"Words"

Brian Lynch

Most of us by now have done a “search” on the Internet. Did you know that if you enter any seven words of your creation you have almost no chance of finding the phrase you made? I for example just made up the phrase “The cat went to get the ball.” and I did not find it on the Internet. The same with “The dog went to get the ball.” Simple seven-word sentences but they are not on the Internet despite the fact there are now, I have heard, about one trillion pages on the World Wide Web. I suppose that is something like at least thirty trillion sentences and not one of them the same as mine.

I mention this not just to point out the amazing creativity of language but also to relate it to our emotional lives.

I have often mentioned that we start life off with nine hard-wired emotions. That is our nervous system has developed to permit us to “feel” through this system. These feelings are interest, joy, surprise, anger, fear, disgust, contempt, and shame. Once again, I believe these are “hard-wired” in the nervous system just as we have a special nervous system to make our muscles move and another one to feel pain and another to feel pleasure and many more systems.

Words and emotions: seven words in a sentence and eight emotions so approximately the same number of possible combinations and there are not trillions of people but only six billion of us right now on earth.

The point is with just eight emotions you have plenty to work with to come up with very different personalities. And with seven words you have plenty to continue adding to 30 trillion sentences.

I, from an early age, get angry when someone laughs at me. You laugh with them. Another person feels fear, disgust, and so on. Then each of these will in turn feel succeeding emotions; after anger, I will feel shame and you will feel more joy while my neighbor will feel fear and then anger and thus we will begin to know each other as Brian, John, Jill, and Jane.

Then each of us will have our characteristic activities or behavior that accompany how we feel. I might leave the room, you will dance, my neighbor complains. Through these behaviors, we will get feedback and this feedback will cause new feelings, a cascade of feelings. But it will always be feelings first and “doing” second. But I emphasize it is all based on just these eight feelings, mixing and matching them and we get six billion personalities.

NB In the theory I most use for these pieces, Affect Psychology, innate emotion that which we call “affect” is slightly more complicated than I present here starting with the addition of a feeling we have never articulated and that is “dissmell”. Please see: Dismell

“Giving Advice is Attacking Others”

“Giving Advice is Attacking Others”

Brian Lynch

 We are exquisitely sensitive to our inadequacies and just maybe exquisitely sensitive to others' pain, although it often does not seem like it.

It does not seem like “we” or that others are so sensitive as it is so often the case that we are victims of criticism when we are looking for understanding and support. My purpose is to show that what seems like insensitivity is often the opposite. The appearance of insensitivity is a defense.

This experience often comes from a sense of insecurity, of not knowing the answer to anthers' plea for help or understanding. It comes from reliving the trauma of childhood. We were expected at an early age to know the answer, to come up with a solution, and to know what to do. 

When we are now put in a situation, one we did not ask for, of helping someone solve a problem we get “anxious”, and feel shame for not knowing the answer. We were told that “life is tough kid you better get used to it.” It is up to you to know the answer and solve the problem.

It is being exquisitely sensitive to our shame and humiliation being triggered by old memories. This trumps our ability to be empathetic with others at the moment. This leads so often to a critical response or useless advice. We would not be thrown into these “attacks” unless we recognized the immediate pain of the person in front of us. But our pain is triggered and memories of having to have the answer interfere and we give what we got and tell the person often the first “suggestion” that comes to mind or return to the “life is tough kid you better get used to it.” 

This is the same kind of dynamic where the person is always telling you that they will be “right there.” It will be a “few minutes” or a “just an hour” and then they show up three hours later and act as if nothing had happened. Yes, they were trying to please you. They also are having a knee–jerk reaction to their shame of not being in control of their actions. They probably would be in control if they were not sabotaged by the memory of a father, mother, or brother telling them to constantly “hurry up.”

So in giving “advice” we attack? So often I have been on the receiving end of “advice” that has been, even well-intentioned, but useless.

The attacker needs to “fill the space”, the silence that is causing shame. The advice giver relieves this shame and distress by saying something and pretty much anything. Useless information is shaming and humiliating, of course, to the listener.

I want to be clear that the point is we are driven( Always the question is what motivates us?) by our shame and distress for whatever reason. We give advice on a knee-jerk basis. One of the most irritating situations is when the advice giver more or less knows he or she is giving “lite” advice, that is the first thing that comes to mind and they are called on it and then say “I know, you’re right.” Well, are we paying attention or not?

