"Judging by Feeling"

Brian Lynch

We came to an understanding that only by taking a detailed emotional inventory, - an inventory of our anger, fear, distress, disgust, and shame and by assessing what we are really interested in and what really makes us happy- will we truly be able to change our actions.     Twelve Steps to Emotional Health, Brian Lynch, M.D

We call the above-named feelings “negative” feelings but it is important to see them as useful feelings. The psychologist Silvan Tomkins claims that we are born with innate feelings. The reason we are born with them is so that we can survive an environment that is at once dangerous but at the same time affords multiple opportunities to achieve moments of joy and long periods of interest. The “negative” feelings are, at the core, “positive” if they can be appreciated quickly and assessed as quickly as possible. Martha Nussbaum talks of our emotions as having a judgmental quality. 

We do have our interests. Tomkins was the first to point out that interest was a primary emotion and probably the most primary emotion for indeed what would we did not have our interests? 

One of the immediate dynamics of note is what happens when our interest is interfered with. I will not speak about the most common instance of that but what happens when we are involved in very common “medium” levels of interest. For example when we are interested in our work but become angry at our landlord and distressed at the state of the stock market.

A simple thought is that at once the distress and anger are in direct opposition to getting my work done but on the other hand they are in their interest. I have an interest in the stock market and in my issue with the landlord. So my anger is a type of “interest.” It augments the interest I have in my landlord, to a point. It can on the other hand also hinder it depending, of course, on the intensity of the anger. We all know if the anger becomes a wild rage it will probably only cause me more problems. Low-level anger just might, however, get someone’s attention where I was previously ignored. It, therefore, augments my interest. Here we get the “judgmental” quality that Nussbaum talks about.

Where this judgmental quality comes from is how each emotion has been associated with our life history. How we have recorded in memory each important time we were angry, or distressed, or terrified. We then now “judge” the present situation based on a synthesis of the past. This is not presented as an explanation of what Nussbaum thinks “judgment” means.

 "More 'testing'"

"Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will then, gradually without noticing it,

Live along some distant day into the answer. "

   Rainer Maria Rilke

I would suspect that most people would not know that most of what is practiced in what is called clinical psychology or psychotherapy has not been proven. That is when doctors and therapists treat patients the methods they use have not been “tested” in any rigorous way. Are you surprised?

Well, this whole business of trying to help people in this way is barely a hundred years old and the idea of having organized systems of doing and paying for research on a large scale is much less than that. Then realize that we are dealing with face-to-face one-on-one encounters, conversations between two people. How do you compare one conversation with another and decide if one is better than another? It is difficult. But we have made some progress.

I have spoken a great deal about two positive emotions joy and interest, mainly interest and about “testing.”

The exciting news is that it seems that there is some “proof” that they are indeed valid. Through a therapy called “Control Mastery Theory” (don’t bother about the strange name) they have been able to do studies through which they conclude that people in therapy are indeed trying their best despite many, many things they might do to demonstrate the opposite. Like, do what! Like calling the therapist names, leaving therapy, and not paying the bill. The conclusion in all of these cases is that the person is “testing” the therapist. They are testing whether or not it is “safe” to move forward in life. Now I just say we all do these things with everyone, we all “test”, in our lives if we are not acting in a healthy way toward them.

We start with a good deal of “interest” and “joy.” These feelings are not attached to much “thinking” or reasoning for a very long time. They are attached to “doing” things. To “playing”, to enjoyment in the world. But through much of our own lives, there has been much interruption of this “interest” and “joy” that from an early age has taught us that the world can hurt and can “hurt” a lot.

I can only suggest that what the theory suggests is that we have a deep subconscious master plan to get “back to the good times.” We will charge forward wanting and hoping for love and connection but will then “test” the environment, the desired object” to see if they or the environment is safe. I also it is “just” that what happens is that old memory of the bad times, of the old hurt of pain and abandonment come back. The feelings of fear of more loss, the feelings of shame and distress return and they are too much and we either runway into a pit of self-hate and blame and often addiction or we strike back.

Each human is innately “healthy” due to innate “interest.” That is we are born with the absolute biological need to connect with other people through “interest.” This is not the Freudian sex drive. This is “I am interested in you.” This is our healthy state. We can never lose this except in extreme cases ( this is what I call the most damaged of us such as a Sadam Hussien). So we subconsciously are trying to recover it even though in any given family we might have learned many rules that teach us that connection is not healthy or is dangerous. We learn the dysfunctional rules (don’t cry, don’t display affect; no hugging or kissing, never being told you're loved) that to connect is not healthy and is dangerous. This causes great internal conflict as these thoughts and feelings are always fighting our biological nature to connect.

 “Hey, It Works For Me.”

Brian Lynch

After speaking with a number of people in our lives there comes a time when we note that if people talk about themselves in any kind of insightful way they will say some remarkably insightful and accurate things about their personality but then seemingly not be able to use the information they just brought into consciousness.

