Page 64 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

Disaster Relief 33

self reflection may help increase our personal awareness of our strengths
and limitations as witnesses to the human array of feelings.
The fifth and perhaps most crucial assumption, drawn from emotion
theory, is that the emotions form a system, with a change in one emotion
affecting the experience of all the others. This assumption has tremendous
human implications. It means, for example, that when someone hopes to
diminish his depression, we could just as well focus on his (relative) absence
of curiosity as on the presence of intense depression. Any change in any
emotion will affect the whole system of emotions. This can be very helpful
because a person can become obsessively fixated on her depression. If we
join her in this exclusive focus, we may both fail to notice crucial aspects
of her emotional and interpersonal life. In addition, if the person brings
an expectation that we will make her depression vanish instantaneously,
she may be impatient with the process. We can all be tempted by the hope
that emotions will operate like a thermostat, and we can learn a simple
and quick way to raise or lower their intensity.
I believe that we each have a “theory” (parts of which may or may not be
consciously formulated) about what emotionally fortifies us to cope with
the human condition. How much do we each rely on will power to pull
ourselves through crises? What do we each count on to enable us to bear
the potential losses and emotional hardships of aging? Some of us look to
religion, work, and/or human connections for strength and for the sense
that our lives are meaningful. But, all we each have is a personal theory
about what can give us the strength we will need.
Perhaps it is equally important to look at what can delimit our emo-
tional strength to cope with life. I think certain defensive patterns cut us off
from potential emotional fortification. The severely paranoid person won’t
fully know curiosity’s delight. The profoundly obsessive person will cling to
routine too much to fully enjoy life’s surprises. The chronically depressed
won’t be lifted up by joy. The intensely schizoid person won’t feel the heal-
ing warmth of love. When we cut ourselves off from significant emotional
experiences, we delimit our own resources for coping with our lives.
Next is the idea that what we each feel about our own emotionality
depends on the interpersonal “socialization of emotions” (Tomkins,
1970). Everyone has a history of how others have reacted to our expres-
sions of each of the fundamental emotions, and this history is a signifi-
cant aspect of our identity. Therefore, it is essential to understand, for
example, a person’s inwardly held “reputation” (with himself) about his
expressions of anger. Was he known as a child who had violent tantrums?
In first grade, was he handled like a time bomb? This has enormous