WHY WE SUFFER

When Food is Used to Feed Inner Conflict

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Food is not always used, as we know, for healthy nourishment. Often it serves an ulterior motive, as a way for us to sneak into psychological mischief and indulge our emotional appetite for unresolved inner conflict.

Learn how food is misused for the purpose of recycling unresolved psychological issues.

When people struggle with overeating and weight gain, they usually believe their problem is with the food itself. They obsess or fixate on food. But food is only the meat and potatoes of their unresolved emotional issues.

In other words, food is being used to replay unresolved issues. In the foreground, in one’s face for that matter, is the unconscious compulsion to act out unresolved inner conflict. The primary conflict in the psyche is the conscious wish to feel strong and capable of self-regulation versus the unconscious willingness to experience oneself through familiar emotions associated with weakness, self-criticism, and shame. We can overcome this conflict by understanding the unhealthy psychological ingredients we bring to the table.

Food is just one of many external means by which people get into emotional trouble. We can make mischief with alcohol, money, drugs, possessions, work performance, family, friends, neighbors, and bosses. A basic principle governs all such misadventure, namely that the struggles in our life, our misery and failures, are direct offshoots of inner conflict. This conflict drives us compulsively to produce misery and self-defeat in our encounters with the world around us.

With inner conflict, we compulsively seek and create situations or circumstances through which we can feel the conflict. Food, alcohol, money, or people serve as staging-grounds on which to act out such conflict. The emotional price for this acting-out includes stress, self-doubt, guilt, shame, anxiety, and self-recrimination. Costs in behavioral self-defeat—involving incompetence, foolishness, and failure—must also be paid. [Read more…]

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The Self-Defeat of Passive Morning Thoughts

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What do you start to think about upon awakening in the morning? Is there a recurring pattern or theme to your early morning thoughts and reflections?

Those first moments upon awakening are, for a lot of us, unpleasant if not disturbing. That’s when people are evaluating their prospects for the coming hours, and their forecast is decidedly bleak.

It’s important to understand the nature of passive morning thoughts and feelings.

They’re starting off their day with thoughts and feelings of a passive nature: “I really wish I could just stay in bed;” or “I’m tired, and I’ll be dragging myself around all day;” or “Everything is scary and overwhelming,” or “So-and-so is going to ignore me (or bully me) today.”

Morning thoughts are often focused on the workday ahead. People might be full of dread at the prospect of all the work that needs to be done (“I’m overwhelmed with projects and don’t have enough time”). Others are agonizing over looming idleness and a sense of emptiness (“I’ll just be hanging with nothing to do, feeling crummy all day long”).

These thoughts can be wider in scope, involving expectations and worries concerning marriage breakup, losing one’s job, running out of money, and not knowing what to do in life. Frequent morning reflections also involve thoughts and feelings of being a failure or a loser.

Thoughts of this kind are passive, and they set us up to experience our day in a passive way. The coming hours are now more likely to be unpleasant and frustrating, and our actions are more likely to be strained, incompetent, and self-defeating.

At those moments, while lying in bed or getting dressed, we can overcome this pattern by recognizing and understanding the passive nature of these considerations and speculations. [Read more…]

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Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 6)

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Readers often send me emails with their comments and questions. Here I answer four of them, all dealing with different aspects of inner passivity. My responses are in italics.

We benefit by becoming more conscious of the nature of inner passivity.

I wrote to you some months ago. Since then I’ve bought many of your books and read the new articles you’ve posted. I’ve enjoyed becoming more aware of my internal processes. Yet I can still feel stressed about spending time with relatives I don’t necessarily get on with. I read one of your articles about family gatherings, yet still I have been trying to understand why I feel so angry when I think about seeing my sister who often takes her aggression out on me.

She is touchy and gets frustrated over traffic jams, etc. When she raises her voice at me, it affects my personal harmony and makes me feel disrespected. From reading your books, I understand that I’m attached emotionally to feelings of being powerless and helpless (she is my older sister, and her reactions have always made me feel victimized and unfairly treated). When I think about my responses to her attitude in previous months, I can see that I have reacted inappropriately with aggression and anger. This has made me feel even worse, as I don’t like disharmony.

I have tied to assert my rights and ask her not to talk to me disrespectfully, which has not really worked. She does not see any problems with her attitude and appears to be in denial. Any tips to deal with this? – L.K.

Thanks for getting my books. Glad they’ve been helpful. Try to use your time with your sister as a way to practice applying what you’re learning about depth psychology. See her as an opportunity for you to grow, not as a trial you have to endure. You’re feeling passive and disrespected around her, and your challenge is to see how these negative emotions arise in you. [Read more…]

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Is Ambivalence a Hidden Factor in Much of Human Misery?

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Ambivalence is one of our more perplexing psychological ailments. The source of this paradoxical mental-emotional state lies submerged in our psyche, almost as unfathomable as those bizarre deep-sea creatures that underwater cameras have discovered.

Ambivalence is a psychological state that can create much misery.

