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We explain how to do walking meditation and the psychology of why it works so well. No matter how busy you are you can do this and benefit g

Many people say they would love to meditate if they only had the time but with their hectic schedules they can’t seem to fit it in. Setting an intention to meditate every time you walk during your workday is an excellent place to start if you feel too pressed for time. If there are short destinations that you usually use your car for, like going to the grocery store, try walking to those places too.

It doesn’t matter how far the distance is really; it can be from your desk to the bathroom or break room a few times a day and you will still start to notice yourself feeling more relaxed and in the moment. About eight months ago I started walking pretty much everywhere I go around a two mile radius of my house and I would never go back. I always feel refreshed and invigorated and I really don’t even lose that much time.

I think one reason that walking meditation works so well to bring about a state of peace and equilibrium is that there are symbolic elements like moving forward in your life, being grounded, and feeling connected that you experience viscerally. You get back in touch with a deeper part of your nature. Humans were not made to sit around all day at our desks or in the various means of modern transportation. Obviously these technologies have great utility and there are distances that are too far to walk for some schedules but you will be shocked by how good you feel when you make a conscious effort to walk more while practicing mindfulness, and by how unappealing sitting in a car or bus will come to be.

And no matter how busy your job is you probably have at least two fifteen minute breaks and a thirty minute lunch that you can use. You will dramatically improve your mental health and job performance and you will be more pleasant to be around while feeling more spiritual just by walking while concentrating on your breathing. The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh loves walking meditations and we are going to end this piece with a poem he wrote that you can say to yourself while breathing and walking that will make you feel really good.

Start small by just choosing an object in your line of site, like a plant at the end of a row of cubicles. Then make up your mind that every time you walk in that direction, every step you take from where you are to the plant will be done in the moment. Each step will provide you with peace and happiness. Try not to worry at all about the past or the future. No matter how hectic your schedule is, for these few steps you can leave it all behind and just experience the gift and the miracle of your life right now in the present. Be aware of how extraordinary it is that you are walking on this earth and have the power to consciously decide how you want to feel and be. Let happiness flood into you as you consciously and mindfully take each step.

If in this short space you start to feel distracted and lose touch with being completely in the moment don’t get discouraged or down on yourself. You will have countless more opportunities during the day to do it again. Mindfulness is not something that just happens and it takes work and practice.

Once you start going for longer walks, you will want to focus on your breath and let the rhythm of your breathing match the rhythm of your walking. This is especially rewarding if you can find a park or some other area that is a more natural setting. You will start to feel really good and might be surprised by the powerful emotions that show up during your walk or shortly after it. Let them come and be aware of them in the moment without trying to alter them. Here is the poem you can say to yourself while you are walking:

In, out

Deep, slow

Calm, ease

Smile, release

Present moment, wonderful moment.

(Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power, Pos 2051 Kindle Version)

On your in breath you will want to say the first part to yourself, and on your out breath the second part. At first you can simply focus on ‘In, out’. Just let yourself be aware that you are breathing in and breathing out, and let that be enough. Once you are ready you can start incorporating the subsequent lines so that you will say the poem to yourself in an endless cycle that matches your in and out breaths and matches the rhythm of your walking. This is a great way to keep your mind from wandering, focused in the present moment while feeling as one with the universe. Eventually you won’t need the poem anymore and you will slide right into a meditative state any time you walk anywhere. But use it as long as you want to and let yourself enjoy the gift of your life in the moment.

We show the psychology behind what feelings and thoughts arrive when you feel a sense of powerlessness, and what behavior is likely.

There are not many states more difficult to bear than the feeling of powerlessness, the inability to influence the things and people around you in any meaningful way. Think for example of when a technological gadget you are accustomed to using starts malfunctioning, even though you are going through the same steps you always go through. What types of feelings surge up? At first probably minor irritation. Then some confusion and redoubled efforts. You start to try more creative solutions. All the time frustration builds as your efforts yield no results, although you might not notice your frustration consciously at first. Then it reaches a point where containing the feeling is uncomfortable. You are compelled to release this stored up psychic energy in some way. Maybe shaking your head, a curse word, yelling, pacing around, or even throwing the gadget against the wall. You blame the gadget, not yourself for your outburst. “Stupid gadget!” Once you have released your energy, assuming there is no immediate recourse, a state of apathy sets in as you realize your own efforts will change nothing and putting in any more is pointless.

