schools of thought clash like factions in a religious war. Scientific studies in psychology and brain research are failing to unlock the mystery of human suffering. Psychologists not only can’t discern what’s true, they don’t even speak the same language. Psychiatrists, as well, have been attacking each other within the profession over what constitutes mental illness.

A growing number of scientists believe that psychiatry needs an entirely new paradigm for understanding mental and emotional health, though they can’t say what that new knowledge and system would look like.

We absolutely need a new paradigm. Yet when essential knowledge about our dark side is presented, we refuse to accept it. Even our best scientists avoid cold truth about human nature because, like most everyone else, they refuse unconsciously to acknowledge it in themselves. What’s really going on in our psyche? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Psyche, Psychoanalysis Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Overcoming a Type of Resistance to Studying

May 28, 2013 By
Studying can be a lot easier when we understand inner passivity.

Studying can be a lot easier when we understand inner passivity.

This topic is addressed as an exchange of e-mails between me and a visitor to this website.

Reader’s comment: I have always been a studious person. Grades were important . . . I was also interested in learning and still am. However, now that I’m at university I’m avoiding studying. It’s not laziness or not caring. I feel fear. I have studied by myself all my life, so absence of family is not a big factor.

Whenever I do manage to study, I feel depressed afterwards. I feel like I have no energy, am mentally foggy, and at the mercy of my thoughts and criticism. All other life issues come back in full force, and I often cry. I also feel depressed again. I used to be very depressed, but now manage to keep it in check and mostly stand up for myself, except when it comes to studying.

Unfortunately, studying is necessary. I want to understand this reaction. More importantly, I want to feel pleased with myself after having studied for the allotted time. . . With all the inner work I’ve done, it feels as if this reaction has a strange power to put me right back to the beginning. I find it very painful.

Is it because studying is a “passive” thing to do? I feel much better after physical activity and such. But after studying, I feel robbed of the little inner strength and confidence I try hard to build every day. . . Why would this be? Do you have any ideas?

My response: I’ll suggest one possibility. Let me know whether you think it applies to you. Indeed, it appears that you’re having a passive reaction to studying. [Read more...]

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

Understanding Anorexia

May 20, 2013 By
Unresolved inner conflict is a primary cause of anorexia.

Unresolved inner conflict is a primary cause of anorexia nervosa.

Recently I watched a YouTube clip of Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil) counseling a 79-pound woman with anorexia, and it was a sad sight indeed. My sadness was felt both for the plight of the woman and for the plight of all people who get only shallow psychological knowledge from so-called experts and the media.

In this video clip from 2012, Dr. Phil succeeds only at shaming the woman for her anorexia. The woman already lives with considerable inner shame, and the unwitting Dr. Phil is only piling it on.

Anorexia can be treated and cured when its psychological origins are uncovered. Yet prominent websites on the subject—such as WebMD.com, the Mayo Clinic, and MedlinePlus, the website of the National Institutes of Health—provide only scanty and shallow psychological information. The National Institutes of Health, which favors a medical approach to understanding and treating eating disorders, claims that, “Family conflicts are no longer thought to contribute to this [anorexia] or other eating disorders.” I disagree with this statement, and I provide evidence in this article that family conflict, along with inner conflict, does indeed contribute to these disorders. When anorexics understand their inner conflict and how they act out that conflict with others, they have a decent chance of escaping their painful condition. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Depth Psychology, Guilt and Shame, Psyche Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Human Weakness behind Alcoholism

May 13, 2013 By
Alcoholism is caused in part by inner conflict.

Inner conflict contributes to alcoholism.

Many alcoholics and addictive personalities resist the idea that their plight is in any way due to character weakness. Any such allegation, they feel, categorizes them as substandard people who are to blame for their troubles. Weakness of character or “moral weakness” is not what causes alcoholism, one addiction website states emphatically. This is true, yet we can’t ignore the influence of a certain kind of inner weakness in the psyche.  

There’s an essential reason alcoholics are sensitive to this allegation that character weakness is behind their out-of-control drinking: Inwardly, this accusation is directed at them on a daily basis by their inner critic. The inner critic (superego) is a primitive, aggressive agency of the human psyche, and it berates alcoholics with allegations that range in intensity from “You should be trying harder to stay sober!” to “You worthless, no good loser! Look at you! You’re truly disgusting!”

Everyone has an inner critic or superego, and for many of us that part of our psyche has assumed the role of the master of our personality. It can harass and scorn us for the slightest misdemeanors. Our inner critic can attack us for a wide variety of alleged “crimes,” most viciously for the idea that we are somehow a failure or a loser. In some people, the inner critic is an absolute tyrant that causes much of their unhappiness and suffering. 

Unconsciously, we give credence to these allegations. We become inwardly defensive and absorb emotionally the negative charges directed against us. As alcoholics struggle defensively to deflect these charges, they might say, “It’s not that big a problem” or “I’m trying, it’s not my fault, I don’t know what comes over me.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Addictions, Depth Psychology, Inner Critic, Inner Passivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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