Emotions and Reality
Mental Health, Emotion, and the Structure of Reality
Modern life is saturated with explanations. We live among psychological theories, political ideologies, philosophical arguments, and social frameworks that attempt to explain reality and justify human identity within it.
Yet beneath all of these explanations lies a deeper condition:
The way human beings know what they know.
Most people rarely examine this condition directly. Instead, we operate within frameworks that appear obvious and natural. We debate ideas, defend beliefs, and adopt interpretations of the world as if they were simply descriptions of reality.
It seems strange to say then that, from a mental health perspective, we analyze in terms of what we already figure must be the proper state of things and, basically, come up with answers that confirm what we know as reality.
This is not wrong, but something else is occurring beneath these interpretations.
Emotion stabilizes belief, belief organizes meaning, and those meanings form the structure we call reality.
This structure operates both within individual experience and across society as a whole. We see it not only on our own personal experiences, but we see it in action in the social world as well.
Understanding this process reveals why mental health occupies a unique position among disciplines.
The Problem of Modern Knowledge
The central difficulty in modern knowledge is not that people disagree about ideas. The deeper issue is that people regularly do not recognize the epistemological situation they are already operating within. We just operate from that standpoint; we call it myself, or me, or any number of self-referencing terms.
Knowledge in this way tends to appear as theories, arguments, positions, identities, definitions, explanations, and so on. These can be compared, debated, and replaced. Because of this, most intellectual activity focuses on developing better frameworks, indeed, society functions by this kind of epistemological standard.
But the underlying structure of knowing itself remains largely unnoticed, in fact, society is categorically incapable and unequipped to reference itself in this way. The best it can do is to critique ideologies that are not (supposedly) functioning in the critique.
Modern ideologies, e.g., political, social, psychological, or philosophical, organize reality through systems of meaning, and these systems give shape to how we understand the world and how we justify ourselves within it. Indeed, psychology is, arguably, the assertion that we need to affirm ourselves by the ideological standard, which is to say, the cognitive, rational standard.
Emotion plays a crucial role in maintaining these systems.
Emotion functions as a kind of binding force. It holds together the terms, definitions, and meanings that compose an ideological framework. Once emotionally invested, those meanings begin to feel natural and unquestionable. The efforts of social justice theory knows this well, but oriented in social structures, it necessarily is unable to question what indeed is feeling natural about the targets of its critique.
At the point where ideology recognizes how it is included in its own critique, there is what we call reality. This process occurs both individually and collectively. Societies stabilize shared meanings through cultural narratives, institutions, and belief systems. Individuals stabilize personal interpretations through emotional attachment to identity, experience, and belief.
This is not a flaw in human thinking. It is simply how modern knowledge functions. It is less a discursive or semantic “construction” than it is reality itself.
The world generates problems, explanations, and solutions. Ideological frameworks interpret those problems and offer ways to address them. The cycle continues, producing the dynamic structure of modern life.
The significance for mental health, though, is in the disjuncture mental health recognizes in its disciplinary understanding and approach.
Why Emotion Holds Reality Together
If cognition alone governed human understanding, the world might constantly dissolve under analysis.
Philosophy shows this clearly. Ask a simple question like What is a table? and the explanation quickly becomes unstable. The object of inquiry dissolves into components—wood, molecules, atoms, particles, ideas, tropes, and so on. And as we ask what each of these might be, each explanation leads to another.
And yet the table remains perfectly stable and usable.
This stability comes from emotion.
Emotion acts like conceptual glue. It holds together the meanings and definitions that allow objects, identities, and beliefs to appear stable. Without this emotional stabilization, the semantic structure of reality would continually dissolve. Indeed, we hear the toll that orientation in cognitive primacy (modern Reason) takes upon a person when reality is challenged through personal expressions such as “I feel numb”, or “I have no purpose”, and in social expressions like “the world makes no sense”, “the world is going to crap”.
Emotion maintains the ideological scaffold that organizes the world. But this does not mean emotion creates reality. Rather, it stabilizes the frameworks through which reality is interpreted and lived.
Young people developmentally are still “learning” what the world is, how terms, definitions, cognitions, are “supposed to feel”, for a phrase; cognitions are leading the way to organizing the emotional world given to them first by their parents and then also the world at large, but emotions basically are the ‘language’ through which children learn what they are and what the world is. The basic cognitive scaffolding then being given, adolescents, with the arrival of puberty, sexuality, now have the challenge of fitting their emotional experience into the social world of population maintenance. Adults then have a very complex cognitive ability due to the larger emotional frame, i.e., the established ideological scaffolding which presents what we might refer to as ‘normal’ in the social sense, and reality in the larger spatial sense.
For cognitive-based (psychological) notions of mental health, the larger frame is allowed for by the system of cognitions that seems natural (ideology), and emotions can be a product of thinking automatically by defining emotions according to expressed behaviors, since overall, if someone is behaving “normal” then accordingly there are no emotions to speak of. Reason and Rationality being the supposed natural or “good” state of being human, any emotional state has the potential to be a problem; for example, the cognitive assessment of depression and anxiety is a result of ‘bad’ thinking. In this light, Cognitions then seem to be an obvious cause of behavior that appears outside of social norms, and the transgressive behaviors are understood to arrive because of abnormal personal interpretations of emotions. Bipolar disorders, which seems to be an emotional issue and thus a problem with thinking, seems then more than what the ‘rational-cognitions’ manner of understanding experience can cognize, which then propose to make comprehendable this behavioral experience as a problem centered in biology or neurochemistry primarily (ie not thinking or feeling primarily). Likewise Schizophrenia disorder become more available to a sensible explanation when we understand this foundational role of emotions and similarly neurodivergence and personality issues are accounted for more satisfactorily.