Ambivalence is the misery we feel when we have conflicting feelings—love and hate, for instance—that we experience simultaneously toward a person, group, object, institution, idea, or action. Ambivalence constitutes an excess of conflicting thoughts. It’s a tortured state of mind that involves failing to reach a coherent point of view on a subject one feels strongly about.

This psychological impasse contains elements of indecision, cynicism, confusion, and mixed feelings. But ambivalence has its own special psychological configuration. Under its influence, a person hovers in pronounced self-doubt, unable to feel or even to imagine a genuine or authentic self capable of assuming inner authority. This person is unable to feel or connect with the part of himself or herself that’s reasonably confident of knowing and acting upon one’s best interests. This state of self-alienation, of “not knowing one’s mind,” is one of many symptoms associated with inner passivity.

How widespread is the problem of ambivalence? Its collective effect could be contaminating many social and political issues. Ambivalence would likely be at play in people who hate the government while claiming to be patriots who love their country. Ambivalence is conceivably a factor with people who believe they’re decent and good while also convinced they’re wretched sinners. Also under its influence are people who understand the need to have police forces yet personally detest representatives of that authority. So too for those who denounce “forbidden” sexual attitudes and behaviors while in their imagination experience a compulsive allure for them. The ambivalence in these examples can be painfully acute. [Read more…]

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Inner Conflict is the Source of Cognitive Distortion

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So much of human thinking is irrational. This kind of messed-up thinking, often referred to as cognitive distortion, perceives reality in ways that are misleading or flawed, if not completely wrong, false, or stupid. (Examples follow below and more are found here.)

Our messed-up thinking produces irrational feelings and behaviors.

Irrationality floods our mind in the first years of life, so its staying power shouldn’t surprise us. The young child has to deal with pronounced self-centeredness, aggression, passivity, and baby fears. The child’s mental and emotional life is also confounded by the trauma of weaning, ambivalence, moral reproach, the threat of punishment, toilet training, the limits of brain power, the inability to frame situations on the basis of experience, the ups and downs of what is pleasant and unpleasant, and various other demands of necessary socialization.

In addition, a child soon starts to experience guilt and shame, along with a litany of what’s forbidden to see, exhibit, feel, and talk about. Much of this mental and emotional disorder remains in the adult psyche in the form of inner conflict and cognitive distortion.

Overcoming cognitive distortion is the primary aim of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which is America’s leading product in the mental-health marketplace. Yet CBT’s methodology just skims the surface. Depth psychology, in contrast, penetrates into the source of this distortion. This article offers readers a chance to understand cognitive distortion from the different points of view of these two methodologies. [Read more…]

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A Technique for Overcoming Insomnia

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If you’re plagued by insomnia or taking too long to fall asleep, you’ll find plenty of advice online. Yet a third of U.S. adults report not getting enough sleep, so that advice might not be helping much.

No–it’s not counting sheep!

I have a technique to offer the sleep-deprived, and it’s not one I’ve seen mentioned on the internet as a way to fall asleep. This is the second technique or practice that I’ve published for this purpose. The first was described at this website several years ago, in a post titled, Taming the “Little Monsters” of Insomnia.

The “Little Monsters” technique involves recognition of the role that inner passivity plays in insomnia. When inner passivity is activated in the psyche, people can lie awake unable to sleep because they’re entangled emotionally in feeling helpless, which produces anxiety and stress. This helplessness often arises from the feeling of being unable to tame the worrisome, self-critical, or catastrophic thinking running amok in one’s mind. The technique involves acquiring self-knowledge, namely deeper awareness of one’s unconscious self-defeating readiness to resonate emotionally with feelings of helplessness and self-doubt.

The second technique is based on the loving-kindness meditation, which is derived from Buddhism and also found in ancient Hinduism and Jainism texts. Here’s how it works: When lying awake unable to sleep, begin to reflect upon other people in your life. Pick a person from among your family members, friends, work associates, or someone struggling with disease, finances, or other hardships. Begin to feel that you care about that person and that you’re sending that person your kindest thoughts and feelings. [Read more…]

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Notes to Psychotherapists on Addressing Inner Passivity

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Inner passivity and inner conflict cause a split in our sense of being.

Earlier this month I received an email from a young psychotherapist, in practice for just a few years, who was struggling to understand how, despite his best efforts, a client of his had committed suicide. He wrote, in part:

I recently experienced a therapist’s worst nightmare and lost a client to suicide. I’ve struggled to make sense of it as he exhibited almost none of the traditional warning signs. One thing I do remember about him is that he was very inwardly passive. Your writings have given me the clearest picture of his internal world, one of a harsh critic and a passive recipient. Nothing in my training even remotely addresses the passivity that I now think was a big part of his suffering. I look forward to reading more of your work and using it to help more people in the future.

Since this therapist is interested in applying this psychological knowledge in his practice, I can offer a few points to assist him and other therapists. My regular readers, meanwhile, can benefit from understanding more about inner passivity and the therapeutic relationship from the therapist’s point of view.

The individual in danger of committing suicide is likely to be inwardly weak and disconnected from self, unable to support himself or herself emotionally. (See an earlier post on the subject.) This weakness is a symptom of inner passivity, which I describe in my books and articles. Inner passivity operates as an enabler of our inner critic, and it’s a major factor in many kinds of dysfunction, including depression, anxiety, and addictions.

