“I know everything I should know;” “I’m as invulnerable to hurt as I should be;” and “I’m not in this alone;” our unconscious entity produces the opposite feelings. It produces feelings like “everything isn’t, wasn’t, and won’t be all right;” “something really bad is going to happen to me – it’s just a matter of time;” “I don’t know everything I should know;” “I’m not as invulnerable to hurt as I should be;” and “I’m in this all by myself;” that will intensify as our stored unconscious entity increases, just as those good feelings would intensify the more our basic emotional need is met. When we have a lot more of this unconscious entity, and a lot less of an adequate meeting of our basic emotional need, we’ll tend to have recurrent unpleasant thoughts and unpleasant dreams of past times in our lives when our basic emotional need was frustrated to a similar level. We’ll also be more prone to having something in our reality seemingly “triggering” unpleasant thoughts and memories of those past unpleasant times as our unconscious entity increases. That “triggering” will always take place as a result of predicate-equating.
As an example of this, a combat veteran, who had been a high-ranking officer in WW2, told me of his thoughts he had in his first experience in battle which he said must have been one of the worst days of his life. Like him, none of his soldiers had ever been in combat before, and he and his men were surrounded by a much combat-experienced enemy. He told me he feared that if he wasn’t killed he would spend the rest of the war in disgrace in a prison camp if he had to surrender. He undoubtedly had a lot of uncomfortable feelings arising from the reality situation he had that day that must have been greatly frustrating to his basic emotional need. One of those feelings might have been the feeling of “failure” that might have been greatly intensified by his increasing unconscious entity that was arising from his repressing anger in his unconscious from experiencing the immense frustrations of his basic emotional need that he must have had that day. Another feeling might have been the feeling of “an impending personal disaster” for him and his career, which would have also become intensified from what would be added to that reality-originating feeling, from his increased level of his unconscious entity. During that very stressful day, his unconscious must have predicate-equated how he was feeling then, with a long past event that also must have been very frustrating to his basic emotional need for he told me he had recurrent thoughts of his mother’s death some twenty years to the day earlier. We might theorize that his mother’s death had also been a “worst day” of his life at the time, like his first day of battle now was. Perhaps the feeling, “worst day of my life,” was his equating predicate that brought that memory of that distantly past event, to mind.
Like this combat veteran, what recurrently might come into our mind of the distant past while awake, and into our dreams at night, are defensive warnings to us that we have a current situation that needs rectifying. It’s being so emotionally uncomfortable in the present that is the cause for the unpleasant memory of the distant past coming to mind. Our memory of a “bad time” in our past, becomes predicate-equated with the “bad time” we presently have. This tendency of the mind to do this may have arisen in our evolutionary history because it may have benefitted survival. It may be an evolved defensive characteristic of the unconscious mind. What we remember as being so unpleasant of our distant past, may have an advantage for us now to remember. We might be able to cope better with the situation we have now, by remembering what in the past is predicate-equated with the situation we have now. But it’s not the memories that are causing our currently being so emotionally uncomfortable, nor is it the “triggers” we might have that seem to set off those memories. What makes us emotionally uncomfortable enough to have very unpleasant thoughts of our distant past and experience uncomfortable feelings, like that of an impending personal disaster, is a reality situation we currently have, about which we, like that combat veteran in his first battle in WW2, could be fully aware. But we can become just as emotionally uncomfortable from a gradual accumulation of unconscious entity with its accompanying increased unmet basic emotional need about which we won’t be aware. We may have no awareness of any specific thing, or things, in our current reality that is causing us to now have an uncomfortable level of unconscious entity because of its origin being so much “part”-oriented, and therefore unrecognizable. We might be only aware that we are currently very emotionally uncomfortable. It’s the recently accumulated amount of repressed anger, from unrecognized frustrations of our basic emotional need that we have now, being predicate-equated with a time in our distant past, or our remembering someone else’s unfortunate past, where the basic emotional need was frustrated to a similar level. (Remembering someone else’s past may also have had a survival benefit in our evolution!) We could then have some very unpleasant thoughts and dreams, and experience uncomfortable primary feelings, like the primary feeling of “an impending personal disaster,” or “bad luck.” We may then erroneously attribute our now being so emotionally uncomfortable to that which we remember from the distant past, that either happened to us, or to someone we know.
If we have a high enough of a level of this unconscious entity, we could have intense anxiety and recurrent terrifying memories during the day, as well as recurrent night-mares at night, all about some very emotionally traumatic event from the distant past. We might also complain of “triggers” that seem to set off those unpleasant memories. If we were to see a mental health professional, and told him or her about our anxiety, our night-mares, and our terrifying thoughts, as well as the “triggers” that seem to initiate the anxiety and the recurrent terrifying thoughts, that person might erroneously conclude that the traumatic event of the distant past is what is causing our currently being so emotionally uncomfortable. That would be analogous to someone saying that the reason that combat officer was so emotionally uncomfortable in his first experience in battle was because of his mother dying twenty years earlier, and disregarding the immensely stressful situation he was currently experiencing in battle that was currently frustrating his basic emotional need.
If we didn’t have any traumatic event in the past, we could just as readily have night-mares or unpleasant recurrent thoughts about something else, just as terrifying, when we become emotionally uncomfortable to a severe degree. We might also experience “triggers” that seem to initiate unpleasant thoughts and “flash backs.” Our recurrent night-mares and terrifying thoughts might be of some horrendous accident we saw some time ago on the evening news. Or perhaps it might be a horror movie that we watched last month. Or it might be some tragic accident that happened to a friend of ours a year ago or longer, that we, just now, fear could happen to us because of our currently increased unmet basic emotional need and our increased unconscious entity being equated with that memory. We could also have “flash back” memories of what we saw in the movies, or heard, or read about in the past, but didn’t personally experience ourselves, that now becomes predicate-equated with the situation we currently have.
If we’re very emotional uncomfortable in the present for any reason, or combination of reasons, that increased unmet basic emotional need of ours will provide very little of that “everything is, was, and will be, all right” feeling, and that “I feel lucky” feeling. That will occur while our increased unconscious entity will be providing a lot more of that “everything isn’t, wasn’t, and won’t be all right” feeling, with more of a worrisome feeling of an impending personal disaster, which we might fear is “just my damn luck,” from our now feeling so “unlucky,” with memories of our, or someone else’s, past bad luck coming to mind. (Again, there may have been an evolutionary benefit for this.) Those unwanted thoughts and dreams of past traumatic events, whether they have been personally experienced by us or not, aren’t the causes for our being emotionally uncomfortable now, though they may be what we might only want to talk about, as though they are. To think they are the causes of our now feeling so emotionally uncomfortable, is a big deception. They are that which has been predicate-equated with the levels of our increased unmet basic emotional need and our increased unconscious entity that we have right now. When we sufficiently lower both our unmet basic emotional need and our unconscious entity, that we have right now, which may begin with our talking about what we erroneously think are the causes of our presently being so emotionally uncomfortable to a mental health professional, who erroneously thinks the same, that which has been predicate-equated from the past, disappears.
