Series: Breaking the Emotional Cycle « | Change Your Life: Living Skillfully

Mar 9

Breaking the Emotional Cycle: Introduction

Posted in Techniques

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Breaking the Emotional Cycle

Do you find yourself doing the same things again and again, and feel like there’s nothing you can do about it? Are you just driven to repeat patterns that don’t make any sense? It’s a common human problem, and over the next few weeks I want to explore one model of why it happens and what we can do to change it.

I’ve recently finished re-reading Cynthia Bourgeault’s book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening. Centering Prayer is the meditative practice I follow myself. It comes out of the 1500-year-old Benedictine spiritual tradition, one of the little-known Western spiritual paths. It’s little-known because, until recently, you had to join a monastery to even hear about it.

Towards the end of the book, Cynthia Bourgeault has a wonderful diagram of how our misguided “emotional programs for happiness” end up making us miserable. For copyright reasons I won’t reproduce the actual diagram here, but I do want to spend the next few weeks working through the steps of the cycle she describes, and talking about it from my perspective as a hypnotherapist, as someone who is deeply interested in how thought and feeling and behaviour interact and how we can become free of our compulsions.

photo credit: {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}

Because compulsions, or what she calls the “emotional programs for happiness“, are the start. Thomas Keating, the founder of Centering Prayer, talks about three “energy centres”: power/control, esteem/affection, and security/survival. Deep down within our minds, we are driven or drawn towards these three centres, and early in our lives we learn specific programs for trying to achieve them, which operate very powerfully at a subconscious level to pattern our behaviour.

The emotional programs for happiness emerge into consciousness as attachments and aversions – the things that we move towards and the things that we move away from, the things that make us feel comfortable or uncomfortable. Attachments and aversions are not rational. They are driven by the emotional programs for happiness, which in turn are shaped by childhood experience, so we are caught in the irrational, incomplete understanding of a child in what we prefer and avoid.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Preferring some things, avoiding others – this creates, in turn, hidden agendas which (because they are irrational) we tend not to admit to. We like to depict our behaviour as reasonable, principled, unselfish and even altruistic, and we get so good at doing so that we even believe it ourselves a lot of the time. We make after-the-fact justifications for our behaviour which fit with the values that we hold as adults, even while the emotional programs of our childhood are actually what is driving us.

Hidden agendas, in turn, lead inevitably to triggering events. Since everyone is running round with their own programs for happiness, and few of them mesh neatly with mine, I will always find things that other people do that trigger off my attachments and aversions, that “push my buttons”. Either their hidden agenda is the same as mine, and we’re in competition, or it’s opposite to mine, and we’re in direct conflict.

photo credit: Anders V

What this creates is the experience of frustration. I want to fulfil my emotional program for happiness. I want to move towards my attachments and away from my aversions. But someone or something is not letting me. I have powerful internal forces trying to move me in a certain direction, and I can’t go in that direction.

Now, the natural response, the usual response, to a situation of frustration is afflictive emotion. We usually associate frustration with anger, but sadness and fear are also common responses to frustration. There can also be guilt or shame, because my hidden agenda is being revealed by the situation of frustration: It’s harder to deny my desire to do something or avoid something when that desire is being frustrated. It draws attention, and one thing the emotional programs for happiness do not want is for attention to be paid to them. They know they won’t stand up well to close examination.

photo credit: Kapungo

In the grip of afflictive emotion, I start in on the internal dialogue. “Woe is me, this always happens to me.” “People just ain’t no good.” “One day I’ll show them. I’ll show them all.” “I’m a bad person and there’s nothing I can do about it.” And in saying these things to ourselves, we strengthen and justify the afflictive emotion we are feeling and descend into emotional turmoil.

Whatever it is we tell ourselves in the grip of afflictive emotion is itself patterned by our emotional programs for happiness, because what we are really trying to do is escape from the situation into one in which we feel happy again, and the only way we know to do that is by following the emotional program. The abuser (the emotional program for happiness that got us into this mess in the first place) comes along sympathizing and pretending to be the rescuer. Its grip over us is strengthened, because we don’t know any other way – and so the cycle begins again.

photo credit: BONGURI

Here’s a scenario, a very common one. (Substitute your own guilty pleasure if it’s different.) You’re on a diet. You’re living on lettuce and miso soup. You’re feeling virtuous, until you make a mistake at work and somebody scolds you mildly. You feel bad. Now, what will stop you from feeling bad and make you feel good? Some chocolate will do that.

You eat some chocolate. Immediately, you feel guilty for breaking your diet. Yes, you really are a bad person, incompetent and lacking in self-discipline. You feel worse. What will help you feel better? Well, how about eating the rest of that bar of chocolate?

