Racket feelings and manipulation

In my upcoming workshop on racket feelings I look at the role feelings can play in human relationships. Especially how people use feelings to manipulate each other. The three most common feelings used to manipulate others are fear, guilt and shame.

For example, many men and women have had a covert unwritten agreement for many generations. Most of the time they are unaware they are even doing so. Women have learnt that in conflict with a male if they start to cry some men will tend to give them what they want, at least to some degree. They are behaving in such a way that the man will feel guilt and this motivates him to change his behaviour in such a way that suits the woman.

On the other hand men have learnt that if they begin to raise their voice and show some level of anger then some women will have a fear response and this motivates her to change her behaviour such  that it suits the man to some degree.

Then there are parents and children. Parents learn quickly that to get a child to do what they want using fear, guilt or shame is much more effective than the usually prescribed methods of time out and consequences of behaviour. The only difficulty with using the feelings method of parenting is there are some negative side effects for the child.

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The role of relational confluence in working through emotions

(This is an edited version of the previous posting)

When one has a feeling the process usually articulated is the mechanism of tension followed by expression and then relaxation. This originally came from the work of Wilhelm Reich who plays a major role in this aspect of human functioning. He presented the powerful yet simple model of a feeling involving firstly tension followed by expression and then relaxation.

This upon reflection this is too one dimensional.  On occasion feelings occur in the context of a relationship or at least whilst in relational contact.  One may have a feeling reaction to another person directly or one may express a feeling about something else but in the company of another.

One could argue the response the other party plays is crucial to how successful the emotion is dealt with. Hence we arrive at the vulnerability anxiety equation.

Consider the situation where person A discusses an emotion not related to person B. For example person A is angry at her boss and is telling her husband (person B). The responses by the husband are going to influence how person A deals with or resolves the angry feelings. For example sometimes husbands can get into ‘fixing’ mode and  respond to the wife in ways where he is trying to help her to fix the problem with the boss. Often this is not what is wanted and she really just wants him to listen to her as she vents her thoughts and feelings about the matter. He does not understand this and as a result it leaves her with a sense of incompletion with her anger because there is a communication problem with her husband.

As one can see this adds an extra dimension to the original Reichian proposal of how one needs to ‘work through’ emotions. That is, resolving feelings (at least some of the time) is a two person psychological process. In this sense it is deemed erroneous to view the resolution of feelings as a function of one person alone. Instead the feeling, in some instances, must be brought into the relational with another person. 

If the other person responds in an effective way then the sense of resolution will be more complete in the emotion laden individual. If the husband had responded by just listening to the wife, then her sense of completion would be more satisfactory and psychologically healthy.

She takes a risk. If she does not raise the angry situation with him then he cannot respond poorly such that she is worse off after her exchange. At the same time if she does not raise it with him then she cannot get that greater sense of completion if he responds in an appropriate way.

It seems reasonable to suggest that dealing with and resolving emotions needs to be seen as more than just one person having some kind of cathartic release. Instead emotions play a central part of relationships and hence one needs to view them in the wider context of relationships which can assist or hinder the process of working through the emotion.

The above example can be shown diagrammatically. In transaction 1 the wife expresses to her husband the angst she felt at work regarding her boss. Two possible responses of his are indicated. First he could cross the transaction and respond from Adult as shown in transaction 2 - “This could be a solution to the problem.” If she is simply wanting to be heard and listened to by her husband then this response will result in a sense of non completion about her feelings.

If he responds from NP in transaction 3 and listens sympathetically then she will experience much more of a sense of completion about the feelings. Thus we are in a position to alter the original Reichian conception of the process of feeling. This diagram comes from Reich (1971).

Moving beyond the purely hydraulic theory of tension build up followed by tension release and adding in a relational component one gets a modified process. 

After tension build up (the person feeling the feeling) the expression allows for a release of tension which provides a partial solution. However as is the often the case with feelings, particularly troublesome feelings, the individual also has a desire to talk about it and relate aspects of the event to a close other. If this happens and the other responds in an effective manner then a sense of relational confluence can be seen to be achieved and the feeling is then fully worked through. Without the achievement of relational confluence the feeling could be seen to be unresolved in the psychological sense of the term.

