exposed to combat, can attain the same amount of an unmet basic emotional need and the same amount of stored anger, as a soldier exposed to combat, by gradually accumulating those levels on an unrecognized “part”-oriented basis with no good means available to lower those levels. Without adequate means to lower those amounts, they could accumulate larger amounts than a soldier engaged in combat, or even wounded in combat, but who has opportunity for talking with buddies.
Without having sufficient emotional strength, and having a build-up of stored anger from unrecognized unconscious “part”-oriented frustrations, we can easily become a psychiatric casualty without our having to experience any recognizable major traumatic event. If we’re not adequately meeting our basic emotional need, as we may not be when we’re not involved enough in extended talking with others, we can become overwhelmed by stresses that other people might see as trivial. But what might appear to others as trivial can wear us down when it depletes our emotional strength by slowly increasing our unmet basic emotional need and increasing our stored anger, when we don’t have opportunity to decrease our unmet basic emotional need and our stored anger. We can gradually attain very uncomfortable levels of both an unmet basic emotional need and stored anger. We don’t need to experience the stresses of combat to appear emotionally “shell-shocked.” With enough of an unmet basic emotional need, too much stored anger, and a resulting depletion of our emotional strength, we can easily become a “psychiatric casualty” without having been exposed to any recognized traumatic event. With little or no extended talking, we could show the same psychiatric symptoms that a person might show from a single recognizable major frustration of the basic emotional need. We can appear as having a “very bad case of nerves” from a succession of unrecognized, as well as seemingly trivial frustrations of our basic emotional need, that over time produces too much of an unmet basic emotional need and too much accumulated stored anger that then depletes our emotional strength. It might then appear to mental health professionals that we didn’t have sufficient “learning of coping skills,” or sufficient “learning to be resilient,” when it’s not a deficiency in “learning.” It’s the deficiency in our emotional strength! When that combat veteran first came to see me, he looked like he had been “shell-shocked” at the pantyhose factory. As he put it when I first saw him, “My nerves are shot to Hell!” which is just another way of his saying, “I’ve depleted my emotional strength.” The irony was that his nerves were “shot to Hell” at the pantyhose factory, and they never were “shot to Hell” in combat! It was the level of emotional strength he had that made the difference. He had no buddies with whom to talk at the pantyhose factory, like he did while in combat. In understanding this, we can see the big deception in explanations for becoming a psychiatric casualty from combat that are solely based on a lack of certain genes, or because of “invisible injuries” to the brain. We can also see a big deception with researchers telling us that an optimistic feeling that everything will be all right originates in certain parts of the brain, because certain areas of the brain light up with neuro-imaging in optimistic people, as opposed to not lighting up in pessimistic people. That’s just more “kabuki psychology.” It’s in the brain’s mind where those optimistic feelings arise, not the brain’s specific parts that only secondarily may light up on neuro-imaging!
Traumatic events do happen to all us for they are a part of life. Life is such that some days will be “good” days, when more of our basic emotional need is being met, and some days will be “bad” days when more of our basic emotional need is being frustrated. Many traumatic events are unavoidable, like the loss to death of good friends and cherished relatives, which will always be major frustrations of our basic emotional need even if we might feel they have gone on to some “perfect place.” By meeting well our basic emotional need through group talking, we can contend better with any misfortune. Any traumatic event can later be more easily put behind us when we continue to be involved in group talking. With an inadequate meeting of our basic emotional need, too much stored anger, and too little emotional strength, any traumatic event will appear magnified to us, and appear more psychologically disabling. The traumatic event most likely won’t appear as later put behind us if we’re not adequately meeting our basic emotional need. A remembered traumatic event of the distant past might superficially appear as continuing to be an emotional problem, when it may not be at all. The remembered event (like someone’s remembered combat years ago) may hide the real problem that we’re not currently meeting our basic emotional need adequately enough to be emotionally comfortable, and not currently getting rid of our recently accumulated anger, but are storing too much of it in that now remembered traumatic event of the distant past.
Our high level of an unmet basic emotional need that we might have now, which might have been unrecognizably engendered from recently experiencing multiple small frustrations where we didn’t have the means or opportunities to lower that level, can become equated in our unconscious, by some commonly shared predicate, as we saw in the last chapter, to a distantly past time in our lives when our basic emotional need was recognizably unmet to a similar high degree from a single major traumatic event. It’s the unrecognized situation we currently have, where we have a very uncomfortably unmet basic emotional need, and that well recognized major traumatic event of our distant past, that temporarily might have given us at that distant time, a similar level of an unmet basic emotional need, that initiates the unconscious equating. The commonly shared predicate, that equates that major well-remembered traumatic event of our distant past, and the unrecognized situation we currently have where our basic emotional need is similarly unmet, might be, “feeling very emotionally uncomfortable,” “feeling overwhelmed by stress,” “feeling hopeless,” “feeling pain,” or any other feeling shared in common by that major traumatic event of our distant past, and by our current situation. We could then erroneously attribute the feelings we have now, as being entirely due to the now remembered traumatic event of our distant past, which would be a big deception. An example of this is a man, sexually abused as a child by his parish priest, and who later very uncomfortably remembers that past time when, for whatever recognized and unrecognized combination of reasons, he again becomes emotionally uncomfortable to a similar level. He may then feel his now being so emotionally uncomfortable is due to his being sexually abused by a priest many years ago, when it’s not! But it can make a very good “logical-sounding” rationalization for currently being emotionally uncomfortable that many people would readily accept.
It isn’t necessary for us to have a recognizable single traumatic event in the present, to equate with a recognizable single traumatic event of our distant past. What can be equated are two different times where we have the same level of an unmet met basic emotional need, and the same level of stored anger. One from a very recognizable time of our distant past, and the other from what we may have unrecognizably accumulated recently. The unconscious predicate-equating is the very reason that any long past traumatic event can then come out of our subconscious and become remembered, and where that same traumatic event may now appear in recurrent thoughts and dreams. It’s the unconscious predicate-equating that allows us to unconsciously store recently engendered anger in a dislike of our distant past, that then can cause us to be more emotionally uncomfortable as though from that remembered dislike. Since what has made us so very emotionally uncomfortable in the present may be unrecognizable to us because of it being a result of a gradual accumulation of an uncomfortable level of both an unmet basic emotional need, and the stored anger from “part”-oriented frustrations of our basic emotional need, we can’t logically talk about the specific causes of that accumulation. We may want to talk about that equated long past traumatic event as though that’s the very reason for our currently being so emotionally uncomfortable. What we might present in regard to that long past traumatic event of our past, as a cause for our now being so emotionally uncomfortable, is a faulty conclusion.
What might be logically presented as a cause for our now being emotionally uncomfortable, as due to some event of our distant past, involves the same predicate-equating process that can occur when our basic emotional need is currently being exceptionally well met, and a memory of a very pleasant relationship, experience, or situation of the distant past seems to come recurrently to mind. Our remembered very pleasant event from our distant past, when our basic emotional need was exceptionally well met, and the very pleasant situation of our having our basic emotional
