Learning to Be Yourself

Often we hear the advice, "Just be yourself," yet doing so is easier said than done. Many people come up against a void inside, as if they have no self to access, while others feel as if that self is a phony, or is despicable or boring. Our unresolved emotions are the problem, and they block us from a fuller appreciation of ourselves. The primary unresolved emotions that block us are rejection, betrayal, and abandonment. When we harbor these emotions, based on past impressions of how we were treated in childhood, we are, in fact, rejecting, betraying, and abandoning ourselves. We need to become aware that we are doing this to ourselves. It's caused by our compulsion to experience whatever is unresolved within us. To free yourself from this conflict, you have to begin to understand and perceive your own unconscious interest in recycling those old feelings of being rejected, betrayed, and abandoned. In a sense, you have to catch yourself in the act of doing this. That is how you put a stop to it.

Two Primary Voices Operate in Our Psyche

Our inner voices usually do not represent our best interests. They are the voices of conflict, and we can avoid coming under their influence when we identify them more precisely. One of the primary voices that plague most people consists of self-criticism, while the other consists of self-doubt. The voice of self-criticism is known as the inner critic, while the voice of self-doubt speaks for our passive, confused, or overwhelmed side. These voices are often caught in conflict with each other, engaging in an ongoing dialogue of accusations and defensiveness. The individual, meanwhile, is caught in the middle of this inner skirmishing. The healthier we are, the more we're able to assume our own authority, which is often an inner feeling of self-assurance and awareness. It's through the process of recognizing the conflicting voices as being irrational and negative, and shutting down the inner dialogue, that we establish our inner authority.

Protection Against Suicidal Feelings

Researchers were puzzled last month to discover that midlife suicide rates are rising. Many modern influences can be contributing to this trend. It takes a toll on us when friendships are so impermanent, good jobs are scarce, and human community is harder to maintain. Nevertheless, we can discover and develop a center within us from where we can be assured of our value and worthiness. Behind the impulse to consider committing suicide are feelings of worthlessness and self-rejection. We can protect ourselves from those thoughts and feelings with more self-awareness. We will absorb negativity from within our psyche and also from the world around us if we don't see clearly enough the process by which this happens. It's not just a matter of being more positive. We first have to understand the power of the negative and how susceptible we can be to it.

Respect, Self-Respect, and Disrespect

A client of mine complained that she wasn't feeling a lot of respect from her husband. Certainly, he had difficulty expressing his affection and appreciation for her. His family members had been notoriously disrespectful to one another. But my client had an issue here as well: It was very easy for her to feel disrespected. She too had been raised in a family where disrespect was dished out to the children. For this couple to move beyond the problem, the husband has to learn to be more sensitive and feeling-oriented, so that he can genuinely feel his respect for her. And she has to watch out for her tendency to slip into feelings of being disrespected, which includes feeling marginalized and unworthy. In fact, this constitutes her own disrespect toward herself, which is why she is especially sensitive to feeling disrespected by others. Such negative feelings will persist in our psyche, and they remain active if we fool ourselves into thinking the problem is exclusively about someone else's inconsiderate behavior toward us.

Expose the Inner Critic's Irrationality

Everyone has an inner critic and sometimes it's a brute. It attacks us subliminally like an invisible Tasmanian devil. Ninety-nine percent of the time the accusations it hurls at us are cruel and completely uncalled for. Unfortunately, many people, when they succumb to the inner criticism, become defensive with their thoughts and actions, although this too can all happen unconsciously. Whenever we feel that we're being hard on ourselves, the inner critic is at work. Try to get a sense of what you're being accused of, and begin to see it as negative energy that's irrational. It's simply self-aggression. Remember, we all have aggression, and it will come straight at us as a negative inner voice (or in the feeling of self-loathing) if we don't sublimate it and find acceptable channels for it. In any case, it's irrational--it doesn't represent the truth about us. Don't stand up to it with defensive words but rather with the awareness of its irrationality as well as with an understanding of the passive part within us that accommodates it.

