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Should we trust our brain--or our gut? That's the question. The answer, though, is more complicated than most people realize. Somehow, over the past few decades it's become conventional wisdom that we should put our faith in our feelings. That is, if we feel something--especially if we feel it intensely--then it deserves to be seen as valid, or truthful. The adage "trust your feelings" has by now become almost axiomatic. But ultimately, how logical--or, how safe--is it to conclude that if we feel something strongly, we should both believe it and permit it to control our behavior? Read More
The return of the repressed?
"I once worked with a woman who as a young child had been repeatedly molested by her father. Having only recently recovered memories of her past sexual abuse, she still harbored great rage and resentment toward him."
Given the well-known controversies over supposedly "recovered" memories of traumatic events, I wonder: did you ever independently verify that the patient was in fact molested by her father?
Excellent Post
To respond to the above post...
Firstly, why would a patient fabricate painful memories of being molested as a child? Even if her story was completely false, the very fact that she felt anger towards Dr. Seltzer on the drive home after the session indicates that there was in fact some sort of unresolved issue from her past that was "triggered" by words said during the session.
Excellent post. This past week I had an instance where I felt strong emotions towards certain things that were said to me by a friend and I was not sure why I felt that way. After examination I realized his words reminded me of a painful memory from my past with similar circumstances. Had I not taken time to turn my eyes inward to understand why I was feeling that way I would have had a strong emotional outburst. It’s important to think about negative feelings before treating them as facts.
"Caution is the order of the day"
In total agreement, and who wouldn't!!! yet caution is the order of the day, both of feeling and of reason!! I beleive you captured the interdependence of emotion and reason as a cognitive function of the human condition. Yet you predominantly stressed caution when dealing with emotion because they can be a false manifestation of something mis-understood albeit consciously, or unconsciously without stressing the interdependence between the two, let alone providing a concrete example of the latter (ie.. an example where trusting "the feeling" becomes an acurate and valid expression of action based on the relationship between feeling and reason....) I believe your right and your blog was, and as always is very interesting and thought provoking, I just personally believe that including the two above stated points would have given the subject material that much more strength and justice.
As always, I wil remain a most interested student.
mmmmmmm?
"For if our thoughts are erroneous or based on false assumptions, the feelings tied to these thoughts are bound to be equally distorted--and hardly to be trusted."
"In further reviewing why it's so important to be wary of letting our feelings dictate our behavior"....
It would seem that between these two statements/ assertions, that we human beings are in a most precarious postion, - Think, but be aware that your "reason" may create in you "false feelings" that can not be trusted, but wait, be wary of "feeling" for they may not be what one might think- mmmmmmhhhhhmmmmmm!!!!! Where does the insanity stop really..... Don't trust "reason" "thoughts" or "feelings" sounds a bit paranoid to me, I mean lets face it, to keep ones self in a constant state of doubt on not only one's thoughts and feelings, but consequently ones reality seems to me the promotion of insanity. It might be said that I am going to extremes, but when faced with the sound advice of one "thing or condition" is most often a consequence or by product something unconscious or unrealized or so deep rooted that therapy is a must, it sets the stage for that condition of doubt where everything we are and everything we do is questioned to the point of paranoia. It seems a bit self defeating when it comes to both you and I, while at the same time a bit self promoting when it comes to the field of psychology.
I see where you are going with this.
If we must doubt our feelings, and analyze them with our thoughts, but our thoughts may be skewed by bad facts and experiences, and thus may also be in doubt, to what end will any amount of feelings or thoughts bring us?
It is my experience that only we can heal ourselves by analyzing our own thoughts and feelings according to our own experience as well as good facts and a willingness to be brutally honest with ourselves. If we are fully able to see ourselves as faulty, lieing to ourselves, dilusional, wrong, hypocritical, etc., as well as sound, correct, honest etc when called for and we are not just looking for some psychiatrist to affirm what we already want to think of ourselves, then we don't need the psychiatrist at all. I mean, if all they do is listen to us and get us to listen to ourselves and answer our own questions, then why do we need them? Well, some people can't objectively self-analyze because they cannot admit when they are flawed while others are very good at admitting they are flawed or are even blame takers who are too willing to blame themselves or have negative feelings about themselves. Psychiatrists, and such are skilled in gently guiding us to a place where we can see and hear ourselves clearly. They perhaps are there to just crack open the doors of our mind to consider something outside our little worlds.
And, no, I am not a psychiatrist, nor do I think psychiatry holds the answer to all the questions of the mind and reality, but as a young science I think it should be respected for the good it can give.
At Last!!!
Well, I must first thank you for hitting the nail on the head!!! I posted the reply for that exact reason, so it can be seen that a self reflective consciousness is an exercise in truth, and even though there seems no way to navigate the internal refuge of feeling, this is not the case. I enjoyed your post and find myself in agreement, and I hope to read more of your posts in the future.
your very useful essays
I've been meaning to leave a comment for some time, and now, having just printed out nearly all of your essays to have for our reference, I am finally doing so. You have done a wonderful job presenting insightful, practical information about common defense mechanisms in a manner that is extremely easy to understand. I'm currently in therapy and have found your work to be a useful complement; for family members not in therapy, I've passed along your insights and this website and people have been, so far, universally receptive. My very sincere thanks to you for making this resource available to the many of us laypeople who scoot around looking for information on-line.
This particular essay of yours, however, remains a great challenge for me. Because therapeutic healing of counterproductive behavior relies on unearthing long-suppressed feelings - feelings that others essentially told us not to have - what are we to make of an instruction to be critical of our feelings? I understand the idea of using our feelings as a springboard for contemplation rather than action, but that, to me, is very different from not trusting our feelings. I don't know. I'll come back to this essay sometime later, but for now I just find it confusing, I think.
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