The feeling of having the cognitive sense (modern Reason and its system of meaning that we call sensible) of things challenged can be likened to a threat upon reality itself. Once ideological or cognitive organization is established itself reality becomes fixed, and emotion works to keep the terms and definitions correlated in a particular way, to contain beliefs to a specific place-space (world) as the universe challenges a person— which happens at every moment. The reaction to this is a trauma response, that is, in as much as a person does not have access to an emotionally supportive way to make sense of what any event might be. Indeed, many people with mental challenges report the experience in their body and say “my mind is racing”, “panic”, “my heart is beating out of my chest”, “I feel like I have to get out of there” or similar expressions of feeling impinged upon without a route of escape. This is the felt experience of their mind resisting the dissolution of what they intuitively know and experience as reality because the emotions are attempting to keep the cognitive system from being disrupted. Similarly, often people experiencing anxiety will work very hard to manage their external world and circumstances, such as controlling other people, attempting to have everything “be just right”, or by trying to do everything “at once” (also think ADHD or OCD).
The description of Mental Health Philosophy also better explains the therapeutic value and effect of traditional medicines, what modern science calls psychedelic medicine. The operative function of these medicines loosen and can even remove the emotional hold on the cognitive-semantic system, aka, ideology.
The Context of Mental Health
Again, keep in mind that this is not necessarily a theory about a proper way to theorize about mental issues and what intervention might be more effective. Because we are simply speaking of mental health, the thing that we are talking about when we use the word, it is not necessarily a problem to be solved. Rather it gives a greater and more sensible context for what is already happening. It explains in a very sensible way why and how we might be able to even know of any problem as a problem and thus experienced as a problem, but also then as well, why any intervention might or might not work for mental health problems including why individual theories are able to pose why, as a theory of intervention, any particular intervention might work.
Mental health describes and inscribes what is simply part of the structure of human life.
Mental Health Philosophy.
141 responses to “Mental Health, Emotion, and Reality: the Modern World Together”
Does phenomenology say that reality is a construction of our minds, and that we can not prove that it exists outside of us?
I’m busy digging holes for myself tonight. Must be feeling existential absurdity. Or just absurd.
I’m sorry about that lapse. I’ll find a philosophy discussion group somewhere.
“Emotion maintains the ideological scaffold that organizes the world. But this does not mean emotion creates reality.” Would you please elaborate on what it is that you believe does create reality?
I’m responding to a tendency that permeates our current environment where certain types of statements are over generalized to be reduced to meaning, so on and so on…
More exactly, Because I’m saying that “emotion maintains a sort of cognitive structure that organizes the world” people might think that I’m suggesting that therefore emotion is responsible for creating reality. This tendency to jump to conclusions happens because of the phenomenological method which says that reality is something that we construct in ourselves in a meaningful way. It’s a bit circular. But the circularity is not recognized.
And so by making that statement about emotions, I’m pointing to a particular problem in the way that people regularly engage with philosophy, which is to say, as though it is something separated from their actual lives. As though it’s just some sort of cognitive phenomenon of thinking.
By that comment , I’m trying to have the person pay attention to something that is going on within them that is typically functioning for the purpose of avoiding notice of …
… which is this phenomenon where we must reduce everything by either/or reference to contradictions in Reasoned thinking. As though this method is the only and correct method that yields reasonable knowledge.
Ok. Wonderful. Thank you. I will re-read and comment on this after I take a tylenol for a screaming headache that I am fully blaming for my inability to think and modulate at the moment.
Does phenomenology say that reality is a construction of our minds, and that we can not prove that it exists outside of us?
In general. Phenomenology comes about with Kant. Who basically has established the philosophical paradigm that we exist in presently : the only reality that we have access to occurs in how we justify propositions.
That sounds like a closed and circular way of thinking to me.
We are creating then propositions that justify our thinking. But how else can we approach reality, since we are effectively isolated in our minds?
Exactly the issue.
Before I exit all the way, I have to ask: what is a musician who is being questioned, lol? Just saw that header! So you are a musician in addition to your other two professions? I think I can see how they must all compliment one another, speak one another’s languages. After all, life is art.
I suppose I will have to call it an early night for now. It’s been a busy day for me, and I think I’m still suffering daylight-savings-time lag. This has been thoroughly enjoyable, a great exercise for the mind, and a warm and friendly discussion as well. I’ll look forward to your next blog (and may read some earlier ones—I assume one can comment on them as well, even if in the receding past?). Maybe I will get around to creating one of my own, though I’m more of a reader, if I didn’t mention that before. 🙂
Yeah, you can comment on any of the posts.
Hello Landzek: I’m starting at the top again here, just to keep things organized, hopefully. I will do my part to be as sequential as possible. Please take your time as needed to respond, I will check my notifications.
I’m wondering this evening about your thoughts as to my question regarding newborn babies and their perception of the new world around them (as compared to their previous “in utero” environment, of which they must also have perceived in some way at some point in their development, so perhaps not much difference).
Because they have no language, what must their experience of reality be like? Could that be what you mentioned as “pure sensation?” How would a newborn understand that experience without language? What do you think the newborn’s awareness of the stimuli around it might be? That is, what sense could a newborn be making of the world until it begins to associate words with their objects or actions?
Would it be similar to being an animal, say, since animals do not share what we think of as language, at least not our language?