Reference

Reich, W.

1971. The Function of the Orgasm: The Discovery of the Orgone. Meridian: New York

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The resolution of emotion

When one has a feeling the process usually articluated is the mechanism of tension followed by expression and then relaxation. This originally came from the work of Wilhelm Reich who plays a major role in this aspect of human functioning. He presented the powerful yet simple model of a feeling involving firstly tension followed by expression and then relaxation.

This upon reflection this is too one dimensional.  On occasion feelings occur in the context of a relationship or at least whilst in relational contact.  One may have a feeling reaction to another person directly or one may express a feeling about something else but in the company of another.

One could argue the response the other party plays is crucial to how successful the emotion is dealt with. Hence we arrive at the vulnerability anxiety equation.

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Strokes and racket development

Already mentioned has been the role of temperament in racket development and how the use of emotions in parenting can also effect the development of certain rackets.

However one of the more powerful ways of fostering a racket is with strokes. When a child displays a certain feeling how do the parents respond with their stroking patterns. Do the strokes they give foster the feeling being displayed or tend to hinder its development.

This is reasonably easy to ascertain. One simply recalls when they were young and how they observed the parents responding. See the chart below:

The patterns of stroking others does not stop in childhood but we are constantly being stroked in certain ways for the emotions we display. In many instances both parties are unaware of what is happening as it is unconscious communication. Indeed the vast majority of human communication is unconscious as this diagram shows.

To ascertain these conscious and unconscious stroking patterns with those in your current life one simply changes a few questions. See the diagram below:

Of course this is a two way process. Whist you are being influenced by the stroking patterns of others you are also influencing them in exactly the same way. To gain some insight into this one can answer another series of questions:

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Factors in racket development

This post draws on the content of the previous two postings

In one of the previous postings I presented the following list of innate emotions.

Sad - depressed, down, flat, melancholic, bored, gloomy, low, dull 

Scared - worried, nervous, frightened, anxious, terrified, trepidation 

Shame - disgust, embarrassment, disgraced, humiliation, degraded, humble

Happy - joyous, delighted, peaceful, playful, glee, contented, glad 

Love - affection, adoration, liking, fondness, friendly, intimate 

Grief - Loss, lamenting, mourning 

Despair - Vacuum, nothingness, hopeless, blank, desolation, numb 

Sexual - romantic, seductive, passionate, sexy, sensual, lustful, amorous 

Anger - fury, rage, resentful, rebellious, annoyance, hate, spite, sarcasm

The development of feelings that become rackets will be due to a variety of factors one of those being the natural temperament of the child. The differing temperaments will result in a proclivity to have certain feelings and indeed develop particular racket feelings. These are listed below:

Fight - anger, sexual

Flight - scare,  shame

Freeze - scare, sad, despair

I also mentioned that a few emotions can be used as a way to parent children so as to get them to comply to the wishes of the parents. Those three being scare, guilt and shame. Thus one can initially look at racket development in a mathematical way.

If the child’s innate temperament is for flight and the parents use shame as a way to socialize the child then we have an additive effect:

Natural temperament of child is flight - 1 point of shame

Parents use shame as a socializing tool - 1 point of shame

In this case the child will have a doubling effect and hence could develop quite a strong shame racket that develops. 

The three other options are

Option 1

Natural temperament of child is fight or freeze - 0 point of shame

Parents use shame as a socializing tool - 1 point of shame

Total 1 point

Option 2

Natural temperament of child is flight - 1 point of shame

Parents do not use shame as a socializing tool - 0 point of shame

Total 1 point

Option 3

Natural temperament of child is fight or freeze - 0 point of shame

Parents do not use shame as a socializing tool - 0 point of shame

Total 0 points

In options 1 & 2 there could be some shame racket development whereas in option 3 there would be very little resultant shame racket development.

Attributions

There are other ways which will make emotions prominent in the personality (i.e. rackets). One of those is by attributions. The parents (or others) attribute a certain emotion to the child or adolescent.

When talking about their children to others in ear shot of the child parents may say things like

“She is the timid one.”

“He is the angry one.”

“She always happy and smiley.”

