Category: Emotional pain

Anxiety and Grief as Emotional Pain

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date September 9, 2020
4 Comments on Anxiety and Grief as Emotional Pain

Welcome to From Insults To Respect. Today we explore the question, Is it helpful or harmful to view our anxiety and grief experiences as painful?

Let’s begin this exploration with a diary entry from a mental patient that appears on page 224 in Richard P. Bentall’s fine book, Madness Explained:

Rhoda [a friend] asked me if I were spoiled and I angrily said no, but feel hurt, as if I was born for a purpose I hide from, covering myself with warm blankets. Go to hell, World! I cannot die in peace and safety. I cannot face the slightest breath of real life or death or ugliness. But I hurt for being a coward. I was always a coward – socially, physically, mentally, sexually, emotionally. If I go insane, am I brave? I will, because then, and only then, I am brave, not a coward. I hate people. They compete and want stimulation. I hate them all, all. None loves, none cares, none understands or ever will understand. I am dead, dead – very, very limited, afraid and hurt. Go to hell, World!

There is a lot we might wish to unpack in this quote, but for today, let’s focus on the fact that the patient mentions three times that what he is experiencing hurts.

In our society, many of us are taught, beginning in our earliest years, that to experience anxiety and grief is cowardly and symptoms of mental illness. From such teachings, many come to believe people who don’t have such feelings are brave and viewed with great respect. All of this occurs despite the fact that pretty much all of us regularly experience anxiety and grief, even those who act in the most courageous manner. The swirling emotions that come about from this misunderstanding is often experienced as painful.

Once we, in our modern society, come to associate anxiety and grief as painful, this leads many of us right into the idea that we best manage it as we do when we experience physical pain, that is, by distracting our minds to something pleasant and washing the feelings away by consuming alcohol and other drugs. And yet, even when dealing with physical pain, these two approaches are often far from optimal.

In research studies, when distracting oneself from pain was compared to a “sensory focus” approach, sensory focus came out distinctly better even for when dealing with the particularly challenging pain that occurs while giving birth (see HERE for a review of this scientific research).

Sensory focus involves turning your attention to observing the painful physical sensations. If the sensations bring forth words such as pain, or awful agony, you accept this without judgment. You very gently, when you feel ready, return your focus to the physical sensations as if you are tasting, for the first time, some fresh mountain water from a tropical island. You just observe the sensations as they wash over and through you.

As for using alcohol and other drugs to deal with physical pain, the problems that can occur are no doubt already known to most of you. Nevertheless, I will bring to your attention a few of them.

Millions of people who turn to alcohol to relieve pain end up with a serious addiction and liver damage. For those who turned to prescription opioids to manage their pain in 2018, there were nearly 15,000 deaths from overdoses. Drugs that contain acetaminophen, like Tylenol, are the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States, and some studies indicate that it can be harmful to kidneys as well. Each year, the side effects of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which are commonly used for pain, cause nearly 103,000 hospitalizations and 16,500 deaths. More people die each year from NSAIDs-related complications than from AIDS and cervical cancer in the United States. Common over the counter NSAIDs include ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil) and naproxen (Aleve).

So, because of the common tendency to deal with pain by distracting and taking drugs, conceptualizing the experiences that come with anxiety and grief as pain may not be ideal. So, today, let’s take a few minutes to consider another approach, and then we’ll compare it to the pain approach.

An Alternative Approach to Experiencing Anxiety and Grief

Let’s begin here with a series of studies indicating that how we conceptualize emotional arousing experiences can dramatically alter the experience.

These studies began in earnest back in 1964 when a team of researchers presented a film showing primitive adolescent “subincision” rites to their subjects and found that it produced marked stress reactions. However, when some subjects were coached to view the film as if they were objective scientists, their stress reaction was markedly reduced. The findings supported the conclusion that the same visual stimulus varies in the amount of stress produced depending upon the nature of the cognitive appraisal the person makes.

Subsequent studies replicated this study by using a series of films that showed horrific workplace accidents, and again, altering the cognitive appraisal strategy of the subjects, altered the level of stress experienced. So, perhaps altering how we appraise our experience with anxiety and grief might alter our level of stress for the better.

What might a better alternative to how people in modern society typically view anxiety and grief? Let’s try this one on for size.

We have, for over two million years, been evolving ways to address our concerns so we have a better chance to survive and to pass our genes on to subsequent generations. Two of our most common concerns involve perceiving a risk of future danger, which we experience as anxiety, and perceiving we have lost something or someone important to us, which we experience as grief. Recognizing these types of concerns is the first step in a more complete process of finding ways to minimize the risk of danger and to successfully move forward despite our losses.

These types of concerns are a type of memory that brings to our attention that we have some processing to take care of. One of the characteristics of dealing with these concerns is that we often can delay attending to them for a limited period of time so we can engage in other tasks viewed by us as having higher priorities. When we put off dealing with these types of concerns, they don’t just go away; they come back again and again reminding us that we have to adequately address them. Despite our efforts at putting them off, as our concerns begin to accumulate without being fully addressed, it becomes harder and harder to delay dealing with them. Our memory begins to remind us of them more frequently and more intensely until we reach a point at which we must attend to them, like it or not. If we put off taking time to process our concerns for too long, our functioning for dealing with many aspects of life can begin to deteriorate, and at some point, we may end up having what some people refer to as a mental breakdown.