Maybe there is a case to be considered that reality has not so much always been “there” for us, as that we gradually come into it by right of the acquisition of language. Maybe some philosophical implications to that? Such as how much of our reality do we create as opposed to its being created “upon us?”
Or am I just playing meaninglessly with words?
Does it seem like you’re just playing with words?
Yes.
Meaning am I making sense to you?
So it does seem like we’re just playing with words and you’re asking me if you make sense to me. 😆. Is that right? Or are you asking if you’re making sense to me about children and babies?
My question about the experience of someone without language is a serious one. How does someone who does not have words perceive their reality as differentiated from those of us who use words, employ language as our structure and form of communication?
The question about babies. From a certain orientation upon things, I don’t have any philosophical opinion about that in that area. From a mental health standpoint. I would say that babies are born with 5, 6 or seven, depending on who you ask, basic emotions. It’s like human beings are hardwired to experience those five or six basic emotions.
From there, we developed the complexities of our lived life.
From a real deep philosophical perspective, I don’t even know if you have any sort of thoughts or anything that I would consider cognitive or linguistic or discursive or any of the sort. Because all that’s really happening is human beings are living their lives. But from there. That’s where it gets interesting.
I am trying to remember where I was going with the notion of being without language. What happens to one’s reality without it?
Yeah. What do you think about deaf people or mute people?
Well that’s who I was thinking about in reference to not having language. But such people do (or can) learn language eventually. Even Helen Keller in her state of both deafness and blindness learned language. To use language is to recognize that there are names for things, but those names are not the things themselves. I run across this often enough when reading your philosophical blogs. I’m having a hard time fleshing out my questions about what is occurring for someone who does not recognize that objects have names. It has to do with reality. Perhaps I’m just going around in circles here, or trying to understand the phenomenon of speech, thought, and communication in a different way. Not sure. Not brightly cogent or even very coherent this evening apparently.
That sounds cool. And one of the reasons I like having these kinds of discussions is because I never know if what I’m talking about and what I’m writing really is communicating what I mean unless I get feedback from people. That engage with it. I think it is. But you could never know unless people give you feedback.
Well, that’s the case all the way around, all of the time, Friend. Somebody has give enough of a damn to talk back to us!
So your expertise is in the field of mental health, and you employ your philosophical views in order to help people understand their experience. That’s what I get from your blogs (I have read others). That does seem to differ significantly from what I tend to think “regular” psychologists or counselors do. They seem grounded in illness, and rather preoccupied with diagnosing. You seem to come from an entirely different perspective.
Many counselors I know are at least somewhat suspicious of the medical model of mental health.
But that’s the thing. That’s also kind of what I’m saying in a lot of my work. all this psychological talk and all these issues and stuff – when it comes down to actually treating a person in therapy We kinda all do something very similar. And you can’t account for someone just under a diagnosis, of anxiety, say, as there is as if there’s a specific treatment that works for . There are ideas and notions and philosophy and methods that seem to work with this thing called anxiety, say , but there are large amounts of variables about why that might be the case that we simply cannot measure. It’s kind of like a whack-a-mole. Or trying to hold sand. Or trying to find the end of the rainbow.
So much has to do with the person that is suffering themselves and what they resonate with. And that’s just well known in clinical circles and in counseling. And so we tend not to judge each other, just as we try not to judge ourselves, because there’s so much variables that go into what is happening and what this person’s experience is, and what will be helpful to them. That no one really knows. If anyone says they know, then for the most part they’re either lying or delusional. The best we can say is We have a fair idea of what works, but so much of it really just has to do with people. The clinician and the client. And all the rest of it is just kind of stuff we talk about all in the effort of trying to just help this person in front of us.
That’s also the weirdness of the whole thing as well. 🥳
To be honest, it isn’t always easy for me to understand what you are writing about. Your style is one of extreme depth, as if you must invent a new language yourself to convey what’s in your mind. Perhaps that’s just a necessary way philosophers must construct their ideas, since the tool of your language is language. But then maybe that’s where mathematics comes in, as it seems to merge at some point with philosophy and take over where words end.
Thank you for this. I’ve had similar types of comments over the years. And I endeavor to be able to write more clearly, so people can understand even if they don’t have all this book knowledge of philosophy. Or if they don’t think they are philosophically erudite.
To me, it’s so obvious. But that’s where the disconnect comes, but it took me a long time to realize that. And it takes people like yourself interacting with me to realize where I might be failing. 🙏🏽
Nonetheless, I think it is pretty obvious 😆when one takes a certain approach to understanding what their experience is. And when this approach is come upon, then only a couple things can happen. So coming back to this post, I think the nature of being a human being is that people’s emotional world defends their way of thinking from coming upon this particular orientation upon their lives and existence.
pretty much what you’re talking about language and things like this I think you’re on the right track. But then there’s also a lot of things that can be understood from the book knowledge philosophers that helps to understand what I might say is the thing that all questions ask about.
And I know that sounds ridiculous ridiculously enigmatic.!! lol.
When I said “yes” to your question, I thought you were reiterating my question, so I replied yes, as if I was clarifying that yes, that was my question. I realize that you may be misinterpreting, No, I do NOT think I am playing with words. I meant it more as a rhetorical question.
There is something really frightening about being a human human being. And I think it’s so frightening that we spend our lives, avoiding a certain fact.
There is a contemporary philosopher his name is John Gray. He really leans into this place that most philosophical discussions just regularly avoid. He framed it in terms of humanism. But what he’s really saying is, we are just animals like every other animal. We like to think we’re doing things different, and indeed our thinking is the thinking that we’re doing something different.
