Featured Article from the Archives of

Why are so many people afraid to face their emotions? Why do they evade, or deny, what is happening inside their minds?

It’s not emotions, by themselves, which frighten most people. It’s what they might have to do with the emotions once they confront them. It’s the responsibility implicit in examining one’s emotions that so many people cannot bring themselves to face.

Consider Raymond, who’s having an extramarital affair. "You had better go talk to a professional," a friend advises him, upon learning of the deception. "You need to decide where you stand with both your wife and this other woman before it all blows up in your face and you lose everything."

Undeniably sensible advice, isn’t it? Yet so few follow it under such circumstances -- whether the issue is a secret affair or any matter causing great emotional conflict and disturbance. Why? Because looking at your emotions will force you to think. Thinking is work; and it usually must be followed by some kind of decisive action. Decisive action means responsibility for yourself, and self-responsibility frightens many people.

Further complicating matters is the issue of self-sacrifice. The pervasive ideology of self-sacrifice and selflessness teaches us (at least implicitly) to be responsible for others, but to ignore or neglect responsibility for ourselves. This ideology sacrifices personal responsibility to "social" responsibility. It provides the perfect rationalization for those who don’t want to be self-responsible: "I’m not going to look inward at myself. That’s self-indulgent, selfish, and bad. I’m going to take care of others instead. It’s the right thing to do, after all." How convenient!

Why should Raymond, the man having the affair, look at his feelings? Many would, indeed, label such introspection a self-indulgent waste of time. Shouldn’t he simply focus on ethics, and leave emotions out of it?

No. Because while ethics are relevant, his feelings are also relevant. Ethical behavior requires that Raymond examine his feelings. Feelings are, in essence, super high-speed value judgments. In order to rationally evaluate his super high-speed value judgments, Raymond first must identify exactly what they are. In order to think rationally and act ethically, he must first make his feelings explicit.

Perhaps -- by making his feelings explicit -- Raymond will discover that he values his wife for her stability and intelligence, while he values his secret lover for her lightheartedness and spontaneity. He will then face a very difficult dilemma. Which set of qualities is more important to him? Or should he reject both women and hold out for a partner who possesses all the qualities he wants?

Tough decision! Perhaps the toughest Raymond will ever make; but he needs to make it if he is to remain in control of his mind and his existence. The consequences of leaving this decision to "fate" or chance will be devastating to his self-esteem and self-respect.

By confronting his emotions head-on, Raymond will also be forced to acknowledge the contradictions in his thinking. He will have to face that there is no such thing as not making a decision. To not make a decision is still a decision. It is a decision with consequences: the psychological damage he does to himself by faking reality with his wife every moment they are together; and the sacrificing of his wife’s right to know on what terms their relationship now operates.

Refusing to face one’s emotions usually serves a subconscious, perverse kind of psychological "purpose." This purpose, at its core, is to escape the responsibility of thought, judgment, and decisive action. If one refuses to think and judge, then one need not face reality and responsibility. One need not be awake, conscious, and alive -- or, at least, that’s the illusion people create for themselves. When this refusal to think becomes deeply ingrained and automatic, psychologists refer to it as denial.

If human nature has one central, built-in flaw, it is the capacity for denial and evasion.

Yet the flaw is not inevitable. Humans are not destined to engage in denial. There is an antidote: thinking. Thinking is the human tool for survival and coping. The self-initiation of thought -- of consciousness, the willingness to be awake -- is the tool of survival upon which all other tools of survival (and coping) depend.

In the psychological and emotional realm, "thinking" means: introspecting about your emotions on a regular basis. Identifying your feelings, mainly to yourself. Talking about them with others, when necessary and appropriate. Applying reason and facts to your feelings. Considering and reflecting before you act. Thinking long-range and not only range-of-the-moment. Practicing objectivity, without sacrificing passion.

Denial (if you suffer from it) is a flaw which you can overcome, if you work at it. The heroic human is the one who thinks. Thinking means allowing yourself to be conscious of your emotions and your motives, instead of running away from them.

Suzanne

Consider Suzanne, who hates her job but refuses to look inward to figure out why. Doing so would force her to take responsibility for either starting on a new career path or adjusting her attitude about her present one. Either way requires work and thought.

Suzanne is mentally lazy, and she is her own worst victim. She feels like she’s playing a joke on reality, but the joke is on her. When the psychological bill finally comes due, and she can no longer tolerate her unhappiness, it will be much harder for her to make a career change. Her level of anxiety will be much higher than had she chosen to face her dilemma at an earlier date. When the crisis hits, she will scream to both therapists and loved ones: "Help me! Help me!" But she could have helped herself much earlier if only she had faced the reality of her inner conflicts.