Our technology example above falls pretty low on the spectrum of important problems, but the underlying psychology is identical to the conflict people face when they feel a general sense of impotence and powerlessness in their lives. It explains the source of a lot of violence in the world. Outward violence in deeds or words, directed towards others or oneself, is often a psychic compensation for the frustrating internal feeling of powerlessness.

The mindful path for keeping violence and apathy from infecting your life is to pinpoint areas where you feel powerless and bring these areas into your conscious awareness early instead of letting frustration build on its own until it’s ready to burst, with or without your approval. You can also pinpoint areas where you are powerful, and everyone has these areas, combating the general feeling of impotence. Most of us have much more power to influence our surroundings and ourselves than we believe, and we can find constructive ways to exercise our creative power when we become consciously aware of the building pressure instead of allowing the disease of violence and apathy to seep into our lives.

Conscious awareness around where grief originates doesn’t necessarily make the process of grieving any easier but it does make it possibl

Conscious awareness around where grief originates doesn’t necessarily make the process of grieving any easier but it does make it possible to go through the process, to start to move towards healing. At the same time moving towards healing is a scary prospect because it means admitting at the deepest level that a loss really has occurred, that life can never be the same again. At the unconscious level many prefer the pain when holding on to this pain means not having to let go of whoever or whatever has been lost to them.

Therefore there are all kinds of losses during the lifespan that have a high likelihood of remaining at the periphery of conscious awareness without ever being adequately worked through. These losses become unfinished business. They exert a profound impact on functioning in the present as people remain in the past, unable to accept their current set of circumstances.

Lost youth is an extremely painful area of loss that is almost never adequately worked through, probably because full acceptance of lost youth would mean full acceptance of mortality, and mortality is the bitterest of pills to swallow. Humans have always resorted to all manner of fiction and fantasy to find relief from the painful recognition of a reality where destruction of being is the unavoidable outcome.

What sort of coping mechanisms do people unable to accept their lost youth rely upon? The most common mechanism is probably to simply exist in the past, to allow nostalgia to wrap around them like a warm blanket as they tell and retell the same old stories. They take solace in a bygone era. The present is just a shadow, an annoyance to which they devote the minimum necessary attention. It’s the past, their lost youth, that is their true reality.

Another common coping mechanism is to project awareness around lost youth to sadness or negativity towards all of the aspects of the world that have changed. The younger generation has lost its values. Suspicion is aroused when encountering any new technologies. The old ways are the good ways, the right ways. The new ways are deficient, even morally corrupt.

But the connection is never made that it’s not the loss of the old ways that causes distress, not really. It’s the loss of youth, the uncomfortable feeling of being left behind. People yearn for the time of the old ways because in that time possibilities seemed limitless and life seemed like it would stretch on forever.

These coping mechanisms mean not fully engaging with the present, not fully engaging with life. While working through grief around lost youth is painful it paves the way for true happiness and fulfillment in the time that remains.

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

– Frederick Nietzsche

When wronged, whether it’s slight or egregious, most of us feel compelled to do something. Evolutionarily speaking, those who were naturally inclined to let themselves be taken advantage of without much fuss didn’t survive to pass on their DNA. If that attribute ever existed it was weeded out of the gene pool long ago. It’s really no surprise that the turn the other cheek attitude must be learned. When someone hits us we’re inclined to hit back.

But this doesn’t mean people are naturally evil either. There’s a difference between hitting first and hitting back, between hostility and what Erich Fromm called reactive hostility. Actually the balance of hostility in the world probably is reactive hostility, it’s the result of environmental contingencies being set up in such a way that people feel, consciously or unconsciously, that their rights are being trampled upon. And so they respond in kind, either against the source of their suffering or if that’s not possible against some other entity.

If you see a little kid kick a dog you’ll think that kid has violent, possibly psychopathic tendencies. But if you see the father hit the wife, the wife yell at then spank the son, the son punch the little brother, and finally the little brother kick the dog, things change even though the behavior of kicking that dog is identical. Take away those unhealthy contingencies, put that little kid in a healthy, loving family environment, and all that hostility and aggression probably disappears.

While we like to label people as villains or heroes, sinners or saints, selfish or selfless, cruel or kind, hateful or loving, for most of us it’s a mixed bag. We have all of those potentialities inside of us. It’s the environmental contingencies we are exposed to that pull out our felt states of mind and our behaviors. In the context of this article it’s the hostility directed towards us that makes us hostile, it’s being made to suffer that compels us to make others suffer. We tell ourselves that we’re just protecting our rights. We forget that in the process we become that which we supposedly abhor. By fighting monsters we often become monsters ourselves, adding more suffering to the world.