And so when you ask this question about babies, I don’t really know if I have an opinion about it because the necessity of it is, I have to recognize that if there was a baby in front of me, I would treat it like a baby human being. I would love it. I know some things about human development and and things like that. I have some views about parenting. And I know what it’s like to be what we consider conscious. But I guess it’s really difficult for me to speculate beyond that.
I have always thought that there is little difference between humans and animals, that we are governed by the same basic drives as they are. Yet as John Gray must be saying, we have self-awareness, which makes us think we are doing things differently. But who is to say that animals don’t think that way about themselves? We can’t know because we don’t speak the same language. But then I think that just as parallel lines apparently do meet somewhere far enough distant in the Universe, so too can language-determined reality be understood beyond language. I just don’t know exactly how that might be done. But I do love that you say that you would love the baby you might encounter. That’s what matters after all. That what I think I meant about playing with words. In the end, it’s what we do to further our humanity, rather than to destroy it. I would expect most philosophers would agree that the definition and thrust of human existence must be toward something indefinable called “love.” Perhaps it is the glue that holds together our reality.
I’m afraid that I’m becoming sleepy. We have had to change our clocks forward here, so I think that is catching up with me. Shall we continue later here, or on another blog? It’s been most interesting to have a discussion with you.
Somewhere you have posted a response asking me if I can tell you something without words, or something to that effect. I cannot find it to answer it. Can you repost it on top here?
I think it was something like: tell me of something that is outside of language.
To explain a bit: have you ever had someone on your mind whom you haven’t seen or heard from in a very long time, and then you run into them somewhere shortly thereafter? I’m referring to these kinds of phenomena as “outside of language.”
Yes, I’ve had those kind of frequently actually.
But I don’t know that they’re happening outside of language necessarily. They’re only happening outside of language in a particular way that I understand. I called that conventional, other people would call it Cartesian, and a contemporary philosopher said it had something to do with correlationalism.
But I said it has to do with orientation and non-philosophy —- have you ever heard of François Laruelle. His Non philosophy?
I have come across that name somewhere, but I don’t know about him or his non-philosophy. Sounds interesting. Like non-language maybe?
No. More like “total language”. He’s actually explaining what must be the case. He spells out the repercussions of the situation being entirely contained by language.
Intriguing. I like would like to understand that concept.
Well, he doesn’t specifically say that that’s what he’s doing. He’s calling his project. Non-philosophy because he’s talking about what philosophy is. And because of what philosophy is, he has to speak a certain way about it in order to communicate this understanding. So he can’t communicate it philosophically – which is kind of ironic- so he calls it non-philosophy or non-standard philosophy. Because it is philosophy. But it’s using philosophy. And so how do you use philosophy to talk about philosophy if you’re fully embedded in philosophy? Or the more precise question is : how is it possible that there’s disagreement ?
In a way, I draw from him a lot so far as mental health. Because, sort of what I was getting out with some of our discussion here. I might have all these great idea ideas about what’s going on with a person. But we have to measure whether I’m correct by whether or not it’s working. And if it’s not working, that’s gotta mean something about what I think is so great. But when we get down to these levels of consciousness and philosophy, and what the universe is (or supposed to be ), At some point it seems like there needs to be some sort of realization that whatever I think is happening is happening everywhere regardless of how people express it back to me whether or not they agree with it. Oddly then it seems , everything that anyone is saying is actually agreeing with what I think the truth of the matter is. And if that’s possible, then a very interesting interaction arises ontologically.
You say: “And so how do you use philosophy to talk about philosophy if you’re fully embedded in philosophy? Or the more precise question is : how is it possible that there’s disagreement ?”
That’s the principle of a self-contained argument. It is impossible to disagree with a postulate that defines its own terms. Self-contained arguments negate dialogue and genuine exchange of new information.
And: ” But we have to measure whether I’m correct by whether or not it’s working. ”
I agree. You can’t really refute another person’s experience. And you seem to be of the mind that it is generally a non-productive method as a therapist. As you indicate, the only way we can gauge whether or not our efforts have produced a change in another’s awareness are by the results, that is, by the consequent actions taken by the person with whom we are attempting communication. That person will either accept or reject new information presented. I count doubtful consideration on their part as “accepting” because doubt is an obvious chink in the armor of circular reasoning.
And: “Oddly then it seems , everything that anyone is saying is actually agreeing with what I think the truth of the matter is. And if that’s possible, then a very interesting interaction arises ontologically.”
Yes, possibly so, since whatever one expresses, you are perceiving the truth of what they are saying as it (their truth) belongs to them. You are acknowledging the veracity of their experience. Therefore, perhaps you are the one who is doing the actual agreeing. Nonetheless, that qualifies as mutual agreement, if only one or the other is agreeing. Am I understanding somewhat correctly what you are meaning here?
Or. That they would have to agree with me first In order to be saying anything in disagreement at all. They would have to know exactly what I mean and agree with it.
For example: The only way that you and I are having this conversation is because we already agree with each other. Whatever sort of disccursive engagement that we’re having is just subjects unfolding how they must. Because they couldn’t have unfolded in any other way given what each particular term that we’re saying must mean in order for us to be communicating at all.
But this is not to say that reality doesn’t function the way it does, I’m not saying anything about the way reality is supposed to occur necessarily. But I’m saying that mental health does function differently. That’s why it’s disciplinary different than the modern real estimation of what’s happening.
in a way of viewing it: the language that they’re using is expressing the agreement. Even though it appears to me as disagreement. At every moment, they are truly expressing the agreement and total understanding of what I am saying and with what I understand as true. Using their own language.
