Psychological Problems and Their Big Deceptions. David W. Shave

my basic emotional need, which is a reassuring worry-free “everything is okay with me so that there is nothing to worry about, and no urgency to do anything” feeling.

      Because we all have some amount of this unconscious entity beyond our infancy, which was a time where we didn’t repress our anger but angrily cried over every frustration of our basic emotional need, it is most likely that whatever we feel is so dissatisfying about us, will have an unrecognized component additionally arising from our unconscious entity. It is unlikely that we would ever have an intensely unwanted feeling that arises solely from our reality. In contrast, we can easily have intensely unwanted feelings that do arise solely from our unconscious, and not at all from our reality, like that woman who was a widely acclaimed violin player feeling her on-stage performances were never “good enough” when they really were more than “good enough,” or like hypochondriacs feeling they have something physically wrong with them when their reality is that they don’t. These hypochondriacs contrast with people who do have something physically wrong with them, such as an undetected cancer, but who don’t feel there is anything wrong with their health because their unconscious entity is finding some other focus. Or they don’t because they have a well met basic emotional need giving them that comforting feeling that everything is okay, and most importantly, will be okay. They feel satisfied with their health just the way it is, and feel there’s no reason to worry and no reason for any urgency – when there actually is. This is analogous to the person who does have a defective car with, for instance, a potential for a fatal unintended acceleration, but with a better met basic emotional need, doesn’t feel there is any problem with his car, when there actually is.

      All the unwanted feelings that could come from our unconscious entity, can become more intensified as that underlying unconscious entity increases in amount. If I feel unlucky from my unconscious entity, with more unconscious entity focused in this feeling, I’ll feel more unlucky. I might feel so unlucky that I’ll be afraid of taking an airplane flight, or use an elevator, or drive across a high bridge, or through a tunnel, or, if a front-line soldier, I’ll be afraid to engage in any combat. Our unconscious entity will increase in size as the repression of anger increases from both recognizable and unrecognizable frustrations of our basic emotional need, and we store the resulting unconscious entity, instead of turning it back into subtly expressed anger in our talking with friends soon after it is formed. It’s the increase in storing anger that really increases the unconscious entity we have, and not necessarily the amount of frustrations of the basic emotional need that we encounter. We could have more frustrations of our basic emotional need, but if we weren’t excessively storing the resulting anger as unconscious entity, but was soon turning it back into subtly expressed anger in our daily extended talking with others, we wouldn’t increase the amount of our unconscious entity that we are carrying in our unconscious at the end of the day. That’s how those combat soldiers in the last chapter avoided becoming psychiatric casualties. They were getting rid of their unconscious entity by turning it into very recognizable battlefield anger, and by the talking they did with their buddies when they had a chance, so that they weren’t accumulating unconscious entity so that it didn’t reach levels where it could produce emotional problems. In contrast, a person could have much less frustrations of his, or her basic emotional need, but with not getting rid of it fast enough, that person could accumulate a high level of unconscious entity. The person might attain a higher level of unconscious entity than someone else who is exposed to combat conditions, but who has adequate means by which to lower it.

      If something angered us, that something would be a frustration of our basic emotional need. If we immediately expressed only the anger that was engendered from that perceived frustration, it would cancel out any brief increase in our unmet basic emotional need that was caused by the frustration. Our immediately expressing the anger would decrease our unmet basic emotional need by the same amount that the perceived frustration increased what was unmet of that need. The anger we express, in regard to this frustration, is “retaliatory anger” that can be just enough of a pleasurable act to cover what the frustration caused in the way of an addition to our unmet basic emotional need. The pleasurable retaliatory anger would have met our basic emotional need just enough to cover what the frustration caused to be not pleasurable. The net result would be a zero change in what’s unmet of our basic emotional need, or how much unconscious entity we have. We would have “evened the score” with our expressed anger. There’d be no gain or loss of anything. If we felt good before we perceived that frustrating something, we’d feel no different after we expressed our anger from that frustration. Anger, expressed to the enemy on the battlefield, may be anger arising not only from the reality of the battle, but also from anger from having some of one’s stored unconscious entity, reverting to outwardly expressed anger. This component of anger, from one’s unconscious entity, is unknowingly added to the anger currently being produced by reality. That could greatly intensify the anger being expressed.

      If we didn’t immediately express that anger about that something that frustrated our basic emotional need but instead, repressed it, it would increase our unconscious entity, at the same time the frustration would increase our unmet basic emotional need. That frustrating event would cause an added deficit to what is unmet of our basic emotional need. A certain amount of repressed anger produces an equal amount of unconscious entity, that’s added to what we previously had, and the frustration that caused that anger, also increases our unmet basic emotional need that we previously had, by the same amount that our unconscious entity increased. We can later lower what is unmet of our basic emotional need by engaging in anything that is consciously, or unconsciously, recognized as pleasurable to us, but our unconscious entity from those frustrations would stay at the same level until we can unconsciously turn it back into directly expressed anger. Unconscious entity can only be reduced by directly expressed anger.

      We might recognize many of our frustrations of our basic emotional need as insignificant, or “just not worth getting angry about.” We might accept them as being “just a part of life” and feel that we should “grow up” and put these insignificant frustrations behind us and “get on with life,” and some frustrations that are experienced more in our unconscious, won’t be consciously recognized at all. Whether recognized or not, they all will result in a small amount of anger. If this anger is not immediately expressed, it will be repressed. The resulting small amounts of unconscious entity being produced by the repression of anger from seemingly trivial or unrecognized frustrations of our basic emotional need can accumulate to such a size that its primary and secondary feelings may later show themselves as an emotional problem, or a disabling psychiatric disorder. The cause of the problem or disorder won’t be recognizable to us, and probably won’t be recognizable to any mental health professional that we might see, who might then believe it has a biochemical or genetic origin. If it’s not concluded that it has a brain-related biochemical or genetic origin, what we can remember of our past reality, such as some distantly past traumatic event where there had been similar experienced feelings to those being experienced now, may be unconsciously presented by us as the very cause of our now being so emotionally uncomfortable, and that, we already know, is not so. In fact, it’s a big deception!

      Our unconscious can’t be searched by us to find the recently incurred cause of our currently increased unconscious entity and our unmet basic emotional need like our reality can. Even if we could uncover it, there is so much that is “part”-oriented and involves that illogical equating based on commonly shared predicates, where the predicates may not always be factual to make any sense. An explanation of a biochemical or genetic origin, or of a long past traumatic event, can make more sense to us and to others. They make sense like explanations for how we feel involving the phases of the moon, or the alignment of the planets, or the lack of sufficient sun-light in the winter, which, interestingly, is when we can’t get out as much to engage in talking, and like explanations of “bad” genes or insufficient “feel good” endorphins do. Even explanations of being possessed by the Devil and requiring exorcism, or having “crooked neurons” in our brain that are producing “crooked thoughts,” or our having “bad blood” that then requires “blood-letting” (A once popular “treatment” that might have caused our first president’s death!), or our harboring “toxins” in our colons making us feel bad, can make more sense than trying to explain the true unconscious causes.

      It’s the current