Psychological Problems and Their Big Deceptions. David W. Shave
a continuing fully met basic emotional need. We found out early that we couldn’t always have what we might have desired to have. We also discovered that the “perfect world” that could fully meet all the component desires of our basic emotional need, that we might have very briefly thought we had in our earliest infancy when we knew so little of reality and spent most of our time asleep, didn’t exist anywhere here on earth, nor could it.
We all began life by meeting our basic emotional need the very same pleasurable way in reality. As we left our infancy behind, we began to meet our basic emotional need as much as we could, in recognizable ways that could bring us pleasure. These recognizable ways of ours, might have differed from how others were beginning to recognizably meet their basic emotional need with pleasure. We no longer shared a common recognizable way to meet our basic emotional need as we once did as newborn infants. As we reached adulthood, how we recognizably met our basic emotional need might have greatly contrasted from how others were recognizably meeting theirs. What we might have wished for in our reality, for recognizably meeting well our basic emotional need, could have greatly differed from what others might have wished for, to recognizably meet well their basic emotional need in their reality. How we sought to recognizably meet that need in reality often differed greatly, from one time in our lives, from another time in our lives.
Engaging in pleasurable activities in our reality helped meet our basic emotional need after we left our infancy behind. But what might be pleasurable to one person might not be pleasurable to someone else. For instance, one person might find a great pleasure in hunting wild animals which might do much to help meet what might be unmet of that person’s basic emotional need in a recognizable way. But hunting wild animals might be a despised past time for someone else, where it not only might not meet any of that person’s basic emotional need, it might greatly frustrate it! Listening to rap music might greatly meet someone’s basic emotional need, but it could greatly frustrate someone else’s. Being left alone may be pleasurable to one person, and be punishment to someone else. What one person might love to eat, someone else might abhor. Everyone doesn’t like the same flavor of ice cream, the same kind of vacation, the same kind of activities, or the same kind of hobbies. We don’t pleasurably watch the same television shows, nor do we enjoy the same kind of movies, or read the same books. We all aren’t attracted to the same type of pet, or the same type of person as a good friend, or a spouse. The talking that we might find enjoyable, may not be enjoyable to someone else. Even our religious beliefs that might sufficiently meet our basic emotional need enough for us to be emotionally comfortable and optimistic about our future, may differ greatly from someone else’s religious beliefs, that might sufficiently meet that person’s basic emotional need enough to be emotionally comfortable and optimistic about his or her future. The promise of any religion is an after-life where our basic emotional need is fully met, but just how can’t be specifically detailed to satisfy everyone. One person’s conception of Heaven may be another person’s conception of Hell. An after-life that pedophiles might desire would be intolerable to most of us. An after-life promise of 72 adult virgin females wouldn’t be that which a gay male might envision for fully meeting his basic emotional need. If Heaven is a place where people sit and strum their most favorite music on a harp, one person’s strumming, might sound hellish to someone else. One can’t specifically define an after-life that would be pleasurable to all people, and that’s because what is recognizably desired to more fully meet the basic emotional need can become so different from one person to another, as people leave their infancy behind. What’s recognizably “heavenly” to one person, may be recognizably “hellish” to someone else.
While we’re trying to meet as much of our basic emotional need that we can in reality, in the many different recognizable ways available to us to do so, our basic emotional need can additionally be met in unrecognizable ways, and may be predominantly met in these ways enough for us to be emotionally comfortable. Satisfying our basic emotional need in both recognizable and unrecognizable ways becomes similar to satisfying our need for water. Though people can satisfy their need for water by noticeably drinking glasses of water, they can also adequately meet it without ever drawing even a single glass of water to drink! That’s because there are so many different foods and drinks that are part water that might not appear as major water sources to us, but they are. Similarly, there is much that unnoticeably has what is necessary to adequately meet our basic emotional need. Like meeting our need for water, we don’t have to be noticeably meeting our basic emotional need, to meet our basic emotional need adequately enough to be emotionally comfortable. What we pleasurably do to meet our basic emotional need is often in this same hidden “part”-oriented way. Like satisfying our need for water in an unnoticeable “part”-oriented way that can be unique to each of us, our unnoticeably meeting our basic emotional need, on a “part”-oriented basis, may be very much unlike how someone else is unnoticeably meeting his, or her, basic emotional need.
We meet a lot of our basic emotional need in pleasurable ways that may not be noticeable to us, or to anyone else, that we are doing so. To understand how we do this, we have to look first at what happens in the meeting of our basic emotional need as we leave infancy behind. Although our mothering person initially met our basic emotional need in a very recognizable “whole”-person way, that need begins to be met more in a less obvious “part”-person way, by others. Our fathers, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles, close neighbors, and pets might have played an early role in helping to meet our basic emotional need sufficiently enough for us to be emotionally comfortable. Unconsciously perceived parts of those relationships could have unnoticeably met a little to a lot, of our basic emotional need, and as this was occurring, we became less emotionally dependent on our mothers to meet that need.
Any kind of enjoyment, contentment, or satisfaction experienced by us in any of our relationships, experiences, or situations, was helpful in meeting our basic emotional need. But that was so, whether that need was being met on a recognizable “whole”-oriented way, or only on an unrecognized “part”-oriented way. Whether the meeting of our basic emotional need was more relationship-oriented, or more non-relationship-oriented, it, too, could be done so in an entirely unrecognized “part”-oriented way. But that “part”-oriented way, that could be unrecognized by us, would be unconsciously recognized. Anything that either recognizably, or unrecognizably, promoted those “good” feelings, or caused optimistic hopefulness, comfort, contentment, and complacency in us, or let us experience pleasure the way we wanted it, helped to meet our basic emotional need. The meeting of our basic emotional need beyond infancy became more disseminated amongst many relationships, things, experiences, and situations that we might have consciously recognized as pleasurably doing so in our reality, and more disseminated in unconsciously perceived pleasurable parts of relationships, things, experiences, and situations, that weren’t noticeable to us, and may not have been noticeable to anyone else. Although our basic emotional need may have continued to be pleasurably met in many possible ways when we left our infancy behind, it often becomes more consistently, and greater met, though unnoticeably so, in our unconscious from unconsciously perceived parts of things, people, experiences, and situations. As we left infancy and early childhood, we no longer recognizably relied as much on our mothers, or on our mother-equated “blankies,” and those mother-equated stuffed toy animals we once had, to meet our basic emotional need.
As we left early childhood behind, the meeting of our basic emotional need became much less recognizably met, when it was being more done so on a “part”-oriented basis, by our involvement with many things, people, experiences, and situations. Our basic emotional need becomes more unrecognizably met from the parts of those entities that our unconscious perceives as bringing a degree of pleasure or comfort to us. Other parts of those entities might not meet any of our basic emotional need. Some of those other parts might frustrate that need, and if they do so, those frustrations, in being “part”-oriented, won’t be consciously recognized by us, or by anyone else, including a mental health professional. But we can unconsciously perceive those frustrations. Though some people might pleasurably meet more of our basic emotional need than other people, and we may have a very special thing, person, experience, or situation, that might particularly meet well our basic emotional need, no one thing, person, experience, or situation, will pleasurably meet our basic emotional need as fully as the mothering person of our infancy first did, when we occluded so much of reality with our sleeping most of the time.