Читать книгу Psychological Problems and Their Big Deceptions - David W. Shave - Страница 11

Chapter Five

How Psychological Assets Can Become Liabilities

Our unconscious entity, which produces unwanted feelings, is our repressed anger that arises from frustrations of our basic emotional need. It has three possible forms. These are the self-felt, the misperceived, and the projected. They all produce unwanted feelings. The self-felt form produces unwanted feelings that are focused on us. The misperceived form produces unwanted feelings that are experienced by us as originating in a person on whom we have become overly dependent and are being directed toward us by that person. Becoming overly dependent brings on this form of the unconscious entity. This form can’t be decreased, but must shift to either its self-felt form, or its projected form, to be reduced. The projected form produces unwanted feelings that we see in someone else or in others. These feelings arise in us from our own stored unconscious entity but are unconsciously projected. The self-felt form can produce unwanted feelings that can be the cause of our reaching a high level of success in life that’s greatly admired by others. The projected form of unconscious entity is where we unconsciously or consciously project those unwanted feelings of dislike to a person we dislike. This person then becomes more disliked. How much more is equal to the unconscious entity we project to that person. We can then unconsciously turn that projected unconscious entity into directly expressed anger which can be hidden if we express that anger metaphorically in our talking where it may not be recognized at all by ourselves, or by the recipient of that metaphorically expressed anger. The unwanted feelings of ours, arising from our self-felt unconscious entity, which we, and perhaps only a few others might know we harbor, may cause us to work hard toward compensating those feelings. We may do so to show to ourselves and others, that we aren’t the way we’re secretively feeling we are. For instance, if our unconscious entity is making us feel unacceptably poor, we might work very hard to become wealthy. The best compensation for our feeling a failure, or worthless, in life, which could be entirely caused by our increased self-felt unconscious entity and the unwanted self-felt feelings it can produce, is to become outstandingly successful in some field of endeavor.

People, with their unconscious entity predominantly in its self-felt form, often do tend to be work-oriented, and that’s because the primary and secondary feelings that their unconscious entity produce, are often work-focused. These people tend to get their basic emotional need predominantly met by working hard at completing a difficult task, overcoming a challenge, or by climbing some personal Mt. Everest in their lives. It pleases them to be making the corrections indicated by the specific focus of their secondary feelings of their unconscious entity. These corrections are to make themselves much better than they are perceiving themselves to be. If they feel in some way unacceptable, they might not want to be satisfied with making whatever might be the focus of their primary feeling, “acceptable.” Instead, they might want to make that focus outstandingly so. If their self-felt unconscious entity makes them feel in some way “ugly,” they might not want to appear simply “acceptable” in appearance, but instead “beautiful.” It meets their basic emotional need to be laboring to attain goals that essentially can be traced back to their hidden self-felt primary and secondary feelings. Like research chemists working alone in their laboratories, people with their unconscious entity more in its self-felt form can meet their basic emotional need through their hard work, and their continued striving. As such, they’re not overly dependent on another person to get a predominance of their basic emotional need met. They aren’t dependent on the acclaim that others might later have for their accomplishments to meet what’s unmet of their basic emotional need. They meet their basic emotional need predominantly by turning their increased self-felt unconscious entity into inwardly directed anger. They turn that anger onto themselves in their striving to better themselves, their attaining goals, and their over-coming challenges. Doing so lowers the level of their unconscious entity in its self-felt form which is a pleasurable experience. It’s pleasurable because it causes these people to become less emotionally uncomfortable by decreasing the level of their unconscious entity. Because becoming less emotionally uncomfortable is becoming more emotionally comfortable, it is a pleasurable experience, and because it is so, it helps meet, indirectly, what is unmet of their basic emotional need. This makes them less necessary to meet that need directly from somebody. Because it is meeting better their basic emotional need, they can increase their emotional strength by this means. They don’t have to increase emotional strength by meeting their basic emotional need in any extended talking with someone else, or others, listening to them talk. They can build it with this “work”-related way. People, who are work-oriented, are most often so because of their increased self-felt unconscious entity producing secondary feelings conducive to working hard. Such people aren’t characterized by “wasting time in talking.”

