knowing our own minds is difficult at
the best of times it is extraordinarily
hard to secure even basic insights into
our characters and motivations of a kind
that we hope can free us from some of
the neuroses and compulsions that spoil
so much of our lives
it is therefore especially humbling and
at moments truly dispiriting to realize
that dispelling ignorance of our psyches
with knowledge isn’t going to be enough
by itself or rather we stand to realize
that there is going to need to be a
further and yet more arduous distinction
to observe between knowing something
about ourselves intellectually and
knowing about it
emotionally we might for example come to
an intellectual understanding that we’re
timid around figures of authority
because our father was a remote and
distant figure who didn’t give us some
of the support and love we needed to
tolerate ourselves assembling this
insight into our characters might be the
work of many years and having reached it
we could reasonably expect that our
problems with timidity and authority
would then abate but the minds nots are
sadly not so simple to unpick an
intellectual understanding of the past
though not wrong won’t by itself be
effective in a sense of being able to
release us from the true intensity of
our neurotic symptoms for this we have
to edge our way towards a far more
close-up detailed visceral appreciation
of where we have come from and what we
have suffered we need to strive for what
we can call an emotional understanding
of the past as opposed to a top-down
abbreviated intellectual one we will
have to re-experience at a novelistic
level of detail a whole set of scenes
from our early life in which our
problems around father’s and authority
were formed we will need to let our
imaginations wander back to certain
moments that have been too unbearable to
keep alive in a three-dimensional form
in our active memories our mind liking
unless actively prompted to
most of what we’ve been through –
headings rather than the full story a
document which it shelves in remote
locations of the inner library we need
not only to know that we have had a
difficult relationship with our Father
we need to relive the sorrow as if it
were happening to us today
we need to be back in his book line
study when we would have been not more
than 6 we need to remember the light
coming in from the garden the corduroy
trousers we were wearing the sound of
our father’s voice as it reached its
pitch of heightened anxiety the rage he
flew into because we had not met his
expectations the tears that ran down our
cheeks the shouting that followed us as
we ran out into the corridor the feeling
that we wanted to die and that
everything good was destroyed we need
the novel not of the essay psychotherapy
has long recognized this distinction it
knows that thinking is hugely important
but on its own within the therapeutic
process itself thinking is not the key
to fixing our psychological problems
psychotherapy insists on a crucial
difference between broadly recognizing
that we were shy as a child and RIA
experiencing in its full intensity what
it was like to feel cowed ignored and in
constant danger of being rebuffed or
mocked the difference between knowing in
an abstract way that our mother wasn’t
much focused on us when we were little
and reconnecting with the desolate
feelings we had when we try to share
certain of our needs with her therapy is
built on the idea of a return to live
feelings it’s only when we’re properly
in touch with feelings that we can
correct them with the help of our more
mature faculties and thereby address the
real troubles of our adult lives oddly
and interestingly this means that
intellectual people can have a
particularly tricky time in therapy they
get interested in the ideas but they
don’t so easily recreate and exhibit the
pains and de-stresses of their earlier
less sophisticated selves though it’s
actually these parts of who we all are
that need to be encounter
listen to and perhaps for the first time
comforted and reassured we need to get
fully better to go back in time perhaps
every week or so for a few years and
deeply relive what it was like to be us
at 5 and 9 and 15 and allow ourselves to
weep and be terrified and furious in
accordance with a reality of the
situation and it’s on the basis of this
kind of hard-won emotional knowledge not
it’s more painless intellectual kind
that we may one day with a fair wind
discover a measure of relief for some of
our dictionary features the language of
emotional intelligence too often we
struggle to find the right words to
explain what we mean this dictionary is
a tool to help us convey our true
emotions and intentions with economy and precision
the best of times it is extraordinarily
hard to secure even basic insights into
our characters and motivations of a kind
that we hope can free us from some of
the neuroses and compulsions that spoil
so much of our lives
it is therefore especially humbling and
at moments truly dispiriting to realize
that dispelling ignorance of our psyches
with knowledge isn’t going to be enough
by itself or rather we stand to realize
that there is going to need to be a
further and yet more arduous distinction
to observe between knowing something
about ourselves intellectually and
knowing about it
emotionally we might for example come to
an intellectual understanding that we’re
timid around figures of authority
because our father was a remote and
distant figure who didn’t give us some
of the support and love we needed to
tolerate ourselves assembling this
insight into our characters might be the
work of many years and having reached it
we could reasonably expect that our
problems with timidity and authority
would then abate but the minds nots are
sadly not so simple to unpick an
intellectual understanding of the past
though not wrong won’t by itself be
effective in a sense of being able to
release us from the true intensity of
our neurotic symptoms for this we have
to edge our way towards a far more
close-up detailed visceral appreciation
of where we have come from and what we
have suffered we need to strive for what
we can call an emotional understanding
of the past as opposed to a top-down
abbreviated intellectual one we will
have to re-experience at a novelistic
level of detail a whole set of scenes
from our early life in which our
problems around father’s and authority
were formed we will need to let our
imaginations wander back to certain
moments that have been too unbearable to
keep alive in a three-dimensional form
in our active memories our mind liking
unless actively prompted to
most of what we’ve been through –
headings rather than the full story a
document which it shelves in remote
locations of the inner library we need
not only to know that we have had a
difficult relationship with our Father
we need to relive the sorrow as if it
were happening to us today
we need to be back in his book line
study when we would have been not more
than 6 we need to remember the light
coming in from the garden the corduroy
trousers we were wearing the sound of
our father’s voice as it reached its
pitch of heightened anxiety the rage he
flew into because we had not met his
expectations the tears that ran down our
cheeks the shouting that followed us as
we ran out into the corridor the feeling
that we wanted to die and that
everything good was destroyed we need
the novel not of the essay psychotherapy
has long recognized this distinction it
knows that thinking is hugely important
but on its own within the therapeutic
process itself thinking is not the key
to fixing our psychological problems
psychotherapy insists on a crucial
difference between broadly recognizing
that we were shy as a child and RIA
experiencing in its full intensity what
it was like to feel cowed ignored and in
constant danger of being rebuffed or
mocked the difference between knowing in
an abstract way that our mother wasn’t
much focused on us when we were little
and reconnecting with the desolate
feelings we had when we try to share
certain of our needs with her therapy is
built on the idea of a return to live
feelings it’s only when we’re properly
in touch with feelings that we can
correct them with the help of our more
mature faculties and thereby address the
real troubles of our adult lives oddly
and interestingly this means that
intellectual people can have a
particularly tricky time in therapy they
get interested in the ideas but they
don’t so easily recreate and exhibit the
pains and de-stresses of their earlier
less sophisticated selves though it’s
actually these parts of who we all are
that need to be encounter
listen to and perhaps for the first time
comforted and reassured we need to get
fully better to go back in time perhaps
every week or so for a few years and
deeply relive what it was like to be us
at 5 and 9 and 15 and allow ourselves to
weep and be terrified and furious in
accordance with a reality of the
situation and it’s on the basis of this
kind of hard-won emotional knowledge not
it’s more painless intellectual kind
that we may one day with a fair wind
discover a measure of relief for some of
our dictionary features the language of
emotional intelligence too often we
struggle to find the right words to
explain what we mean this dictionary is
a tool to help us convey our true
emotions and intentions with economy and precision
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