So, with this understanding, anxiety and grief are part of a wonderful process, rather than a sign of mental illness that we need to distract ourselves from or to take drugs to manage. Part of this process requires that we devote enough time to process these concerns or the level of intensity is liable to become more and more challenging.

When we are reminded of our perceived dangers and grief, rather than automatically perceiving such experiences as painful, we can allow ourselves to observe the physical sensations that come with it. If words such as, “Man, this is painful,” “Man, this is hurting,” or, “I can’t stand this suffering,” we can observe them without automatically accepting them as accurate. What is accurate is the physical sensations, and the specific concern to be addressed as best as you can fathom. Once the sensations go through us, we naturally begin to spend some time thinking about some ideas to address the concerns.

An Example of Someone’s Personal Experience Dealing with These Types of Experiences

In a recent Mad In America post titled, “Can We Allow Suffering,” Karin Jervert tells us how she was treated by psychiatry over a 20-year period. She found that the entire industry is based on this very human, very common, reaction to suffering, the inability to allow it—the inability to hold it with nonjudgmental compassion—whatever its manifestation. When those in psychiatry perceived that she was suffering, they drugged her without consent, leading to some awful side effects. They also isolated her and involuntarily committed her. The terms they used were “disease” and “a broken brain.”

As Karin so eloquently put it,

For years, I never thought of my suffering as something that deserved anything but force in response: suppression, drugs, hospitalization. Until I started to look back on all this and it all seemed like punishment for suffering too greatly, too powerfully; that I was not allowed to suffer this way. So, I began to broaden my idea of what was acceptable suffering, and my healing began. My fears of my own and others’ suffering lessened. What before was something to pounce on, to solve, to fix, became something to witness, to honor, to allow.

So, there you have it, some thoughts about conceptualizing anxiety and grief as emotional pain, and what might be a better alternative. I hope you give this some thought, and please join us again soon right here at From Insults to Respect.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags Anxiety, Depression, emotional pain, fear, Grief

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Is Depression an Illness?

Since as far back as she can remember, Carla, 19-years-old, has been having periods during which she has waves of deeply sad feelings. She has family members who say that depression runs in their family, and she should see a psychiatrist for treatment. So, off she goes, and after a few questions, the psychiatrist declares she has a mental illness called Major Depressive Disorder. Carla is prescribed pills referred to as antidepressants.

She soon feels a little better, but begins to experience a number of side effects, among them, her sex drive is diminished. Her boyfriend soon breaks up with her, and she has a new bout with sadness. Her doctor increases her dose of pills, and adds some additional ones as well, which seems to work. But in time, new waves of sadness occur, so she goes back to the doctor. He now sets her up with a series of electroconvulsive shock treatments, which her doctor calls Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT). Her memory begins to suffer, but after each series she does feel her mood rise.

Some who know Carla, respect her for facing the fact that she has a mental illness and is seeking sound medical advice to have it treated. Others who know her, upon seeing her turning to pills and ECT, regard her as foolish and lose respect for her.

In contrast to how Carla construes her waves of deeply sad feeling, some view it as an artistic temperament, and learn to appreciate these visits of melancholy as something of extraordinary value. Thus, in an earlier post titled William James’s Personal Bout With a “Mental Disorder,” we looked at how the brilliant psychologist and philosopher came to view his “bass notes of experience.” On this subject, he wrote that many so called “healthy-minded” individuals believe that those who worry are “morbid-minded” and “diseased,” but it may very well be true that “the world’s meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart.” He went on to write that,

“there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.”

Recently in the New York Times I met up with another writer who genuinely appreciates periods of sadness.

In an article titled “The Case for Melancholy,” Ms. Laren Stover weaves a very different perspective from Carla, the individual I described at the start of this post who has an image of herself as a “sufferer of mental illness, and a consumer of antidepressants and ECT.”

Ms. Stover, after telling us of her weariness of all those folks on the internet promising to show us how to be delightfully happy in just a few short steps, writes:

“Whatever happened to experiencing the grace of melancholy, which requires reflection: a sort of mental steeping, like tea? What if all this cheerful advice only makes you feel inadequate? What if you were born morose?”

It is of course not alway easy to bear these experiences, but one can begin to observe the beauty of it:

“It visits you like a mist, a vapor, a fog. It is generally uninvited. And as some people are born into royalty, wealth and prestige, others inherit a disposition for sadness.”

Notice how Ms. Stover pairs this experience with images of being born into royalty, wealth and prestige. In contrast, the mental illness promoters would much prefer to have us associate such experiences with being stuck with an awful disease we can only learn to manage with psychiatric drugs and, if that doesn’t prove sufficient, ECT.

Laren continues to weave her artistic images of melancholy with such words as:

“Sadness has a bad reputation. But I soon came to feel that melancholy — the word itself is late Latin from the Greek melancholia — is a word with a romantic Old World ring, with a transient beauty like the ring around the moon.”