Many people wanting to “make themselves much better,” as a secondary feeling from their self-felt unconscious entity, are unconsciously resolving their emotional problems, which are perceived dissatisfactions about themselves arising from their uncomfortable levels of self-felt unconscious entity, when they join, for instance, exercise groups. Such groups may go by a variety of different names depending on what their physical goals are. With becoming part of an exercise group, these people can gain emotional support for continuing with the group. They meet regularly for their particular form of physical exercise and then work hard at it. They may do very little talking with each other but they can diminish their dissatisfactions about themselves, by decreasing their self-felt unconscious entity and what is unmet of their basic emotional need in this work-related way. These people may do so under a reality-oriented guise of wanting to be more physically fit. They may have been told that their involvement in their exercise group “gets the endorphins flowing,” “tones muscles,” “boosts energy levels,” “promotes better sleep,” “improves sex lives,” “benefits cardiac function,” and “prevents obesity.” They don’t recognize that they become more emotionally fit, with more emotional strength, as they become more physically fit, with more physical strength, with their regular physical involvement in their particular exercise group. These people feel more emotionally comfortable, and have a better self-image, more self-confidence, less emotional problems, less anxiety, depression, and worry, and appear to handle stress better, from unconsciously turning an uncomfortable amount of self-felt unconscious entity, into a more comfortable level. They turn that uncomfortable level of self-felt unconscious entity into inwardly directed anger and this decreases the level of their unconscious entity. In doing that, they are indirectly meeting some of what is unmet of their basic emotional need in their becoming more emotionally comfortable. They might also be unconsciously decreasing their unconscious entity through subtle anger expression in any extended talking with others who are also exercising and talking. In contrast, this would be unrecognizably expressing their anger outwardly.

As people’s self-felt unconscious entity and their unmet basic emotional need increase, they may respond by working harder, which is due to their developing more demanding secondary feelings from their primary feelings becoming more intensified. The challenges they may now want to overcome, and the goals they may want to reach, may then become greater. A woman, for instance, that feels she looks “old,” can feel “more old” with more self-felt unconscious entity, and less acceptable to herself from a less met basic emotional need, and may, as a secondary feeling, want to be seen as “more young.” If people’s unconscious entity and their unmet basic emotional need increase enough, from increasing frustrations of their basic emotional need in their lives, and their repressing the resulting anger, their strivings might not now be able to lower their unconscious entity as easily or as well as they did before when their unconscious entity was at a lower level. The goals that these people’s secondary feelings from their increasing unconscious entity may now set for them, may become too difficult for them to attain. This is because the increasing self-felt unconscious entity from more repression of anger, and an insufficient means to lower that increasing unconscious entity, will tend to move the bar higher for what it will take to successfully accomplish what their secondary feelings now want accomplished. As it does this, it also increases the urgency and the worrying to reach those goals. When these people can’t reach those new goals, they may then develop emotional problems that mental health clinicians might recognize. Mental health professionals might erroneously feel these people are “willfully” setting too high a goal for themselves, when their goals aren’t being consciously set by them but instead, are being unconsciously set by their unrecognized increasing unconscious entity and the intensifying secondary feelings it produces. Since the goals are not being “willfully” set, advice to these people to lower their goals to decrease the stress they may now be feeling, isn’t helpful. To set their goals lower, and to feel there is less stress to accomplish those goals, they must first lower their self-felt unconscious entity to a more comfortable level. As a result of their lowering their self-felt unconscious entity, they will then tend to feel less of an urgency to do anything, and will tend to be less worried about things, so that they will feel less stressed. With their lowering their unconscious entity, they will meet more of their basic emotional need which will result in their feeling more acceptable about themselves just the way they are. They’ll feel more this way, the more their basic emotional need is better met.

If these people don’t lower their uncomfortable level of unconscious entity, it may lead them to becoming depressed, or anxious, or phobic, or stressed out, or worried, or hypochondriacal, or obsessive-compulsive, or subject to panic attacks, or having pedophilic tendencies, or any other manifestation of an uncomfortable level of self-felt unconscious entity that can develop from different primary feelings, with different foci, and a kaleidoscopic array of possible secondary feelings, most of which can’t be predicted beforehand with any certainty. Where their self-felt unconscious entity is focused most, will be the predominant manifestation. It’s those very different primary and secondary feelings that are possible, that will determine how these people’s being emotionally uncomfortable will show itself. At any one time, the unconscious entity isn’t limited to producing only one primary feeling, and from that primary feeling only one secondary feeling. It can produce many different possible primary feelings, each with a different reality focus, and each with many different possible secondary feelings, so that there could be many varied manifestations of an uncomfortably increased unconscious entity in a person. Where one person might appear predominantly depressed, another might appear predominantly phobic. Rather than a predominance of any one manifestation, a person with an uncomfortable level of unconscious entity might appear anxious, depressed, stressed out, obsessive-compulsive, phobic, panicky, pedophilic, and hypochondriacal, all at the same time! But these manifestations would be less in intensity than if this person’s unconscious entity was more singularly focused in the person’s reality, with one primary feeling and one secondary feeling predominating.