Not feeling good yet? You obviously need a bigger bar…

photo credit: procsilas

So what (you are probably asking by this point) can we do to break out of this cycle? Is there anything? Certainly there is. Remember back at the frustration point, where I said that the natural and usual response is afflictive emotion? This is the point where the cycle can be broken. The Centering Prayer technique for doing so is called the Welcoming Prayer (don’t get too hung up on all the “prayer” terminology, by the way, if that’s something you’re not comfortable with – it’s not, in either case, something that would usually be recognised as prayer). I talk about the Welcoming Prayer a lot, and I have a brief introduction to the Welcoming Prayer on my Relaxation Response page, but when we get to that point in the series I’ll go into it in more depth than I have previously. In its full form, the Welcoming Prayer directly addresses the underlying issue of the three faulty emotional programs for happiness.

In brief, what the Welcoming Prayer does is defuse the afflictive emotions so that the descent into internal dialogue and emotional turmoil, and the reinforcement of the emotional programs, is avoided. Over time, doing so weakens the emotional programs and enables you to respond to situations as they arise with a more authentic self, one that is actually doing what it thinks it’s doing.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll spend some time on each of the steps of the emotional cycle, exploring in more depth how it occurs and what we can do to change it.

UPDATE: I’ve now revised the material in this series and turned it into a self-reflection process as part of my ebook, Your Emotional Hamster Wheel and How to Get Off It. It’s included when you sign up for my free Simple Stress Management Techniques course.

Technorati Tags: emotion, Welcoming Prayer, negative emotion, behaviour, personal change, motivation, habits

comments: 0 » tags: anxiety, confidence, emotions, habits, integration, motivation, personal change, practice

Mar 16

The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Power and Control

Posted in Techniques

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Breaking the Emotional Cycle

What we think will make us happy generally won’t.

As Richard O’Connor explains in his book Happy at Last: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Finding Joy, the deep emotional programs of our minds have a bait-and-switch operation going on. Their agenda is to drive us to particular behaviours which will preserve our safety, our existence and our genetic heritage. In order to do this, they hold out the promise that those behaviours will make us happy. But if they did actually make us permanently happy, the drive would be gone and we would no longer take those actions.

It’s like the story in the Odyssey of the Lotus-Eaters, who ate a narcotic plant which made them happily apathetic. In fact, this is one reason that euphoric drugs like heroin are harmful: People who have all the happiness they want from the drug have no further motivation to do anything to help themselves or others.

photo credit: rumkolat

So, it seems as if we are faced with Hobson’s choice: Pursue the things that our deepest instincts tell us will make us happy, and we will not be happy. Pursue the things that will actually make us unconditionally happy, and we will probably die from self-neglect.

Fortunately, there is a third course, but it begins with an understanding of those happiness programs that drive us from within.

In last week’s post (Breaking the Emotional Cycle), I introduced you to the Centering Prayer tradition’s idea of the three “energy centres” or “emotional programs for happiness”: power/control, esteem/affection and security/survival. Today I want to focus on power/control.

photo credit: DSmous

Basically, power/control is the program that says, “If I can control the world around me, I will feel OK.” The problem with this program is that we can’t control the world around us, either collectively or individually. We can’t control extreme weather, for example. We can’t even collectively control the human world of economics, as the recent recession has demonstrated. The power/control agenda is subject to inevitable frustration, because ultimately we can’t control the world. (Nor would that be a good thing, in fact, if you think about it.)

The characteristic emotion driven by the program of power and control is anger. By expressing anger, we are attempting to control others and gain power over them by implying a threat: If you don’t give me what I want, I’ll hurt you. Now, anger gets abstracted away from this exact situation – you can be angry with a computer or a piece of string, which doesn’t have the capacity to be afraid – but that is the basic proposition of anger. The power and control agenda leads inevitably to bullying, subtle or overt.

photo credit: Furryscaly

I was thinking about power and control a while ago, and realised something. The people who are able to let go of the program of controlling people and things around them are the ones who have focussed on controlling themselves. I’m talking about the mystics and the meditators – because self-will is not the path to self-control, as we’ll discuss further in the course of this series. The path to self-control is to develop the authentic self which is no longer driven by the emotional programs for happiness, which doesn’t actually care about not being in total control of everything.

Although Centering Prayer arose out of the Christian tradition of the Benedictines, we can see parallels with the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. Here’s my condensed paraphrase:

1. This whole thing is all messed up.
2. The reason is that we’re driven by our desires.
3. It’s possible to be free.
4. Freedom is achieved through thought, understanding and practice.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this when we get further through the series, but here’s today’s main point. The thing that can free you from the control of the agenda of being in control, the thing that can actually put you in control of your own reactions and responses, is this: Letting go of being in control.

photo credit: jurvetson

The emotional program of power/control repeats these words within us: “If I’m not the one in charge, if things aren’t going as I decide, I will be miserable”. As small children, we’re confronted all the time with a world that isn’t in our control. We’re hungry, cold, hot, sore, uncomfortable, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It seems like if we can make other people do things for us to fix those problems, we are happier – but if we can’t, it’s devastating, it’s the end of the world. And sooner or later, no matter how indulgent our parents are, we are going to run up against a situation in which we are not in control and can’t make anyone else fix it, and that will be distressing.

