Bhushan Khadilkar

In my article, Towards a powerful personality, (part I) in January 1998 issue of Heard Melodies, we saw that what we feel may not be same as what we think. The gap between these may be quite wide. Wider it is, more troublesome it becomes. More frequently the gap is apparent, weaker one feels. Let us first try to understand the nature of emotions or feelings. Here meaning of ‘thinking’ is non-compulsive, conscious one. Compulsive thinking is spontaneous and is a function of the attitude structure of the person, that is nothing but personality. Compulsive thinking is a ‘subconscious’ phenomenon, mostly not accurate while a non-compulsive thought process is a better-guided one, and is a function of a ‘conscious’ mind. Former is usually inaccurate; irrational (unproven) as it is too rapid to be based on adequate data analysis, while latter is more accurate as it is a result of proper analysis of larger amount of data. Let us try to understand this with an example. Imagine that you are walking on a deserted road in a dark night. Suddenly a thick rope, which looks like a snake, and which you can not properly see, is in front of you, say five feet ahead on the road. You may quickly consider it to be a snake and will exhibit fear response. The conclusion has been arrived at on the basis of inadequate data. The data recalled and analyzed by brain is ‘snake is a rope like long and dangerous animal’. The decision of running away has been taken on the basis of perceived similarity but not the reality. More accurate conclusion will be possible only if fear is controlled and emotional hijacking is avoided. You may light a torch, gather more accurate and adequate data and will conclude that the thing lying in front, is just a rope. If fear takes over, you will run away and tell every one that a large snake is lying on the road and also may advise others not to go that side. By doing this you may feel happy thinking that you have saved others from the danger. Few people may take an emotional decision based again on inadequate data and avoid going there. A bold person (the one who can win over fear, not the one who is fearless, there is no one who is fearless), will win over the emotional hijacking and may collect more information and will find out the truth. Thus emotional hijacking deters you from taking a correct decision. You may take a quick decision rather than a correct one. This happens when any emotion, may it be pleasure or grief, anger or happiness overtakes you. Habit of making quick conclusions can make your life misguided; you keep on misinterpreting others and your family member’s lives become difficult, at times even miserable. Such a person who loves to conclude emotionally feels proud of his capacity and keeps on taking inaccurate decisions, which makes the life of his close one difficult. Though this discussion can go on let us take a diversion and understand more about emotions.

The nature of emotions

Our feelings or emotions are a major part of our inner lives. Our emotions are sometimes rapid primitive reflexes (like sudden outburst of anger, screaming, etc.) independent of our thoughts, but at other times, our feelings reflect our cognitive assessment of our current situation. Cognitive assessment in turn is driven by attitude structure. Our feelings involve both our emotions and our urges to act certain ways. Thus, emotions determine if we are happy or unhappy, if we want to approach something or run away from it, if we are exuberant or frozen, if we have strong personality or weak, etc.

We are probably always feeling emotions; they seem to impose themselves on us; we ordinarily don't "will" (a function of conscious mind) to feel certain ways (though one can train oneself to feel in a ‘decided’ way by using hypnotic and other psychotherapy techniques). The range of emotions is extensive. We can feel terrible, as in horror, suicidal depression, rage, and self-depreciation. Even in milder forms, such as tension or boredom or irritation or subordination, emotions may make us miserable. Yet, we can feel happy, proud, loving, or fascinated, which makes life great. At this point in time, psychologists know more about reducing unwanted feelings than about increasing the desired emotions although latter is not always impossible.

Indeed, many emotional reactions seem to be largely generated by our thought processes conscious or subconscious, compelling or noncompelling, rather than by operant or classical conditioning. Lazarus contends that cognition is always involved in our emotions because emotions reflect our cognitive evaluation of how well things are going for us, namely, if our situation is seen as getting better or worse. The question is: What thoughts (meanings or inferences or expectations) arouse which emotions? For 20 years, Ellis & Harper have been reminding us of the 2000-year-old idea that our intensely sad or hostile feelings are a result of our own thinking, our irrational ideas. For example, we assume that situations (failing an exam) and people (someone lied to you) cause our emotions, but Ellis says most emotions result from our insisting that the world and others should be unfolding differently. And, like a child, we get upset--we "awfulize"--when things don't go the way we want them to go: "It was a stupid exam!" and "It's terrible that he/she lied to me!"