The Unseen Bug in Internet Addictions

It's fine to be enthralled with the Internet, but a lot of people are literally captivated by this technology. A virtual life is no substitute for the real thing. Facebook has 60 million users, and many of them settle for email and pixel exchanges with others instead of real-life dancing, laughing, singing, and talking. A "love affair" with the Internet can be attributed to a psychological condition known as inner passivity. This condition is also at play with people who spend a lot of time gambling at casinos or watching TV. Inner passivity causes problems for us in our self-regulation. It prevents us from getting in touch with the part of us that represents our best interests. Through our inner passivity we're tempted to come under the influence of some person, force, belief, or technology, instead of being directed from within. When our inner passivity comes into focus, we're able to grow beyond this limitation.

The Source of Most of Our Guilt

People can feel a lot of guilt for the slightest misdemeanors that occurred ages ago. One client was still feeling guilty at times because she had gotten angry for a few hours during her mother's long, fatal illness over 30 years ago. The mother was sick for more than three years, and my client has been a conscientious daughter who tried her best to be helpful and ease her mother's pain. But she still regretted that one-time outburst of anger and frustration. I told my client, "The only reason you're still feeling guilty is because your inner critic is able to hit you up with negative accusations about it that are unfair and quite irrational. You have to see that, through inner passivity, you're allowing your inner critic to pass judgment on you. That causes the guilt. As you get stronger and eliminate this unconscious passivity, you'll successfully shut down your inner critic and live guilt-free and in greater harmony."

Looking for Trouble in all the Wrong Places

It amazes people when they begin to see clearly how they've spent a lifetime acting against their own best interests. One example of doing this involves what's called "injustice collecting." Injustice collectors use their powers of mind to conjure up different ways to feel offended, cheated, or otherwise victimized. This is called "misuse of the emotional imagination." A healthy person is interested in generating thought processes that lead to creativity, productivity, pleasure, or relaxation. An injustice collector, in comparison, is secretly (unconsciously) interested in generating thought processes that involve deprivation, control, criticism, and rejection. This produces tension, frustration, anger, cynicism, and depression. It also is a factor in behavioral problems such as addictions. Injustice collecting can be exchanged for a better life by becoming conscious of our inner negativity.

A Dream about Hell's Angels

In a recent dream a client of mine confronted a group of Hell's Angels. He was writing with paint on a sign, warning his neighbors of the gang's intentions to move into their neighborhood. The gang members knew who he was. About 20 of them were seated in an old jalopy, glowering at him with hostility. Calmly he told them, "I don't dislike any of you personally, but I don't want you here. You should also know that the hatred you feel toward me resides in you. You're responsible for whatever hatred you feel. Don't think you can put it on me, because I know better than to take it in." My client had learned the lesson well. This psychological fact applies to us all: If we want to be happy, we have to see that any negativity we feel towards others truly belongs to us. My client acknowledged, too, that the dream represented some negativity in him that he planned to expose and work out.

Our Inner Demons are Emotional Conflicts

We all know the feeling of struggling with our demons. Sometimes it feels like a losing battle. One problem is that people don't get enough understanding or clarity about what their demons consist of. It's hard to beat something when you can't clearly see it. Inner demons are emotional conflicts. For instance, a person can have a love-hate relationship with himself or herself. Or a person who is rich in many ways can still feel deeply deprived and dissatisfied. This person needs to clearly see the inner conflict, and to begin to undermine the power of the negative side of the conflict. We need to become an observer who can see his or her own psyche with objectivity, detachment, and the right psychological knowledge.

The Hidden Issues Behind Addictions

I read this definition of an addiction on the Internet, and I think that, as far as it goes, it's a good one: "Addiction is an unconscious way of coping with emotions." To help us end an addiction, we have to clearly identify what those emotions are. Usually, we have to go pretty deep into our psyche to identify them. For instance, the emotions of anger, fear, loneliness, and sadness are on the surface. These are not the causes of addictions. The causes are deeper feelings such as helplessness, deprivation, rejection, and criticism (especially self-criticism). We often are unaware of how acutely we can be stuck in such negative emotions. Before there is a substance addiction, there is an (emotional) addiction to something that is unresolved from our past.

