[Neurons] 2013 "Neurons" --- Meta Reflections #35

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2013 Meta Reflections #35

August 5, 2013

Emotional Mastery Series #8

 

 

SELF-ACTUALIZATION

AND EMOTIONS

 

If you really want to master your emotions-self-actualize.  That is, make
real (actualize) your best version of you so that you become as Carl Rogers
said a "fully functioning person" and as Abraham Maslow said you access your
"full humanness."  And if you do this, what will you feel?  How will you
handle your emotions?  What will be different about your emotional life?

 

Well, first and foremost, you will have lots of energetic vitality.  By
gratifying your basic needs truly (and not falsely or through distortions)
and adequately (sufficiently, not perfectly or one-hundred percent), those
driving impulses ("needs" or requirements for living) will be gratified and
"go away" thereby allowing the next level of drives to emerge.  And after
the levels of basic needs the self-actualization needs emerge.  And when
these are the inner driving impulses of your life-then you will be living
passionately with a strong sense of purpose, inner value, and joy.

 

In self-actualizing you will be giving accurate meanings to your basic and
higher needs which will enable you to truly and adequately gratify your
inner impulses and drives.  As you then learn effective and adequate coping
skills, you will satisfy those needs which, in turn, will release your
energy and vitality.  That's the design of your "needs" as well as the sign
that you have gratified them truly and adequately.

 

The vitality that you will be feeling will be an energy to live fully, to be
your best self, and to strive to contribute and make a difference.  That's
what "self-actualization" means and if I belabor this, it is because of the
myth that connects it to selfishness.  The truth is that self-actualization
is not about you, it is through you, but paradoxically not about you.  This
vitality involves experiencing those moments that Maslow called "peak
experiences."  These are those little moments that happen to everyone (or
nearly so) in which, for that moment, you sense that "life is good, it is
precious, it is sacred."  And in that moment, you are again "in love with
life" and are "surprised by joy" (C.S. Lewis) and are able to appreciate
freshly as if for the first time, again.

 

All of this is one side of the self-actualizing emotional life.  There is
another.  The other involves being able to experience your emotions- all of
them, the negative ones as well as the positive ones- fully and accurately.
And as you do so, you lose your fear of any of these emotions.  After all,
they are just emotions- just the somatic or bodily experience of the
meanings being activated in your mind-body system.  And now you can use the
negative emotions for their best value- to stop, look, and listen and see
where you need to make some life adjustments.

 

Now as a self-actualizer, you can much more effectively and efficiently use
your fear, anger, sadness, stress, frustration, vulnerability, tenderness,
etc. to be more fully alive and more fully human.  Now you can allow
yourself to fully experience the emotions without being overwhelmed by them
or think that you are going to "lose control."

 

By self-actualizing, what you will feel will be more appropriate to the
contexts and situations of your life.  Here's what Abraham Maslow said about
people actualizing (making real) their inner drives and integrating what
could be dichotomies.  This came after his study of the fully human
self-actualizing subjects that he studied:

"It seemed to me that ... it could be traced back to the relative absence of
fear in my subjects.  They were certainly less enculturated; that is, they
seemed to be less afraid of what other people would say or demand or laugh
at.  They had less need of other people and therefore, depending on them
less, could be less afraid of them and less hostile against them.  Perhaps
more important, however, was their lack of fear of their own insides, of
their own impulses, emotions, thoughts.  They were more accepting than the
average.  This approval and acceptance of their deeper selves than made it
more possible to perceive bravely the real nature of the world and also made
their behavior more spontaneous. ... they were less afraid of being laughed
at or of being disapproved of.  They could let themselves by flooded by
emotion." (1968, Toward a Psychology of Being, p. 140-141).

 

About what happens to the experience of anger in a self-actualizing person,
Maslow described the change in this way: 

"In the healthier person, anger is reactive (to a present situation) rather
than a characterological reservoir from the past.  That is, it is a
realistic effective response to something real and present, for instance to
injustice or exploitation or attack, rather than a cathartic overflow of
misdirected and ineffective revenge upon innocent bystanders ...  Anger does
not disappear with psychological health; rather it takes the form of
decisiveness, self-affirmation, self-protection, justified indignation,
fighting against evil, and the like." (1968, p. 162)

 

"The ability to be aggressive and angry is found in all self-actualizing
people, who are able to let it flow forth freely when the external situation
'calls for' it." ... "a child should learn not only how to control his
anger, but also how and when to express it." (1968, p. 195)

 

Emotional Mastery Series

           What is an Emotions (#1, 2 & 3)

               Pseudo-Emotions (#4)

               Emotional Continua (#5)

               Emotional Tolerance (#6)

               Don't just feel, Do Something! (#7)

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

                Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

                Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

                1 970-523-7877 

                Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net


     

    

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