“The Origen of Conflict”

“The Origin of Conflict”

Brian Lynch

I often talk about a movie entitled “The House of Fog and Sand.” I use it as an example of what the director states in the DVD “extras” and that is “The film exposes the unsettling truth that sometimes it is our hopes, rather than our hatreds, that divide us.”

I will briefly say that the film is a tragedy that deals with a struggle between several people trying to acquire a house. People die.

The statement of the director is haunting. It is one of the greatest truths I have ever heard. To truly understand it we need to begin to understand one of the emotions that I have now mentioned many times and that is “interest.”

Our desires, wants, ambitions, and needs, to wit, our interests have initially nothing at all to do with hatred, recrimination, revenge, jealousy, and anger. Why? Because all of these have to first start somewhere. They have to start with a desire.

Recently I experienced this with a loved one. I had not discussed the next day’s events with them. I had in my head the whole day planned out which involved a lot to do with my practice as it was a working day. I equate this phenomenon to blowing up a balloon. We blow and blow and blow and the more we blow the more we exclude others' needs. We are “into our needs.” Well, returning from a trip at ll: 00 pm. I then hear the other person’s version of the day. It is nothing like my version. They too had blown up their balloon.

Had either party “wanted” to get in the other’s way? As far as I can tell, no they had not. But each balloon was emotionally burst as trust and emotional needs were not met. I withdrew for a while thinking “I had to do what I had to do.” I was tired and felt I had not been considered and now had to rearrange everything.

In the end, my friend’s project was very important to both of us and it was possible to get everything done. But it was one of the best practical lessons I have had in this very message I am conveying.

No one was “right.” No one was “wrong.” It is however difficult and well neigh impossible to “put on the breaks” at the very moment needed as the balloon or balloons can be broken instantaneously and I believe we then have little or no control over the initial feeling of shame, anger, disgust and distress or combinations of emotions we will initially feel. We have to have a lot of practice at recovering quickly.

Now think of the same process in any relation, in a business deal or an international conflict. So I think it vital we begin to think of the “positive” origins of conflicts and search them out, that is each other’s “interests.”

Copyright 2010

Just one more.....

“Just One More Minute”

Brian Lynch

I was just in the dental chair. I was reminded of an unfortunate habit of medical professionals and that is to say “Just one more minute,” or one more stick with the needle, or one more stitch. It seems that it almost never works out that way.

Good medical instruction teaches not to do this and I was taught more than once not to say such things. So why do we do it and why is it so irritating and so counterproductive? Of course, these principles are true in any area of life. I was also just on an airline and it always seems that when the pilot gives a time of departure it never happens. This time he said we were to pull back in “one minute.” Something happened with the “tug” and it was twenty minutes later that we left. Better to say nothing.

I work with some ideas that offer a specific explanation for why this habit can be so irritating.

It is a simple idea and that is that we suffer a great deal of pain throughout our life at the moment when our “wants” are not fulfilled. This is a pretty simple idea. “We suffer a great deal of pain throughout our life at the moment that our “wants” are not fulfilled."

So, we want the procedure to end. Someone tells us that it is going to be over in “a minute.” “Don’t worry one more stitch.” Or we are going to make up twenty minutes of lost time. We “project” into the future. Doctor Donald Nathanson put it this way, saying “When desire outruns reality shame ensues.” A “translation” would be that when we “want” something and do not get it we simply feel bad. Make sense? Makes sense to me. Why shame? Well, I hope you think about it and I think maybe you will agree that it is shame that we feel at that moment.

Now why do doctors, nurses, dentists, and many others inflict these tortures on their charges? They do it out of the best intentions. They want to give us hope that “it will all be over soon.” But they themselves are engaging in a version of desire outrunning reality. They want it over with. They want to get done. They also want you to feel good. But by wanting you to feel good they end up doing something to make you feel bad.

There is a first principle in medicine and that is “First do no harm.” The longer you are in medicine the more you understand how easy it is to do harm and how often not doing harm means doing nothing before you do something.

Finally, it would not be accurate to say that it is always as I have portrayed it and that is that everyone always has the best intentions. There are many disturbed people in all walks of life and it is not precluded that such torture as described here is not very much intended by the controlling party at least subconsciously. Why this would be is left for another time.

Copyright 2010

"Feelings as Tapestry"

Feelings as Tapestry

Brian Lynch

We can think of every one of our personalities as a tapestry or ornate woven rug.

The materials for the finished product would start with the emotional apparatus we are born with.

There is a lot of evidence to say that we are born with a fixed set of emotions or feelings. For our purposes today I will name them as anger, fear, interest, surprise, distress, disgust, contempt, joy, and shame.

Imagine each of these as one of the threads we had to start with to weave with on our loom to make our tapestry or rug. The moment we were born the threads would all be separated and “pure” but immediately life would begin to weave them into our unique patterns of “knowing” the world."

There is me and my twin brother and my one-year-old sister and there is a terrible thunderstorm. How do we feel? I might feel much fear followed by some distress and then more fear. My twin, on the other hand, might at first feel surprised and then fearful, but then joy at the lighting and laugh. My sister on the other hand, simply might stare out the window in amazement or intense “interest.”

Since this storm was very intense and stimulated our nervous system in all of us in intense ways we all “recorded” it in some way in our memories and it is now part of our instruction manual as to how we will respond to thunderstorms. We, that is, learned in those moments how to respond to thunderstorms. How did we learn and who was our teacher? Well, we were nothing much, but putty in the hands of nature. Nature was our teacher and why one felt interested and the other felt fear is pretty much an accident. But little by little through these intense experiences and then by grouping similar experiences we learn what the world means to us. We begin to form our personality.