The child is told it is a certain way and in many instances the child will take that attribution on as the parents are imbued with psychological power by the child.

"He is the naughty one." Parents need to be careful with their attributions.

Furthermore in Transactional Analysis this is what is called a carom transaction. The parents do not speak directly to the child but talk about the child to others whilst the child listens on. This is a particularly potent transaction, more powerful than if the parent is speaking directly to the child. Very as well useful for a therapist in group or family therapy.

The other one of note are the feelings of:

Sexual - romantic, seductive, passionate, sexy, sensual, lustful, amorous

This is particularly important for the physically attractive female and the parents need to be very careful with it or it can become quite a substantial racket. The physically attractive girl hears comments about how pretty she looks and then when she reaches adolescence it truly starts. The parents often continue with attributions and carom transactions about the teenage girl and her physical appearance. In addition to this the psychically attractive female suddenly discovers how it effects males attitudes to her. She quickly learns that she can get ‘stuff’ from males because of her physical attractiveness. I don’t mean by having sex with them but at a subtle and often unconscious level she and the male communicate with the sexualness in the background at the very least.

This leaves the physically attractive woman in a precarious position because she can so easily get seduced by her own seductiveness. She learns at a conscious and unconscious level that her physical and emotional sexualness works. She starts to use it more and more often without her even being aware of it. In essence it becomes a racket. The sexualness is used to get males in particular to behave in a particular way. Any emotion can be used to manipulate others including sexuality with the physically attractive female. Over time she starts to rely on it, often without her even being aware of it and that leads to all sorts of negatives for her later on. 

The physically beautiful female needs to be careful not to be seduced by her own seductiveness such that it becomes a racket.

It is indeed a  difficult thing for parents to deal with. They need to somehow communicate to the physically attractive girl and adolescent not to rely on what their attractiveness can get them when there are going to be significant and powerful pressures to do so. However at the same time for her to enjoy her physical appearance. A difficult line indeed for parents to walk to avoid such a racket developing in the psychology of the girl.

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Temperament and racket

Below is a list of the nine innate feelings that occur in humans. Each basic feeling is followed by a list of derivative feelings that come from the basic feeling.

Sad - depressed, down, flat, melancholic, bored, gloomy, low, dull 

Scared - worried, nervous, frightened, anxious, terrified, trepidation 

Shame - disgust, embarrassment, disgraced, humiliation, degraded, humble

Happy - joyous, delighted, peaceful, playful, glee, contented, glad 

Love - affection, adoration, liking, fondness, friendly, intimate 

Grief - Loss, lamenting, mourning 

Despair - Vacuum, nothingness, hopeless, blank, desolation, numb 

Sexual - romantic, seductive, passionate, sexy, sensual, lustful, amorous 

Anger - fury, rage, resentful, rebellious, annoyance, hate, spite, sarcasm

Innate temperament can be conceptualized a number of ways. One is with the model of fight, flight or freeze. Children are born with these tendencies as a basic way to deal with problems and stress in life

The differing temperaments will result in a proclivity to have certain feelings and indeed develop particular racket feelings. These are listed below:

Fight - anger, sexual

Flight - scare,  shame

Freeze - scare, sad, despair

Freeze temperament?

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Racket feelings

Emotions are such an emotive topic. There are many and varied definitions about them and lots of alternate theories of emotion. In transactional Analysis the term racket has been used in many ways and some are listed here.


To see a larger version click on the picture.



Racket feelings are generally seen as pathological and hence it seems opportune to define what a healthy, here and now feeling is.

Also enclosed are different solutions to feelings. Again there is much conjecture on what is the psychologically healthy way to deal with feelings - express them, inhibit them or think them away.



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Anger work in psychotherapy

Preliminary notes

It is necessary to use anger work in a context in counselling. In some areas such as the bodywork approaches this is not done and anger work can be used just as an exercise in itself. It must be relevant to the contract at hand and have a clear role in assisting the client to achieve that contract.

For example a client could say, “I want to shout at my father because of the way he treated me the other day”. In order for a therapist to go along with such a contract he needs to be aware of what happened between the two people as the anger work could be just a part in the game. What is the client’s script messages about anger and its expression. The client may be chronically angry and to go ahead and do the anger work would be contraindicated.

