A Nerdy Perspective on Emotional Mastery

While doing research for the upcoming book, Ive been thinking a lot about ego-identity formation, or basically the investments that we each choose to define ourselves by and by measure our self-worth. For instance, growing up, were all pressured to measure ourselves as success/failures as men based on how strong, competitive, rich, sexually accomplished we are. Many of these identity choices are made unconsciously or are pushed on us by society/family when were young. The book will go into nose-bleeding detail about this stuff and how it relates to masculinity, self esteem, sexing all the womenz, and, oh yeah, happiness. But in the meantime, heres a little bit of a daydream nerd theory I had on an airplane yesterday. Its a way to model emotional development in general. Warning: This is a hair-brained theory of mine and not a psychological model put together by any researcher that I know of. So strap yourself in for a pretty nerdy analysis of your emotional problems and how they eventually get solved. And by no means take this as gospel.

Model of Competency

Theres a famous grid in Neuro-Linguistic Programming that people like to refer to when they want to state the obvious in a way that sounds really smart. It looks something like this:

This grid is used in regards to learning new skills. Take a skill, lets say surfing. Everyone starts out an unconscious incompetence. That is, not only are you unable to surf, but youre unaware of what is required to surf. From there, you become consciously incompetent. You learn that you suck at paddling through waves, that you dont know how to push yourself up onto the board and youre horrible at balancing even when you do. Youre incompetent and youre painfully aware of it (as you almost drown). Eventually you get to the point where you are consciously competent. You can surf, but you stil have to think through everything youre doing how to paddle efficiently, how to read the incoming waves and time them correctly, how to get up and balance yourself on the board as you ride the wave in.

Finally, through repetition, you become unconsciously competent. What that means is that you can surf without even thinking about it. The actions just happen and you can successfully ride waves while thinking about the toilet paper you need to buy on your way home. Everyone can relate to the feeling unconsciously competent at something. Im unconsciously competent at typing this and youre unconsciously competent at reading it. But it wasnt always that way. I used to have to search for the keys over and over and at one point you had to sit there and sound out each letter in a word to read it correctly. But unconscious competence does not come easily for any skill. Theres time and work involved:

1. To go from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, you must first gain knowledge and study the skill.

2. To go from conscious incompetence to conscious competence, one requires practice and conscious effort. 3. Eventually, unconscious competence happens through habituation: youve practiced something to the point where you dont even think about it anymore. Then you pick harder skills and repeat the whole process again, becoming better and better at your chosen activity. Pretty simple and self-explanatory, right? Well, what if we apply these same concepts to emotional development?

Model for Emotional Mastery

My nerd theory is that the process in which we come to terms with our emotional problems follows a similar process. Look:

Lets go over the terms. Compulsion refers to overreactions of negative emotions or emotions that cause you to pursue behaviors that go against your values or self-perception. For

instance, anger is a normal and healthy emotion that we all feel at one time or another. But getting angry at the slightest infraction and becoming uncontrollably violent is a serious compulsion and unhealthy.Regulation means an emotion which were able to manage or which occurs in appropriate situations. So, in our anger example, lets say a mans girlfriend forgets to call him when she gets home and he goes on a screaming fit and starts threatening her. This is a compulsive emotional outburst, and the man has serious underlying issues that need to be address. Reaching a point where he doesnt have violent outbursts but perhaps feels disappointed or hurt that she forgot to think of him is a normal regulated form of the emotion. Our emotions are also either identified or disidentified. This is where it gets a bit complicated and where my back-of-napkin theory kicks in. My personal pet theory and there is evidence for this is that our emotions exist in order to protect our ego-identity. The problem is that when we form an unhealthy ego-identity, we begin to produce an unhealthy array of emotions. For instance, if when you were young, you were always made fun of for being stupid, then you may internalize an ego-identity of being stupid and incompetent, even if objectively you are very smart. The problem is that we adopt a lot of aspects of our identities unconsciously or when were so young that we forget that we did. This is why a smart and capable person can have an emotional meltdown when presented with the smallest amount of intellectual stress. Or why a charming, attractive man can feel totally unworthy and desperate around women. Their emotional reactions are compulsive. And because theyre unaware of why these emotional meltdowns are occurring, then they

are disidentified with them, as in, the part of their identity that is causing these unwanted emotional outbursts is unconscious. So the person who deep down believes that theyre stupid and incapable consciously does not identify with that belief. Or the man who is attractive but desperate does not consciously identify as a desperate man. Still with me? Once a person becomes aware of why their compulsive emotions are occurring (usually with the aid of some kind of therapy), then they can become identifiedwith the compulsive emotions. As they say, the first step to recovery is acknowledging you have a problem. So the desperate man comes to realize, Hey, Im attractive, but I feel desperate and pathetic around women. Why? Or the smart person who feels incapable finally admits and identifies with the reality that they are incapable of handling any intellectual stress or responsibility. The hardest part about identifying with compulsive emotions is that we construct a lot of beliefs and defense mechanisms to justify our compulsive emotions. So, for instance, that smart person who has emotional meltdowns when presented with any intellectual stress may have convinced themselves long ago that people treat him unfairly and expect him to be perfect that its not his fault hes so stressed out all the time. Or the desperate man may have convinced himself that women only go for the most alpha of men and you have to go the extra mile to prove how high status you are to them. These beliefs fall into place because they justify the compulsive emotions.