Still other emotions may arise from unconscious forces within us. Suppose a part inside of us wants a very close relationship with one parent. Our efforts to get attention from that parent, to be cute and clever, to excel, to be attentive to that parent may arouse some anxiety, but we are not aware of the source. We may even marry someone similar to the admired parent without realizing it. Likewise, suppose your boss unconsciously reminds you of a cruel elder brother; thus, the intensity of your fear and anger at the boss may surprise you and others. Let me explain it a bit more to understand the concept of inside desire. Repetitive thinking or even less repetitive thinking but in a peculiar state on mind (known as off-conscious state, a state of high emotional arousal) makes a thought or an idea deeply rooted so that it becomes operative and guides the physiological changes. Example: if one thinks (deep inside and is convinced) that the disorder he is suffering from can not be cured unless some medicine is swallowed, or some god-man ritual is done, the thought becomes his guiding system. He may feel relieved of the disorder, many times simply because he ‘believes’ in it. In today’s pill culture many believe similarly. They also give the credit to the alternative therapy technique and also spread the word. Many of us eagerly believe in such a miraculous cure, as we love to do so, because it is soothing and comforting. Though, there can be argument that what is wrong in believing in it when it has helped. Nothing wrong, at least on the short term basis, as far as the person benefited is concerned. The same therapy may not be fruitful to a person with a rational mentality, or even to one with different belief system. But overall it is better to know the truth. I do not say that such scientifically unapproved therapies/rituals don’t work. They can work by the placebo mechanism, at times extremely effectively. They do work subject to the extent of depth of the faith in them. The therapies are subjective and seriously lack generality. Any way, I do not wish to disturb the honeycomb at present. Let us come back to the process of building a self-help system.

In short, human feelings are complexly caused, i.e. the learned aspects of emotions may be (1) operantly conditioned, (2) classically conditioned, (3) socially learned, (4) a result of our thoughts, and (5) a result of unconscious processes. However, in reality these five learning processes are often all mixed up together (along with reflexes, hormones, and genetic predisposition) in the development of an emotion. Discussion on these theories will be covered in next issues. Don’t bother about them at present.

Understanding the way we acquired a certain complex emotional reaction might help us figure out how to change the feeling. On the other hand, knowing the etiology of each emotion may not be necessary. It seems quite likely that several treatment methods will work regardless of the causes. Example: suppose you feel inadequate. Thus, you could take an "insight" approach in which you explore your childhood and eventually say to yourself, "It is silly to feel inadequate because my parents were critical and put me down; I'm OK, I don't have to be superior and I don't have to continue feeling inferior." Or you could challenge the irrational (unproven) idea that you are inadequate and set about demonstrating that you are quite capable; thus, reducing the self-doubts. Or you could counter-condition or over-ride the anxiety you feel in threatening situations, using desensitization or relaxation. For a particular problem many different therapies can be used. All these methods might be effective, regardless of the origin of the feelings of inadequacy. When the self-help method you first selected doesn't work, however, then a re-analysis of the causes of the problem might help you select a more appropriate self-help method. Detailed discussion will be attempted in future issues.

Emotional behavior, feelings, physiological responses, and attributions

Emotions involve (a) behavior, (b) subjective feelings, and (c) physiological responses. And, to make matters more complicated, each of these three aspects is often only slightly correlated with the other two, i.e. you may (subjectively) feel very tense but not show it overtly (behaviorally) and not respond internally (physiologically). A person can feel quite relaxed but has an upset stomach or low back pain and appear to others as either very laid back or very nervous. All the combinations are possible.

Although drugs can be useful (witness the millions of tranquilizer and anti-depression prescriptions written), it is also possible that using drugs before or during therapy or self-help might hinder improvement. How? If the person attributed all improvement to drugs, he/she might start relying entirely on drugs for help rather than on therapy or self-help. Also, if the problems don't get better after taking drugs, the person might falsely conclude they are getting worse rather than that the drugs aren't working. Naturally, false assumptions about therapy or self-help can be misleading too. It is important to know that your body system is recovering, therapies just provide suitable environment for it. It may recover even without any drug therapy. When the immune system fails to function properly even a ton of antibiotic will be of no use. There are huge number of psychosomatic disorders in which mental state of the person, his self-image is of utmost important in guiding him to physical ailments.

The consequences of certain attributions are not always easily understood. For instance, insomniacs (one who can’t sleep) given a placebo (a fake medicine that has no pharmacological effect) which they were told would produce alertness went to sleep faster than those given a placebo "relaxation" pill. They presumably took some comfort in blaming the pill for their awakeness and then fell asleep. Storms and McCaul (1976) have proposed that concluding you are responsible for some unwanted behavior is anxiety arousing. And, increased anxiety may increase the unwanted behavior. Example: thinking, "I'm responsible for my speech problems" increased stammering; thinking, "my speech problems are due to the experimental conditions" did not increase stammering. Yet, concluding you are not responsible for unwanted behavior may very likely decrease your anxiety and decrease your self-improvement efforts. Ideally it should guilt free awareness. So, it's complex because the "I'm responsible" attribution is helpful in many circumstances but not all.