The possible manifestations of our increased self-felt unconscious entity often have a recognizable defensive purpose. This is best seen when the level of the unconscious entity is not producing a severe degree of being emotionally uncomfortable. Having any one or more of those primary and secondary feelings could be advantageous to us in the current reality that we might have. But what might be an asset at one level of unconscious entity, could become a liability at a higher level. For instance, with a primary feeling of being “out of place,” my secondary feeling might entail my putting in place things associated with my business that should be put in place, which could be highly advantageous for me in the reality I might have. I might be characterized as being a “stickler” for wanting things done in my business in a very certain way, and no other way, which could lead to my business becoming successful. But with too much unconscious entity focused this way, I might be obsessive-compulsive to a disadvantageous degree. As a housewife, with a primary feeling that my house is unclean, I might be noted for keeping a very clean house. But with more unconscious entity, my secondary feelings of needing to clean might make me constantly cleaning house so that I do little else but that, and still be unable to have the feeling that I have adequately done it “right.” The more my self-felt unconscious entity increases, and continues with the focus it has, the more increasingly difficult it will be for me to do that house-cleaning “right,” because what I will determine to be accomplished “right,” will be seen as more urgent, and will be more stringently determined. House-cleaning “right,” then becomes more difficult for me to attain as my unconscious entity increases. Any advice to me to “slow down” is worthless advice. I’ll continue to be obsessed with cleaning my house until I can lower the level of my self-felt unconscious entity. Or, with a primary feeling of an impending disaster, and an increasing level of unconscious entity, I might be increasingly worried and hyper-vigilant about taking risks for fear of encountering possible calamities which could be highly advantageous for me in the particular reality I might currently have. If I were in business, my being this way might make me less likely to have a financial disaster. As my unconscious entity increases further, what might have been an advantage to me in business, could now become a disadvantage when I become afraid to try anything new. With more unconscious entity, my secondary feelings might make me phobic, or perhaps subject to panic attacks, or being excessively worried and hyper-vigilant, or stressed out and always expecting the very worst thing to happen to my business or to me. I might become unable to leave my house for fear of an impending disaster that I might feel, or, with more unconscious entity, might “know” is waiting for me. Your telling me to “stop worrying” is worthless advice. I won’t change until I can lower the level of my self-felt unconscious entity.

Reaching an outstanding level of success, that’s recognized by others, most often does require an uncomfortably increased unconscious entity in its self-felt form, which for some people, whether their field of endeavor is business, politics, law, religion, sports or any other endeavor, can lead to pedophilia. As an example of how an increased level of our self-felt unconscious entity may not create an emotional problem for us, but could benefit us, suppose you uncomfortably feel that your road-work and dieting for an upcoming marathon is “inadequate.” Because you hope to be the winner of the marathon, which you feel will make you feel happier, which we know can only be done by meeting better what might be unmet of your basic emotional need, you won’t want your preparation to be inadequate. That feeling that you experience about your preparation for the marathon being inadequate, could not only be arising from the reality of your preparation actually being inadequate, but it could also be arising from your self-felt unconscious entity in your unconscious providing a primary feeling of being “inadequate” that is focusing on your preparation for the marathon. (That feeling of being inadequate, may make a person feel uncomfortable sexually relating to adult females, and less uncomfortable sexually relating to under age males or females.) This could be a very small added component to your experienced feeling that your preparation is inadequate. If it is a large component, it could be the predominant cause for your uncomfortably feeling your preparation for running the marathon is inadequate. But because this unconscious component isn’t recognized, you’ll attribute the way you are feeling only to that which is arising from your perceived reality in regard to your preparation. What you might tell us in great detail, as to why you feel your preparation for the up-coming marathon is inadequate, and why you secondarily feel you have to urgently do much more in preparation, will be a rationalization. It’s a rationalization because it leaves out what is arising, unrecognized, from your unconscious entity, which could be a predominant component of your feeling your preparation is inadequate. It’s your accompanying unmet basic emotional need that’s focused on the up-coming marathon, and your increased unconscious entity, that together, could be the unrecognized driving force in your preparation for coming in “first” in the marathon.

That part of your feeling your preparation for an upcoming marathon is inadequate that is arising from your increased self-felt unconscious entity, is a primary feeling of that entity. It’s just one of the many ways that your increased self-felt unconscious entity could have shown itself. Your unconscious entity, rather than focusing on your preparation for an upcoming marathon, might have manifested itself with a different primary feeling, with a different focus on anything identified with you, such as your appearance, your work, your health, your secret sexual preferences, your financial worth, your past, your future, or anything else about you. You’d then have a different secondary feeling which would present how the focus of that primary feeling has to be corrected, or avoided. What you would then believe is making you emotionally uncomfortable wouldn’t be so much your upcoming marathon as it would be that something else. It would be something else that you would now feel an urgency to correct, or to avoid, and about which to worry more. If your unconscious entity focused an unwanted feeling more on that something else, and less on your preparation for the marathon, you might not be as successful in the marathon as you would be with more of your self-felt unconscious entity focused on that preparation.

