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Key points
- Feelings are the conscious components of emotions.
- Emotions pass through unconscious judgments, biases, and coping habits to become conscious.
- In the transformation process, feelings, though real, can be inauthentic instantiations of emotions.
- Drilling down beneath our feelings reveals our coping habits, biases, assumptions, tacit beliefs, and values.
My last post described a drill-down process as a route to authenticity. Drilling down involves an examination of the perceptions, coping habits, core emotions, assumptions, beliefs, judgments, and values that underlie feelings. When these align, authenticity is automatic. When they don’t, authenticity is lacking. That's when a drill down is necessary.
The Case
Amanda was a 30-year-old woman who suffered from severe anxiety and despair, with occasional thoughts of suicide. She was the mother of a special needs child but could find no meaning or joy in parenting. Her husband of 10 years had mental health issues coupled with substance abuse. He separated from her in response to her continual shaming, which she acknowledged but insisted was justified.
These were her opening words in treatment:
“I am at the end of my strength. I feel numb, worthless, stupid, used, and unloved. I will try to stay calm and not reach out any more out of despair, because I just end up at the mercy of someone who is always protecting himself and not showing up for us.
"I am done, I am broken. He knew from my life history that I could not take abandonment, that it would destroy me. I do not only wish I was dead, I suspect that in many ways I am. I spend many hours just staring at a wall. I do the bare necessity chores and take care of our daughter as well as I can. If I turn off the ‘numbing’ for a few hours, it’s very messy and can contain howling and crying and anger. I still can’t comprehend what he did to me. I very very literally can’t cope.”
The Drill Down
Feelings: Anxiety, anger, contempt
Perception: My husband cruelly abandoned me, knowing it would destroy me.
Coping habits: Blame
Core emotions: Fear, guilt, shame, sorrow
Beliefs, assumptions, and judgments: My husband must agree with my perspective because I am right, and he is selfish, deceitful, and crazy. I’m gullible, a fool, too trusting, isolated, inadequate, and unlovable.
Fundamental value: Protecting and caring for my daughter
I couldn’t persuade Amanda to alter her perception with self-compassion and a more compassionate understanding of her husband, which would have increased the likelihood that he could be more compassionate to her. The more Amanda blamed her husband and others for her pain, the more powerless she felt.
We worked on replacing the coping tactic of blame with improvement, that is, trying to make her situation or her experience of it a little better. (As a general rule, the mental energy we waste on blaming is better spent on improving.) However, small, incremental stages of improving require a desire for a better life, which Amanda lacked in her tormented state.
The core emotion from which her anxiety emanated was fear. Amanda was afraid of losing her relationship and her will to live. To follow the motivation of fear (make herself safe), she had to stop shaming her husband and instead try to encourage him to be more supportive. She could do this by focusing on his strengths and by accepting gradual but consistent progress. (Automatic defenses take time to disengage.) However, she was too angry and resentful to make herself feel safe.
The core emotion that triggered her anger and resentment was shame. This was not an easy realization; anger is an attribution of blame, and blame keeps us focused on others at the cost of self-awareness. By blaming her husband for her anger, she invalidated her shame. She needed to validate and accept her shame to change the beliefs, assumptions, and judgments underlying it:
The world is disappointing and cruel. I’m a failure as a wife and inadequate as a mother, and there is neither help nor comfort.
The motivation of shame is to stop doing what is failing and begin to do what will produce success and connection. Feeling her shame could open her heart to self-compassion and compassion for her husband. Understanding the message of her shame helped her soften her assumptions, beliefs, and judgments about herself and her partner. She recognized that they were both hurting and that inflicting more pain would only increase their suffering.
Once she aligned her feelings, perceptions, coping habits, core emotions, beliefs, assumptions, judgments, and values, Amanda was able to control the meaning of her experience in ways that facilitate healing, growth, authenticity, and hope.
This was Amanda’s written declaration at the end of treatment:
“I’m sensitive, humane, resilient, resourceful, empowered, and motivated to improve. I know that I have the strength, resilience, and self-compassion to heal this hurt over time, even when I don’t feel that way. I will stay true to my deepest values—I feel stronger when I do. I will reach out to friends and other loved ones and appreciate the world around me.”
"I will recognize human frailty in myself and in people I care about. I will evaluate my options and choose behaviors that will lead to a better future.”
“My pain has given me a deeper knowledge of myself and others and a deeper appreciation of those who struggle to grow from the ruins. I will resurrect my abandoned dreams—taking courses, looking up old friends, starting a small business, doing volunteer work in my community.”
Amanda came into treatment with victim-identity—identification with hurt and maltreatment. She could hardly think of anything except her perceived damage, injury, defects, and weaknesses. Victim-identity made her powerless. She left treatment with a healing-identity—identifying with her capacity to heal and grow. This marshaled her intellectual, emotional, and spiritual resources toward healing her hurt and outgrowing its otherwise indelible scars.
Emotional pain, and the depression that usually follows it, offer a period of reevaluation and opportunities for growth. In the sea of emotions, we drown on the surface and breathe in the depths.