And it is within that instance, of knowing, of epistemology, that opens the situation to what is actually happening. Both the problem as problem, and the solution as solution : the things that are rising in the universe as such, things unto themselves.
You know, babies don’t speak. They have to learn language. So what is their experience?
Do you remember?
I have two first memories. One it’s probably my earliest is I’m looking at myself from behind myself as a toddler. And I pooped my diapers and my dad picks me up. And then the next earliest memory I have is actually a dream. Again, I’m watching myself from behind and I’m running in the middle of a flat plane in a big valley. And then this Tyrannosaurus rex foot comes down on me from the top. 🥳. What about yours?
Honestly, I don’t have one. I can only remember back to the age of about 4, well able to verbalize.
That’s interesting that you say that you don’t have first memories, but you only remember back to the age of four. Is not the first memory that you have your first memory?
I am thinking of very early pre-verbal memories, none of which I can recall. If we could remember the day of our birth, what would our experience be? I ask that because you asked me to tell you of something outside of language. Isn’t a newborn baby’s experience outside of language?
That has to be quite symbolic, laden with meaning— worth venturing into: a dream about getting stomped by a huge dinosaur!
I apologize, I am sending too many comments at once, but what is the significance to you that you were outside of yourself observing these events as they happened to you
Idk. But when I’m working with a person’s dream, I do ask them From what perspective are they seeing themselves in a dream? Just like you just asked me. Lol
I’m not sure this matters or is relevant, but wouldn’t you think that by asking what perspective are they seeing themselves in a dream that the only perspective could be as outside of themselves? Otherwise, would they not be inside of their dream, hence dreaming at that moment? What I am trying to say here is that in recalling the memory of a dream (or any memory), one uses language, visualization, and emotions. Therefore, any memory is always “outside” of our original memory. We can’t relive our memories; we can only remember them. It’s a fine point perhaps, but we can’t be certain of exactly what occurred in memory (including dreams) at the time of its creation (the actual event we are recalling). In other words, memory by definition is always at least once removed from its past reality. And so it is always inaccurate. Or call it “imperfect.”
Is any of that something that is occurring outside of knowledge?
Is knowledge the same as reality? Isn’t that the unending question?
Well, that’s why I keep asking you if there’s something that you can know that is not itself knowledge? 😄
Well, I didn’t put it in that way. But we were putting it in terms of language. Maybe those are different questions. Can I know something that is not known? Can I know something that is not based in language?
It makes me wonder if the being outside of oneself isn’t actually the recalling of the memory. How is distinguishable? I can see myself in a baby carriage that my mother was pushing on the sidewalk in front of our house, with a neighbor bending over to look at me. But then again, I think my mother might have told me about this incident, as she was concerned that I might catch a contagious disease if the neighbor got too close to me, and I created a visual picture of it that is not really a memory of the actual happening.
That is, I am outside my self NOW remembering that memory of when I was 4. But I don’t think I was outside of myself at the time. Or was I? How can we know which it was?
I should have asked first: what do you mean “They’re only happening outside of language in a particular way that I understand.” What is the particular way that you are understanding that experience of “foreshadowing” you might call it?
Look up my posts that have the topic or keyword the “two routes”.
You are making me work for an answer. That’s rather cagey.
Maybe I should just look up Laruelle.
😋
Did say telepathy? I meant to add, lol.
Do I understand correctly: emotions shape our reality, that is, create a structure for corresponding decisions/action. Mental health intervention intends us to know (be aware of, recognize) our emotional experience and apply thought (reason, logic) to a (usually problematic )situation to examine whether or not the emotions we are experiencing are appropriate, warranted, or perhaps worth it…?
Hi. Well, what all that means to any particular theory about what we’re supposed to do with mental health depends on that Theory.
Nonetheless, I’m suggesting that regardless of how we think about how we might understand our own mental health or what the theory about what what I’m supposed to do with it – in as much as I am involved with achieving some sort of change in my situation of mental challenge – all work from the problem that arises because emotions are getting in the way of trying to solve the problem. And the way that they get in the way of effectively handling the problem is they are working to hold reality in place, as reality is this experience that I’m having as a known thing. Cognitions are inseparable how we know reality. Emotions function to keep this (cognition of) reality in place as a functioning reality. That’s why it’s difficult in the more serious or insidious mental challenges probably, for a person to Handle them themselves. I’m not saying it can’t be done though. But it’s because when I do that I’m basically , in a manner of speaking, using the reality that I understand as reality in order to challenge the reality that I intuitively understand as reality itself. There’s nothing wrong with doing that. But it does pose a certain kind of challenge that most people intuitively do not perceive or comprehend or ever come upon…Because that’s the nature of reality as it is known.
Does that resonate with what youre asking ?
My thoughts are that our emotions are not only pushing up against outer reality, possibly creating problems (getting in the way) but at the same time, can influence or change that very outer reality.. So it is a dynamic situation that can result in a corresponding shift in our emotions that may (or may not) be more productively aligned to the situation at hand and, therefore, lessen the experience of those emotions as problematic. Which would seem to be a move forward toward mental health (sense of well-being). Does this seem to cohere?
And so it appears that one of the objectives in mental health intervention is to foster an individual’s capability to perceive a differing view of his reality other than the reality that his emotions that are working to uphold. Lessening resistance to acceptance and change?
Apparently my first reply to your reply was not sent (or maybe it was), but I’m reiterating it here: My thoughts are that our emotions are not only butting up against outer reality, possibly creating problems (getting in the way) but at the same time, can influence or change that outer reality. So it is a dynamic situation that can result in a corresponding shift in our emotions that may (or may not) be more productively aligned to the situation at hand and, therefore, lessen the experience of those emotions as problematic. Which would seem to be a move forward toward mental health (sense of well-being).