And in another fine phrase, she tells us:

“it is fine to indulge in the cloudy charms of melancholy: to watch a sad black-and-white movie or to be swept away by the wind making a sound that Truman Capote described as a grass harp.”

My favorite line in Ms. Stover’s article is actually a quote from her late father, a writer who published 24 books, and apparently also dealt with the many challenges of melancholy: “I don’t know if you’ll be a writer,” he tells his daughter, ” but you have the ‘up down’ thing too. Make creative use of it, otherwise, people will think you’re just plain nuts.”

In our society, with its commercials every few minutes on TV telling us of all of the wonderful benefits of treating the terrible disease of depression with drugs, it is not easy to come to the artistic temperament point of view. And there are many good people that you will meet who genuinely believe that they have been saved from the depths of despair by doctors who utilize the medical model. If you choose to follow them down that road, I do wish you well. I have no desire to stop people from following the path that makes the most sense to them.

But for those who have not made their decision on what direction to head questionably into that dark night, I do gently ask for a momentary pause. Yes, in the physical illness domain, many medical procedures produce amazing outcomes. And it is therefore understandable that people will be eager to seek help from those who practice this medical approach to help in the domain of psychological distress. But it is worth noting that doctors can be terribly wrong at times. In the same issue of The New York Times as Ms. Stover’s article appears, we can find an article titled “How Doctors Helped Drive the Addiction Crisis.” It points out that,

OxyContin’s long-acting formulation makes it popular but also prone to abuse.

“The rate of death from prescription opioids in the United States increased more than fourfold between 1999 and 2010, dwarfing the combined mortality from heroin and cocaine. In 2013 alone, opioids were involved in 37 percent of all fatal drug overdoses.

Driving this opioid epidemic, in large part, is a disturbing change in the attitude within the medical profession about the use of these drugs to treat pain.”

A recent scientific analysis of the pros and cons of the so-called antidepressant, titled “Primum Non Nocere: An Evolutionary Analysis of Whether Antidepressants Do More Harm Than Good“ concludes:

We have reviewed a great deal of evidence of the effects of antidepressants on serotonergic processes throughout the body. Some of the effects are widely known, but they have been largely ignored in debates about the utility of antidepressants. Indeed, it is widely believed that antidepressant medications are both safe and effective; however, this belief was formed in the absence of adequate scientific verification. The weight of current evidence suggests that, in general, antidepressants are neither safe nor effective; they appear to do more harm than good.

Recent findings with regards to the previous standard medical recommendations for breast cancer and prostate screenings now indicate they led to far more harm than good for millions of patients.

And so, pausing, and considering an alternative way to think about melancholy may be well worth your while. If you feel you just can’t go it alone, meditation has been an enormous help for me in discovering a deeper understanding of these experiences. My son, Jack, has found his Vipassana meditation retreat experiences of enormous value, and the cost for these retreats is on a voluntary donation basis. Some counselors and psychotherapists who have not fallen hook, line and sinker into the medical model view of these types of challenging experiences, can be of great help to make the transition from ugliness to beauty.

Well, I hope this discussion has deepened the reader’s views of melancholy, sadness and tears. Until you join us again right here at “From Insults to Respect,” may all of your concerns be addressed with wisdom, love, and kindness.

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Tags Depression, Laren Stover, melancholy, mental illness, sadness, William James

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Bob Dylan On Tears

I have discussed the topic of crying and how it relates to how much respect a person might have for the crier in several earlier posts (see here and here). In those earlier posts we looked into the following questions: If I cry when criticized, does that mean I should view myself as acting like a baby? Is it right to view someone who cries as immature? In today’s post I’ll try to enrich some of these earlier issues by discussing Bob Dylan’s “Theme Time Radio Hour “show on the theme of tears (most of his shows are available on YouTube”.

Bob Dylan on Tears

Bob begins his show on tears as follows:

Well, welcome to Theme Time Radio Hour. In the background, some very sad music because this week, we’re gonna learn about sad clowns, crocodiles, and tear-stained make-up. We’re gonna look at a river of tears as we learn about crying. So grab yourself some Kleenex, heck, you better grab the whole box. Not that songs about crying are necessarily sad. This one at least sounds happy. It’s by Question Mark and the Mysterians–“96 Tears.”

Here are some of the lyrics to the song:

Too many teardrops
For one heart to be crying
Too many teardrops
For one heart to carry on

You`re way on top now since you left me
You’re always laughing way down at me
But watch out now, I`m gonna get there

We`ll be together for just a little while
And then I`m gonna put you way down here
And you`ll start crying ninety-six tears
Cry, cry, cry…

Hmmm, if this guy who is singing was a friend of mine actually going through a similar experience, how could I be helpful?

Well, just listening for awhile in a caring manner is almost always a good start. Rather than to be too quick to start offering advice or criticizing in any way, I might just softly summarize, every couple of minutes, what my friend has been saying, thus assuring him that I am accurately listening. If my summary is off the mark in any way, my friend will clarify.

At some point, I might explore with my friend his desire to not be crying. I understand that many people in our culture feel it is an immature act. You see this when someone does begin to cry in front of you and he or she quickly starts to apologize for crying. Is there some reason to change this attitude that crying is an act that only immature people do? Different people have different views about this.