As my clients start seeing and understanding their inner passivity, they’re able to recognize it as a clinical condition and a universal peculiarity of human nature. With growing insight, they begin to see and feel the powerful influence of the passive side as they also shift away from their unconscious identification with it. As a benefit of this recognition, they start to detach emotionally from false impressions of themselves (such as impressions of being unworthy or a hopeless failure) that their symptoms have misled them into believing. In this process, their best self emerges from under the weight of painful and self-defeating symptoms. [Read more…]

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Another Visual Portrayal of Our Psyche’s Dynamics

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Our body, mind, and psyche are fundamentals of our existence. Our body is visible to us and our mind is at our disposal. But our psyche tends to hide in the mist of our unconscious, like the hint of a person lurking in the background of a dream.

This image depicts our unconscious tendency to gravitate toward unresolved negative emotions.

When we don’t know basic facts about our psyche, we find it harder to connect with our deeper, better self. We’re then at the mercy of inner turmoil when our psyche is conflicted, as it is to some degree in just about everyone.

The psyche is the repository of forces, dynamics, and conflicts—largely unconscious—that influence and even determine our personality, behaviors, thought processes, and prospects for success and happiness. Misery and self-defeat arise from any dysfunction occurring in our psyche. Knowing more about our psyche is obviously important.

Our psyche becomes apparent and accessible to us—not visually but as a new awakening of our intelligence—when we learn and see how the principles of depth psychology apply to us personally.

Learning about the psyche is challenging because we can’t put it under a microscope and study all its aspects. What exactly is it anyway? We can’t even say whether our psyche is an entity within us, an energy field swirling around us, or some other mysterious configuration.

In this post, I’m presenting an illustration that depicts a major operating system of our psyche. This illustration (drawn and colored by me in my folksy style) depicts our unconscious tendency to become entangled in unresolved negative emotions. (Click to enlarge image.) I recently published another visual portrayal of the psyche (in a post titled, Illustrating the Characters Who Mess with Our Mind), along with a written explanation of what is portrayed. My latest artwork, published here with this post, provides another overview of how our psyche works. Over the years I’ve written extensively about all of these dynamics, and I’m hoping that this visual portrayal and the one published earlier will help readers make sense of depth psychology. [Read more…]

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Get to Know Your Psyche’s Operating Systems

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People tend unconsciously to falsify reality. We’re usually not aware of how and why our sense of reality is distorted, which is an impediment to our intelligence.

Separate operating systems in our psyche can distort our objectivity.

What’s causing this distortion of reality? At play in our psyche, with distinct and separate “operating systems,” are the inner critic, ego, id, psychological defenses, inner passivity, and resistance. Not only do these systems tend to operate outside our awareness, they’re also at odds with one another as they churn up inner conflict, negative emotions, and self-defeating behaviors. I have illustrated and described them here as aspects or “characters” of our psyche.

As we grow psychologically, a dominant and healthy inner operating system arises from our solid connection to (and embrace of) our authentic self.

For this article, I focus on the operating system known as inner passivity. It’s the least well-known and perhaps the most problematic of these inner systems. This passivity, which affects almost everyone, is a mental-emotional state of mind through which we stumble into suffering and self-defeat. Humankind has not yet begun to appreciate this aspect of our human nature.

We are in the throes of this passivity when we interpret situations and challenges through feelings of being overwhelmed, helpless, indecisive, trapped, constrained, restricted, controlled, held accountable, required to submit, and otherwise victimized. [Read more…]

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How to Love Yourself

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A lot of people struggle with the challenge of trying not only to feel good about themselves but, more urgently, trying to avoid feeling bad or really bad about themselves.

Being a loving person is our birthright. But we still have to make it happen.

When individuals understand the primary psychological dynamics that produce self-doubt, self-criticism, self-rejection, and even self-hatred, they can escape from these negative feelings and begin to appreciate themselves in an accepting and loving way.

Being a loving person is our birthright. This ability comes naturally when we clean house, meaning when we identify and resolve the inner conflicts that produce negative emotions.

You can get to love by looking at the inner dynamics that cause you to dislike yourself. Feeling bad about oneself usually arises from an inner conflict involving feelings of being unworthy, unimportant, and deserving of disrespect. What exactly is the conflict? Consciously, we want to feel good about ourselves but many of us still resonate emotionally with (or identify with) the feeling that being disrespected and unworthy is somehow true to the essence of who we are.

Why is this? When we’re feeling bad about ourselves on a daily basis, the most likely culprit producing these bad feelings is self-aggression. This self-aggression is a byproduct of the natural biologically endowed aggression that human beings have required in order to survive. Our ancient ancestors were very aggressive as hunters and defenders of their territory. This aggression has been modified and tempered by civilization. Religious principles have at times helped to contain this aggression, as have legal systems, educational achievement, social and cultural norms, and the threat of punishment and imprisonment. Yet our innate aggression still exists as part of our biology, and we can obviously see evidence for it in the extent of domestic and international dissension and strife. [Read more…]

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