It’s ironic that Nietzsche, with a quote like the one at the top of this article, was so utterly disdainful of Christianity, calling it the product of a slave culture. For him turning the other cheek was weakness disguised as virtue. He may have had a point, but what he missed was the godliness inherent in consciously transcending our baser human instincts, instincts like pushing back the moment we’re pushed, replacing our mindless reactions with the very best in us, with understanding, forgiveness, and love. When we understand that most of the hostility directed towards us is actually reactive hostility, that most of the people who make us suffer are themselves suffering, forgiveness and love become possible. We get the chance to decide for ourselves whether to let this hostility and suffering keep growing or to stamp some of it out of the world.

An important differentiator between healthy couples and struggling couples is not the presence or absence of conflict. Conflict arises from

An important differentiator between healthy couples and struggling couples is not the presence or absence of conflict. Conflict arises from time to time in all relationships, it’s unavoidable. But what we do find when thinking about struggling couples versus healthy couples is a very different underlying approach to conflict. Struggling couples take on an adversarial, judgmental attitude where blaming and defensiveness take centerstage. Healthy couples take on an empathetic, curious attitude where openness and acceptance take centerstage.

The shift that needs to occur for struggling couples where partners want to improve the quality of their relationship is to wipe the slate clean by setting the firm intention to stop viewing each other as adversaries and instead as partners, as two people on the same team facing a common foe. Most people enter into a conflict situation with the goal of winning. They can’t help but take on the adversarial attitude. That might sometimes work in the world at large but it doesn’t work in intimate romantic relationships, where winning is actually losing in that the adversarial attitude causes the buildup of resentment and hostility, which comes to infect all facets of daily life together. Winning a fight shouldn’t be the emphasis, it shouldn’t even be a consideration.

What needs to be kept front and center is that conflict is a clear sign that a partner is suffering, that something is wrong. The goal should be to do whatever possible to help reduce that suffering, period. Taking on a curious, non-judgmental attitude is the best inroad. Instead of instantly taking up the relied upon sword and shield of blaming and defensiveness the ideal is to think and say “I see that you are hurting what can I do to help?” Struggling couples might act as if, and even believe, that they’re interested in finding a good solution to the conflict situation but what they’re really interested in is passing the buck, in trying to make those aversive, unwanted thoughts and feelings go away by blaming someone or something else for the situation, by arguing their way out of it, by refusing to take any responsibility for the current state of affairs, by seeing one another not as dear friends who need help and support but as enemies purposefully causing undue distress.

Conflict And Power In intimate relationships power will always play some role since underlying values and the wants and needs that stem from

A lot of people who are struggling and unhappy in their lives and relationships approach change with the goal of fundamentally restructuring

COMPETITION People who rarely praise those close to them and can’t be genuinely happy when they succeed are stuck in a psychology of competitiveness where others doing well is seen as a threat, as a clear and present danger, not just in the material sense of losing money or missing out on a promotion but also in the spiritual sense of Self feeling that disintegration has become a possibility. The reason they have such a hard time seeing others do well is because they don’t see another person’s successful achievement as objectively independent from them but as very much related to them, as almost an insult to them. It impinges upon the idealized image where in the game called life they’re the ones who are winning, they’re the ones who are on top, they’re the ones who deserve the awards and accolades. DEFENDING THE PSYCHE FROM OUTSIDE THREATS The fact that feelings of envy and competitiveness will often arise even when the achievement in question isn’t in an area they’re actively pursuing or have ever been more than mildly interested in shows us the irrational psychological nature of those feelings, shows us that what’s at play is the makeup of the psyche itself and its attempts to defend that makeup from outside challenges. At the barely conscious or unconscious level praising others for their accomplishments, and more importantly being genuinely happy for them when they succeed, is tantamount to accepting defeat, to being a loser, to drawing the short stick, to getting pulled down while someone else is being raised up. If life is nothing but a competition then there are winners and there are losers. But there can’t be a human transaction where both parties come away winning, those aren’t the rules of the game.

Help understanding where fear of flying comes from and how to manage it.

A fear of flying is at once rational and irrational. Rational because it’s just not natural to willingly put yourself in a metal box so that you can be taken 35,000 feet above the surface of the earth for hours at a time, irrational because if you look at the data you’ll see that many common, everyday activities, like driving an automobile, have a much higher statistical mortality rate.

If you want to get over your fear of flying, or at least be able to manage boarding an airplane in spite of your fear, it will be useful to bring the deeper psychological issue into your conscious awareness. Why is flying on a commercial airliner so terrifying when you logically understand that the chances of something going wrong are extremely small?

