Psychological Problems and Their Big Deceptions. David W. Shave

what might be unconsciously influencing what we perceive of our reality. We have little if any control over how our unconscious may be determining how we feel about ourselves and others, or how we act toward ourselves, or toward someone else, or what we remember, or don’t remember, from our subconscious. If we were to have negative feelings about ourselves, or about someone else, arising more from our unconscious than from our reality, some people would have us believe that we can change how we feel about ourselves, or about someone else, by simply making a conscious effort to do so. It would be nice if through a conscious intellectual endeavor of ours we could have only favorable feelings about ourselves, and favorable feelings about someone else. Though some people might try to convince us that all we have to do is change our conscious thinking, to feel more acceptable about ourselves, or to feel that someone else is more acceptable, we may not be able to change our feelings by any conscious effort. This could be less due to our reality, and more due to the influence of our unconscious when we’ve become emotionally uncomfortable. While we might be able to make small changes in our feelings about ourselves, or about someone else, with conscious thinking when we’re emotionally comfortable, it becomes more difficult, and may become impossible, the more we become emotionally uncomfortable. What might work in changing our “negative thinking” about ourselves, or about someone else, to “positive thinking,” with little influence from our unconscious, might not work at all when there is much more influence from our unconscious when we’re more emotionally uncomfortable. Our ability to resolve our emotional problems by a conscious intellectual endeavor decreases in direct proportion as we become more emotionally uncomfortable. The more we become emotionally uncomfortable, the more our emotional problems will require an unconscious emotional resolution, and not solely a conscious intellectual one. What we might be able to do with someone’s advice in resolving a very small emotional problem, may not work at all if that emotional problem becomes larger, which is to say when we’ve become more emotionally uncomfortable.

      Advising people to think better of themselves, may be effective advice only if there is very little influence to the contrary from their unconscious. If there is a lot of influence, as there would be for anyone lying in the middle of a busy road, advising people to think better of themselves, may be a waste of breath. Concluding that these people can resolve their emotional problems, by willfully changing their conscious thinking for the better, could be not only an unrecognized big deception of an inexperienced mental health professional, but a very dangerous assumption for anyone to make. If these very emotionally uncomfortable people were to tell us that they are going to start thinking better of themselves from now on, as a result of someone’s advice, we had better not take our eyes off them, because they may be right back lying in the road again before long. If one were to write a book on how to resolve the emotional problem of wanting to lie in the middle of a busy road, or any other similar emotional problem, without distinguishing between those less emotionally uncomfortable people that can intellectually resolve their problems, from those more emotionally uncomfortable people that can’t, because of the influence of their unconscious, one would be doing an immense disservice to the Reader. Unfortunately, this is how most self-help books on resolving emotional problems are written. Being able to resolve one’s own emotional problems intellectually, by a conscious endeavor, is just what most emotionally uncomfortable people want to do. They want to read self-help books that profess that one only needs to make the “right choices” or the “right changes” in thinking, to get through life without emotional problems. They want to believe that they can change “negative thinking” to “positive thinking,” as easily as one can change a television channel one doesn’t like, to one that one does like, by learning which buttons to push and knobs to turn, and consciously making the right effort. They want to know how one can make an intellectual endeavor, from their conscious mind, and change their lives for the better. Unfortunately, many people can’t resolve their emotional problems by any such intellectual endeavors of their conscious mind, because of the unrecognized influence of their unconscious from being too emotionally uncomfortable from an immediate origin less in their reality, and more in their unconscious. Like the person wanting to lie in the middle of a busy road, their emotional problems must be unconsciously resolved first before their problems will appear as intellectually resolved in their reality. Then it might appear that they simply made the “right choices,” or “pushed the right buttons and turned the right knobs,” which would then be an unrecognized big deception for what has really made the change. The more people become emotionally uncomfortable, the more their emotional problems must be resolved first, by an unconscious emotionally-oriented process, before it will look like these people resolved their emotional problems with a conscious intellectually-oriented process.

      If what’s going on in our unconscious results in our wanting to lie in the middle of a busy road, someone trying to convince us to do otherwise isn’t going to change our feelings. We’ll continue to want to lie in the road until things change for the better in our unconscious, and we become less emotionally uncomfortable. A person very emotionally uncomfortable won’t feel less so by reading any psychology “best seller” about some recommended intellectual endeavor that ignores the influence of the unconscious. People, who are bent on wanting to commit suicide, or wanting to commit murder, or fearful someone is going to murder them, are little likely to change their uncomfortable feelings as a result of their reading a book that only emphasizes, as a resolution to the problem, some conscious intellectual endeavor, or the taking of some seemingly “good advice.” One, for instance, can’t depend on advice, or even one’s own intellectual knowledge, to resolve an emotional problem where suicide is a possibility if one’s unconscious is making one feel, which is to say “believe,” one should commit suicide. The medical profession has always had one of the highest suicide rates in the country, and the specialty of medicine that had the highest rate when this Author began his residency in psychiatry, was psychiatry itself! Knowledge about mental illness is no guaranteed protection from suicide. As just one example of that, a social worker from a nearby county, who worked with depressed patients at a mental health clinic, told me, the first time she came to see me for help after she, herself, became depressed, that she had felt so deeply depressed the evening before that first visit to me that she didn’t think she could make it through the night without committing suicide. She felt that evening so strongly that she should commit suicide that she thought she should call the county’s suicide hotline but then remembered that she, herself, was on call for answering the hotline for that night.

      When things are going especially bad for us in life, our uncomfortable feelings we might be experiencing may become noticeably intensified. Any intensified unwanted feelings we might have at those difficult times may not be arising solely from our reality, where we might believe they are, but from our unrecognized unconscious as well. If they are, and we are very emotionally uncomfortable, the unwanted feelings we experience may be well beyond any control of our conscious thinking, and may not be subject to being solely changed by any conscious endeavor toward “positive thinking.” If we are very emotionally uncomfortable, and have intensified feelings of being “down” on ourselves, with pessimistic feelings about our future, it is little likely we can wake up each morning and just will ourselves to change those feelings like some people would have us believe. We can’t get up each morning and tell ourselves that, “Every day, in every way, I’m better than the day before,” and feel better. It would be nice if we could, for then we would all experience more “good” feelings each and every day. When things are going badly for us in life, how badly we feel will unlikely be changed solely by any intellectual endeavors on our part, or anyone else’s. Our emotional problems, whatever they might be, most often do have some added component from our unrecognized unconscious that’s not subject to being consciously and intellectually changed. That component will require being unconsciously and emotionally changed, and when it is changed for the better, we’ll erroneously believe we did it all by a conscious intellectual endeavor. We’ll be seeing again the obvious, and the seemingly all-important smaller part of the iceberg above the waterline, and disregarding what is really determining a new and better direction that the smaller part is now taking.

      If how badly we feel most often has an added component from our unconscious that’s not under our intellectual control, we are implying a lot. We’re implying that any emotional problem we might have, that is making us feel very emotionally uncomfortable, will most likely have to be at least partially resolved