Anger work is a regressive technique. That is it encourages the client to ‘regress’ into the Child ego state and out of the Adult and Parent ego states. This has obvious uses for the individual who is stuck in his Parent and Adult and excludes the Child ego state, which many people are who attend psychotherapy. On the other hand there are people who are too much in their Child ego state and exclude the Parent and Adult, clearly one would need to be careful in doing such anger work with these individuals. For example the chronically angry person, and the hysteric personality type.



Anger work also destabilises the personality. This is one of its great therapeutic advantages. A client’s script becomes set and solid over time after many, many rehearsals and reinforcements day after day. Anger work can be used to shake it up and loosen the concrete holding it together. Once loosened one can then restructure the script into another form that allows the individual to live a more emotionally liberated life. That is, less script bound and more autonomous.

The down side of this destabilisation is that what if the client is already destabilised such as can be the case with schizophrenia, dependent personality, borderline personality and the obsessive/compulsive personality. One would need to be cautious using anger work in such situations.

Another difficulty with anger work is that anger always has the potential to turn into physical violence. So if the client is impulsive and has a tendency to be explosive then one needs to be very careful with anger work particularly if the client is bigger than you.


These women need to do some anger work, for sure!


In all my years of counselling I have never had a client express their anger in a way which hurt me or any of my property. One can use “Stop” techniques if necessary. Another advantage of this is with the client who comes from a physically violent back ground. By doing anger work they get first hand experience that there can be anger without physical violence.

Anger expression can be self validating. If one feels they have been wronged, then the act of saying so , especially to the face of the other party says to the individual - “I am worthwhile”. So to say such things with the expression of anger can assist with the self esteem.

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Writing

I had forgotten what it was like and how it worked. For the past two weeks the publisher had asked me (twice!) to put in the proposal for the book on emotions. I had thought about it, meant to start it, “ummed and ahhed” about it all and nothing had happened.


To all you smokers out there, remember the cool, smooth flavour of Camel.


Well stuff was happening but it was all behind the scenes. My mind, as I ate my dinner, went for my walking exercise, bathed and other such domestic tasks was slowly but surely getting it together. How do you put together an 80,000 word manuscript? What is the overall structure of the thing which of course is the most important part of all. It was not like I had set myself the task to ‘get the overall structure of the book’ it was kind of thinking about this bit here and that bit there. Definitely done in a non systematic way.

On my computer desk top is the folder which has all the stuff in it for what the publisher is wanting. It just sits there in the bottom left hand corner. Today I sat down at my computer and opened up the folder. I had no intention of doing that, it kind of just happened. Then three hours later it was done. It was one of those things where you start something and then you look at the clock and realise three hours have gone by. All of a sudden you realise you have that sort of numb feeling behind your eye balls because your concentration has been so intense for such a protracted period of time.



It reminded me of how I wrote the manuscript for the book on working with suicidal individuals. I never forced anything, it happened and came when it wanted. At times I was a bit concerned as I would go for a week or two with out writing anything. But then it would come and I would write a whole bunch of stuff.

Back to the current book.

I have an exercise for anyone out there who might like to do such a thing. You need to get four separate pieces of paper (Blank sheets with no lines on them).

On the first page draw a picture of an angry person
On the second page draw a picture of a sad person
On the third page draw a picture of a scared person
On the fourth page draw a picture of a happy person

Then if you like send them to me and I will analyse them.



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Emotional dysregulation

I was recently reading an article on emotional dysregulation. Sounds impressive eh?

The person who is capable of emotional regulation can initiate, maintain and modulate the occurrence, intensity and duration of internal feeling states. Impressive eh? In other words they are capable of self soothing.



In Transactional Analysis terms one could describe emotional dysregulation in the following ways



The child begins life in a symbiosis with mother. It has to do this or it will die as it has no Adult or Parent ego states to keep it alive. The child will use mother’s Parent and Adult ego states to get food and water and all the psychological needs it has for love and human contact.