The answer is basic anxiety as the psychologist Karen Horney conceptualized it, which is the feeling of helplessness in a world perceived as hostile. The key word is helplessness. As an adult, when you are faced with situations where your personal efficacy is sapped, the same feelings of anxiety bubble up that existed for you in childhood, where you didn’t have much recourse against a hostile world and had to depend almost entirely on others for your sustenance and survival.

The statistical chances of dying in a car crash are much higher than dying in an airplane, but you don’t feel helpless, even if you’re a passenger, because you believe you’ll be able to influence events, to swerve out of the way or alert the driver. Your perception of personal efficacy remains intact. Riding as a passenger on an airliner offers no such psychological assurance; you know that your life is completely in the hands of the pilot and that there is nothing you will be able to do to change the situation if something starts to go wrong. Obviously it doesn’t help that most commercial crashes are catastrophic and leave few if any survivors.

But the fact is that ultimately we are all helpless in a hostile world. At some point our physical bodies will succumb and we will die. Our daily lives are filled with situations where we have little or no personal agency, even if we are not consciously aware of it. Unless you decide to live in a padded cell, completely isolated from the vagaries of human existence, you’ve got to come to terms with the fact that you can’t control everything that happens around you. Being a passenger on an airliner is just one more example in an endless stream of examples. If you can isolate your basic anxiety as the culprit, that feeling of helplessness in a hostile world, you are well on your way to acting in spite of it.

Shoulds are the inflexible, authoritarian, joyless rules for thinking, feeling, and behaving that people subject themselves to at various le

Shoulds are the inflexible, authoritarian, joyless rules for thinking, feeling, and behaving that people subject themselves to at various levels of conscious awareness. Many of these rules of conduct are not very well formulated thoughts. Others are explicit. But what they all have in common is that they set a non-negotiable standard for behavior, usually a very high standard that is impossible to live up to on a consistent basis. But these are not suggestions for living, they’re ironclad psychic ‘laws’ with moral undertones. Therefore feelings of guilt, shame, self-ridicule, and other aversive psychological and emotional states of being are induced when a given thought, feeling, or behavior falls short of a should expectation.

Most should values were implanted from the outside by primary caregivers and other important authority figures, but many adults take these shoulds to be a map of absolute reality, as simply the way things are. What we mean is that not a whole lot of reflection or questioning goes on, these rules for living are not up for debate, not meant to be put under the microscope. They are believed to be facts, hard truths about Self, others, and world, and that’s that.

There’s not a lot of joy or vibrancy or spontaneity in the lives of those who find themselves under the sway of the tyranny of the shoulds. How could there be? Their human experience is defined by trying to escape negative reinforcements, by feeling compelled to think, feel, or behave in order to avoid the aversive psychological, emotional, or practical consequences of not living up to authoritarian expectations. The best they can hope for is a sort of grim satisfaction when thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are felt to be satisfactory.

Shoulds are like a psychic police officer who hands out citations for breaking the law, they’re an abusive primary caregiver who demands obedience and swiftly punishes any acts of rebellion. They are the definition of self-abuse but most don’t see it that way. What they see are reasonable ethical demands, fair norms of conduct which must be followed in order to be classified as a good, moral person.

There’s a deeper reason why those ruled by shoulds suffer immensely and this is that their unique growth and self-actualization is necessarily stifled in countless ways since thoughts, feelings, or behaviors outside the parameters of inner shoulds are felt to be tabu and therefore never fully explored. The existential anxiety, guilt, and shame make sure they’re never fully explored. So people find themselves in a prison of their own making, one that keeps them from ever becoming who and what they really are since for that to happen unique potentialities must first be isolated and then developed, two steps that never occur as long as these potentialities seem tabu.

The psychic pain constantly battering those whose behavior is dictated by the tyranny of the shoulds springs from two different sources, from what we could call a superficial source and a deep source. The superficial source is simply that daily life is hard in and of itself when behavior is compelled by negative reinforcements. When we’re driven by what we fear rather than pulled forward by what we love we suffer for it. We’re constantly subjected to the threat of or the actual application of aversive stimuli and it hurts. The deep source is that authentic Self is never given the chance to grow and self-actualize because the shoulds by definition limit self-exploration. And at some level of awareness, even if only very dimly sensed, it’s recognized that the one and only chance to become, to self-actualize, is being thrown away in favor of blindly following implanted norms, values, and tabus, and that hurts even worse.