Getting Back to the Dylan Show

After Bob opens his tear-soaked Theme Time Radio Hour show with “96 Tears,” which gave us an example of a man being bitter about his break-up with his lover, he plays a song by the lovely and talented Anita O’Day. In “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine” Ms. O’Day provides us a woman’s perspective on what it’s like to be crying over how a lover mistreated her.

And her tears flowed like wine
Yes, her tears flowed like wine
She’s a real sad tomato
She’s a busted valentine
Knows her momma done told her
That the man is darn unkind

Next up on Bob’s show is a tune by the great blues singer, Bobby Charles, who reminds us that even “Big Boys Cry:”

I cried last night until I couldn’t
I’ll cry tonight, I know I shouldn’t
It hurts to know that I can’t reach her
I learned to lose, she was my teacher

Well I try to hide all the tears down deep inside
But even big boys cry

I climb the walls, I chew my fingers
I run around but her love lingers
Her friends say she don’t talk about me
They say she’s doing fine without me

Well I try to hide all the tears down deep inside
But even big boys cry
Oh

Well I try to hide all the tears down deep inside
But even big boys cry

There are quite a variety of songs that Bob Dylan plays that remind us that crying is part of life for pretty much everyone. Bob introduces one of my favorites like this:

Thomas Fuller once said, “We’re born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed. Hank Williams knew what he was talking about. This song is about a very specific depression inspired by a troubled relationship with his wife, Audrey Sheppard. Here that Lonesome Whippoorwill. He sounds too blue to fly. I’m so lonesome I can cry.

What human being is unable to relate to these sad lyrics?

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind the clouds
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die?
Like me, he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry

After a couple of more sad songs, Bob lightens things up a bit:

We still have plenty of tears to shed here on Theme Time Radio Hour’s crying edition.

He then plays a little of the audio track from the movie A League of Their Own. Tom Hanks, playing a manager of a women’s baseball team begins to shout criticism of one of his players. We hear the player begin to cry. Incredulous, Tom asks, “Are you crying?”

“No,” comes the reply from player, but then we hear her weeping.

“Are you crying?” Tom asks again, but now he is yelling. “There’s no crying! There’s no crying in baseball! There’s no crying in baseball!!! No Crying!!!!!”

For those who didn’t see the movie, it might be hard to understand why this scene strikes so many of us as funny, while touching at the same time. I guess you just have to see the movie to understand. I will say this, despite what Tom says in the movie, I have seen many men even in the major leagues crying after losing a big game. Often, they throw a towel over their head in an effort to hide their tears.

As Bob’s tear-fest show begins to wind down, he provides us a quote from Oliver Wendell Homes-“Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility. One is wind power, the other, water power.”

Then he he tells us that “poets have always used crying as an inspiration. Here’s an example by Dylan Thomas.”

Clown In The Moon

Dylan Thomas

My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.

Well that’s pretty much my blog post for today. I hope it has provided you some food for thought about this whole crying stuff. And with that, let’s end with the words that Bob uses as he ends his show on tears:

Well, the old clock on the wall says it’s time to go. It’s a good thing because I’m out of Kleenex anyway. So I’m gonna hop in my car, head down the Robinson Freeway and get myself a beer I can cry into. In the meantime, remember the words of our former president, Woodrow Wilson: There is little for the great part of history except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags Bob Dylan, conflict management, conflict resolution, crying, respect, tears

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From Psychiatric Name Calling to Plain, Humane English

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date March 14, 2015
4 Comments on From Psychiatric Name Calling to Plain, Humane English

Many mental health service providers well know that there are serious problems with the jargon that is used in their profession. In a recent post titled “Psychiatric Name Calling: Is It Time To Put A Stop To It?” I outline some of the most glaring ones. In a subsequent post titled “Psychiatric Name Calling: Is There An Alternative?” I describe a plan for professionals who have an interest in eliminating the problems inherent in the current psychiatric pathologizing approach. This plan would allow professionals to replace the old model with one that would be practical, more consistent with principles of science, and far less stigmatizing.

As I have been seeking ways to promote these ideas, it has become more and more apparent that the gears of the mental health service provider professional organizations grind slowly. Until the necessary changes occur, what can the average English speaking person do when faced with terms like mental illness, major depressive disorder, psychosis, schizophrenia, etc.?

Three Principles That Can Be Used When Psychiatric Pathology Terms Are Employed by Others So That The Negative Effects Associated With Their Usage Can Be Reduced

Even people who are not mental health service providers will regularly use psychiatric jargon. Thus, a French writer once wrote:

My sadness was without limit, and having got possession of me, it filled my life from the most indifferent external acts to the most secret thoughts, and corrupted at their source my feelings, my judgment, and my happiness. It was then that I saw that to expect to put a stop to this disorder by my reason and by my will, which were themselves diseased, would be to act like a blind man who should pretend to correct one of his eyes by the aid of the other equally blind one.

In this quote, the French writer, to describe some concerns he had about his sad mood and how it was affecting his feelings, judgments, and happiness, uses the words “disorder” and “disease.” This is the type of language most mental health service providers throw around. What is the writer attempting to convey by their use?