Someone might say “I tend to see things in ‘black and white’ and that is the way it is.” Their voice will trail off and then go on to something else. Or maybe they will note that they see others in a similar situation that they have been in recently, but they just don’t have the patience to tolerate it in others. That is, they cannot help others, as they would like to have been helped.

As terrible as it sounds it seems that many people, in a manner of speaking, give up on life rather early. They give up in the sense of having a life of affluence, rather life is seen as “life is hard and you better get used to it.” The sense of this is magnificently expressed by psychologist Silvan Tomkins in speaking of grander defenses against life’s hardships when he says we enter a “..lifelong war that need never have been waged, against enemies (including the bad self) who were not as dangerous or villainous as they have become, for heavens that never were as good as imagined.”

There is evidence, that I would think is counterintuitive, that people become more sociable as they age and that in their twenties they are actually less sociable and more work-oriented. 

Implicit in the psychology of the late teens to the early twenties is “deciding how things are” and going with it. That is solidifying your ideals. The danger is, that while by necessity, one will have to close off certain options as life goes on to get anything done, one may also take on thoughts that are more rigid than necessary and that we may start to project onto others. That is, we may start to say others should be like we are. 

Of course, with not much reflection these thoughts are not surprising. For the vast majority of humanity, it is a matter of facing some kind of economic reality fairly early in life. A tiny minority of people have any advanced education at all. We are put out in the world with frighteningly little information and especially frighteningly little in the way of how to find alternative solutions to life’s problems. It is not surprising that we will then fixate on “what works” for us. “Hey, that seemed to work last time, why not this time?”   

We can fall into all manner of “bad” habits. It “seems” to work if I yell at people. I get my way I seduce people. This can go on for years and years before anything serious happens or before I realize how much better things could have been doing it another way. Or I more or less “decided” to hide from life and this went on for years and years and maybe I did or did not find out the damage I did to myself and others. But hey, “it worked” I was “alive” wasn’t I? The “Dapper Don” “Mafia King-Pin” John Gotti, lived with the belief and reality/acceptance that he would either be assassinated, “whacked” or die in prison. It “worked” for him.

Now is this anyone’s fault? No, it isn’t. It is the state of society. It only says we now know what the situation is. If we know the situation maybe we can change the larger conditions that trap so many people. It means making education ever so much richer at an earlier age. 

"Getting well is tough. Getting well emotionally is tough. It can take years. II"I

 Getting well is tough. 

Getting well emotionally is tough. 

It can take years. III

We came to realize that we are profoundly emotional beings and that unless we understand our emotions we are very often powerless over our own actions and are powerless over the world.

For some time now I have been bothered by the phase you “have to do it for yourself.” As you have to stop using drugs for yourself you can’t do it for your wife or kids et.

It is not so simple. What motivates one person is different than the next.

We are social beings.  It would seem that we are trying to get well under any circumstance in order to better fully enjoy the company of others.  “I don’t want to lose my children.”  “I want my family back.”  “My wife left me.” 

True enough we have to somehow come to understand how we got to where we are. How we came to this point of “losing everything.”  Everyone has their own baggage and it is our baggage and we bring it into relationships and those around us do not need our baggage because they have their own.  So we do ourselves and everyone a big favor if we work  hard on understanding what hurt us in the past and how we have come to habitually respond now in our adult life to hurt by taking drugs or by whatever we are doing be it gambling or sex or beating our spouses or running up credit card bills.

So yes work on “the self” but it seems to me it all has to be done at once.  Why on earth are we working on ourselves if it is not to connect with others?

There is a study about alcoholics and suicide that seemed to document that those that committed suicide were those that ended up with no connection at all. It was when the wife followed through on all the threats. That is the man would come home and the house would be empty, the car was gone. No note, no forwarding address. All efforts at contact would fail and he would have no one left in his life. Yes, there are, at times, seemingly no solutions but, obviously, inherent in that is the thought that there are no easy solutions. There is a tragedy. Not that people do not have to leave sometimes but it is also true that he cannot just “up and stop drinking.” He needs a community. How he or anyone does it is an ongoing project.

Brian Lynch

Shame and Humiliation

Tomkins, Silvan S.: Affect Imagery Consciousness NY: Springer Publishing Company, 1963.

Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self by Donald L. Nathanson Paperback (March 1994)

W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393311090

How To Get Where You Want To Go Brian Lynch

"Humiliation"

Brian Lynch

Labor and management: What are the problems and what are the solutions? Boy, wouldn’t it be nice to solve everything in a few words? Well, most everything, believe it or not,, does revolve somehow around shame and humiliation. Yes, it is unfortunate, in some aspects, equivalent to saying that everything revolves around E=mc2, and then saying that is nice but what can I do about it? It is not quite that bad. We might go with an example.

