Why We Need Safety

There is a confluence of two events, quite unlikely, that explain something about human nature.  The first is something that my colleague, neurologist Michael Holden and I wrote about over forty five years ago.  It was about amoeba that lived in dirty water with black ink poured in.  They absorbed the black ink, as an external  menace into a vacuole and then when the place has clean water they discharged this intruder.  Back  into the water.  The second event is something I see on TV all of the time.  Someone is discussing the loss of a friend or relative and they tear up and scrunch their face and then it shuts off and they say “Sorry.  Excuse me.” They do not seem to understand the mountain of tears lying below. It is those tears that need to be dredged up and experienced, otherwise  they stay locked up and continue to gnaw at the system. The person gets sick years later and no one knows that they have been sitting on all those unfelt emotions.

How do we know?  Because people come in and cry those itty-bitty tears only to discover weeks and months later in therapy what they have been sitting on.  Then the inundation begins.  And when that happens, there are major changes in many biologic measures, as well as alterations and normalization of many vital signs;  blood pressure and heart rate descend.  Also there are significant changes in brain wave functions.  In other words, tears can change all that. And because that is  true it may well be that repressing those tears plays a real role in a number of illnesses, not the least of which is hypertension and heart problems. Not just one day of holding back tears, but of years of it happening.  Because to hold them down takes effort and energy which is being used up all of the time.  It takes work to hide from ourselves.

So what does India ink have to do with it?  Amoeba, as a basic minute cell shows us a biological process; waiting for safety, a welcoming environment to allow us to rid of all the junk and pain inside.  And that is exactly what is missing in psychotherapy; first, a notion of all the tears inside that must be experienced, and secondly, the need to provide an environment where those tears can be let out in full force.    That is right; “full force,” because rarely does a therapist sees that force, neither in others, nor in himself or herself.  They see this as “too emotional” and, “out of control.” So the tears are “discussed” not felt.  We do not live in a culture where full emotionality is not only accepted but welcomed. There lies the rub, to quote an old pal of mine.  What is his name?  William something.

The problem is that psychotherapy that evades and avoids emotions makes the patient sicker.  All the emotions are entombed in the head and the body goes on suffering unconsciously.  So in helping a patient become mentally aware he is at the same time becoming more unconscious.  What a dilemma!  We can learn from that amoeba.  He is only doing what is actually human:  waiting for a loving, warm environment to show his feelings and unleash his pain.  Let me add:  crying about it is not enough.  It has to be crying in context.  Tears must emanate from felt pain, not as an intellectual exercise, not as directed by a well-meaning counselor but tears that arrive automatically when the actual early memory is evoked. And careful, it is not always words that express the feeling.  It is often in body language or non-verbal emotions.  We need to know how to read that language.  That is why it takes so long to do primal therapy correctly; that mysterious language that lies below verbosity and has so many hidden meanings.  Those means, “I am not loved, no one wants me or cares about me,“ drives so much of our behavior and later symptoms.  And why is that? Because those meanings derive from actual early experiences where we were not loved.  They are not inventions. They correspond to reality, and reality is what we must deal with.  It is the name of the game.  We are historical beings; we cannot avoid history and get well. Our own history.

Crying without specific context and memory is only abreaction, the discharge of feeling without feeling it. It cannot ever be healing.  We are going back to origins remember, and that means long, long ago.  Feeling is healing, to coin a phrase.