Psychological Problems and Their Big Deceptions. David W. Shave
often at a loss to give any logical sounding reason for feeling so badly, or showing a lack of emotional strength, unless to erroneously say there’s a genetic, or neurological, or a biochemical cause in the brain, or from some traumatic event of the distant past. We aren’t always going to know what is making us emotionally comfortable, or uncomfortable, when these feelings are being currently developed more from “part”-oriented perceptions in our unconscious. In fact, it’s probably more in our unconscious where the predominance of our day-to-day perceptions of what meets and what frustrates our basic emotional need takes place. Since we can’t ascertain what’s going on in our unconscious, like we easily might in our reality, we will tend to attribute any feelings we might have, as arising solely from reality for one reason or another. Our explanations to ourselves and others, for our feelings of being happy or unhappy with life, are more often rationalizations because they don’t address the component of feeling that is coming from our unconscious, which could be the predominant reason for our feeling the way we do. Because what might be engendering “good” or “bad” feelings may be predominantly contributed from our unconscious from unrecognized “part”-oriented meetings, or unrecognized “part”-oriented frustrations, of our basic emotional need, we unconsciously present reality-oriented rationalizations to explain our feeling the way we do.
Whatever we engage in that is enjoyable to us, increases the feeling that our basic emotional need is being better met. This, then, increases our feelings of having more emotional strength. We might theorize that eating what we love to eat can contribute to gaining an increased feeling of emotional strength. Perhaps this is the reason that a prisoner, condemned to death, is often given a “last meal” of what he, or she, likes eating the most. The person might then gain more emotional strength to endure what is awaiting that person. A WW2 combat veteran told me he always knew when a planned bigger than usual battle was about to take place, as he and his outfit would be served an unusually good meal beforehand. People feeling “down,” and feeling as though they have little or no emotional strength, often turn to eating more. Where eating excessively, or eating more “sweets” and desserts, might make a person temporarily feel better, while providing a feeling of increased emotional strength, over-eating is fattening and therefore detrimental to one’s physical health. Drinking alcohol and taking drugs may also be enjoyable and because it is, it can provide a false feeling of having more emotional strength, when in fact the basic emotional need isn’t really more met and a person doesn’t really have more emotional strength! The more people gain of that false feeling by drinking and “drugging,” the more impaired their brain functioning becomes. The advantage of our engaging in talking for meeting better our basic emotional need and increasing our emotional strength, is not only that it’s not going to add unwanted pounds to us, and that it’s not going to impair the functioning of our mind and brain, but it allows us to subtly rid ourselves of repressed anger. With our engaging more in talking, we really can become more emotionally comfortable people while truly having more emotional strength, and less repressed anger!
Having always our basic emotional need very well met isn’t always advantageous to us. Having it frustrated at times may be to our benefit. We have to have our basic emotional need frustrated to some degree, in order to live more comfortably in reality. We learn from the frustrations of our basic emotional need and with that learning we can better avoid much bigger frustrations of that need. We can learn from the mistakes of others that don’t frustrate our basic emotional need, but we learn best from our own mistakes that will frustrate that need. What we learn best makes it easier for us to later avoid greater frustrations. We learn better what’s “really good” to eat from having eaten things that were “really bad” to eat. We can more fully appreciate “heavenly” experiences and situations that meet well our basic emotional need when we’ve earlier experienced some “hellish” ones that might have greatly frustrated our basic emotional need. We can avoid pain better in the present and in the future by having experienced pain in the past. Frustrating our basic emotional need. so that we can later avoid greater frustrations. can be highly advantageous to us, but those lesser frustrations will still produce a degree of anger for us. When that anger is stored in our unconscious, a most fascinating entity develops that can profoundly affect each and every one of us every day that we exist. What that fascinating entity is, we’ll find out in the next chapter.
Chapter Four
What Hides In Our Unconscious
A frustration of our basic emotional need, which is consciously or unconsciously experiencing anything at all that is unpleasant to us, always produces anger. The bigger the consciously or unconsciously perceived frustration, the greater is the anger produced. Because of our having to live in a world that’s far from being perfect for fully meeting our basic emotional need, we’re unavoidably going to be engendering a lot of anger on a daily basis that can’t be all expressed as soon as it’s formed. When it’s not, our unexpressed anger is stored in our unconscious and, like a caterpillar metamorphosing into something else, that then can take flight and land wherever it might be lured, our stored anger can also turn into something very different that can seemingly take flight and settle wherever it’s attracted. Where it eventually settles out in our reality can greatly affect our lives without our recognizing that it even exists. It’s an entity, that not only can influence our perceptions of reality, but when increased enough in size, can greatly distort those perceptions without our ever realizing it. Because it can affect our perceptions this way, it can secondarily distort our thinking which has to depend upon the perceptions we make of our reality. What we might conclude about ourselves, about how others feel about us, and about others, may be much determined by this hidden entity when it’s increased enough, and we wouldn’t know it. It can become the unrecognized determining factor for what we perceive of our reality. If this entity is distorting our perceptions, as it greatly can when increased enough, we won’t change our distorted perceptions about ourselves, or about how others feel about us, or about others, unless this entity is first reduced in size so that it has less of an influence in determining the perceptions we make.
This always unseen entity is never uncovered by any psycho-analysis, psychotherapy, hypnosis, or sodium pentothal interviews. It’s an entirely unconscious entity that stays unconscious. It can take its form from whatever it is that’s the focus of it in reality, disguising its very existence. To recognize this immensely important entity’s existence, and how it is capable of profoundly influencing our lives, is to better understand what can be the determining factor for our feeling emotionally uncomfortable to any degree, and what might be a major, but always unrecognized, component of any emotional problem we might have. Our recognition of the existence of this hidden entity, that can rival the immense psychological importance of the basic emotional need, introduces an entirely new unconscious dimension in understanding ourselves and our relationships with others.
This strange entity is like a chameleon that has most successfully evolved to fit unnoticed in its environment by camouflaging itself in the reality in which it hides. The psycho-analyst, Wilhelm Reich, suspected the existence of this entity when he described a hidden underlying “something” to people’s emotional problems as “dammed up sexual energy,” which reflected the usual psycho-analytic pre-occupation at that time, with things sexual. It is a “dammed up something,” but rather than “sexual energy,” as Reich theorized, this “something” is “dammed up anger” that then becomes something else that like a chameleon, can become so disguised as to be unrecognizable to anyone not knowing of its existence and therefore not looking specifically for it. “Dammed up anger,” “stored anger,” or “unexpressed anger,” is repressed anger. It’s from this repressed anger, from unrecognized and recognized frustrations of our basic emotional need that this most elusive entity comes into being. Let’s call this always hidden “something” that we all possess to some degree in our unconscious, our “unconscious entity.” We should always remember it’s our repressed anger that becomes our unconscious entity.
Our unconscious entity is as different from anger as ice is from water. It’s different because it has characteristics of its own. Calling this unconscious entity “repressed anger,” would be like our calling ice, “frozen water.” Though ice is “frozen water,” when we freeze water we dramatically change it. What can result is a great diversity of possible forms