Chapter 7: The Role of Emotion

Emotion has taught mankind to reason.

Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715-1747)

Learning Objectives

ü Provide a framework for understanding the purpose of emotions

ü Discuss the concept of emotional identities and how they affect each of us

ü Provide categories of emotions viewed as strong versus weak

ü Explain the value of many emotions

I’ve devoted a lot of time to laying groundwork in order to get to this point in the book. We’ve spent time on power structures, communication patterns, historical perspectives of power and how emotion influences outcomes. We’ve looked at dichotomies that often result in an unfounded and often unproductive exchange of emotions. Do you believe that there are any unneeded emotions? If it helps, return to the list of emotions and create your own list of emotions that you feel aren’t necessary.

Have you ever asked yourself, “Why am I feeling what I am feeling? What possible purpose could this feeling have?” Most of us have wondered why we feel as we do. However, we often forget to ask, “What can I learn from this feeling?” Instead, we often try to hide the emotion or run from it. Emotions play a fundamental role in life. What do emotions do for our lives? They help us to form relationships, experience growth, and evaluate our performance. Besides that, they prompt us to learn and sometimes prompt us to quit, fight, cry, lie, and/or to hide.

A reason for feeling

Did you ever wonder how long a person would live if they could not feel fear? Why would someone want to apologize if guilt was not present? Why would someone miss the company of others if they could not feel sadness? We couldn’t appreciate life if we couldn’t feel these emotions. Unfortunately, many times we’re unable to pick and choose the emotions we feel, but we try to select how we display them. I often tell those I teach and counsel that everyone feels all of the same emotions; how we them makes us different. As was discussed in the dichotomy of strong versus weak, we learn to perceive these emotions differently, and depending on how we perceive them, we will show them differently to others.

Are we a society of manipulators? As I mentioned earlier, we favor rational thought instead of expressing emotion. We must consider emotions as they pertain to dealing with life issues, but logic is an integral part of that process. In addition, when emotion enters into the process, it is important to make sure we consider the emotions in balance with logic. Often people try to use logic, or they become carried away with emotion, but they do not seek the balance in understanding that emotion can be a healthy part of an interaction. Most emotions have a logical place, depending on the situation. If we can consider what the emotions are trying to tell us, then they can often help us to understand how to address the issue. As a result, instead of responding in a reactive manner, we need to learn how to respond in a proactive manner.

We often speak with logic instead of feeling; we are not vulnerable if we are not feeling. Through logic, we can mask emotions and defend ourselves from threat. This type of communication exists between children and world leaders alike and at all levels in between. As such, communication has become a cat and mouse game, sometimes with deadly results. We often mistake arrogance for pride, and believe in the nobility of martyrs. But if we look at these martyrs more closely, we may see that many died out of fear to express their true feelings. It seems that emotions and logic do not mesh well; although it may not want to do so, it may be in your best interest to consider the notion that there could be a logical purpose for each emotion.

Many of the clients I have worked with often feel that fear, shame, sadness, and guilt are worthless feelings. They feel that if these emotions did not exist, they would be much better off. Upon further discussion, they often find that they cannot do without these emotions. Instead, they realize that they chose to deal with the emotions in an undesirable manner.

If we think about each emotion without clouding our judgment with emotions, we would be able to see that all our feelings have a purpose. There are two major viewpoints regarding the development of the human race: creationism and evolution. Creationism centers on the belief that our “Creator” made us as we are. Evolutionism asserts that over a long period, we have adapted to our surroundings and became the humans of today. Perhaps we should think of the development of emotions from these same vantage points. If we believe in creationism, then we more easily accept the idea that all emotions are natural and serve a purpose. We could then say that our challenge is to understand each emotion and master their meanings. If we believe in the concept of evolution and/or do not wish to consider a divine purpose for our emotion, we may consider that our emotions have also evolved and they have enabled us to survive. In this case, it makes sense to try to understand the roles they play in our life so that we can see how they may contribute to further growth and evolution.

Emotional Mastery Versus Control

You may have observed my use of the word "master" in reference to emotion. I discriminate between the terms “master” and “control.” How we view these words and apply them to life can impact our quality of life. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, Control is defined as: (verb usage) “4. To exercise authority over; direct; commands 5. To hold back; curb; restrain.” (Noun usage) “1. The act or fact of controlling; power to direct or regulate; ability to use effectively 2. The condition of being directed or restrained”. The most appropriate definition of the term Master is defined as: (adjective usage) “3. To become an expert in.” I noticed that several of the definitions for the word “master” contain the word “control.” But the aspect that makes these words different is what I would like to focus on, for a moment. The act of becoming an expert indicates several things. Words like understanding, appreciation and management seem to lend themselves to the notion of mastery.

In contrast, “control” may cause us to think of a time, place or situation but doesn’t seem to imply understanding or appreciation. It is likely that you know of two types of managers in the business-world or in social dealings. One type of manager directs people through mastery of the task at hand and understands the goal; this manager knows and appreciates the talents of the employees he or she manages. The other type of manager controls or commands and orders his or her employees to do tasks that they may not be skilled to perform. Businesses want their employees to be happy and productive and, above all, to work as a team; management through mastery often accomplishes these objectives.

