Returning to a State of Emotional Equilibrium
Sharing the Counseling I Give Myself
This morning I’m going to touch on a bit of psychology, but before I do that, these are all the “qualifications” that are not reasons for you to listen to me.
My bachelor’s is in psychology and my master’s degree is in human services. I’ve spent 23 years working with emotional-disturbed teenagers and developmentally-disabled adults. I was a pastor/elder for two decades and studied spiritual counseling.
None of that should matter, but if you want to know my background, that’s it. What I’m going to share are my own personal practices and philosophies. It’s what works for me.
I’m sharing because I see an ever-present, ongoing need. This is at the heart of most interpersonal blowups, and it undermines our ability to express ourselves in the open marketplace.
Truth number one: your body reacts to stimuli with physiological stress that is designed to produce a life-saving response at times when logical thought cannot help you. It’s primal and illogical by nature.
Truth number two: you react to the physiological stress with psychological stress and emotion. Those emotions are valid.
Truth number three: your brain responds to the physiological stress, psychological stress, and emotion by trying to assign a logical cause. Your brain connects events of similar emotions, creating a pattern that is a reductive and incomplete picture of your life and relationships.
Truth number four: once in that stressed state, your primary need is to return to a state of equilibrium
It’s truth number three that generates the fallacies we chase when trying to ease our inner turmoil.
Fallacy number one: our emotions are logical and rational.
Fallacy number two: we are aware of the cause of our discomfort and the history of events that has brought us to feel this way.
Fallacy number three: the quickest path to a state of equilibrium is removing the logical cause of our discomfort.
Without intentional intervention, these fallacies dictate how people respond to their emotions. In some cases, that response is abusive. In others, it is self destructive.
Intervention number one: recognize your physiological stress and initiate self-relaxation techniques to calm that stress, beginning with controlled breathing.
Intervention number two: recognize your emotions and accept them a valid response.
Intervention number three: recognize your stress- and emotion-triggered thoughts, including the truncated time-line created by your emotions. This is where the fallacies are generated. One way to look at it is that our emotions are valid, but they lie to us and create thought processes that will both strengthen and prolong the undesired state of physiological and emotional stress, working in direct opposition to our need for emotional peace.
Responding “logically” in these states creates a situation where we are liable to lash out at a perceived cause. Some lash out to silence a spouse or child. Some lash out at themselves, as if in doing so, they can silent the internal torment.
The truly logical response cannot be generated in the moment but must be planned ahead of time.
I refuse to listen to my emotion-driven “logic” and remind myself that my emotions are valid but that they lie to me. I identity those emotions and embrace them as valid, and dig deeper to understand how my body is reacting. Am I tight across the chest? Do I have a weird feeling in my gut or in my head? This physiological reaction is what needs to be calmed in order to return to a state of equilibrium. Once that state is achieved, then I can address the offending situation calmly and logically.
How we take control over our thoughts and calm our physiological state is where we will differ. It’s safe to say that a focus on our breathing is a good, universal start. Our bodies were created to be calmed in this manner.
Beyond that, mental chatter and physiological reactions (and baselines) will vary, but the principles I’ve shared will focus your energies on where they belong. For some, talking it through takes the power from the thoughts. For others, talking it through empowers the negative thoughts. For myself, I can silence my thoughts pretty well now, which allows me to focus on relaxing physiologically.
That’s as far as I can take you, but I do have one addendum for spiritual / religious people who struggle with prayer.
Spiritual Addendum
Many people pray but find no release in prayer. Instead, they wrestle with God like Jacob at the foot of the angels’ ladder. I was in that position, and I’ll share my solution for those who are interested. I’ve learned since that my process is rooted to stoic philosophy.
At the time, I called it Worst-Case Faith.
I talk to God about the issue bothering me and express my desired outcome and the outcome I fear.
In regards to that fear, I take this additional step:
I give God permission to do as He sees best, and if that means the worst-case scenario, I will trust Him through it.
That gives me the release I need. I’m no longer wrestling with God to see things my way, and I trust Him for the outcome and to bring me through that outcome. It allows me to be more grateful for desired results and to witness and be grateful for the deliverance when I pass through the events I fear.
— Thaddeus Thomas
I have a solid feeling that I shall read this article, reread it, and then read it again more than ten times at least, over the next few months. I thank you for drawing on your expertise and past experiences in bringing this knowledge to a group that can truly benefit from what you wrote.
For those of you in the community who may hesitate at reading a psychological article aimed at helping writers, fear not. This is good information that we can all relate to, maybe not all of it at once, but over time, absolutely.
Plus, I can also state that this can pertain to flashing out a complicated, very layered character. Sure, delving into inner personal emotional states can take a writer down the path of too much detail… but mapping it out for yourself can help you make their decisions more realistically. So this article has another layer altogether that is of great help!
Thank you!!! 😊
I don't know who's familiar with my "issue," but it's behind the Paywall now, and that's where it's going to stay. It's not something I tend to want to bring up as often as others might. Let's just say it involved a death and that it was my best friend, and that it happened at work. My whole thing about seeing psyches, or shrinks, or whatever you want to call them, is that I will say to you what I said to them: "The mind is it's own place, and of itself can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell." It's Milton, and it's paraphrased, but it doesn't matter. That has been my mantra since I first stumbled across it in English Lit class back in Grade 12, which was back in 1976. I live by that rule. That, and humour. I've gone through therapy. And having gone through what I did, I don't know whether I can say yes or no as to how much it helped me.
A guy like me -- old and set in his ways -- has way more triggers than you would ever imagine. Thing about triggers is that you never know what they are, or where you're going to come across them. I can hear something on the radio, or be watching TV, and get triggered. Another thing about it? I don't mind. I enjoy the emotional release, or collapse, or whatever you want to call it. I like that my wife calls me a pussy because I cry at something like a Princess Di story. Who the hell cries at that?
I'm still a little fucked up and we both know it (the wife and I), but we don't make a big deal about it either. I know I'm supposed to do all of that meditation shit, deep breathing, but I just can't be bothered. All that pent up anxiety is going to kill you, they say. So? Unlike most people, I look forward to dying. By that, I mean I'm not afraid of it. Not in the least bit. I believe in Life after Life. I sat at my mother's death bed and watched her as she spoke out to her mother, calling her and telling here that she wanted to go with her.
I'm not a deep thinker, in spite of the length of this comment. I've lost a lot of good friends over the years, and been touched in some way by every one of them. This last one takes the cake of course. (Seriously, if you want to know about, you'll have to go behind the paywall.) That one will never leave me. There isn't a day goes by where I don't think about him, and even sometimes have a cry. But I love crying at the memory of him because it means I'm alive, that it mattered, that he mattered, and that I'm still a human being.