Emotional Detective

Being Human

This is the first in a three-part series on Unconscious Mental Processes.

Our inner worlds are active all the time, even when we are asleep.  We process the world continuously… and have reactions we don’t know about.  Neuroscientists estimate that ninety-five per cent of what we do and experience goes on without our awareness.   This is an astounding and humbling fact, but critical to know.  If we don’t know how much we are missing, we won't think to look for what is hiding in plain sight.

Our ongoing reactions affect us deeply, whether or not we are aware of them.   They shape our minds and behaviors, impacting our future.  Knowing about these inner reactions is incredibly useful.

We now have enough information about human nature to make a tentative map of our inner world.   Acquiring  knowledge about this map, and understanding its nature, is very useful.

Emotions are signals, sent without awareness, from our inner world.  Feelings are our mental experience of these signals.  Thinking about our emotions and feelings reveals critical information about aspects of ourselves that operate beneath the surface –  almost guaranteed to bring personal rewards.  People feel better, live longer, and achieve more of their goals when they understand themselves.  They have better, richer lives, and enjoy more of life.  It is much easier to navigate life’s difficulties when you understand the vessel with which you are maneuvering – by that I mean yourself.  Understanding more aspects of yourself makes it easier to avoid obstacles and to manage those pitfalls that are inevitable.  All of this can be understood by paying more attention to your emotions, and reflecting on them patiently without judgment.

The map of human nature and method for self-reflection that I am going to share with you throughout this column has been developed over centuries.  Over the past twenty years it has been refined thanks to exciting new research and techniques for neuro-imaging.

Follow the trail of emotional clues, discover their deeper meanings, and learn as much as you can about the one person you can never get away from – yourself.

 1) It is critical to have good information and having patience.  Thinking about emotions dispassionately, with the detachment and open mind of a detective, lets us learn more about ourselves.  This approach can help you uncover new aspects of yourself -- aspects that are operating beneath the surface whether you like it or not!

2) Expressing feelings and emotions under safe circumstances helps us feel more calm, vital, and enhances creativity.

3) This approach to investigating one’s inner world can be done while showering, driving, or taking a walk.  Anytime you are alone and free to think, you can ponder your own emotions.   It can help to talk to people whom you love and trust.  Their input offers new information  that we cannot see due to blind-spots.  Obtaining multiple perspectives is always useful when pursuing truths – that’s why detectives track down as many witnesses as they can.

Ignorance may be bliss in the short run, but it is dangerous in the long run.

Next to Normal

The best things about this rock musical about a bipolar woman are its title and its message.  For those of us who strive to be "normal", the title makes way for many variations of normal, with ample room for much individuality.   In life (and statistics) we see that one common way to define normal is not as an absolute, but rather as relative.  This can be organized by a bell shaped curve.

There is plenty of room for being different in life and still being normal.  But what is normal?  Does it have to do with being similar to others, or does it have more to do with emotional management?

The implicit message in the play is that dealing with one's emotions straight up will make you "next to normal", which is surely good enough.   Advocating that we try to be next to normal rather than a pre-packaged normal makes great sense, allowing room for individuality. It emphasizes the importance of acknowledging your emotions, whatever they are, to being healthy and normal enough. 

The concept next to normal borrows from British pediatrician Donald Winnicott's notion of a "good enough mother".  This term meant to avoid idealizing any one image of motherhood, but rather to emphasize instead the critical importance of emotionally attuning to one's child.   There are so many ways to be unique and adequate, both as a person and as a parent.  Routinely ignoring one's emotions (and those of others) - while obliviously acting out one's impulses - is clearly not one of them.

This pulitzer prize winning show mockingly reveals the limits of modern psychiatry and our wish to fix everything with a pill ... or better yet with twenty.  It also explores how seemingly unbearable emotions that get buried inside us can ruin our minds and ultimately our lives.  

It seems an odd topic for a musical, but perhaps it reflects our culture's attempt to handle the disappointments that have followed in the wake of the psychopharmacolgical revolution.  Talk therapy seems no more effective than pills in this play, although it does actually seem to produce some awareness of what has gone wrong, and what needs to happen.

In reviewing this musical, Ben Brantley of the New York times wrote that:  "to discover the liberation in knowing where it hurts ... this production assesses the losses that occur when wounded people are anesthetized — and not just by the battery of pharmaceutical and medical treatments to which Diana is subjected, but by recreational drugs, alcohol and that good old American virtue, denial with a smile.... This show is less about connecting the dots than about life as a state of fragmentation."  Well said.  It is for us to connect the dots.

This musical reveals the dangers of not acknowledging one's emotions in an ongoing way, especially when they are intense.  It portrays the pain and dissolution that can result when emotions left lingering inside us are pushed underground. It shows how they can reemerge in ways that are destructive to ourselves, and to those we love.  Avoiding our personal emotional truths is way too costly, for everyone.  Life is filled with loss and fear, we must each find a way to manage these painful affects without burying them underground; so that we can grow.

Next to Normal is a powerful advertisement for how you can benefit from becoming an Emotional Detective. 

Human Nature

It is our nature to have inner conflicts come, but come to think of it, what do we think is conflicting with what?  Some people  experience a devil arguing with an angel, while others may experience an inner parent and cautioning a child.  Some lucky folks feel blessed with a muse or wise homunculus. While these images can all be useful, I have another to suggest. Try imagining three inner voices coming from three separate creatures inside you, each with a distinct personality.  Envision that these three creatures compete for control of you.    

A local artist,  Nicolette Wales, drew her imaginings:                                                                                                                                    

                                                                  
Your imaginings may be quite different.  Or you may not have any imaginings, or just a knot of indecision in your stomach. 

Let’s call one of these creatures  Primitive (top left), the next Social (right), and the third Reasonable lower left).  Each is more evolved than the next, with priorities, skills, and inclinations true to their names.  Each has a distinct personality and agenda that becomes modified gradually by time and experience. 

These three creatures each have distinct perspectives, motives, abilities, and developmental courses.     Our primitive aspect is our core animal nature, interested in survival and advantage, indifferent to the needs of others and reason.  Our social aspect is very emotional, highly susceptible to influence, and focused on other people.  Our reasonable aspect operates strictly according to logic. Although emotionally clueless, reason can think critically and plan ahead.  Each of our three aspects influences the others to varying degrees at varying times.