Sometimes when these words will be employed, their context will make it clear what meaning the author intends. In this example, the author does provide some context. He clearly indicates he was much sadder than he wished to be, and he believed he was unable to do anything about it. He also expressed a concern about his feelings, judgments, and happiness, but he was less clear about what he meant by this.

When someone begins to use pathologizing language and we simply don’t know what is intended, we might end up with misleading, simplistic associations. And so, here are three principles that can be used when psychiatric pathology terms are employed so that we can avoid unnecessary confusion.

Each Time Someone Uses A Psychopathologizing Term, Ask The User Of The Term For A More Specific Description Of What Is Meant By It

In the example that I provided above, there was some lack of clarity about what the French writer meant about his judgments. We know that he felt that it was disordered and diseased. That really tells us nothing more than he was dissatisfied with his judgments. To clarify, we could ask for some specific examples of when his judgment proved to him unsatisfactory.

As another example, suppose you hear Alice saying that John Doe is “mentally ill.” If you want to use this first principle, you would ask Alice what, specifically, does “mentally ill” mean to her and what has John done specifically that led to her calling John this name. These questions typically lead to further constructive discussions and ends up clarifying the nature of many fascinating experiences.

When Psychopathologizing Terms Are Employed, Express A Concern That This Terminology Simplistically Devalues An Experience

Terms like “mental disorders,” “mental illness” and “psychosis,” even when used by professionals, implies that there is something wrong with the person being described. However, as I described in my post “Are Mental Illnesses Really Potentially Helpful Tools?” there are numerous examples of the types of experiences that tend to be labelled mental disorders that end up being enormously helpful. Moreover, in cultures that recognize this possibility the outcomes for those people undergoing these challenging experiences are distinctly better.

And so, as you begin to use the first principle, asking for the user of pathologizing terminology for more specifics, if he or she seems to be suggesting that the experience is bad, you might wish to point out this well documented observation. At such times, I often say, “Many people with artistic temperaments have these types of experiences. Such people have given the world some of its most valued achievements.”

Instead Of Using The Concept of “Disease” And “Illness” To Encourage Humane Responding Toward Individuals Undergoing Challenging Experiences, Emphasize Rights, Kindness, And Practical Reasons

In seeking to encourage people who are using pathologizing terminology to be more specific, it is not uncommon to find that one reason they use these terms is that they hope it will encourage people to be more humane toward those who have certain challenging experiences. They usually mean well by this, but this approach has been used for centuries and history documents that despite such efforts, people who are being given these labels have often ended up in some of the most horrible, degrading treatment facilities.

Instead of using the concept of “disease” to encourage humane responding toward individuals undergoing the experiences that get labelled with pathological terms, an alternative is to emphasize human rights, kindness, and practical reasons.

Note that when people in a town are hit with a hurricane, we don’t have to resort to calling them ill to encourage some help. Instead, we have set up laws that entitle people to certain rights from the government when emergencies occur. Moreover, as word gets out about what is occurring to those who are suffering, out of kindness, people make donations or join their hands to provide direct assistance in a variety of ways. And lest we forget, there are practical reasons to lend a hand. By doing so, we model for people just what kindness is all about.

Any of us can find ourselves in an emergency situation. The more we promote acts of kindness, the more likely we may find that others will treat us with kindness if we are ever to find ourselves in a very unfortunate set of circumstances.

Using the Three Principles

William James, in his grand book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, tells us of some people who have mystical experiences that tend to be called “mental disorders.” James begins to use the three principles when he seeks out descriptions of the various mystical experiences that go well beyond the simplistic psychopathological descriptions. He then states that these mystical states have the right to be absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come.

It is vain for rationalism to grumble about this. If the mystical truth that comes to a man proves to be a force that he can live by, what mandate have we of the majority to order him to live in another way? We can throw him into a prison or a madhouse, but we cannot change his mind-we commonly attach it only the more stubbornly to its beliefs.

It mocks our utmost efforts, as a matter of fact, and in point of logic it absolutely escapes our jurisdiction. Our own more “rational” beliefs are based on evidence exactly similar in nature to that which mystics quote for theirs. Our senses, namely, have assured us of certain states of fact; but mystical experiences are as direct perceptions of fact for those who have them as any sensations ever were for us…. The mystic is, in short, invulnerable, and must be left, whether we relish it or not, in undisturbed enjoyment of his creed.

In this quote, we find no plea from James that we should treat mystics humanely because they have a mental disease. Instead, James puts forth “rights” and “pragmatic” considerations. He argues that just like we in the majority would not like to be ordered to live in a particular way, these mystics have the right to live their way. And pragmatically, if we do use heavy-handed approaches to try to change them, such as throwing them in a madhouse, they will become more stubborn in their beliefs.

James proceeds from here to state that mystics have no right to claim that “we ought to accept the deliverance of their peculiar experiences, if we are ourselves outsiders, and feel no private call thereto.” His theme is tolerance for both the majority toward the minority and vice versa.

Returning to pragmatic arguments, James tells us in his chapter on mysticism that some have found that their mystical experiences have led to wonderful fruits that they highly valued. Some, for example, suffered for a great period of time and after their mystical experience felt wondrously free from their pain and found in its place increased energy and happiness.