We can see it can be and is a very personal world just as every custom rug and tapestry is unique in the world so is every personality. Each experience is like a series of knots that are securely tied. Can they be untied? This is an important question.

The next thought about our patterns or life is once we have these feelings what do we do? During the thunderstorm what did we do? I cried. My brother laughed and danced around. My sister was still. We all could have “done” many different” things and still felt the same. I can be fearful and run away or I could have tried and ignored the problem by suppressing the feelings. Whatever I do at these early ages will also start to become “learned” experiences and like secure knots tied deep in the tapestry of our personalities. Can they be undone? This is an important question.

Once the tapestry or rug is made can it be changed? This is the question of therapy and the work of therapy. The purpose of this piece is to get us to think about how personality is formed starting with innate feeling most of all. But we are not rugs or tapestries we are living, breathing humans that can and do change but it is not easy.

Brian Lynch, 

COPYRIGHT 2010

“I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”

Brian Lynch

I remember when I was thinking about going into medicine I wondered what a “nervous breakdown” was. I mention this as many people still use this phrase. In these few words, I want to help us understand that we can help ourselves by being more understanding of our mental states.

First, if you have ever had that thought: “I am going to have a nervous breakdown” I would like you to think about how you felt at the time. Were you angry? Was there a lot of fear? Usually, it is the case that there seems to be “too much” going on in our lives that is stimulating our unpleasant feelings that we become very overwhelmed. Anger, fear, disgust, distress, and shame take over. Doom looms in the future. We think, “What is on the other side.” We don’t know. We see disaster in the world but what will become of our mind? We know the phrase “nervous breakdown” but have we ever seen someone have a “nervous breakdown?” True enough people “shut down.” They do have radical changes in their behavior and they do become hospitalized and many of us have lived through unfortunate circumstances. I may be being unfair, but you may have a clear idea of a “nervous breakdown”, even so, and for those that don’t I want to say we can be much clearer in our thought and if so, much better off.

Above all, there is much more help available now. The first rule is that we now know that simply having someone to talk to in troubled times who will not judge you is very important. Next, I ask you to consider the truth of the statement “that it is almost as equally difficult to pursue a path of healing as it is to, as one friend said, “give up.” I say this as I think sometimes when we say we are going to have a “nervous breakdown” it is at those times that we want to “give up.” But what does that lead to? Running way? To where? Blaming ourselves for our problems? Where does that get us? Using drugs to drown our sorrows? What does that accomplish? And then a good solution, blaming others for everything. That fixes things? All these things take a lot of energy and are what constitute giving up and what constitutes a “nervous breakdown” for many and in great part.

Now, I want to be very clear it is very tricky, as I do not think we “choose” to “give” up.

I said it takes as much “energy” to do one or the other, to “give up” or keep going. It is an “energy” balance and I believe it is driven by our emotional state. How overwhelmed are we by our unpleasant emotions at any given time? Is there a solution? Can we control them? We can, to a point by working today build strong relationships with others so we do have that friend, spouse, or special other that we can always confide in and then ultimately so we can build the inner strength to calm ourselves, calm our specific feelings, when needed in the middle of the storm if we find ourselves alone. Not easy but practice, practice, practice.

Copyright 2010

R

“Cast The First Stone”

Brian Lynch

Whenever I write I wish not to be “pointing the finger at others”, although it is natural to first see “wrong” in others first, but very often I will write something and then be so surprised to be thinking about what I wrote and find that I remember doing a similar thing to someone just recently.

Today, I am thinking about stories I have heard and experiences I have heard concerning people that just seem to be unable to, well, share very much.

In extreme form, it might be that you could not expect them to walk across the room and get you a glass of water.

People who might live with you a week and maybe, just maybe, wash the dish from which they ate. Otherwise, they feel that they need every last cent that they have as “who knows what might happen tomorrow?”

People, who know all about a given profession, are professional and yet after 20 years and claim you as their “best” friend, but I bet you, you have not gotten one bit of “free” advice from them. You might be “picking” their brain! Yet you have freely given of your knowledge as you see this as part and parcel of “friendship”, of sharing. One of the best examples and “proofs” of this is email. Think of all the caring emails you have sent out without one response.

Over and over you hear, “I’d love to help you out” with this or that. “I know how to do this or that.” “You really should get this organized.”, etc. But nothing comes of it.

A relative is full of advice. You’re desperate for tuition money but you just hear criticism. Had you done this or that? They are going to give all their savings to the poor in India when they die. That is the only solution they can see. “Otherwise' people just hurt you?”

So why are “we” like this so much of the time? Well, the last statement says it all. “Otherwise, people just hurt you?” So it is with, for example, email. It is so often that it is not the case that communication is not appreciated. Quite the contrary. Tt is much appreciated, but people cannot let on that they appreciate it.

If we are not creating the good times now, today, then we are not creating them, we are living in fear of some unknown future. Why is it that we are not creating the good times today? It must only be because we have learned to be cautious. A little logic must tell us that there should be a balance to this but then who is to tell us what that balance is? Where do we go to find out?

If we have been severely abused how do we even know we have been severely abused and that we are “over reacting?” How do we know that we should be more giving and if we were more giving we would be better off? The truth is those that don’t know and are not “evil”, “mean” or “doing it on purpose” just do not know. Those that can give in the moment and experience the “interest” and the resulting “joy” of giving and hopefully of receiving only know it through doing. The receiving part is very important because the downside is that is almost as dangerous and “sick” is to give and give without receiving as to not give.

Copyright 2010