The world of work is complex and varied but we have to start somewhere. There is an organization of labor that often consists of people who manage and others that do the actual labor of the enterprise. Of course, in many enterprises, the two roles are mixed. Nevertheless, the division has been applied In the arts to making cars.

What is for sure these worlds often do not overlap they are parallel universes and this can be a problem and set up for shame and humiliation between the worlds and cultures.

An example is that management has to promote within its ranks executive talent. These people by necessity will often have little experience, often no more than a year or so, but they are seen as “rising” stars. They are then put in charge of the “talent.” Who are the “talent” anywhere from famous Rock Stars to, a clinic full of experienced physicians or a chef with fifteen years of experience at the top of her game? The problem with the manager is that they have to, as they see it, gain “respect.”

Anyone who has been in the workplace probably anticipates what I am going to say. The age-old way of gaining “respect” is to “put people in their place” and “show who’s boss.” This is done in any number of ways. Whether the new manager has the back of their superiors will be played out, but that is neither here nor there for my point the point is people use, so often, shame and humiliation as the tool. Not out of “choice” but as the default mechanism as there is no recognized other standard of “respect” of a tried and true way of “the right way to do things,” a set of a minimal set of standards of human rights. There is a basic stupidity of not knowing any better. Why is it that we do not know that such actions only serve to alienate, drive performance down and drive talent away?

Ad nauseam I hear the stories such as when the boss continually comes by a unit of a highly talented team at near closing time with an entourage and keeps everyone for two or three hours. Or the middle manager that has increased profits by 80 percent over last year and takes no time off coming in some hours every day and saying “Now we want to make sure you're putting in your hours.” And the big boss making clear that “Profits were still not good enough, you know.” So, how many a reader recognizes the parent who would never praise an “A” but asked, “Well child I am disappointed that you didn’t get an A+.”

“ Interest is the impediment to ongoing shame.”

“ Interest impedes ongoing shame.”

Brian Lynch

Silvan Tomkins was the first major psychologist to isolate “shame” and “interest” as primary emotions. We see them as “feelings” that we are born with. They are specialized parts of our nervous system.

Tomkins himself and those that follow him spend a great deal of time on the meaning and concept of “shame” as he understands it. It becomes more curious as I go along, now over years into my study of this material, how little attention “interest” has received.

Why? From the start “interest” not “shame” is the primary  feeling. Shame is called auxiliary to interest, shame’s definition being “a blockage or impediment to ongoing positive “affect” (interest or joy) or “feeling.”

Thus shame takes on a central role in our life. The shadow of shame haunts us and once uncovered can be the clue to almost all that has bothered and inhibited us in our life. Well that it should be dwelled on, written about, and seen as the multifaceted black diamond that it is.

That said by what means does one examine this diamond? Our reason? Well, yes, our reason, but don’t you have to be interested in something before you reason about it? So we are back to interest? Interest and shame are handmaidens. They are oddly enough two sides of the same coin and this being the case it is the secret key to any growth: How do I focus my interest sufficiently on my shame to reduce it when it is this very shame that is impeding my interest? It seems an impossibility! But there you have it.

This is why the interest of others is important when people are struggling with what seems to be insurmountable pain, hurt, and confusion and why I say: “Interest is the impediment to ongoing shame.”

At times, most of the time, with many, many people it seems that nothing, absolutely nothing helps them. Your interest is like water off a duck. But I believe that “interest” is our lifeblood. We need it like air and I say that all we want is “for someone to be interested in us.”

We hear about “interest” in others all the time but just do not recognize it as this vital primary life force. Here is an example I was struck by the other day when I came across an interview by Wayne Fenton of the National Institutes of Mental Health being interviewed about a certain category of patients. I do not mention the type, as it could be anyone. This is his last statement in the interview:

“But when patients do recover and you speak with them in retrospect, oftentimes it is somebody's belief in them, somebody believes that they can make it, and it's often their family's belief that they can make it that they identify as the critical issue in achieving their recovery.”

“ Interest is the impediment to ongoing shame.”

"All we want is someone to be interested in us."

"Everything and Nothing"

Sweet dreams are made of this

Who am I to disagree?
Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused

The Eurythmics 

The theme of being hurt and the consequences of the damage done is rich in facets. I often feel a deadening amount of time is spent on it and it seems to keep me from focusing on the more positive aspects of my interests. But hurt and interest are so intertwined that there will always be interplay. To speak of one is to speak of the other.

Once again, I was trying to counsel someone about his or her heartbreak with a person that was having difficulty with addiction, coming and going from a relationship in rather rapid succession.