The need to control often comes from the desire to avoid experiencing fear. There is a simple logic behind having control. If I can control everything around me, I can control which emotions I will feel, and I may avoid feeling fear. To master our emotions, we must do a few things. We must understand, appreciate and manage the perception and expression of emotions in a manner that is respectful to us and to others.

If we can accept the idea that each emotion exists for a reason, then we can find the value that each emotion can have in our life. Finding this value may allow us to understand our feelings and express them in more adaptive ways. The expression of anger does not have to involve yelling or violence; sadness does not have to involve crying; fear does not have to involve hiding or avoiding.

If we listen to what our emotions tell us, and understand what our emotions mean, we can respect them and they often fade. But if we ignore what our emotions tell us, our feelings build up and may result in a display of negative behavior. People sometimes resort to shouting and physical violence if they cannot get their point across. Likewise, our emotions may incite the same types of behaviors in us if we ignore them.

Is it possible to express true feelings without extreme behavior? If we understand our feelings, we can express them in a rational manner but still convey what we feel. It is important to understand that we can express true emotion without shouting or the threat of violence. We may associate strong emotion with aggressive words or acts, but don’t confuse these behaviors with the actual emotions. Similarly, simply because a person can state their feelings in calm manner does not mean they are insincere. As this discussion continues, think about true emotion and what true emotions mean.

Newborn Feelings

We will look at the theory of emotional development before further discussion of the purposes for our feelings. Newborn babies feel emotions and some would agree they babies have emotions before birth. In short, we express emotions at the time of birth. Babies do not understand their emotions; but they quickly learn that certain behaviors evoke certain responses from other.

Do infants know the differences between emotions? They probably do but cannot use words to express these differences. Babies want to feel loved and accepted. If someone loves and accepts a baby, they help to assure the baby’s survival. Even before we can seek love and acceptance, we must survive. This implies that sometimes a baby’s need for survival overwhelms her need for acceptance. The baby has no means of expressing her survival needs except by crying or yelling. The people around the baby may not respond to her cries with love and acceptance, but will likely feed her. Depending on the feedback she receives, she may experience confusion, frustration, and other emotions without understanding them; but she gets what she needs to survive: food

Let’s assume that at the moment of birth, a newborn is fully aware all emotions but cannot understand or express them. Since babies have no worldly experience, they may have no need for an unconscious or subconscious. There is no one single definition for the unconscious and/or subconscious in literature. I will use these terms interchangeably in this discussion, but some authors differentiate between them.

For our discussion, I will use a definition for unconscious from Webster’s New World Dictionary, which is, the sum of all thoughts, memories, impulses, desires, feelings of which the individual is not conscious but which influence his emotions and behavior. As the conscious and unconscious develop, a child receives feedback from his environment in many ways. They learn the relationship between actions that gain rewards and those that evoke punishment.

If we want to feel loved and accepted, then we might learn to try to reject parts of our self that do not help us attain these things. As we mature, we may experience many aspects of that our conscious mind cannot store; in this case, we need to place some events and experiences out of our conscious awareness. Therefore, the subconscious develops out of a need for storage for our experiences and emotions. We tend to repress events and emotions that we wish to forget, did not receive love or acceptance from, or couldn’t understand. As such, we begin to create an internal hierarchy of emotions and experiences to which we may or may not have immediate access.

In the illustration below, the human is a large sphere of energy. Each emotional experience becomes a deposit of energy that we may use or store. The smaller spheres in the unconscious indicate these experiences. The varying size of each sphere shows the relative power or importance of each sphere of our experiences. If a person wants to keep an experience or emotion out of the conscious mind, he must expend energy to keep it away. In doing this, the need for defenses arises.

Commonly, we use one of two ways to defend emotions and experiences that we want to protect. We can use emotions to intimidate other people or other emotions. The other means of defense involves a logical approach that might seek to outwit other emotions and individuals.

We use defenses to guard emotions and to fend off certain experiences. We also use these defenses to protect us from external attacks. Depending on how the subconscious perceives a threat, it may call on defenses to protect aspects of itself from threats to the structure. Defense tactics will differ from person to person.

As stated earlier, through life events, a person may learn that emotions are bad, wrong, and/or weak. Over the years, our conscious mind learns to rely upon logic as a medium for processing communication. In this manner, if the conscious mind only needs reason, in theory, life should be easier to figure out and deal with.

Emotions may become taboo to the conscious mind. Although the conscious mind may seek to block emotions, it never fully succeeds. This situation is similar to a person standing on the other side of a fence calling you names. You hear what they say and, although you cannot see the source of these insults, the words still hurt. You may try to distance yourself from the fence, but you can only go so far, because the fence surrounds you. In other words, we cannot escape our emotion and memories, but we can make every effort to avoid them. It is usually only a matter of time before we have to deal with them, in some capacity.

