Psychological Problems and Their Big Deceptions. David W. Shave

event that might have happened years ago that we, because we are so emotionally uncomfortable at the moment, are now prone to remembering because of the predicate-equating that our unconscious is doing. Neither is it due to something that occurred when we were a child and is now “rearing its ugly head,” like childhood sexual abuse. Instead, it’s what’s going on right here in the present, both recognized and unrecognized, in regard to our reality, that’s increasing our unmet basic emotional need and increasing our unconscious entity in our unconscious to uncomfortable levels! Though this might sound like a simple concept for anyone to accept, it has profound implications. Fully understanding this “simple concept” should dramatically change our thinking about the origin of many of our emotional problems as well as what makes us feel emotionally uncomfortable. That understanding could make a very convincing case against reality for the immediate origin and the later resolution of many of our emotional problems that we might have thought involved only our reality, and nothing else.

      As our basic emotional need is increasingly met, which is to say we consciously and unconsciously experience more pleasure, it generates more “good” feelings which will find a focus somewhere in our reality. What we perceive of that reality focus will be what we’ll believe is the sole reason for our “good” feelings. As our unconscious entity increases, it generates more “bad” feelings that will also find some focus in our reality. What we will perceive of that focus in reality, we will believe is the sole origin of our “bad” feelings. What this means is that if our basic emotional need is being met enough, we’ll tend to see our reality as productive of “good” feelings. If our unconscious entity increases enough, we’ll tend to see our reality as productive of “bad” feelings. In both these cases, what reality might be actually producing in regard to our experienced “good” or “bad” feelings could be inconsequential. The feelings could be predominately coming, unrecognized by ourselves and by others, less from the current reality we might have, but a lot more from what’s currently in our unconscious. When our “good” feelings outweigh our “bad” feelings, we’ll feel good. With more of our basic emotional need being met, we’ll feel even better. That’s the opposite of what our increasing unconscious entity in our unconscious does. When our “bad” feelings outweigh our “good” feelings, we’ll feel badly. With more of an increase in our unconscious entity, we’ll feel worse. How much worse we’ll feel, will depend upon the level of our unconscious entity, and the level to which our basic emotional need is unmet.

      Where the primary feelings of our unconscious entity are focused in our reality is still part of our unconscious. Just because our unconscious entity is focused on something about us, doesn’t get rid of it. It’s still in our unconscious. That “hat of guilt” that we can put on ourselves, where if we’re not feeling guilty about one thing, we’ll find something else about which to feel guilty, is more accurately a “hat of the unconscious entity.” That hat is in our unconscious, and it doesn’t have to be limited to guilt feelings at all. It may be of any of those unwanted feelings that derive themselves from our unconscious entity. Our unconscious can hang that hat on anything in our reality associated with us, but it’s still our hat. The only way we can get rid of that hat, is by turning that hat back into anger. We don’t get rid of it with “good advice” from mental health professionals who see only the focus of the unconscious entity in reality and are unaware of that entity’s existence in a person’s unconscious and its ability to make that person emotionally uncomfortable. But our talking about that “good advice” with a mental health professional, might unknowingly allow us to change that hat back into anger that’s unrecognized, when anger is unconsciously expressed by us in our talking about that advice, or talking about anything else we dislike, to our listener. With less unconscious entity, we have less of those unwanted feelings about ourselves, so that we’ll feel better. This, then, has a potential of making any given advice, whether good advice or bad, appear as effective advice. It can explain why talking with a quack, about that quack’s advice, or about that quack’s explanation for why we feel the way we do, and what’s necessary for us to feel better, could be effective in decreasing the unwanted feelings we might be having, so that we later do feel better. We’ll then attribute our feeling better to the quack’s advice and not to what has unrecognizably occurred within our unconscious, and that is, we’ve turned some of our unconscious entity back into anger which was subtly expressed in our talking to the quack.

      Where meeting well our basic emotional need produces feelings like “everything is, (Even “was,” – like feeling, “what happened to me years ago wasn’t really that bad”), and will be all right;” “something real good is going to happen to me – it’s just a matter of time;” “I know everything I should know;” “I’m as invulnerable to hurt as I should be;” and “I’m not in this alone;” our unconscious entity produces the opposite feelings. It produces feelings like “everything isn’t, wasn’t, and won’t be all right;” “something really bad is going to happen to me – it’s just a matter of time;” “I don’t know everything I should know;” “I’m not as invulnerable to hurt as I should be;” and “I’m in this all by myself;” that will intensify as our stored unconscious entity increases, just as those good feelings would intensify the more our basic emotional need is met. When we have a lot more of this unconscious entity, and a lot less of an adequate meeting of our basic emotional need, we’ll tend to have recurrent unpleasant thoughts and unpleasant dreams of past times in our lives when our basic emotional need was frustrated to a similar level. We’ll also be more prone to having something in our reality seemingly “triggering” unpleasant thoughts and memories of those past unpleasant times as our unconscious entity increases. That “triggering” will always take place as a result of predicate-equating.

      As an example of this, a combat veteran, who had been a high-ranking officer in WW2, told me of his thoughts he had in his first experience in battle which he said must have been one of the worst days of his life. Like him, none of his soldiers had ever been in combat before, and he and his men were surrounded by a much combat-experienced enemy. He told me he feared that if he wasn’t killed he would spend the rest of the war in disgrace in a prison camp if he had to surrender. He undoubtedly had a lot of uncomfortable feelings arising from the reality situation he had that day that must have been greatly frustrating to his basic emotional need. One of those feelings might have been the feeling of “failure” that might have been greatly intensified by his increasing unconscious entity that was arising from his repressing anger in his unconscious from experiencing the immense frustrations of his basic emotional need that he must have had that day. Another feeling might have been the feeling of “an impending personal disaster” for him and his career, which would have also become intensified from what would be added to that reality-originating feeling, from his increased level of his unconscious entity. During that very stressful day, his unconscious must have predicate-equated how he was feeling then, with a long past event that also must have been very frustrating to his basic emotional need for he told me he had recurrent thoughts of his mother’s death some twenty years to the day earlier. We might theorize that his mother’s death had also been a “worst day” of his life at the time, like his first day of battle now was. Perhaps the feeling, “worst day of my life,” was his equating predicate that brought that memory of that distantly past event, to mind.

      Like this combat veteran, what recurrently might come into our mind of the distant past while awake, and into our dreams at night, are defensive warnings to us that we have a current situation that needs rectifying. It’s being so emotionally uncomfortable in the present that is the cause for the unpleasant memory of the distant past coming to mind. Our memory of a “bad time” in our past, becomes predicate-equated with the “bad time” we presently have. This tendency of the mind to do this may have arisen in our evolutionary history because it may have benefitted survival. It may be an evolved defensive characteristic of the unconscious mind. What we remember as being so unpleasant of our distant past, may have an advantage for us now to remember. We might be able to cope better with the situation we have now, by remembering what in the past is predicate-equated with the situation we have now. But it’s not the memories that are causing our currently being so emotionally uncomfortable, nor is it the “triggers” we might have that seem to set off those memories. What makes us emotionally uncomfortable enough to have very unpleasant thoughts of our distant past