As one goes along in hearing these stories there are certainly two constant themes, one is that once in a relationship, it is not an easy thing to pull out. The other is that, at least the more and more I repeat the principles I use the more I see that relationships vary, more than anything, only in their intensity. Realizing this has the most profound implications because we then all end up in the same boat. Or to use a phase Dan Weil has used from Dickens that we all recognize that we are all “Fellow passengers to the grave.” I believe that it can and should make leaving a relationship harder as we realize the grass is likely never to be greener.

But a qualifier, a big one, of course, and that is there are many relationships of such inequality and abuse that they should end. Relationships that, in effect, were never consensual or were entered into by deceit, are not valid.

On the other hand, Shakespeare did it again when he penned “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.” In my language, this translates to not letting shame enter into a relationship. Or, we know we have great interest in each other, but we also know that things can be rough, very rough and the roughness is not a reason to leave. Good luck in trying to leave. You can leave, of course, but one way or another you will pay.

That said, it may indeed be very rough as with the person I was giving counsel. What do I say? How do we stand by and watch and try to care for a loved one that is medicating their hurt by hiding or by drinking or harming themselves in other ways? What does one do? How do you not hurt yourself more? In the same ways? This is very important. How do you medicate your pain? How is it that this person can control you? It is simple; we need people in our lives. We need to be interested in others. And for better or worse here they are. We meet the people we meet.

People get hurt. People are abandoned and their brain is hurt. Depending on the degree of hurt so will their degree of confusion and ability to stay in a relationship. For a long time, they may need a lot of help.

During much of the healing time, it seems as if the more damaged person wants everything from you and wants nothing. It is the most agonizing of possible states of love. It is the razor's edge of shame and interest, the absolute borderline. It is on the one hand “complete” control of the desired object. If I keep the object at just the right distance then “they” cannot abandon me. My mindset is “I want nothing from them.” Or “I need nothing from them.” Actually “How in the world could I possibly need anything from you.” “On the other hand, the precise distance affords me immediate access to ‘everything’” if I need it. But what do I have? Nothing. It is sand through my fingers.

Brian Lynch

"School Violence"

AFFECT AND ADOLESCENCE

ON THE TRAGEDY IN LITTLETON and other shootings.

Revised

I am a family doc, and I am supposed to know everything, so if someone asks me about the school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, or other shootings, I am supposed to have an answer. 

Several years ago, I would not have had a very good answer. I do now. I wrote this originally sometime near the time of the Columbine shooting now 25 years ago. Things are not better. The cause is the same and as shootings have gone far beyond schools we need to understand that the same dynamic applies.

So the piece is based on the simplest of concepts. It is not more security, it is not having armed teachers and it is not mostly everything that is being repeated. It is about not hurting people. But we must start at the right place. It is about not hurting our children so they do not hurt others.

I now modify the above by saying that we are in such trouble that addressing the problem through education about hurting others, while essential, is not going to stem the tide by itself. We must stem the tide of guns. Since Columbine, the number of guns has increased by some 100 million in the united states. More than one per citizen.

But I am writing about the core issue of processing hurt. At the time of Columbine, I had just learned of a concept that I will call a "a compass of hurt." When we are hurt, we either withdraw, attack others, attack ourselves, or try and avoid the situation; these four ways, in the main, only cover up the hurt; they do not address the hurt.

That said there is a fifth way, and that is to examine the hurt. To come and appreciate it and its roots. To deal with it, to take the hit and then ask the question, why did this or that hurt me so much that I would attack another or berate myself or use drugs? The hurt we feel can come from an idea, a thought, or a memory. 

The hurt comes because we are interested in life, and things get in our way. We are interested in having loving parents, but we don't. We are interested in having loving siblings but don't. We are interested in having loving classmates but don't. The teenage years are some of the most vulnerable to feeling hurt. It is that time of great definition in our life. What is important is, I firmly believe, not the influence of radio, TV, or movies but the influence of those people that we have great interest in. If we are attentive parents, teachers, and friends, we will not produce people that will take murderers as our example.

To be sure, this is not a simple journey. I do not accuse, as we, who expound this psychology, also believe that, unfortunately, life can be and is quite capricious. Single instances of intense emotion seem to be able to dramatically affect one's actions and outlook on life. Thus we know that a child can be easily damaged. 

The trick is not to point the finger at the parents but at all of us; parents, teachers, doctors, friends, and neighbors need to care about each other's hurt. We must ask and make it clear that it is OK to show emotion. It seems, in the main, that the "trench coat Mafia", the group of the Columbine pair was part of what was seen simply as esoteric. 

We do not want to expunge individuality, but we believe that it is imperative to become sensitive to such isolation at this age, or truly at any age, and ask ourselves are withdrawing due to hurt and might that withdrawal revert, at any time, to attack. To quote Dr. Donald Nathanson, the attack comes when "if there is nothing we can do by our own hand or mind to raise our self-esteem, we tend to reduce the self-esteem of anybody available."

When you woke up this morning there was mostly likely another mass shooting last night or going on right now.