James well realizes that the fruits from mystical experiences are not always positive, but he asks us, at the very least, to realize that they have the potential to “be indispensable stages in our approach to the final fullness of the truth.” Thus, we see that “rights” and “pragmatic arguments” can be used instead of a disease concept to promote humane, kind responses toward those who have the types of experiences that tend to be called mental disorders.

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Tags insults, mental disorders, mental health concerns, mental illness, name calling, William James

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Overcoming Fear

Recently I wrote a post titled “Free of Fear,” employing the name of the musical group my two sons, Jack and Lennon, happen to be in. They had just released a new album, See You on the Other Side, and when I went to the album release party it got me to thinking about the subject.

When we become free of fear, it seems to me, we still experience fear from time to time, but we are no longer imprisoned by it. As I discussed in my earlier “Free of Fear” post, a key that can set us free from this imprisonment are inspiring narratives that includes a fearful struggle that ends in success, coupled with a vision of why the particular form of success was of value not only to the struggling individual but to others as well. During this past week, I’ve thought about some additional ideas for overcoming fear and I received a couple of worthwhile comments about my last post on this topic that I hope will spark some debate.

Additional Thoughts on Overcoming Fear

Before I went to the Free of Fear show, I viewed fear simply as a type of emotional pain which can be dealt with pretty much like other types of emotional pain. Regular readers of this blog know that I have proposed three approaches to dealing with emotional pain that doesn’t cost a cent and yet are highly effective—sensory focus, an expressive writing technique, and meditation. Although I contend that all three of these approaches can also be helpful for freeing us from fear, by participating in the Free of Fear multi-art event that included music, paintings, dance, poetry and a short story, I came to a deeper appreciation that fear has something about it that makes it, in a way, somewhat unique from other forms of emotional pain.

In our culture, unlike other forms of emotional pain, there are numerous narratives that have instilled within our breast the notion that to be fearful is cowardice, whereas to not be fearful is associated with bravery and courageousness. Cowards, in some circles are shot, hung, and despised, whereas those who display courage are cheered, given tickertape parades and Medals of Honor.

Such narratives do have something to offer in our coming to an understanding of the nature of fear. And yet, to truly become free of fear, an additional narrative that offers a more nuanced understanding of fear’s role in life is necessary. For your consideration, I offer you the Wright Brothers.

The Wright Brothers Find That Their Fear is Helpful.

For hundreds of years many people have dreamed of flying. Some folks found that this dream led to some ideas for building various contraptions. A few rather fearless people built and tried out first attempts at flying machines. Unfortunately, these brave souls usually either perished in their attempts or became so injured that they ended up giving the project up. Then the Wright brothers came along. They, too, had the dream of flying. And they, too, had some ideas of what type of contraption might make their dream come true. But when they built the first version, their hearts began to beat wildly and they began to sweat, and they decided not to try it out right away. They at first criticized themselves for not being brave, but then they sat with their emotions, allowed themselves to experience their physical sensations mostly nonjudgmentally, and at one point they experienced a creative thought—maybe we can come up with some way to first test our ideas out in a safer manner. They sat on this idea while also experiencing their fear and then another creative idea burst into their awareness. From this idea, the Wright Brothers developed wind tunnels that allowed them to safely observe what happens when they systematically varied different shapes of wings and propellers under various wind conditions. As they began to learn more and more about the nature of the materials that they would use wright Brothers2 to improve their original design, they managed to survive far longer than others who so bravely jumped right into trying out their early flying machines. At the same time that this was going on, some other people knew that they, personally, would be way too fearful to try out any flying machine, and yet they still sought to help this project. They found that to be part of this dream, to enter into a connection with this dream inspiring. One guy, for example, was trying to come up with an engine that was lighter and more powerful than other engines because a real practical airplane would need that type of engine. This guy was actually afraid of heights, and yet he eventually did develop a much improved engine. The Wright Brothers, having at this point lived long enough to learn a great deal from their observations in wind tunnels, combined this with this new type engine. Now they really were ready. And then they found that they now had enough confidence in their well tested ideas to try out their newly designed airplane.

This type of narrative reveals that a certain amount of fear can be helpful, and even lifesaving. Moreover, we all benefit from the diversity of fearful experiences found in human nature. As people come to a better, deeper understanding of this, the simplistic thoughts that associate fear with nothing but negative attributes are transformed into something far closer to the truth. Rather than being imprisoned by the idea that experiencing fear can only mean we must be a coward, the idea that fear can be, at times, a useful tool can serve to help us overcome our fear.

Now, some people have expressed a concern that my parable might lead to people becoming complacent with their fears. Perhaps in certain situations this might occur. But I contend that the Wright brothers never became complacent, and their narrative of overcoming their fear by careful planning serves as an enduring inspiration to all the inventors that will follow in their brave footsteps.

Two Comments From my “Free of Fear” Post

I want to finish up this post by sharing with you a couple of comments about my last post on this topic that throws some additional light on this topic.

