Touchy-Feely
Jan. 30th, 2008 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"Our feelings are time travelers. We keep re-experiencing that feeling until we go to the root. And then when we go to the root, we can begin to heal."
- M. Gary Neuman (psychotherapist & rabbi)
The above quotation is borrowed from a recent "quote of the day" on a contemporary's LiveJournal. My understanding is that she actually lifted it from the Oprah Winfrey show. The repurposing of Neuman's thought in this space brings us a full two degrees of separation from Oprah, which should be enough to offset her intense psyche-gravitational pull.
First, I should note my willingness to accept Neuman's notion as Truth. Cosmic imagery and mixed metaphors aside, his argument is sound: our deeply held feelings extend all the way to the surface, stick with us, and inform our thoughts and actions every day.
For example, my relationships in the present are no doubt inflected by my relationships from the past. Loss has made me appreciative; Betrayal has made me guarded; co-dependence has made me self-sufficient.
But there's still something that bothers me about Neuman's observation. It's in the second sentence: "And then when we go to the root, we can begin to heal." It includes a clear presumption that those feelings are negative feelings -- that "feelings" are equivalent to "pain." We know this isn't true. For another example, the deep love and respect I inherited from my parents is a more powerful influence in my relationships today than is the hurt from my miscellaneous traumas combined.
Now, maybe I'm simply taking Neuman's quotation out of context. I'm only reading it second-hand, and I'm certainly engaging in some subjective reductionism, which in this case is kind of like fighting fire with fire. But here's why the distinction is important:
Neuman is advocating a regressive kind of therapy where you go back to the source of your anxiety, spray it with Weed-B-Gon®, and go back to your life. But human experiences are more complex than that; feelings are often intertwined, hurt often wrapped in a double-helix with euphoria. Anyone who's seen Back to the Future Part II knows that when you go back in time to set things right, you inadvertently set other things wrong. Kill the weeds and you could spoil the fruit.
Pain is important, because it lets us know when we care about something. I'm all for healing the sick, but we have to draw the line somewhere around the moderately bummed-out.
Of course, Neuman has probably forgotten more about counseling than I ever knew. Psychologists and psychiatrists have been thinking about this stuff for centuries; I've been thinking about it for ten minutes. I'm sure my aforementioned LiveJournal contemporary is right now grinding her teeth and dismissing me as the narcissistic, masochistic, self-righteous self-determinist macho barstool philosopher I am.
All I can say to back all of this up is that I used to be a pretty melancholy guy. If feelings are time-travelers, I was fricking Quantum Leap. And I spent most of my time mulling my feelings and rooting around in the past. It wasn't until I left the old garden and started planting new trees that I stopped being such a drag.
Which brings me to this parting quotation, by a guy who knows something about bad feelings:
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
- Soren Kierkegaard
- M. Gary Neuman (psychotherapist & rabbi)
The above quotation is borrowed from a recent "quote of the day" on a contemporary's LiveJournal. My understanding is that she actually lifted it from the Oprah Winfrey show. The repurposing of Neuman's thought in this space brings us a full two degrees of separation from Oprah, which should be enough to offset her intense psyche-gravitational pull.
First, I should note my willingness to accept Neuman's notion as Truth. Cosmic imagery and mixed metaphors aside, his argument is sound: our deeply held feelings extend all the way to the surface, stick with us, and inform our thoughts and actions every day.
For example, my relationships in the present are no doubt inflected by my relationships from the past. Loss has made me appreciative; Betrayal has made me guarded; co-dependence has made me self-sufficient.
But there's still something that bothers me about Neuman's observation. It's in the second sentence: "And then when we go to the root, we can begin to heal." It includes a clear presumption that those feelings are negative feelings -- that "feelings" are equivalent to "pain." We know this isn't true. For another example, the deep love and respect I inherited from my parents is a more powerful influence in my relationships today than is the hurt from my miscellaneous traumas combined.
Now, maybe I'm simply taking Neuman's quotation out of context. I'm only reading it second-hand, and I'm certainly engaging in some subjective reductionism, which in this case is kind of like fighting fire with fire. But here's why the distinction is important:
Neuman is advocating a regressive kind of therapy where you go back to the source of your anxiety, spray it with Weed-B-Gon®, and go back to your life. But human experiences are more complex than that; feelings are often intertwined, hurt often wrapped in a double-helix with euphoria. Anyone who's seen Back to the Future Part II knows that when you go back in time to set things right, you inadvertently set other things wrong. Kill the weeds and you could spoil the fruit.
Pain is important, because it lets us know when we care about something. I'm all for healing the sick, but we have to draw the line somewhere around the moderately bummed-out.
Of course, Neuman has probably forgotten more about counseling than I ever knew. Psychologists and psychiatrists have been thinking about this stuff for centuries; I've been thinking about it for ten minutes. I'm sure my aforementioned LiveJournal contemporary is right now grinding her teeth and dismissing me as the narcissistic, masochistic, self-righteous self-determinist macho barstool philosopher I am.
All I can say to back all of this up is that I used to be a pretty melancholy guy. If feelings are time-travelers, I was fricking Quantum Leap. And I spent most of my time mulling my feelings and rooting around in the past. It wasn't until I left the old garden and started planting new trees that I stopped being such a drag.
Which brings me to this parting quotation, by a guy who knows something about bad feelings:
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
- Soren Kierkegaard
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Date: 2008-02-07 05:46 pm (UTC)Sometimes I forget that the differences in terminology I use are in my head only, and need to be explained... You said, "Self-preservation isn't more important than acting intelligently, I think self-preservation is intelligent behavior."
The kind of self-preservation I'm talking about is dysfunctional behavior as a reaction to a perceived, not actual, threat. The behavior was learned when the danger was real, but in the present only serves to push people away and sabotage the things the person wants. "Intelligent" behavior is based on an awareness of the basis for one's automatic reactions, and takes into account other perspectives - which can be extremely difficult, even when the person knows intellectually that what they are doing isn't helping them, they're so wrapped up in years of "weeds" who have a self-preservation mechanism all their own.