Once she enters the crisis stage, Suzanne might become tempted to turn herself into a victim of her family or "society" or her genetic makeup -- refusing to acknowledge she is actually a victim of her own long-standing denial.

No doubt she will find many people who are more than happy to indulge her pseudo-victimization.

The typical psychiatrist, for example, will tell her that her anxiety/depression is totally medical, and has nothing whatsoever to do with her choices, feelings, or values. The typical psychotherapist will tell her that her anxiety/depression is totally due to her childhood or society or men.

The Alcoholics Anonymous group will tell her that her anxiety/depression requires passive submission to a Higher Power and blind adherence to the will and judgment of the group.

The academic professor or the journalist will tell her that her anxiety/depression is due to the absence of some government program or new law.

The plain truth, however, is that Suzanne simply refused to think -- and now she’s paying the consequences.

Only by facing this truth -- and finding people who help her face it, instead of enabling her to evade it further -- can she make a course correction and head in a healthy direction. Only by facing that she made a mistake can she avoid such mistakes in the future.

Art

Consider Art, the young man who majors in business rather than architecture. Business is a perfectly fine career -- except he has no passion for it whatsoever.

Architecture, on the other hand, is something he would love to practice. But he’s afraid of failure, and he’s afraid he won’t be able to find clients to sustain himself in the field of architecture. In corporate business (or, better yet: government), Art can go work for a big entity and perhaps not be so directly and immediately answerable to others. He pursues the business degree not as a desirable end in itself, but rather as a way to avoid his fears about architecture. He strives not for the pursuit of a positive goal, but rather for the absence of anxiety.

His strategy backfires.

As he moves through the business degree program in college, Art begins to experience terrible bouts of pain and sadness. He claims not to know what’s causing them. A doctor labels the bouts "anxiety attacks" and implies they are a purely medical problem. "Take your pills," the doctor advises, "and you’ll be fine."

The pills blunt and neutralize Art’s emotions, but do not make them go away entirely. Nor do they help him understand what the emotions are and why he’s feeling them. They treat symptoms, but not root causes. Consequently, he still feels out of control.

A concerned friend invites Art to talk about what he’s feeling. Art refuses. He also refuses to talk to a professional counselor. He doesn’t want to face the emotions. Facing the emotions will require him to think, and to make hard decisions. Why on earth would he want to do such a thing?

For Art, the burden of knowing is too much for him to bear. He’d rather not know. So he refuses to look inward. He pretends that he does not have an inner conflict, even though he does. Months or years later, he will come to find the conflict completely unbearable and his psychological symptoms will take on extreme proportions. He could end up with a "mid-life crisis;" or clinical depression; or a "nervous breakdown;" he might even become suicidal.

Whatever excuses Art (and the so-called experts) make for his neuroses at the scene of the future psychological disaster, it remains an inescapable fact that denial and evasion started it all.

"Psychology Is All A Bunch of Nonsense"

Many people are just like Art. They feel that looking inward and introspecting is, at best, an unnecessary luxury and, at worst, an improperly self-indulgent waste of time. Men can be particularly guilty of this error, though increasingly many women are as well.

Certainly there are forms of looking inward which are useless. It is possible to over-analyze your feelings, and to use this over-analyzing as an excuse or distraction for not taking decisive action. A lot of what goes on in the psychotherapy field is, admittedly, a colossal waste of time.

Just because you sit with a mental health professional in an office does not mean you are getting better. After all, you can fire a therapist who tells you what you don’t want to hear, and you can hire a therapist who helps you evade your real conflicts even more. It happens all the time.

But to reject psychological introspection on principle is an equally serious mistake. Sooner or later, the psychological chickens will come home to roost. Unresolved conflicts will cry for resolution in the form of ever-increasing psychological symptoms.

You can be your own best friend -- or your own worst enemy. The choice is yours. If you want to advance your interest rather than act against your interest, then you need to regularly look inward. You need mental tune-ups just like your car needs tune-ups. You need to keep track of what’s going on in your "inner world" as well as the outer world.

If you don’t, you will eventually lose the ability to manage either.

Click here to SUBSCRIBE NOW!

Copyright (c) 1997, Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D. Reprinted from The Living Resources Newsletter.

Note: For more details on good vs. bad therapy, see "Effective Therapy" by Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D. (New York: Dunhill Publishing Co., 1997). Information on how to order "Effective Therapy" is available on this site.

This article may not be copied in whole or part without written permission of the author.