To change the personal relationship to the tyranny of the shoulds it’s necessary to first become aware of their occurrence across the psychological constellation and second to ask some simple questions when one of these should directives comes up in daily life:

“Says who?”

“Where is it written that this rule of thinking, feeling, or behaving must be followed?”

“Other than my own unwanted emotional response, what bad things will actually occur if I fall short of this should?”

“Is constantly trying to live up to this should making me happy? Helping me grow? Letting me be me?”

Over the weeks, months, and years victims of domestic abuse tend to see most of their important relationships fall by the wayside. They beco

Over the weeks, months, and years victims of domestic abuse tend to see most of their important relationships fall by the wayside. They become increasingly isolated from friends and family until one day, seemingly out of the blue, they find themselves on an island with few if any close human connections outside of their immediate nuclear families.

Abusers are happy to use the carrot or the stick to achieve this result. They’re especially happy if their victims believe their increasing separation from friends and family is their own choice or their own fault. But it’s the abusers pulling the strings, the abusers prompting this separation to come to pass. The reason why abusers isolate their victims from friends and family is that abuse is about control and victims are more easily controlled in mind and body when they don’t have trusted confidants to turn to.

Quite aside from threats, intimidation, and other aversive strategies control is predicated upon the belief in the controlee that the controller’s worldview represents objective reality. In a closed system this trick is more easily accomplished since in a closed system there aren’t any dissenting voices to present alternative points of view. The abuser’s word becomes law, as it were, and this law acts as the foundation upon which an unhealthy, dysfunctional state of affairs can be passed off as healthy and functional. Abusive behavior becomes normal behavior and the victim falls further and further under the abuser’s thumb.

The last thing an abuser wants is concerned, caring people in the victim’s corner. People who know the difference between healthy and unhealthy family environments might muck up the desired abusive state of affairs by calling a spade a spade, by casting doubt upon the supposed objective veracity of the abuser’s dictates and worldview. So again the best way to insure that control is maintained is to simply cut off all those relationships and that’s what the isolation a victim of abuse experiences is all about.

If you chose emotional detachment in childhood as a life solution to sustained abuse at the hands of a primary caregiver you’ve got to rea

If you chose emotional detachment in childhood as a life solution to sustained abuse at the hands of a primary caregiver you’ve got to realize that not only was your solution understandable but that under those hostile circumstances it was adaptive. You did a good job in a tough spot, you protected yourself as best you could, without resorting to sadistic or masochistic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that would have either purposefully hurt others or compromised your individuality.

There are three overarching life solutions that can be taken to reduce the anxiety engendered by the abusive situation, three solutions to combat feelings of helplessness in a world perceived as hostile, and these are sadism, masochism, and emotional detachment. You weren’t consciously aware of this psychological fact but you did know at some fundamental level of your being that neither sadism nor masochism were viable options for you because of the damage these life paths would cause.

The sadistic solution would have implied treating the people in your environment as adversaries to be conquered, it would have necessitated becoming interested in power and control above all else, it would have meant trampling the needs of others, hurting them psychologically, emotionally, or physically to get your own needs met. The masochistic solution would have implied surrendering your individuality, abandoning the traits that made you special in order to shelter under and identify with the perceived superior traits of some stronger presence.

You didn’t want to lose who you were, you didn’t want to change who you were, and you didn’t want to hurt anybody else, which is a small miracle considering the dual realities that victims of abuse are taught to dislike themselves and people being made to suffer usually end up projecting their suffering onto others. But despite the frequent abusive messages attempting to convince you that you weren’t good enough, a voice from deep within always retorted that you were good enough. You needed to find a way to protect what this voice represented, you needed a way to preserve who and what you were in the face of the constant pressure working to twist you into something that you weren’t.

Your solution? Just stop caring about anything. Stop allowing yourself to get emotionally drawn in. Let the abusive words and actions pass over you like water over rocks. Deny those words and actions the chance to take seed by refusing to provide any soil. You built an impregnable fortress around your emotional apparatus. This isn’t to say you lost the ability to get in touch with your authentic emotions. Actually from your perspective, though it was probably largely unconscious, building the impregnable fortress was the only viable way to insure the purity of your emotions since without the protective walls those same emotions were constantly forced through the filth of abuse, they were transformed into something that felt rotten and ugly and wrong.