At this point we have a choice: We can accept how the world is constituted and that we will not always get what we want (and sometimes will get what we don’t want), and move on with life. Or we can struggle for more power and more control so that we don’t have to feel like that again – but we always will.

I read recently about a millionaire European who came to the realisation that the five-star lifestyle he was living was bizarre and ridiculous. He’s liquidating his assets, giving most of them to charity and is going to live in a modest dwelling on a modest income. He believes he’ll be much happier, and I think he’s right. It’s not the solution for everyone, but it’s an example of what I’m talking about: Releasing the continual grasping after power and control.

photo credit: bwhistler

You’ll notice I haven’t gone into detail about exactly how this is achieved. That’s because I’ll be talking about it much more later in the series. For now, take a look at my page on the Relaxation Response Practice and the Welcoming Prayer, and think about how those practices build a habit and an attitude of letting go.

Next week, I’ll cover the second of the three emotional programs: Esteem and affection.

Technorati Tags: letting go, power, control, emotions, drives

comments: 0 » tags: emotions, habits, integration, personal change

Mar 23

The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Esteem and Affection

Posted in Techniques

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Breaking the Emotional Cycle

If everyone loved you – or even if anyone loved you – you’d be OK. Right?

This is the emotional program of esteem and affection. Last week I looked at the program of power and control, as part of this series on breaking the emotional cycle that promises us happiness but delivers frustration and misery. Next week, we’ll consider security and survival. But today: Esteem and affection.

Jeanne Segal’s book The Language of Emotional Intelligence: The Five Essential Tools for Building Powerful and Effective Relationships has a lot to say about all of the emotional programs, though she doesn’t use that terminology specifically. Her starting point is the very early experiences of small children, and the kind of “attachment” that we establish with our mothers (or equivalent caregivers).

One of the ways that the attachment bond can go wrong is if we don’t get a secure sense of esteem and affection – if our caregivers are distant, inconsistent or negative towards us. We then tend to spend our lives attempting to complete the uncompleted bond, driven from relationship to relationship or achievement to achievement seeking the esteem and affection that we crave – quite often driving people away from us and bringing about crashing failure in the process.

photo credit: terren in Virginia

Because the unfortunate paradox is that people who have a secure inner sense of worth are a lot more likely to attract affection than those who desperately crave it. Likewise, people who are confident and centred are more likely to achieve great things than those who are desperate to be applauded. My neice, who’s staying with us at the moment, is a fan of American Idol, and I’ve watched some of the auditions with her. It struck me very strongly that the people who are interviewed saying, “I’m the greatest singer in the world, I’m just the best” are often completely without talent and sing in hideous, forced voices. Meanwhile, the people who have some stability and inner strength, who have families that they care for or who have been through difficult personal experiences like major illness – who have a sense of themselves that’s not dependent on whether they can get into a singing competition or not – perform in a relaxed, appealing, natural manner and are often very good.

The besetting emotion of someone with a strong program for esteem and affection is sadness, the feeling of being alone and abandoned, of loss. Their inner dialogue is one of worthlessness, desperation and need. What they think they need, what drives them, is recognition and love, but they secretly believe they don’t deserve it. Some people even feel compelled to sabotage it if they get it, so that their inner beliefs about the way the world works can go unchallenged.

photo credit: ░░░SunEye░░░

What is the way out? The way out is the way in. Just as the way to deal with issues of power and control is to let go of the desire to control the world and those around you and build a sense of control within yourself, so the way to deal with issues of esteem and affection is to let go of the search for external validation and build a sense of authenticity and validity within yourself. And I know of no better way (in fact, I know of no other way) to do this than through the various forms of meditation.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, my own meditation practice is in the Centering Prayer tradition, which is also where I’m getting the terminology of the three emotional programs for happiness. That’s not the only way to meditate by any means, or even the only one I would recommend. One thing, though, that Centering Prayer has as an emphasis which is less prominent in most other traditions is the emphasis on letting go.

photo credit: hapal

The basic practice of Centering Prayer is to sit for 10 or 20 minutes and let go of each thought as it arises by returning to a preselected word or phrase. Unlike other “concentrative” traditions like TM, the word or phrase is not something to focus on – in fact, the word itself is something to let go of. Everything, thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, are there to notice and gently let go. Part of the charm of the method is that it’s impossible to get it wrong. Either you are successfully sinking into a state in which you have let go of your thoughts, or you are successfully encountering each successive thought and letting it go, over and over again.

My version of Herbert Benson’s Relaxation Response Practice is actually a simplified version of Centering Prayer (and the other practice on that page, the Welcoming Prayer, emerged from the Centering Prayer tradition). I’ll have much more to say about these practices in later posts. For now, here’s something to reflect upon: When you feel a sense of sadness and loss, what is it you’re really missing?

Technorati Tags: sadness, depression, loss, letting go, emotion, Centering Prayer

comments: 0 » tags: depression, emotions, integration, personal change, practice

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Breaking the Emotional Cycle: Introduction

The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Power and Control

The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Esteem and Affection