That’s seems coherent and sensible. Yes. May I ask also: what might be the reality that I am knowing that I am not having, or not viewing ?
That would be the reality likely offered or encouraged by another, probably by the counselor since we are discussing mental health intervention.
The challenge is that what constitutes reality is a debatable subject. My premise is that reality is always malleable rather than fixed.
Unless 100% of people agree on the same thing. How likely is that?
It’s hard enough to get 2 people to agree.
lol. …. It’s almost like reality is filled with a bunch of people with theories based on what they are knowing…
And are their theories provable?
What is it to be proven ?
That these bunch of people with theories actually know what they are talking about. But then, that is at the heart of this discussion, isn’t it. You are speaking of the ability of people to understanding their emotions in a more objective way, as if to separate a mix that is usually a conglomerate and list its ingredients, so to speak.
That sounds like something you are knowing.
I would expect everyone believes that they know what they are knowing, unless convinced otherwise. And then, they are still knowing what they are knowing. That is always the case, but the thrust should be to expand their knowing to include new, previously unknown information. And you make the argument that the emotional resistance to doing so is what keeps people in the same place with the same problems. This sounds suspiciously like human nature.
Yes. That’s one of the things! I talk about in places the difference between awareness and noticing. And I was reading a paper the other day, and this person talked about it as attention. We can’t simply be aware. There has to be a certain kind of awareness, there has to be some sort of noticing that indeed I am doing this thing called being aware, and then I also somehow need to attend to it in a way that’s appropriate to what I’m being aware of and noticing.
For sure, people are aware of what’s happening in a certain way. But the issue is that the way that they’re understanding what this awareness is is not helping them to overcome the problem that they are aware of in the details of that problem. So it’s kind of like the details that they notice of their experience that amount to this problem do not amount for them a relief of the problem.
So that suggests a couple things. On a purely existential human kind of level, that’s just life, that’s what it is to be a human and the unfolding of this process is filled with all sorts of challenges that is unique to each person.
And then on the other hand, it suggests that even though they are aware, the content of their awareness is not correct. It’s skewed in someway. Or it’s not assessing their situation through the correct lens. But There is no objective correct lens , as if I could give it to them or someone can give it to them from the outside. But it’s more of that through adjusting awareness and engaging hopefully openly with this thing that is their experience in all its aspects outside and inside, they will find the lens that meets what they need in order to get through this challenge. Or, solve this mental issue we could say.
Usually, what prevents people from finding this way through is based in emotions. And as I say in this post, sure you can argue with their ideas and we can discuss the philosophical aspects and point out contradictions in what they’re thinking, and that can be helpful, but the reason why it’s helpful is because it’s working on this Emotional experience that’s underneath. You always have to point there, always has to be an indication to the emotional experience. But we can’t really overdetermined how to go about this or what this means. I mean, even if I were to say that it is my cognitions that are determining my emotions, there’s nothing about my cognition that would be allowed to permeate or to interrupt my emotions if I wasn’t addressing my emotions primarily through the cognitions. Which then tends to indicate that it’s really the emotional world that is responsible for the issues and not as much the cognitive.
But we do well to keep in mind that using these particular terms is just one way to frame things.
I would expect that a therapist might have more success with people who are more highly motivated for whatever their reasons. Perhaps a little more willingness to examine their bedrock resistance to solving their problems.
Perhaps. But that’s really when the rubber hits the road for philosophy and mental health. Because in a certain way about it, there is no resistance. Because everyone is being exactly how they need to be. And the only way that they can be. And so just the idea that there is some sort of problem that they need to change becomes the opening. Where there really isn’t resistance there’s only a perception of resistance , so to speak.
I don’t quite understand what you mean. Why is the resistance that you originally attributed to “emotions getting in the way” now only a perception of resistance? Or do you mean that in every instant, one is being as one is being? Is that why you say that is “the only way they can be”? If so, then something undefinable (without language) must be happening from one instant to the next in order for change to occur without resistance. You are breaking down the flow of emotions in real time into the infinite where definition cannot apply because definition is finite. Do you agree?
Because there’s nothing wrong with anyone; it’s only a particular way of viewing what is happening that says that something is wrong. That’s what makes mental health different. It’s not based in either/or standard of knowledge .
That’s what makes mental health disciplinarily different than conventional reductive philosophy. Mental health philosophy does not necessarily reduce the phenomenological standards of modern reality – If I had to put a phrase to it. 🙂
You are asking the right questions because This is what my larger work is about.
In one sense, I can agree with you, but also I can’t impose that upon a person if that’s not the way they think about or are able to think about things. Because it’s likely that these kinds of impositions upon a persons sense of their self that is contributing to the problem that they think is happening.
It nonetheless is happening, but I don’t have to enforce those particular types of phrases and definitions upon the person’s experience. We work from the person‘s experience in mental health. Rather than upon it.
This oddity hints at what I mean about two routes upon things.
I am not refuting your notion that there is no real resistance in a philosophical sense because a person is simply being the way they are in the moment. The way one is = the only way one can be at that moment, of course. But a person can be different in the next moment. But when is the next moment? Or perhaps, what is the next moment? That is what I am saying is undefinable (inexpressable; without words). I.e., a mental transition occurs in an instant, a point in time, that can be talked about only after the fact, but has no language in the instant of its occurrence. That is how I understand you to be saying that there is no resistance. Because resistance disappears when it can’t be defined as such.