Under the circumstances emotional detachment was an admirable life solution. You were just a kid, you didn’t have all the acquired knowledge and life experiences that you do now. Your instinct as an adult might be to blame that kid, to feel like that kid let you down since now you’re saddled with a way of being that prevents you from opening up emotionally, that prevents you from functioning well in intimate relationships, that prevents you from feeling connected to others, that makes you feel isolated and alone. But don’t be upset with that kid. Thank that kid, honor that kid, celebrate that kid. That kid got you through a really rough stretch of your life without resorting to sadistic or masochistic life solutions that would have fundamentally changed who and what you were.

Of course as you well know emotional detachment has ended up changing you. It’s dulled down your life. It’s made your experiences less vivid, less intense. You’re left with the sense that something’s missing. Emotional detachment has kept you from success in intimate relationships. You’ve probably had partner after partner complain about your emotional distance, about your inability to connect. You said you didn’t understand what they were talking about, you rationalized your way of being on this or that plausible grounds, you told yourself everything was fine, but deep down you knew they were right. You never let your emotional guard down, you never allowed for the possibility of true connection, you never let your partners see who you really were.

A solution that makes a lot of sense as a kid, a way of being that under abusive circumstances could be termed adaptive, doesn’t make sense as an adult, it’s a way of being that under your current set of circumstances could be termed maladaptive. Like we said, the first thing to do is honor and celebrate that kid for landing on a clever, adaptive life strategy to get you through a very rough stretch of time. The second thing to do is to return the favor, to make good on what that kid did for you by doing something for that kid, and for yourself. It’s time for you to overcome emotional detachment. By deciding you’re going to face the possible pain and anxiety of letting yourself feel deeply again, by opening yourself up to human connection, you’re giving that kid his or her authentic voice back.

Now’s the time to overcome emotional detachment, not because you’re being compelled to do so by environmental factors outside of your control but because it’s something you want to do. It’s never too late to become who and what you really are. You knew that truth as a kid, you chose emotional detachment as a way to protect your threatened Self from external meddling. When you recognize the same truth as an adult you’ll choose overcoming emotional detachment as a way to protect your threatened Self from internal meddling. We’re not saying everything will change overnight. But what matters right now is making the firm decision that you’re no longer going to let past circumstances negatively affect your present emotional functioning. Overcoming emotional detachment in adulthood is an attainable goal because emotional detachment is not and never was your natural way of being in the world. You’re older and wiser now, you’ve outgrown the old emotionally detached shell. It’s time to grow into an emotionally connected shell, one that fits you better.

Have you ever noticed how some people, when suddenly confronted with the absence of any observable conflict, take it upon themselves to crea

Have you ever noticed how some people, when suddenly confronted with the absence of any observable conflict, take it upon themselves to create problems where there are none? They’ll start to harp on small issues that wouldn’t have warranted a second thought when times were tough. How could it be that the moment they’re finally out of the fire they throw themselves back in?

We can understand the fabrication of problems as the unconscious response to the sensed existential anxiety that arises precisely during those times when there are no immediate stimuli in the environment to divert attention away from the threat of nothingness always lurking at the edges of conscious thought. Most of us like to think of problems of all kinds as anxiety inducing but in the existential psychological sense many of these problems actually act as anxiety reducers in that they keep attention focused on the concrete task at hand, the task of confronting and overcoming the concrete problem, and away from the existential anxiety always lurking underneath.

In the absence of any real and pressing problems to confront people suddenly have the time and psychic space to confront the deeper existential problems of human existence as such. As a result of this confrontation painful existential anxiety begins to spike. Their unconscious response is to simply fabricate new problems so that they can once again focus their attention on something concrete, observable, and understandable rather than their existential anxiety that is by its very nature ephemeral, unobservable, and confusing.

Many take it for granted that the route from emotional and psychological dysfunction to emotional and psychological wellness is to bring rep

Many take it for granted that the route from emotional and psychological dysfunction to emotional and psychological wellness is to bring repressed traumas into conscious awareness and then talk them over with a healer. Our modern day Western healers are therapists, psychologists, doctors, etc. This process is akin to exorcism although the demons in question are of course metaphorical. At any rate cure is supposed to be achieved through expunging those inner demons, through getting what’s stuck inside out there into the world. With the clearing of these blockages the free, uninhibited flow of psychic energy can resume.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that making repressed material conscious and unburdening oneself of it is a major part of the healing process. But it’s usually not enough on its own. Because when we talk about the route from dysfunction to wellness what we’re really talking about is transformation, and simply talking about the hurt over and over doesn’t necessarily transform this hurt or anything else about the life situation. It certainly doesn’t change what happened. In fact for many people drudging up the painful parts of life can feel counterproductive. Why open up that can of worms? Why not just let sleeping dogs lie?