Meaningful advice should be given after knowing a great deal about the other's situation. What the individual seeking advice more than anything is to be listened to.

A favorite of mine is that when I have needed help with something the advice is “Why don’t you find someone to do this or that to help you out? Get a college kid.” Well, have you ever tried to do that? It is quite an undertaking. Nothing is truer than “good help is hard to find.”

It more and more amazes me how I can be in what I think is a safe and trusting environment and I share some problems and what happens is the worst kind of dressing down or a flippant comment.

"Actions do speak louder than words"

Brian Lynch

What has been fascinating in my  study of human emotions is how everything has come into question.

Like what? Such as conventional wisdom that if someone treats you badly or does not recognize your distress, they are not empathetic.

Now what is empathy? Usually, it is the concept of “putting oneself in the shoes of another.” It can be distinguished from sympathy as empathy can imply great concern for another or, and this is crucial, simply understanding the feelings of another.

For example, I can be happy and you can be happy and I can be empathetic to your happiness. We usually tend toward thinking it only has to do with “bad” feelings.

Then, what do I do with that empathy? I can be “sympathetic”, sympathy being that I “feel with you.” I care or am concerned about your feelings or I can abuse you. Yes, just because I can be attuned to your feelings, just because I am empathetic, does not mean that I care about them! It is “this guy is a sucker, let's take him!” It is an interesting and disheartening thought that to take advantage of your emotional state, it seems logical that the person must be attuned to your emotional state!

These distinctions are surprisingly recent, within less than the last two hundred years, that is the distinctions between sympathy and empathy.

So with that background, I said “we”, which is generally felt that if someone does not recognize our distress they are not empathetic. From what I just said that may be entirely not the case. I will offer several possibilities. 1), it is that they indeed do recognize our distress, but as I just said, they are after something else or 2) they are suffering from so much distress/shame/fear that they are incapable of sympathy, of expressing in word and action their concern. Or 3) they simply are not empathetic or sympathetic.

Now, why would the third possibility happen? Well, it is not settled by a long shot, but the possibility exists that some people just cannot feel sympathy or empathy. Autism, for example, seems a clear example of someone without this capacity in various degrees. A less severe form of Autism called Asburgers Syndrome is very much a problem in “reading” other people’s emotion. This is to say nothing of the origin of what we call psychopathology or sociopathy.

Given that high-order investigational tools, such as PET scans and Functional MRI have only been available for some 10-15 years it would seem logical that we might find that there is a continuum throughout humans concerning the ability to feel others' distress or other emotional states.

But that is biology. What of the environment and the phenomena of empathy?

I return then to the first two possibilities: Let’s say I tell you of my distress and you tell me to “grow up”, you get angry, or you go away.

The purpose of writing this is to point out that we just do not know why the other acted as such. It may be that they do “feel for you” but due to overwhelming “empathy” in the form of remembering their pain they simply are incapable of responding. Or they may be “after something else” which will leave us feeling manipulated. But even at this if they are “after something else” and are “manipulating” it does not mean that they do not “feel your pain” but simply something else is more in their “interest.” They simply do not have the knowledge or learning to handle their interest in you and what their needs are at the same time. And indeed their interest in you might be quite nil. Will not most of us not betray someone dear simply for a greater interest? We will as long as we feel isolated.

“Responsibility”

 of Responsibility

Brian Lynch

I have been reading several personal histories and testimonials lately of people who are in therapy or have given themselves diagnoses, often serious diagnoses.

I have written other pieces on responsibility but the logic of this particular thinking always pains me so much that I feel this can never be said enough.

It goes like this: These narratives are written when the person is in a calmer safer place and when they can reflect. They have great insight concerning their pain. They tell us their loved ones, lovers, friends, and therapist that they have great psychic wounds due to abuse, abandonment, and shame. They explain, often in detail, the havoc they have visited on everyone in their life; their addictions, broken relationships, and financial messes.

Now you may be surprised as to where I will go with this. The pain I feel is that they then ask if are they seriously ill or disturbed and their answer is “yes” then they ask if are they “responsible” for their actions and then they say “yes” too.