The Rewards of Self-Knowledge

People with low self-esteem are caught in powerful emotional beliefs about themselves. Their challenge is to expose the irrationality of these beliefs. People with low self-esteem often look desperately for evidence that they're good. What they need to expose is how, deeper down, they're compulsively looking for ways to feel bad about themselves. They need to be able to see more objectively their inner temptation to be drawn into unresolved emotions concerning feeling unloved, rejected, abandoned, or disapproved of. On the surface of awareness, they'll feel inadequate, flawed, and unworthy. These feelings are not the problem--only the symptoms. The root problem is their secret affinity for indulging in unresolved feelings such as being unloved or rejected.

The Challenge of National Unity

If we want to be more united and live more harmoniously, we probably need to become better people. We say we want national reform, but why shouldn't personal reform be a prerequisite? We don't realize (and don't necessarily want to see) how negative we can be. Apathy and passivity, for instance, are negative. They produce painful feelings of helplessness, indifference, or cynicism. The inability to be satisfied with less materialism is also a negative condition. To various degrees, most people struggle daily with feelings of being victimized, deprived, rejected, or worthless. People frequently see something or hear something and then extract all the negative implications from it. Seeing this inner negativity can be challenging because we're always ready to cover it up with defenses and denial.

The Bittersweet Allure of Feeling Unloved

Odd though it seems, there's some strange affinity in human nature for feeling rejected, abandoned, and unloved. Not all of us are prone to this, of course, but many of us indulge in these feelings. We're dragged down into unhappiness, depression, and even ill health by clinging to these old unresolved emotions. Our affinity for these painful emotions, which I call secret attachments, is unconscious. Though common sense tells us that we ought to avoid painful feelings, common sense can't work for us until we see more clearly into the nature of our emotional conflicts. The more needy a person is, and the more desperate this person is for love, the more likely he or she is entangled in feeling unloved. When that attachment is brought into the light of awareness, our situation can improve dramatically.

The Art of Self-Regulation

All human systems need regulation. (I'm not a fan of government deregulation unless the bureaucracy is totally hidebound to begin with.) Each human being practices regulation according to his or her powers of self-regulation. Anyone skilled at the art of self-regulation stays clear of addictions, compulsions, and phobias. This individual also possesses the ability to keep negative emotions at bay. The stronger our sense of self, the more adept we are at self-regulation. We strengthen our sense of self by exposing and eliminating our inner conflicts, which consist of our tendencies to feel unloved, deprived, helpless, betrayed, and so on. Our self is the center within us where we can feel our goodness and also our power to be at peace with ourselves and others.

The Roots of Compulsive Self-Approval

Mark Twain once famously commented that human beings have only one main interest: their need for self-approval. It is "a yearning which is commonly so strong . . . that it must have its way." Liking oneself is desirable, of course. But a compulsive need for self-approval can make a person defensive, self-centered, and stubborn. Such self-approval is an unconscious reaction to a negative energy in our psyche that is called the inner critic, or self-aggression, or the superego. This part of us is harsh, cruel, and condemning. When it operates beyond our awareness, it causes a lot of emotional pain. Self-approval is a way of coping with our inner negativity, but it is not a very good solution.

Staying Positive When Negativity Approaches

When your partner is angry or upset at you, try not to take it personally. That’s easier said than done, of course. But two important facts can help you stay calm and centered. First, your partner’s blow-up likely has nothing to do with you. Your partner is probably just feeling his or her own pain (i.e. feeling criticized, disapproved of, unimportant, helpless) and is automatically or instinctively drawing you into that suffering. Second, recognize that you will be tempted to react to your partner with negative feelings based on what is unresolved in you. Be responsible for your own negativity. And try to avoid absorbing your partner’s negativity by staying connected to a sense of goodness and value in yourself.

Nothing is Easier than Fooling Ourselves

Fooling ourselves comes naturally. One glaring example is our conviction that someone else is to blame for our unhappiness: “His (or her) behavior is causing me to feel this way (offended, angry, depressed, etc.).” To be free of emotional sufferings and self-defeating behaviors we need to recognize the inner choices we make to indulge in the bittersweet appeal of unresolved negative emotions such as feeling deprived, helpless, criticized, betrayed, or abandoned. For instance, a person who easily feels criticized by others and reacts angrily to them is very likely to be his or her own worst critic (via the agency of the inner critic). Doesn’t it defy common sense to be angry at someone who may have been critical of us when we’re the first in line to be critical of ourselves? When we’re sensitive to criticism from others, we want to blame them for our reactions (or blame ourselves for being inadequate). In doing so, we’re covering up how much we’re secretly willing to indulge in that old unresolved feeling of being criticized or disapproved of.