Let us continue this fence metaphor. Imagine the individual calling you names felt a strong need to let you know he was there; he may have a difficult time knowing whether you can hear him because he cannot see our reaction. He may decide to try to tear down the fence. If that does not work he may dig a hole under the fence, or set the fence on fire (if he feels desperate enough). Besides these things he may try to find more people to make noise to get our attention. In relating this to a person, research indicates that people who do not deal with emotions often have other health problems such as heart problems, cancer, etc. The relationship between these factors and repressed emotions is too high to ignore. We can view this situation as our emotions’ way of telling our logic-based conscious mind that it is time to listen. It is clear, however, that people fail to listen to these emotions and blame their health problems on things like diet, smoking or genetics.

In order to consider the cause of disease, we need to look at theories about what causes disease. One important theory is The Diathesis-Stress Model of disease. This theory asserts that people contract a disease when they are predisposed and experience an amount of stress that activates the disease. Without these stressors, or if the strategic group of stressors never occur, then it is less likely that the person will develop the disease. The Diathesis-Stress Model is similar to finding the weakest link in the chain. It does not matter how strong all of the other links of the chain are, if there is a single weak link, the chain will break. The weakest link goes unnoticed unless we stress the chain.

Whether we realize it or not, we often use our emotions to manipulate others. We may use anger to intimidate, sadness to invoke fear, guilt to receive pity. Relationships become troubled when we question the sincerity of the emotions of others. In Chapter 3, I referred to strong versus weak dichotomies used during conflicts. During a conflict, we use emotions such as anger, rage or even humor to protect our sense of power. It is worth noting that in a conflict, emotions that seem “most powerful” do not appear initially.

If you focus on the expression of these emotions, there is always some display of a weak emotion shortly before the conflict. As such, we see that a protective emotion always appears in the wake of a weaker emotion. We need to understand the main purpose of these protective emotions; this information may help us to resolve conflicts. Taken further, there are unique features to each emotion that are important to discuss.

Concept of Emotional Identities

We often hear many different “voices” or “opinions” within us at any one time. We should not confuse these “internal voices” with those of schizophrenics’. The degree, to which these internal voices affect us, as well as the verbal content of the voices, may cover a range of expressions. At the point where these “voices” interfere with our thoughts or suggest harmful behaviors, they become pathological.

I have developed a theoretical perspective that we all exist within the range of having a single identity to having many identities. If we only contained one identity, then we could expect to respond the same way in similar situations, much as a computer program operates. We do not respond the same way every time; there are many times that we may do something and wonder why. In such cases, we may feel as if someone else took over and acted in our place. This model is difficult to prove through research.

Since we are all different and may have many several identities, no two people will respond the same way in a research setting. It is likely you have seen books on the “inner child” and other similar titles. In addition to inner children, so, too, could there be adolescents and other identities. This theory can be used as a model to aid in understanding why we do the things we do, since logic from a single identity model often defies explanation.

Do most adults have more than one identity? If so, why? Most likely it is because throughout our lives, we repress emotion and experiences. Instead, adults often have many different points of view. The extent an individual isolates his emotion falls somewhere in a range of values. We use a range of value to indicate a person’s level of emotional disconnection. On this scale, the extreme represents those people with multiple personalities. We call this diagnosis Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.).

Perhaps you have seen movies or books like Three Faces of Eve and Sybil. These provided examples of a person who has different personalities and the core personality is not aware of the others. Such a situation is common for people with this condition. During the periods when an alternate personality assumes control, the person often blacks out and cannot recall what happened. Through therapy, the client may learn about the existence of these other identities and how they express themselves. D. I. D. creates some interesting psychological issues. Some clients with D. I. D. tend to form some identities that are psychologically adaptive and are very clearcut from other identities. Since the personalities are independent, they do not influence each other.

Looking back at the illustration, let us think about the hierarchical structure of emotions and experiences within the subconscious mind. We will discuss internal power struggles in more depth in later chapters. A person’s emotional hierarchy dictates which emotions a person expresses and which ones he/she hides. How do we form these emotional hierarchies? Often, our interactions with society and family influence these structures. You may find that during a conflict you cast aside your belief system in favor of one more commonly used in society. So, these events are often influenced by two of the dichotomies we mentioned earlier: strong versus weak and win versus lose. We may consider our emotional identities and, in doing so, find that they add another dimension to our understanding of complex behavioral and emotional patterns. From this perspective, we will examine the purpose of emotion.

Summary

In this chapter we have continued to establish a case for why we feel what we and do what we do. Some of these ideas may be difficult for you to swallow, but I ask you to read on with an open mind. I think that we all can recognize when we have had many different thoughts at the same time, but it might be the case that explaining the idea of emotional identities may be too much. That is up to you to determine.

Questions:

1. Can you think of some instances wherein “undesirable emotions” served their purpose to your benefit?

2. Do you recall situations that led you to make an effort to reject your feelings in favor of logic in order to maintain control of a situation?

3. We commonly realize that we have different facets to our personality. Does it sometimes seem that at various times, different facets become more dominant? If so, how does it affect your attitude or actions?