As the child grows in its early days it learns that at times it will experience distress of various kinds. It has hunger, thirst, wind, a need to be changed and so forth. It learns or is programmed to let mother’s Adult and Parent ego states know of its needs by crying. When mother hears the cry she swings into action and sets about solving the child’s distress and thus the child is emotionally regulated as the distress eases.

When this happens the child learns four things
It learns that it is important, it has worth and people will help it out
It learns that it can get its needs met
It introjects a soothing Parent ego state into its own Parent ego state
It learns the experience the feeling satisfied and calmed down



Sometimes this does not happen. For instance mother may be suffering post natal depression. She begins to find herself isolated in the house, lying in bed for long periods of time during the day. When the new-born cries she finds it very hard to get out of bed to deal with the child, at times she does not even recognise the child is crying. As a result the child has to cry for long periods before it is dealt with and sometimes the help never comes and the child just gives up crying.

When this happens the child learns
That it is of little worth
It develops the injunction, “Don’t get your needs met”
It does not introject an internal soothing parent figure
It has no experience of the feeling of being soothed

Combine this with certain inborn natural temperament qualities and the young person can be set up with a life of emotional dysregulation. Consider this list of temperament qualities.



If the child is born with a negative quality of mood and an intense level of reaction combine this with a lack of internal self soothing ability, a “Don’t get your needs met” injunction, that it is of little worth and has no experience of what it feels like to be soothed then it is likely to suffer emotional dysregulation.

Should this happen then the person will develop other ways of coping with the dysregulation. Three common ways are:

Self harming. This is common with the borderline personality. As I mention in my book on working with the suicidal there are eight main reasons for self harming

1. Self harming as part of gang tattooing behaviour.
2. Self harming to make self feel real which can be found in those who dissociate.
3. Self harming to make self feel something.
4. Self harming used as a means of tension relief and to release pressure build up.
5. Self harming as a physical expression of emotional pain. Self harming is seen as providing concrete evidence of the pain.
6. Self harming as a means to self nurture. It allows the person to care for self as can be found in Munchausen Syndrome.
7. Self harming as a means to punish self and an expression of self hatred.
8. Self harming as a means to manipulate others or as a cry for help.



People who self harm as a way to cope with emotional dysregulation would most often be doing it for the reason cited as number 4.

Drug use. Some cope with emotional dysregulation by self medicating with drugs weather they be licit or illicit



Comfort eating. One way to soothe self is to eat good tasting food. When this happens the person is said to engage in what is called comfort eating. They deal with ongoing painful emotions by self soothing using eating.

Therapy with such people is not all that complex. The therapist simply soothes the client when necessary. Of course this is easier said than done but the overall direction of treatment is quite clear. This soothing can range from lending a sympathetic ear and a soothing voice, to holding work, to the client learning methods of self soothing such as using a pacifier and so forth.

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It happens sometimes

I have seen a twenty something woman about 4 times. About the end of the second session I could see it in the way she looked at me. A strong positive transference is developing, maybe even very strong. She reports the sessions have been most fruitful for her and is keen to attend further sessions.

But it is the way she looks at me right into my face and eyes. I find it a little bit disconcerting as she can kind of stare at me for a little time. Not an excessively long period of time but it is a little longer than would usually be the case.



Why do I feel a little perturbed by it? At the moment I am “The best thing since sliced bread”, in her mind so I am supposed to feel good about that aren’t I?. But it is the swiftness of the emotional development, it could have a romantic quality to it and they could be quite intense emotions.

I have dealt with such clients in the past but I suppose I am yet to find out how such intense emotions are going to be displayed by her. If she is an acting out type of person then it is going to be some hard work at times. Some clear boundary setting is going to be required along with some clear confrontations. I suppose I am not looking forward to the possibility of that. However from how she has behaved so far, acting out is not one of her traits.



As I have mentioned before an intense positive transference sooner or later turns around to an intense negative transference. As I write I feel I am perhaps hyper vigilant with her at this time due to the strength of the emotions she is feeling towards me.

Maybe also it is the fact that she really looks into my face and eyes. Maybe I am finding that a kind of ‘closeness’ which I am not currently comfortable with. I get a sense of too much too soon sort of thing.


In dealing with her I kind of feel like this at times

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