And I wonder about the world and my sanity and I wonder too about how many therapists repeat the same thing to these people. That is that they are “responsible” for their actions.

How is it that you can be “crazy” and “responsible” at the same time? First of all, I abjure the use of the term “crazy” unless we all admit to it. I use it therefore to make the needed point and that is one cannot make a responsible decision while unable to reason properly, a pretty straightforward thought. I say that is when we are overwhelmed by emotions.

We have good evidence that the center for feeling emotional pain is the same as the center for visceral or “gut” pain. So that is if you get “kicked in the gut” literally or figuratively your brain will light up in the same place. Now if you get kicked in the gut are you sure you are going to be in “control of yourself/” If you suffer a second-degree burn or break your leg are you going to be in control of yourself? If you receive news of a parent's death or of your wife’s betrayal? 

This week alone I have heard the line on T.V. of men in respectable professions saying they drowned their sorry in a bottle for 1-2 months after a breakup.

When we stop and analyze these statements of being “responsible” they quickly make no sense, but somehow we need to make sense of the world and so force the world to be orderly. An orderly world is one where man’s reason must prevail and if it doesn’t then we must blame ourselves, that is our nature, man’s nature. We are “weak”, “weak-minded” unfit to exist. We either attack others for being weak or attack ourselves for being weak and failing to make the right decision.

 

  People do what they do for good reasons.

Someone once told me that actually no matter how we are reacting for the “good” or the “bad”…..

we are reacting to stimuli exactly as our organism “should” be reacting at that moment.

 We are “nothing more” than our memory banks. We can only react based on what we know how to do in a given situation.

    We can not do what we don’t know how to do.

 

Either we are hopeless without redemption, we are, that is, so biologically damaged that were have to be removed from society. Or that to the best of our present knowledge one has no capacity for empathy (To be clear: not punished, but removed from society.) Or we have the capacity for empathy but have been traumatized to the point that our negative emotions continually overwhelm us in the present so we are thrown into turmoil.

 

We are reacting to stimuli exactly as our organism “should” be reacting at that moment.

 

To the observer, the two situations will appear the same. They both appear to be unable to empathize. It is important to sort them out because the latter person can be and needs to be helped. And in the end, all should be helped.

One point is you cannot be “crazy” and responsible at the same time. In both cases, the emotive side has taken over. In one case permanently and in the other momentarily. For those caught in the moment, it is a “shame” bind. It can be a setup for eternal failure. “Oh my God I did such a terrible thing and I am responsible for it!” 

The shame one feels at that moment now is as overwhelming as the original shame and rage or terror and it freezes one into inaction. One now is incapable, even now in what seems to be a calmer state, a more rational state, to have the wherewithal to apologize, pay for damages, or repair harm done in other ways.  

Why is this? I believe one reason is that deep inside one feels the truth with which this essay started that their organism could not have done anything different than it did at the time it did it and so in the most strict cosmic sense there is never any guilt or responsibility. There is at least a kind of emotional determinism. Why should I apologize for the emotional demons that control me and for whom I cannot control? I did not traumatize myself.

But the world attempts to work in the here and now: this organism does harm to that organism now and the one that has harm done to it is not expected to understand anything other than that they are hurt. They want and need reparation.

A popular phrase now is “Hurt people hurt people.”

How does society grow and begin to accommodate both of these understandings? A serious attempt is being made through the Restorative Justice Movement

(see http://www.brianlynchmd.com/TWELVE/restorativejustice.htm). When Restorative Justice is done correctly it invites all injured parties to come together on equal footing to express their narrative and understand.

It is almost an entirely new way of thinking. Humans have always argued, and since Aristotle supposedly convincingly, that we can indeed control our emotions and therefore our actions. I say it is not convincing at all and that Aristotle’s teacher Plato knew better and tells us so through his elegant defense of why we should not punish in the Republic. Now, punishing goes hand in hand with understanding motivation and the conditions that caused the harm.

As this is entitled "Responsibility" a final note on the word. We might take note that the word is made up of the words "response" and "ability." That is don't we first have to have the ability to respond? The "knee jerk" admonition of "be responsible" I hope is now seen in a new light. We would "act" better, be better, and do better if we knew how. We all need help in learning.