Once a person has identified with their compulsive emotions, they must then learn to regulate them. The way to do this is paradoxical. Most people attempt to regulate their emotions through sheer will power. Others try to find healthy ways to redirect their negative emotions. These are forms of coping, and they are good short-term solutions, but rarely make for good long-term solutions. The reason is that while theyve gotten better at altering the negative behaviors that the emotions cause, the chunk of their identity that is causing the compulsive emotions hasnt changed. In fact, resisting negative emotions and fighting against them often makes them stronger (evidence for this too, by the way). As the Buddhist saying goes: What you resist will persist. Compulsive emotions are caused by deep internal shame, the belief that we are not good enough or that we are somehow faulty. Research shows and TED superhero Brene Brown says that we undo our underlying shame by exposing it, accepting it, and even sharing it. So once one becomes aware of their compulsive emotions and the shame that underlies, one must then accept it and practice self-compassion with the faulty part of oneself. What does that fruity word self-compassion mean? It means re-orienting ones beliefs to understand and accept where the compulsive emotions come from (dont worry, examples coming up). Once one does this successfully, eventually the compulsive emotions will become manageable and regulated. One will find oneself becoming less angry, or less overwhelmed, or less panicky, or less whatever. And if one does become those things,

its not the end of the world, theyre OK with it. They understand that they dont have to act on them and, in fact, its far easier now not to. Finally, once thats occurred, one can disidentify with the old compulsive emotions by sharing them and objectifying them through words. This happens through vulnerability. You may actually recognize this process as being similar to what Alcoholics Anonymous uses. AA is actually surprisingly one of the most successful therapeutic processes in the world, despite being made up by a drunk with absolutely no expertise whatsoever. But thats a story for another time. So we get a new model that looks something like this:

Here are a couple examples of how this process may work: 1. John grew up with a single mother who was unreliable. As a kid, he was often frustrated because his mother seemed more concerned with her social life than him. He internalized an identity that he was not worth committing to and bolstered this

identity with the beliefs that women are unreliable and untrustworthy. These were all unconscious. Or, at least, they happened so young that he forgot he had them and just always believed thats the way the world worked. In adult life, John is a mess with relationships. While he seems abnormally pre-occupied with dating and having sex with women, he finds himself either ditching the women immediately, or the few he does become attached to, he becomes unbearably insecure and stressed around them. To even notice these issues are going on, John must be able to sidestep his personal beliefs about women and their trustworthiness and recognize his irrational emotional reactions to any woman who gets close to him. He must perceive his own anxiety and stress, perceive his rationalizations for his behavior and his apparent inability for secure intimacy. Once hes done this, he can identify as someone who has major attachment and intimacy issues, and suffers through compulsive anxiety and stress any time a woman gets too close to him. Since John is awesome and reads this site, he recognizes that theres no quick fix for his anxiety and that he must consciously face it head-on when hes in these intimate situations. He accepts that hes had an unfortunate emotional past and hes committed to changing. As new relationships come up, John doesnt resist getting closer to women, although he doesnt force it either. He feels the anxiety and faces the rationalizations telling him to dump the girl for stupid reasons or to run away. He accepts these feelings and rationalizations and slowly learns that theyre not

necessarily true, and that they pass with time. He begins to find that some women actually are trustworthy and that intimacy can actually be far more pleasurable than mindless sex. After many months and a few short relationships, he feels far more comfortable with the prospect of becoming attached and intimate with one woman, something hes never felt comfortable with before in his life. Hes so comfortable now that he doesnt mind sharing his problem with the women he dates, being very open about the fact that he used to have trouble with commitment and intimacy used to make him uncomfortable. As he makes himself vulnerable and shares these emotional realities, hes able to gain a third-person perspective on them the former emotional issues are separated from his identity and soon he doesnt even identify as someone who has intimacy issues, just someone who used to have intimacy issues. 2. Greg chronically feels unworthy. He placates everyone and is afraid to assert himself. He struggles regularly with depression and has a lot of self-defeating thoughts. Gregs father is a popular politician, Harvard graduate, and successful at everything hes ever done. Greg, on the other hand, had trouble in school, and every time he screwed up he was compared to his father. Greg internalized a lot of shame and constructed belief systems to cope with his feelings of inferiority. Some people just arent talented, he told himself. I cant help it if Im not good at anything. But as life went on, Greg began suffering from unbearable depression. He was rarely motivated to do anything, and when he was, he always anticipated failure. Worst of all, his inability

to hold a good job always landed him back at his parents house, being supported, again, by his successful father. It was in one of these periods that he hit his limit. He signed himself up with a psychiatrist, was put on anti-depressants and began seeing a therapist every day to talk about his issues. The anti-depressants allowed him to separate enough from his beliefs and emotions that he could look at them objectively with the help of the shrink. He came to the startling discovery that a lot of his behaviors self-perpetuated hismisery. It was almost like he wanted to be a failure and disappoint his parents. He got another job, one that he wanted to do, not one his parents wanted. He began making good money and moved out of his parents house. He made a point to focus on new behaviors that would help build his self esteem and create a life for himself, not for anybody else. As he did this, he began to realize how much pressure he had always put on himself to do something that would make others proud. He also realized how hard he had always been on himself. He identified these emotions and accepted them, acknowledging that they werent necessary anymore and that he could still love himself even if he felt like a failure or like he was disappointing someone. To his surprise, as his new life gained steam, his parents became emotionally supportive of him, despite his unconventional choice of career. Eventually, Greg is able to get off his anti-depressants. He still sees a therapist to keep him on top of his emotional issues, but he is no longer subjected to compulsive sadness. Hes disidentified from the depressed person he was years ago. And for the first time in his life, hes proud of who he is and what

hes doing with his life. Hes come to terms with his past and is more comfortable making vulnerable around others. This comes in handy since his new job is acting in gay porn.