We earlier saw how our secondary feelings often present as reality-oriented explanations for what we must do to rectify the unwanted primary feelings about something associated with us as being in some way “deficient,” “flawed,” or “unwanted” in its present state. If you have a primary feeling from your increased unconscious entity that your preparation for an upcoming marathon is “inadequate”, or “inferior”, or “incomplete”, or “indicative of failure”, then a reality-oriented secondary feeling of yours might be, “I feel I need to spend a lot more time working harder and longer, preparing for the marathon,” which might now have to be accomplished more urgently and with more worrying, in a more stringently determined way, and no other way. That’s what it would take, you might now believe, to correct what you uncomfortably feel isn’t “good enough” about your preparation. Though it might appear that you have consciously determined what you believe, and can present this in a logical and factual way, what really is determining what you believe, is your uncomfortably increased unconscious entity in your unconscious. We know that what it takes for you to become more emotionally comfortable is to lower both the uncomfortable levels of your unconscious entity and your unmet basic emotional need. Although you could meet your basic emotional need and decrease the unwanted feelings from your increased unconscious entity in a lot of other possible ways than winning the marathon, you won’t feel so. Your increased unmet basic emotional need and your increased unconscious entity are being narrowly focused in your reality by your unconscious, as a desire to win the marathon. Your unconscious is determining your primary and secondary feelings, as well as the reality focus of those feelings, and, as such, it is determining your conscious thinking in regard to the marathon. That’s an example of how our unconscious can unrecognizably determine our conscious thinking in regard to anything. It does it by the primary and secondary feelings that arise from an increased unconscious entity and an increased unmet basic emotional need, with an unconsciously determined reality focus for those entities.

If you’re feeling, which is to say “believing,” that your preparation for the marathon is inadequate, and much of that feeling, or “believing,” is arising, unrecognized, from your recently increased self-felt unconscious entity, then you’ll feel, or “believe,” more intensely that way, as your unconscious entity increases further. As a result of a further increase in your unconscious entity, your feeling you need to prepare more could become seen as a more factual, and, as such, a more emphatic, “I do need to prepare more for the marathon.” That increase of your unconscious entity intensifies your belief. What had been a feeling with less unconscious entity now has become an indisputable perceived “fact” of your reality with more unconscious entity. Your intensified belief is based on what you perceive as “factual” of your reality which may not be based at all on true facts of your reality. You might now be more driven to prepare yourself better for the marathon, because not only is your increased unconscious entity intensifying your primary feeling that your preparation is inadequate, but it’s also intensifying your secondary feeling of needing to work harder and longer in your preparation, in a more stringently determined way. That increased unconscious entity is increasing the urgency to do that, as well as increasing your worrying about it. It’s determining what you perceive as “factual” about your reality. With a much lower level of your self-felt unconscious entity, you would feel less inadequate (and less inadequate sexually in relating to an adult female) and that your preparation is less inadequate, and you would feel less urgency in correcting that inadequacy, and what must be done will be less stringently determined. What you would now see as “factual” would be different than what you saw with more unconscious entity. You’d now be less driven to prepare for the marathon with little or no worrying about it. With an increasing level of your unconscious entity, you’d have a higher level of an unmet basic emotional need, and if this is focused on your winning the marathon, winning it would become more emotionally important to you, and you’d be more driven to reaching that goal. As your unconscious entity increases more, the inadequacy of your preparation would be magnified as a problem to you, the urgency to complete your preparation would be increased, and what must be done to prepare for the marathon would become more stringently determined, and more of a worry to you. Your uncomfortably increased self-felt unconscious entity, and the specific primary and secondary feelings it is producing, that is being unconsciously focused on what is needed to be focused upon to win the marathon, would provide the unrecognized motivation to correct what needs to be corrected. Your unconscious entity would be influencing the perceptions you make about yourself and the reality of what is needed for your winning the marathon. It could change your thinking, which might be essential for you to do, to train more often, more arduously, and more in an unalterable certain way. It could unrecognizably be determining your priorities. Your similarly focused unmet basic emotional need would become an added asset, because it could create a beneficial rationalization for what is necessary for you to become more emotionally comfortable, which you’d believe, because of the unrecognized influence of your unconscious, would be winning the marathon race.