Let’s think of those repressed traumas, of all of those painful, hard to describe life experiences, as manure. It’s gross, it’s repulsive, you don’t want anything to do with it. If for some reason you do decide to swish it around this way and that it remains manure. But when you add intentionality and insight into the mix you realize that you can use it as compost. Suddenly what seemed repulsive and useless serves a very important purpose. It becomes the ground out of which beautiful, healthy plants grow and thrive.

This is the transformation we’re talking about. It’s taking the ugly things that have happened to us and making something beautiful out of them. When we become aware of our suffering through bringing repressed material into conscious awareness and talking everything out with a concerned healer we get the chance to tap into the human condition in a way we never have before. We get the chance to become more sensitive to our own suffering and to the suffering of those around us. And we put ourselves in position to turn what happened to us on its head by using all that suffering as the impetus for our own growth as people. We learn how to handle suffering more effectively. And we decide to seek to reduce suffering in ourselves, others, and the world rather than keep on adding to it. This is how meaning is derived out of those painful past life experiences that seemed meaningless. It’s how transformation occurs. Simply talking about what happened over and over again is a good start, and usually does provide some relief, but the route to emotional and psychological wellness lies not in rehashing the past but in transforming it. This means intentionally using past and present suffering as the ground from which we grow and thrive as people, a growing and thriving spurred on by increasing insight around the human condition and increasing sensitivity to suffering.

When we understand that longstanding patterns of maladaptive behavior usually serve vital psychological and emotional functions despite thei

When we understand that longstanding patterns of maladaptive behavior usually serve vital psychological and emotional functions despite their objectively destructive consequences we can understand the unconscious propensity to frame these maladaptive patterns as adaptive patterns.

This is the power of rationalization. It allows us to make a weakness seem like a strength, to supposedly make clean that which remains dirty, and in the process to continue on uninterrupted with the same constellation of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are interfering with our overall mental health and happiness but at the same time seem deeply vital to our continued functioning. Most of the time we find that whatever is rationalized serves the function of reducing painful existential anxiety.

In the case of emotional detachment we’ve found several common rationalizations that allow for the justification of a continued way of being in the world that causes great dissatisfaction in life and especially in intimate relationships. People with emotional detachment tend to believe:

That displays of strong emotion around others, especially crying, are dysfunctional or histrionic

That cognition is superior to emotion

That they are ‘rational philosophers’ who have evolved past the need for emotion

That they are ‘easygoing’ and that’s why they’re averse to relationship conflict

That ‘detachment’ is ‘enlightenment’ (justified by the concept of detachment in Zen Buddhism)

That groups of all kinds produce groupthink and sap individuality

That individuality is superior to community

That ‘freedom’ is synonymous with ‘freedom from’

That ‘love’ can be proven solely through acts of service

That independence is the highest virtue and dependence the lowest vice

That relationship conflict is inherently ‘bad’

That vulnerability, especially emotional vulnerability, is a weakness

That caring too much about anything is a weakness

That when conflict arises it’s the partner who has the problem of ‘wanting too much’ or of ‘being irrational’

That keeping hostility and resentment to oneself is motivated by ‘not wanting to rock the boat’

For rationalizations to work they need to seem plausible and the above all fit the bill, there’s some grain of truth in all of them. But they all serve the same underlying purpose, which is to allow for that continued way of withdrawing from rather than connecting with people and the world in order to keep painful existential anxiety at bay.

For progress to be made people with emotional detachment have to summon up the courage to look honestly at the above rationalizations and at their own unique, personal rationalizations and to see that they’re not proof of human growth and self-actualization but rather motivated by keeping a deep seated fear at bay that’s been there since childhood or adolescence. This fear in a nutshell is that opening up, connecting, making oneself vulnerable in an intimate relationship, being part of something bigger than oneself, sharing one’s inner world, letting oneself be caught up in powerful emotions – that all of these things lead to terrible consequences.

The insight if you are dealing with emotional detachment is that you’re absolutely right that those things did lead to bad consequences in the past due to you having been exposed to abusive, traumatic conditions, to maladaptive conditions. Frankl once said that an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. Withdrawing, moving away emotionally, psychologically, and physically, did serve to reduce the anxiety, to reduce the seemingly unbearable pain of being vulnerable and getting stomped on. At the time emotional detachment was the correct choice, the healthy choice, the adaptive choice, the normal choice. But it’s not anymore. Rather than serving a protective function emotional detachment is now serving a destructive function, it’s walling you off from life and all its possibilities, including happy, healthy, satisfying intimate relationships. It’s keeping you from experiencing and sharing the full emotional spectrum. It’s keeping you from connection.