Are feelings good or bad?

A common saying is "you are responsible for your feelings." (For the moment, let's forget about reflexive and unconscious feelings.) Fortunately, all feelings can be viewed as natural, as neither good nor bad. This is how: many people believe that feelings and thoughts can not be bad because they hurt no one. Acts can be bad (because they can hurt). From this viewpoint, there would be no need to hide our feelings (unless disclosing the feelings hurt someone) and no need to feel guilty about any thoughts or feelings.

However, it is easy to see how we come to believe that thoughts and feelings are bad. Suppose as a child you hit your little brother and were spanked and told, "don't do that." As a 5-year-old you aren't likely to figure out that the parent who hit you meant "your hitting is bad but feeling angry is OK," so you grow up thinking "feeling angry is bad." Many of our feelings are suppressed by being told "don't be a scaredy cat," "big kids don't cry," "touching yourself down there is naughty," etc. So, we learn to deny or dislike or feel guilty about many feelings. We even hide many positive feelings: "I don't want him/her to know I like him/her because he/she might not like me."

Feelings usually leak out

Feelings usually find a way to express themselves, however. There are several ways subjective feelings get expressed:

You may act on feelings: shout at someone when angry, cry when sad, and communicate (in body language) your interest when attracted to someone. (These same behaviors--shouting, crying and attracting--surely influence our feelings too.)

You may have physiological reactions when feeling something: you blush when embarrassed, have high blood pressure when anxious, sexual arousal when attracted. Actually psychologists are doubtful whether arousal precedes, accompanies, or follows an emotional reaction.

You may try to suppress the feelings and deny being upset or angry. Quite often people who deny their emotions think they are healthy and well adjusted, but they tend to have high blood pressure, high heart rate, an immune deficiency, high incidence of cancer, difficulty sleeping, and lots of aches and pains.

You may try to change the situation: shout out orders like a drill sergeant when things go wrong or become charming to attract and influence someone. Note: yelling "shut up" at someone implies but doesn't directly express your feeling, "I'm angry at you."

You may have one feeling to deny or conceal another: criticism may hide attraction, crying may occur when you are mad, love may hide scared dependency. Or, you may have one feeling in response to another feeling: disgust to your own sexual interests (more when you approach 45), frustration to your shyness.

You may blame others rather than assuming responsibility for your own feelings: "You are a selfish, mean person" instead of "I feel very hurt," "You are a lazy slob" instead of "I feel furious when you are so sloppy," "You are arrogant" instead of "I'm afraid you won't like me." Remember: you are more responsible than anyone else for your feelings is. In general, no one can make you feel any way; it is usually your choice (although some emotions are impossible to control--like a startle reaction or grief following the loss of a loved one). You may not be aware of the true nature of your emotions but they can still have an effect on your life. Dramatic examples are people with multiple personalities; an unconscious personality may have feelings that are not known to the person until that personality becomes conscious and "in control" later. More common examples that have been well documented recently are the "sleeper effects" in children of divorce. Example: children may be unaware of emotions (fears, anger) during their parents' divorce but suffer ill effects from the divorce years later, often when they become intimate with someone. There are lots of things, especially feelings, going on inside of us that we don't know about. Haven't you felt upset after talking to someone without knowing why? Don't you sometimes respond to events and behaviors very differently than others do, and can't see why you have such a different reaction?

You may openly share your feelings with others. This involves many skills: self-disclosure, "I" statements, social skills, assertiveness, self-confidence etc. Telling your story, as in therapy, self-help groups, or with friends, is usually healthy (as long as you share your emotions and don't just stick to the objective facts, and as long as the listeners are supportive).

You may use your feelings as a barometer of your relationships with others and your self-acceptance. Negative, unwanted feelings are a sign that something needs to be changed that self-help is needed.

After getting reasonable idea about emotions we may look at the ways to take control of your emotions. For understanding this it will be necessary to understand how we develop our attitude structure. Attitudes govern the fate of our feelings, and also many times the nature and the intensity our feelings. In short we must know the theories of learning. We shall begin with this next time. You can be sure that in next two articles you will understand what you may have found in these difficult.