of New Orleans that made popular the sale of chamber pots in the Civil War with occupying Union General Benjamin Butler’s portrait painted on the inside bottom. He, and the contents of the chamber pot, were being predicate-equated! Citizens were also predicate-equating when they referred to him as General “Beast” Butler. Predicate-equating can occur more specifically as in my seeing a very specific occurrence of something in my reality that I then interpret as a “sign from God.” That “sign” I see, and “God,” become predicate-equated in my mind. With that “sign,” I feel God is communicating specifically with me.
Predicate-equating continually occurs, as we’ll soon discover, in our “small talk!” It is this hidden “part”-oriented predicate-equating that makes our “small talk” so emotionally advantageous to us.
Chapter Three
How We Gain Emotional Strength
Stress and emotional strength are comparable to physical hardships and physical strength. Although a flight of stairs may not be a physical hardship for most people, some people lack the physical strength to be able to climb a flight of stairs. People, with a high level of physical strength, might be able to run up several flights of stairs, two stairs at a time, and not experience it at all as a physical hardship. If people, who couldn’t negotiate the stairs at one time, build up their physical strength, those stairs may no longer be a physical hardship. The reverse is that if people don’t keep up their physical strength, physical hardships for them may increase in number and be more difficult to negotiate when encountered. That’s analogous to stress and emotional strength. If we can build up our emotional strength, we will encounter less situations that we would consciously, or unconsciously, perceive as stressful, and those that we do encounter will be experienced as less stressful. With enough emotional strength, what others might think would be very stressful, may not be experienced as such by us. If we have little emotional strength, what others might feel is not a stressful situation, may be for us a very stressful situation. Because of this, others might look upon us as being “weak,” which is to say lacking in emotional strength. Perhaps why one soldier can’t make it through basic training without becoming a psychiatric casualty, and another soldier can go through basic training, as well as intense combat later, without becoming a psychiatric casualty, depends not only on the amount of actual stress there is, but also on how much emotional strength each soldier has at the time. That emotional strength may be a major factor in determining the amount of consciously, or only unconsciously, perceived stress that there is for the soldier.
If we were to look at the feelings necessary for emotional strength, we would find feelings about which we’ve already become familiar. For instance, we might find feelings of being emotionally attached to others. With those feelings, we’re less likely to feel “separated,” “isolated,” or “alone,” which aren’t conducive to emotional strength. We might find a high degree of those worry-free “good” feelings that everything is, and will be all right in every way, that we’ll avoid misfortune, and that good things are coming, which are feelings that can only come from meeting well our basic emotional need. It’s from feelings like these that our secondary feelings of self-confidence, optimism, and expected good luck arise that are essential for emotional strength. With emotional strength, we might find feelings of being safe, secure, and protected, in spite of the adverse reality we might have. There might even be feelings that we are invincible, that we aren’t subject to being hurt, and that we know everything we need to know. The less our basic emotional need is met, the less we have of these feelings. How much emotional strength we’ll have at any one time, will always be a direct result of how much of our basic emotional need is being met. The more we can recognizably, or unrecognizably, meet our basic emotional need, the more capable we’ll be in contending with the adversities of our reality and resolving our emotional problems, whatever they might be, that might appear to us as directly resulting from those adversities. Insufficiently meeting our basic emotional need, for whatever reason, will produce a lessened amount of emotional strength, and a lessened amount of self-confidence, optimism and anticipated good luck. We’ll be less capable of contending with the adversities of our reality. We don’t “learn” to have more emotional strength, as people might erroneously believe. We emotionally gain it by meeting better our basic emotional need, which we know is experiencing that which is pleasurable to us.
Like daily physical exercise builds physical strength, daily meeting well our basic emotional need builds emotional strength, self-confidence, and optimism. The easiest way we can do this is taking time for involving ourselves in talking with our friends. How daily talking can build emotional strength, by meeting well our basic emotional need, was well exemplified by a combat veteran who had a most remarkable experience of enduring severe combat conditions without becoming a psychiatric casualty. He was a highly decorated WW2 veteran who had spent much time in a frontline infantry squad. With this squad, he was frequently ordered to go on night patrol in order to determine the map co-ordinates where the enemy was concentrated. He told me how he could kill an enemy soldier at night without that person uttering a sound. When I asked if he felt his job was extremely stressful, knowing that he, himself, would have been similarly killed if he were discovered first by the enemy, he told me he never once felt his night patrols were more stressful than he could handle. He said, “I felt I was just doing my job like everyone else in my squad was doing.” He even admitted that at times he took pleasure in his work, for he told me that once they had located where the enemy armor was, the map co-ordinates would then be conveyed to the artillery, and “the next morning they would blow the place to Hell, and that made me feel good knowing it was because of me and my buddies that made it all possible.”
This person’s talking within his squad, and the resulting camaraderie, met well his basic emotional need even though the circumstances of his army life on the front lines would seem so unimaginably frustrating to anyone’s basic emotional need. Severely deprived of the comforts of home, as he was on the front lines, separated by thousands of miles from his loved ones, and living in constant danger, he and his squad contended very well with the stress they were under. He admitted they were a “cocky” bunch that, together, felt they could handle anything night or day, as well, if not better, than any other infantry squad “on the line.” What might have appeared as massive frustrations of anyone’s basic emotional need, weren’t perceived as such. How that could only be, was because of the great amount of emotional strength these soldiers developed. Their on-going talking within their squad gave them a high level of emotional strength to contend with adversities that one would think would greatly increase anyone’s unmet basic emotional need. No one in their squad had any earlier army training in “building confidence,” “developing psychological coping skills,” “learning stress management,” “building resilience,” or “learning to avoid becoming a psychiatric casualty.” They accomplished what they did in combat with their emotional strength, which came from the talking they did with each other. Without that resulting high level of emotional strength that these soldiers had, they wouldn’t have been able to exist without developing disabling emotional problems of one kind or another. The talking these soldiers did with each other created large emotional attachments, recognizably bonding them closely with each other, and building emotional strength. Why their emotional attachments were large ones was because their interpersonal relationship sphere for meeting their basic emotional need was pretty much limited to the infantry squad, and to no one else. This wasn’t a reality situation one commonly finds in civilian life where interpersonal relationship spheres are usually larger, so that one can better spread out the meeting of the basic emotional need, and the getting rid of stored anger. When this person left the service, he didn’t become involved in any extended talking with friends, like he had been in his infantry squad, for he told me he didn’t have the time, and that things were often such between his wife and him that weren’t always conducive to doing much talking with each other. For him, it was like discontinuing any daily physical exercising because of not having the inclination, the time, the means, or the opportunities for it, and having, as a direct result, a dramatic decrease in physical strength.
The reason this veteran came to see me was because he had