National Behaviors Reflect Our Inner Progress

The sub-prime mortgage crisis--a collective acting out of national self-defeat--is a mirror image of what we each do when we engage in personal self-defeat. On a personal level, we slip into self-defeating situations when our negative impulses and tendencies (whether emotional or behavioral) are unregulated. This means we have not engaged an inner authority or a sense of self that can represent our best interests and take charge of a situation. Too much inner conflict keeps this sense of self from emerging. Unregulated, we passively drift along with the unresolved issues in our psyche, until the situation becomes so painful that we finally bail out (if we can). In the case of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the country drifted toward disaster over several years. No leader in the White House or at the Federal Reserve stepped forward to guide us to a safe shore. This failure indicates regrettably slow progress in our human development. Our inner self is wise and it protects us from folly once it evolves from the depths of our lingering primitive aspects.

Feeling Unloved? Look to the Source

Many of us end up in troubled relationships because we do not feel entitled to love. If we didn’t feel loved as children, we’re going to be challenged to feel it in our adult relationships. There’s no point blaming our parents for their imperfections and limitations. Even if we had cruel parents, our recovery depends on turning the spotlight on our own inner dynamics. We need to uncover our secret interest in holding on to feelings of being unloved. Though it sounds strange when we first hear it, most of us are to some degree unresolved with (and hindered by) old feelings of being rejected, abandoned, betrayed, and belittled. This is true even if our parents were normal and decent. If you want to become a loving person, you must observe (hear the thoughts and feel the emotions) of your own self-rejection. These thoughts and feelings are negative, irrational considerations that have no bearing on the truth of your goodness and value—but nonetheless you are secretly tempted to replay them and to indulge in them. They are noxious weeds, however, and with the right knowledge you can uproot them and throw them out of your garden.

Our Most Common Inner Conflict

When we have difficulty feeling harmony and peacefulness, we are usually suffering from the conflict in our psyche between two negative polarities, aggression and passivity. Aggression is dished out by the inner critic in the form of scolding, accusation, and harassment. The inner critic gets away with this unwarranted, usually irrational, intrusion into our life because of our inner passivity, which is our self-doubt, our separation from self, and the consequence of our incomplete evolvement. When we transcend this conflict through inner knowledge, we discover our true self, which is the realization of our goodness, our value, and our power of self-regulation. The self is also the point of access to our capacity and determination to live in harmony with all of life.

We are Masters of Inner Defensiveness

As a psychotherapist, I need to be skillful at penetrating the defenses of my clients. I empathize with them, but I don't let them hide behind their defenses. As an example, an individual who feels rejected by others may, as a defense, want to reject or hate those others in return. Blaming others for one's own painful feelings is a defense, designed to hide our collusion in our own suffering. Individuals who are sensitive to feeling rejected need to consider how they're compelled to feel rejection and go looking for it. Painful though it is, we compulsively re-enact whatever is unresolved in our psyche.

Don't Disappoint Yourself

One of the most common causes of self-defeat (meaning failure in our career, relationships, or self-regulation) is the expectation that others will see us as a disappointment. Maybe our parents saw us this way, or perhaps we experienced our mother or father acting this out in his or her life. Though consciously we want to do well and be successful, an emotional conflict is created by our lingering expectation of being a disappointment. The most painful aspect of this emotional attachment is our own sense of being a disappointment to ourself. Most people with this emotional challenge do not understand how determined they are, unconsciously, to hold on to the feeling of disappointment.

The Hidden Appeal of Deprivation

Greed, envy, and compulsive desires are recognized as problems for many of us. These are symptoms, however, not the deeper problem in itself. At the root of the problem is our emotional attachment to a feeling of deprivation. What we don't see (and don't want to see) is that, deeper down in our psyche, we are compelled to entertain or indulge in a feeling of being deprived or a feeling of missing out on something important. This is called a negative emotional attachment. It is a simple matter to clear ourselves of such an attachment once we make it conscious and bring it into better focus.

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