I am just trying to translate your terminology into mine so that I can understand what it is that you are stating.
Does this seem to make sense to you?
Yes, it does make sense to me.
And yet, even if people were to understand this, many would still be having their mental issue and becoming to therapy for help. And so we’re left to ask shall I just impose that idea upon them until they figure it out more and more? Or do I just accept that they’re making it up? Or try to educate them sufficiently so they really understand what I’m saying and then somehow they’ll get over themselves.? For sure there are some theoretical interventions and modalities that work to try, as we say, to help the person gain space from the thing that’s causing them a problem, and what we might call their sense of self. But what do we do if that doesn’t work? And what does it mean that I’m thinking this is the proper understanding of things, and yet when I try to educate someone about it or bring about whatever the experience that behind me thinking that that’s the way things are— if it doesn’t work to solve their problem what does it say that I’m thinking that that’s the way it is?
I don’t think there is a distinct separation of emotion and cognition. That is why I have trouble understanding your semantics approach. I view emotion/cognition as a spectrum. One leads into the other, but where and how is not known. And you appear to be saying that you as a mental health therapist do not impose definitions on a person’s experience. It seems that our views are quite close to jibing here if we can agree that the terms we are each using have the same meaning for us both.
That sounds interesting. Tell me how emotions in cognitions are a spectrum?
Define for me “emotion” and “cognition” as you understand them, and I will give you my thoughts on why I believe they are a continuum.
I’d say an emotion is a cognition of a group of feelings. A cognition is a thought.
By saying “an emotion is a cognition” you seem to be equating them as the same. An emotion is a cognition of itself or its elves? Yes, an emotion recognizes itself, that would seem to be a definition of a “feeling.” Emotion is a definition for the more commonly used word “feeling.”
An emotion is a defined grouping of sensations that we know cognitively, by evidence tat we have a term for it. I tend to say Feelings are pure sensations, yes, and emotions are our cognitive grouping of them into a defined term.
Are pure sensations “feelings” without words then?
Now you’re really getting deep into my mental health philosophy work, which I think is a little bit more involved than I could answer simply here.
I understand. These things are complex and require time and care to delineate. Nonetheless, it is most interesting.
But I love talking about them. I love having discussions about them. Yes they are interesting. Not many people what to discuss things anymore. It seems. People just want to state their opinions and then tell how other people’s opinions are wrong. Or they don’t want to talk about anything significant at all. Or it’s just me that I don’t really get on social media. Lol.
Lol! Its elves. That is, itselves. But maybe there are elves too.
Emotions and cognitions are words for mental processes that create reality. One experiences emotions (a reality in themselves) that lead to corresponding cognitions (a reality in themselves) that ultimately lead to action/decision. Both of them result in the creation of an action/decision based reality. But how does this happen? Does emotion come first, then cognition? Or vice versa? No one knows. Can you cite evidence of a distinct process that would prove which comes first? You cannot because it is a circular process of each entity influencing or creating the other. Hence, emotions and cognition are a on a spectrum and are a continuum.
I like that. Yes, philosophically that makes sense to me. But then try to get other people to. Lol. And I might ask to what are you referring when you say no one knows which comes first?
Which do you do first: think or feel?
lol. touche! For many problems, the best order of operations is to check in with the feelings first.
Once I was in the grocery store when I saw a father swat his little son on his behind much too hard. Cognition. I felt angry and sad. Emotions. I considered going over to him and asking him if he needed help. Cognition. My question: Was I having an emotion or a cognition before this incident?
I think that’s too simple a question. For you it’s whatever you say it is really.
This is more of a question that how do I know that the emotions that I’m having is appropriate to what I’m thinking or doing? In as a therapist, we call this when we observe it. Anyways, we call it “congruency” when it’s overt. But we have to ask why am I associating whatever term to whatever state of being that I’m having. Which is probably very similar to what you’re saying as a continuity or a continuum.
But the fact is is that I cannot possibly know whether or not any emotional state I have should be accord to any particular experience of cognition or any particular activity. The only way I can know this is by knowing it. But somehow, in this, knowing it, I regularly refer to something that is not this knowing.
So again, you’re getting into these topics that it can be hard to give a simple answer, and I’ve written papers and papers and books on these types of things. So, I’ll try to answer in a considerate enough way. And, you might check out some of my other posts to some of these questions that you’re coming up with 😄.
I’m gonna check out your blog and see if you have anything . 😎
Yes, it was really a disjointed question on my part and really doesn’t make sense. Yes, I will check out your other posts, and maybe we can have some more good discussions. I too enjoy such discussion and debate.
Or, one can say that emotions and cognitions are simply two definitions imposed upon one mental process. Similar to imposing mental health definitions upon a person’s experience.
How are we imposing these definitions upon a process?
You have not answered my question as to where and/or what is the dividing line between emotions and cognitions. I am postulating emotions and cognitions to be a continuous mental process upon which those arbitrary definitions, or better called “descriptions,” are imposed. By imposing them, they imply a separation of processes, which implies two distinctly different entities.
To be perhaps more succinct: we are imposing these definitions upon a mental process by the very fact that there are two different words for what is a mental process. Mental process meaning an intangible function of the brain, I suppose. All thoughts and emotions are obviously intangible. Even if there are any other definitions that we consider to be mental processes, a mental process is still a mental process, and is therefore a continuum.