Comment by Frank Farley, PhD

Dr. Farley is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Temple University and former president of the American Psychological Association. Upon reading my post from last week, he wrote:

Nice post on “Free of Fear”. Any artistic, or psychological, process that will help liberate people from their fears is worthy of our attention and support. The constricting effect of fear on the possibilities of life is profound, and the potential of so many lives never get realized. One avenue to freedom from fear is through risk-taking, through confronting uncertainty in small steps, building up to self-confidence in the face of the major uncertainties that many experience. Positive risk-taking can to some extent be learned, be educated for (the “Fourth R”), and if started early in life, can strengthen us to move forward against those fearsome uncertainties that may confront us.

All the best,

Frank Farley

Naturally I’m honored that Dr. Farley took the time to comment on my post. I particularly liked the part in his comment where he mentions confronting uncertainty in small steps. It reminded me of a time when I was a teenager and I was trying to ask, for the first time in my life, a girl out on a date. Several tries ended with me chickening out and questioning my manhood. Feeling like a total coward, I tormented myself over this for weeks. And then, one day I came up with the idea that perhaps asking this girl out was too much to take on all at once. Maybe I should start small and just try to go over to her and say something brief about some movie I had seen. Without the pressure of saying something to her AND asking her out, I found that I was able to manage this smaller task. Fortunately for me, she responded in a warm and friendly manner, and it wasn’t long afterwards when we were going to a movie together on a star filled Saturday night.

Comment by Tom Greening, PhD

Tom is the author of Nasreddin the Psychologist, a book of droll stories about a wise fool, and Words Against the Void, a collection of thought provoking poems. Upon reading my post from last week, Tom wrote:

To Jeff,

Here is my response…

FEAR OF HELL

I¹m full of fear and angst and dread,
so sometimes wish that I were dead,
but worry that I¹d land in hell
and know no sinner who can tell
me what it¹s really like down there
and whether Satan would be fair
and give me credit for good deeds
and cater to my special needs.
Thus I will grimly persevere
and struggle sinfully up here.

I replied to Tom’s poem with a poem of my own:

Your Fear of Hell

Your fear of hell
Is like a well,
And really something swell.
Sip its water
Enjoy the border
Where good and bad
Merges to sad,
Twists into dread,
Freshens your bed
Where your dreams lead,
Sprinkled with seeds
For the flowers
Of creativity.

Well, those are some thoughts on overcoming fear that I wanted to share with you this week. Thanks for taking the time to read them! Please let me know your thoughts, questions, or feedback by leaving me a comment below. I always do my best to reply to everyone.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags challenge, Dr. Frank Farley, Dr. Tom Greening, emotional pain, fear, Frank Farley, free of fear, overcoming fear, threats, Wright Brothers

conflict resolution Emotional pain free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum meditation psychological maturity sensory focus wisdom

DEALING WITH EMOTIONAL PAIN

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date July 8, 2013
11 Comments on DEALING WITH EMOTIONAL PAIN

You get a phone call and discover the person you have fallen in love with has decided to end the relationship.

An event is coming up and each time you think about this, you experience waves and waves of fear.

Some big kids at school teased you in front of your friends and when you get home you find yourself vividly recalling, over and over again, what happened. These images are accompanied by gripping, gut-wrenching feelings of embarrassment.

Americans typically use three approaches when they are faced with such experiences. Let’s take a quick look at them, and then consider three very different approaches that are free and backed by research effectiveness studies.

Three Typical American Approaches to Deal With Emotional Pain

1. Drinking alcohol or taking pills.

Here we see a man who is using the drinking approach, and he ends up falling into the great sea of turmoil.

2. Trying to avoid thinking about the emotional pain.

Here we see Linus using the avoidance approach. People who try to avoid the problem of emotional pain sometimes say they don’t pay any attention to it, or that they just ignore it.

3. Trying to divert your attention to something more pleasant.

Here we see Ted trying to “face his fear” by diverting his attention to some fantasy.

If you are using one or more of these three approaches and find that you are completely satisfied with the results, I’d still like you to consider trying three different ones. They won’t cost you a dime, and there is scientific support for each.

Three Different Approaches to Dealing with Emotional Pain

1. Sensory Focus

“Sensory focus” involves turning your attention to the physical qualities of the pain and observing the sensations you are experiencing.

If the sensations bring forth words such as pain, or awful agony, you accept this without judgment. You very gently, when you feel ready, return your focus to the physical sensations as if you are tasting, for the first time, some fresh mountain water from a tropical island. Just let the sensations wash over and through you for a couple of minutes. Do this each time you begin to experience the sensations. Also, find some time once in the morning, and once in the evening to take a couple of minutes to sit by yourself and practice doing this.

Although for many Americans distraction is believed to be more effective for managing distressing painful experiences than observing the physical sensations, when compared in experimental studies, distraction most often turns out to be the inferior technique.

Now, I should point out that if you look quickly online, you will see research reports that claim just the opposite—that distraction leads to better outcomes than experiencing the felt qualities of distress. These reports are usually based on an analysis that failed to make a distinction between sensory focus and emotion focus. Emotion focus has individuals attending to the emotional aspects of the pain. For example, someone going through a painful experience might focus on a thought such as, “This pain is making me feel terribly angry.” Notice that the emotion focus approach has one observing a set of words describing the feeling, whereas sensory focus has one observing its physical sensations.