There are a million and one rationalizations to explain away the choice to remain emotionally distant in close relationships where intimacy

There are a million and one rationalizations to explain away the choice to remain emotionally distant in close relationships where intimacy is required. Underneath all those rationalizations what’s really going for people is usually exactly the same. They’re afraid to get close. But they’ve repressed this fear and the reasons behind it because these reasons are too painful to face. At the conscious level they buy into whatever rationalizations seem most plausible and try to make others buy into them as well while at a deeper level of their beings they know the truth. They’re actually desperate for authentic human connection and suffer greatly for the lack of it.

The real reasons behind the choice to remain emotionally distant almost always point back to the quality of the first and most important relationship with one or more primary caregivers. Opening up emotionally led to repeated bad consequences in this relationship, a sort of endless cycle where trust would build up to the point where the guard would be let down, at which point abusive words and deeds would once again shatter that trust.

At some point a rather ingenious solution to the problem was taken. This was to simply stop caring, to stop wanting to connect. If all of that emotional pain is the result of exposing the soft emotional underbelly then it can all go away by wearing protective armor. And for those afraid to get close in adulthood, that protective armor was to stop investing emotionally in anything that had the potential to do emotional harm. Why keep subjecting oneself to that?

We said that people who are afraid to get close repress the real reasons for their emotional detachment in adulthood. This is because to the child the primary caregiver is a god whose perspective carries tremendous psychological weight. In other words, if your parent thinks your’re worthless and unlovable then it must mean you really are worthless and unlovable.

Adults with emotional detachment usually haven’t fully worked through their ambivalence towards their primary caregivers. On one hand they’re still desperate for love, approval, and above all a safe space to connect emotionally, while on the other hand they’ve virtually blacklisted these people. At a deeper level the ambivalence is due to the ingrained unconscious assumption that their primary caregivers were and still are gods whose beliefs are objective and unbiased rather than flawed human beings whose beliefs are subjective and biased.

What it really comes down to at the unconscious level in adulthood is that reaching out for emotional connection and getting burned, just like what happened over and over again in childhood, would seem to confirm the unwanted narrative of being fundamentally worthless and unlovable. Remaining emotionally detached serves the dual purpose of protecting against emotional pain of all kinds and of insulating oneself from that unwanted narrative. But of course it’s a disastrous life strategy because long-term isolation, physical or emotional, is hell. Humans are wired to connect, to other people and to the world. No one is an island. Bringing the real psychological reasons for the choice to remain emotionally detached into conscious awareness and working through the ambivalence towards primary caregivers are essential steps in deciding to open back up emotionally in order to move towards more fulfilling connections.

Despair is a black hole that threatens to rob you of all your light and energy. It’s a prime example of the faulty thinking pattern called

Despair is a black hole that threatens to rob you of all your light and energy. It’s a prime example of the faulty thinking pattern called fortune telling, where you look into your imaginary crystal ball and take it for granted that you have the power to predict exactly how things are going to turn out. In the case of despair you predict that the situation is hopeless, that not only is life bad right now but that there’s no chance of it ever getting any better.

With this sort of attitude in place a self-fulfilling prophecy is born since if you take it as absolute fact that things can never change for the better there’s no point in activating, no point in doing anything to try to improve the situation. Your light and energy keep on dimming until there’s only darkness. When you do nothing to try to improve your situation the most likely outcome is that your situation doesn’t improve. And the guaranteed outcome is that your present tense is filled with psychological and emotional pain, regardless of how the future turns out.

Despair is a prediction, not ironclad fact. No matter what percentage chance you give the future of turning out the way you believe it will you can’t know for sure. What we do know for sure as existentialists is that no matter how grim your life situation is or how little time you have left there is always, under all circumstances, something you can do to make your life, the life of those around you, and the world a little better. There’s always something you can do to instill a sense of meaning into your existence, and meaning is the antidote to despair. This something might be small or it might be monumental but the size is less important than the realization that you always wield the power to make it.

When you allow the black hole of despair to engulf your light you completely lose awareness of your efficacy to respond to your given set of circumstances as you see fit but you don’t lose that efficacy. A major part of taking it back is actively challenging the fortune telling faulty thinking pattern causing you to incorrectly believe that you know what the future holds. Many variables are completely outside of your control but some aren’t, and when you discover those variables that are inside your control you can affect them in some way and this ability to affect them replaces the black hole of despair with the bright light of purpose.

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