Yes. It makes sense to you. It makes sense to me as well. The question arises when it doesn’t make sense to other people. I could spend hours and hours trying to convince someone; so what does it mean if they simply do not understand what Im saying? AND what if they have debilitating anxiety? Many people have great ideas, have a lot of intelligence about philosophy, and physiology, psychology and so on, and have very good ideas about what’s going on with them, but they still can’t go to work, say, because they have a melt down every time they try to get out the door. So we might consider how their very great ideas of what is going on could be contributing to the problem they are experiencing.
But more philosophically to your point. Yes. But what is this “continuous mental process”? Is it what lies beyond the terms and definitions? like a transcendent whole Self? This indeed may be helpful for some people, including you. And there are many spiritual teachings that speak of this, and many ways to speak of it.And may mental health interventional modalities that draw upon this idea. So then It really is as though people are using different terms to speak about One thing. I say it is what is indicated as opposed to expressed. And I say it is inclusive as opposed to exclusive, that it includes that which is excluded.
But let’s go further. If indeed we are saying something “spiritual” for a term, something that transcends the discourse. What is that really saying? But more significantly, how does having this view inform what I think the world is supposed to be and what people are supposed to do or think?
Then even further. If I am using the term “emotion”,say, or, “a continuous mental process”, and this is just an imposed term upon something that exceeds the definition of the term as well, then does not this hold for every object that we speak of?
What do you say about all that? 🙂
I missed this comment earlier. You say: “Then even further. If I am using the term “emotion”, say, or, a “continuous mental process,” and this is just an imposed term upon something that exceeds the definition of the term as well, then does not this hold for every object that we speak of?” Yes. I believe so. Language is necessarily limited and limiting, if only by the fact that it is expressed after the instant thought and/or emotion occurs within. That is why the ancients used the name Ja-Weh as God’s name. It was supposedly unpronounceable, beyond the capacity of words to express.
Ok.
Again, this gets into more of my larger work. Because you’re drawing upon phenomenological principles to make your reasoning. And much of what I’m talking about concerns this situation, as you say, of limitation.
I’ll give you an experiment: is there anything that you can tell me about that is outside of language?
Furthermore, if I am not tiring you by these multiple add-on responses, there is a historical context to the idea of emotions and cognitions as separate entities. If you are interested, I can explain a little bit of that.
You’re not tiring me. I’m enjoying it. Thank you for being interested. I love discussing this stuff.
Are you willing to comment on my replies to your question “tell me how emotions in cognitions are a spectrum?”? I appreciate your thoughts, feedback, emotions…
That is to say, I’m very interested in knowing what you think.
And I would ask, why in common speech do people use the words “feel” and “think” interchangeably much of the time?
And perhaps you can give a concrete example of how you “work from the person’s experience in mental health rather than upon it.” How do you approach a person who is admitting is suffering in their life and has come to you for help?
lol like you were saying before, you gotta slow down on the comments because they get they start to get all jumbled.
OK. I am sorry about that. Could you perhaps address each of those comments? I will stop any further commenting until you have time to answer each of them.
A concrete example. That’s just a very broad question. That’s kind of difficult to answer. Overall, I think that there’s something about the way people think about things that is contributing to their issue; there’s something about the way that people are relating to their emotional experience that is contributing to the problem; there’s something about the way that they are being involved in communication that is contributing to the problem. We don’t know what it is until we get into it.
But then there’s a difference between how we understand might be going on with these things, and how we actually work on alleviating the issue. I may think that it’s because they are not relating to thier emotions in whatever way, but there’s a number of ways that we could participate in altering that situation for the better.
I tend to work with parts. I tend to work with observation and awareness. Pure senses, feelings and so on. I work with people’s dreams if they’re into it. Sometimes we work with the creative language that people are using. It really just depends what resonates with the person.
A lot of people just wanna know the causes of things as if they know the cause of something then they’ll know how to fix it. Well, I would say much of the time that doesn’t work. 😄. It’s a very broad topic.
OK. This is what I’m looking for, a bit less abstract and more concrete, though it would be even more clarifying to watch you in action. “I tend to work with parts. I tend to work with observation and awareness. Pure senses, feeling and so on. I work with people’s dreams if they’re into it. Sometime we work with the creative language that people are using. It really just depends what resonates with the person.”
You are intuitive.
Moreso than methodological. I will stop here and wait again until you reply.
I would clarify my comment here by saying that what I mean by reality as malleable is that the emotions of an individual can affect the reality of other individuals. Perhaps its not quite on topic, but is still relevant in the sense that influence and change run in both directions, the “dynamic (viewed as evolving rather than static) situation” I referred to earlier. As you say, it seems that much of the time people attempt to negate the reality of others primarily due to an emotional reaction that upholds their own. And so we have not only internal conflict and stagnation, but a reflecting external condition of impasse as well.
Do you consider yourself a Philosopher, Dwellminima?
If you are saying that most people do not seek help when they really need it to move past the emotional roadblocks that stymie their efforts to change (or even their recognition of a need for change), then I agree.
All theories of mental health have their own way of viewing what the problem is and what to do about it.
I can’t know what is going on with someone who is not seeking help with their mental health. As far as I can know, they are perfectly healthy.
For someone who is seeking, speaking for me personally, I don’t know what’s going on with them until we start to get into what is happening. 🙂
As far as “getting into what is happening,” what is your method for finding that out? That is to say, there are many layers of “what is happening” for an individual. I am curious as to how you peel back those layers in order to understand?
I am a therapist. So. Yes. I have an idea of how I go about involving ourselves in what is happening. The simple version is what people popularly call mindfulness. But it’s really more just developing awareness.
I laud those in the profession whose objective is to develop awareness, for then there is hope of change in a direction that benefits all concerned.