In more recent studies, researchers have been making a clearer distinction between emotion focus techniques and sensory focus techniques. It now looks like sensory focus tends to be more efficacious than distraction.[1] More importantly for dealing with distressing emotional experiences, sensory focus was found to be even more effective when researchers looked not just at the short term effects of coping, but what happened in the long term.

Most studies on the effects of different coping styles look at what happens within four minutes of a painful experience. In such studies, sensory focus tends to be a more effective coping technique, but occasionally distraction did just as well, or even a little better. In a study by Kevin McCaul and Carl Haugtvedt,[2] for example, distraction reduced distress early in the four minute trial, but attention to sensations was a superior strategy for the last two minutes.” When studies looked at what happens when pain lasts longer than a few minutes, or a similar pain occurs again a week later, sensory focus over time more clearly is the better coping strategy.

Now some have argued that sensory focus works with men, but not women. However, even for brief pain lasting for just a few minutes the results have been inconsistent. For example, Thompson and his associates[3] found that women experienced less pain with distraction, but Roelofs and his associates[4] found that women who report that they are high in pain-related fear benefited more from the sensory focus technique than they did from distraction. In this study the whole painful experience was of the short term variety, lasting four minutes. There are fewer studies involving women and longer term pain, but Leventhal[5] and his associates found that women in labor who were instructed to monitor their pain sensations experienced a sharp decline in pain and negative mood during active labor. There was no decline in the control group that received no such instruction. Note that labor tends to last several hours, in contrast to the four minute type of pain that is usually the object of study in the scientific literature.

It appears that when you focus on carefully observing the sensations, your body mobilizes its internal resources to cope with the distressful experience. You have seen what happens when you cut your finger. You experience some pain, and before long your body, in an incredibly complex process, begins healing. Within a few days the cut is completely gone. You see from this that your body has a way to deal with the cut in a manner that the greatest scientists cannot yet duplicate. Similarly, when you take the time to fully observe the sensations from a distressing experience, your body over the course of time appears to carry out a process to address the distress in an incredibly helpful manner.

2. The Expressive Writing Technique

Over the course of four days, write for a minimum of 15 minutes at each sitting about something that has led to your challenging emotional experience. As you do so, make sure you include not only what happened, but also what you felt when it happened, and how you now feel about what happened. Include your deepest emotions and thoughts about what occurred. Really let go and explore your feelings and thoughts about it. As you do so, recall the sensory experience of these feelings, not just the words that define the experience. In your writing, you might tie this experience to your childhood, your relationship with your parents, people you have loved or love now, or even your career. How is this experience related to who you would like to become, who you have been in the past, or who you are now?

You can write about the same issue every day or a series of different issues. Whatever you choose to write about, however, it is critical that you really let go and explore your very deepest emotions, sensations, and thoughts.

As you go through this experience, many people report that after writing, they sometimes feel somewhat sad or depressed. Like seeing a sad movie, this typically goes away in a couple of hours and in the long run is beneficial.

If you find that you are getting extremely upset about a writing topic and come to feel it is unwise to continue, trust your judgment and stop writing or change topics. You might try to return to the extremely unsettling topic again in a week or two. If you again begin to have feelings that are so extremely upsetting that you feel it is unwise to continue, trust your judgment and stop. Try one more time to write about this topic in a month or so. If you end up striking out, you might want to seek out a professional counselor to help you to process this sensitive material (see HERE for some suggestions for obtaining this type of counseling services).

Expressive writing has demonstrated in research studies to improve health outcomes and to reduce the anguish people experience during episodes of depression. You can find the research supporting the expressive writing technique by clicking here and here.

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3. Meditation

For most people, meditation doesn’t provide relief of emotional challenges as quickly as sensory focus, but when it is combined with sensory focus and the expressive writing technique, it can lead to long term improvements.

In an earlier post, I describe a simple form of meditation, along with the research supporting its effectiveness (see Anger, Ruminations and Meditation). Millions of people for thousands of years have attested to both its health and emotional benefits.

So, there you have it, three approaches to dealing with emotions that are free, and can turn what is now experienced as pain into a valued source of creativity. Rather than something that has been perceived as negative, it is possible to come to understand that these challenging experiences are our only opener of our eyes to the highest levels of truth.

[1] J. Suls & B. Fletcher, 1985, The relative efficacy of avoidant and nonavoidant coping strategies: A meta-analysis. Health Psychology, vol 4 (3) 249-288.

[2] K. McCaul and C. Haugtvedt ,1982, J. of Personality and Social Personality, , vol 43(1), 154-162.

[3] T. Thompson, E. Keogh, & C. C. French, 2011, “Sensory focusing versus distraction and pain: moderating effects of anxiety sensitivity in males and females,” Journal of Pain, 12(80), 849-858.

[4] J. Roelofs, ML Peters, & M. van der Zijden, 2004, “Does fear of pain moderate the effects of sensory focusing and distraction on cold pressor pain in pain-free individuals? The Journal of Pain, vol 5, 250-256.

[5]E. Leventhal, H. Leventhal, S. Shacham, & D. V. Easterling, 1989, “Active coping reduces reports of pain from childbirth,” J. of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 57(3), 365-371.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags emotional pain, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, meditation, psychological maturity, sensory focus, wisdom