Embrace The Pain, and You Will Win This Game!

One must assume total responsibility for his actions and feelings! Accepting full responsibility may make sense for actions. You do something; you are responsible for it. However, there are certain situations under social structure and laws that people are not held accountable for their actions, including when a person is clinically declared insane. Even then, the social structure mandates certain precautions such as institutionalizing the person to protect society from the harms of an insane person and vice versa. This is not considered personal punishment due to the assumption of responsibility but rather a necessary protective action. Still, it makes no difference for the individual; they will be locked up in a protective facility (prison) under widely accepted societal norms and laws of the day.

So how about feelings, are people also totally responsible for how they feel? Am I responsible for how I feel towards a particular object, event, or individual? Am I responsible for feeling threatened by another entity/individual when there are sufficient and objectively verifiable threats coming my way from the other entity? Am I responsible for feeling sad, mad, or in love? Can I hold others accountable for how they “make” me feel? The sensible answer here is: yes, one must hold others responsible for how they make him/her feel. But I’d like to argue against what makes sense and advocate complete personal responsibility for our feelings and emotions.

Feelings arise from inside; they may or may not have external triggers. They may also manifest themselves through actions we take to deal with them, either to maintain, reduce, or intensify them. But unmistakenly, they arise and reside inside us with or without external triggers and manifestations. As humans, perhaps we are the only species with a mind equipped to look for causes and reasons. We take joy and pride in accurately attributing observed effects to some causes. Our mind, most of the time, is not content until it finds a reason for what is happening or what has happened, especially if it was something “bad” or “negative.” Cause seeking is an innate capability of our mind that has delivered us almost all of the scientific advances we enjoy today, as well as superstitious beliefs and things in between.

Cause seeking is a fundamental function of our mind, and thus there is no easy escape from it. Without even noticing it consciously, we are, and we will be looking for reasons for things that happen to us or things that we observe in our environment. Therefore, it is only natural to look for what causes us to feel this way or that way. In most cases, our minds stop looking further for causes when it encounters the first apparent reason and associate how we feel to just that. For example, I am feeling angry because someone said something to me, or I am feeling anxious because an exam is coming up or because I am meeting my boss, and I don’t know what to expect, or I am feeling sad because someone broke my heart. But putting the blame and responsibility on the immediate perceivable cause is not free of cost. Over time, this behavior can cost us our relationships with our close friends and partners, our professional relationships, and much more as this habit turns the perceived immediate cause into an object of negative personal feelings and perhaps actions. I am angry because of you, so if you are not in my life, I will not be angry anymore! I am sad because someone did something, that person is responsible and has to make it up to me!

Some people, however, realize this approach is not working well for them and will go further in search of causes for their feelings and behaviors on their own or with the help of professionals. Through these efforts, people typically can trace back the cause or causes of their apparent behavior and emotional state in childhood traumas and events. This process helps people to shift the blame from immediate external triggers or themselves to their early childhood bearings, to a distant past that they can’t do much about. As a result, people going through this process, typically become aware of the “ultimate” reason(s) as to why they feel and behave in certain ways when they do. These discoveries give them a sense of accomplishment, comfort, and peace of mind. But typically, positive feelings associated with identifying the “ultimate” cause, and their consequent behavior modifications, are not very long-lasting as I experienced myself and observed in a few friends.

Moreover, based on recent research findings, it seems that the “ultimate” reason(s) may not, after all, be the “ultimate” one(s). The research suggests that some traumas can affect multiple generations through a mechanism called gene expression[2]. These findings question the validity of the view that considers childhood traumas and events as the ultimate reason(s) for one’s emotional state and behaviors in adulthood. Consequently, the ultimate reason(s) for one’s behavior is not easy to discover. Hence, the effectiveness of such approaches solely falls on people accepting the suggested reason as the ultimate one. In other words, it is make-believe, where a professional(s) with our help leads us to believe what is discovered through our active participation and their help is the ultimate reason. On this path, If we continue within the chain of causes and reasons, we can easily shift the blame (responsibility) of how we are today to our forefathers and their lives, and for that matter to the big bang itself! Therefore, looking for causes of our feelings and behavior, as much as it helps us to achieve peace of mind and a sense of accomplishment, can not lead to further growth of our characters. It is essentially the same thing we used to do (blaming others) but on a much broader scope through a never-ending chain of cause and effect.

Instead, I would like to advocate a rather comprehensive approach toward how we deal with our feelings and behavior. This approach includes the causal method but only as a milestone, not the terminal goal of the process. It is important to note that I acknowledge the benefits and peace of mind that the causal approach of analyzing our feelings and behavior brings us. I am merely stating that it has to be given its rightful weight in our path of self-knowledge and psychological growth. I am advocating an age-long approach suggested to us by many saints, mystics, and philosophers of different religions and creeds, including the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung[3]. This approach considers life events (positive or negative), including pain and emotional disturbance of any kind an opportunity for mental and psychological growth. It advocates fully accepting what comes our way, pain or pleasure, as a vehicle for growth. However, one can not fully accept pain or pleasure until one takes full responsibility for it. To the extent that one puts the burden of what they feel (positive or negative) on others and external triggers, distant or immediate, one is not fully accepting their feelings and thus not taking full advantage of this vehicle for growth.

The literature to support and further explain the above position is abundant in religious scriptures, philosophical notes, and mystic texts. It would merit research of its own, which is out of the scope of the current writing. Here I limit myself to a few examples that I can readily recall from Persian mystics along with remarks from Carl Jung as a contemporary scientist. Hafez, a 14th-century mystic and poet, says: “I drank whatever was poured into my cup, be it heavenly wine or a bitter one[4]”. He is suggesting that we should accept (choose, in the Landmark terminology) whatever comes our way be it pain or pleasure as he did. Baba Tahir, another Persian mystic and poet of the 11th-century, says: “one desires pain, the other desires pleasure, one desires union, the other desires separation; of pain, pleasure, union, and separation, I desire whatever my beloved desires[5].” The “beloved” in mystic texts and poems typically refers to God, the creator, the one that everything emanates from it, including one’s feelings and emotions. Hence, he not only accepts but also truly desires whatever comes his way from that eternal love. Further, Rumi, the celebrated 13th-century mystic and poet in condemning the excessive cause seeking states that “Wonders and secrets are outside of the realm of causes. A mind that is always looking for causes shall not see wonders[6].” Seeing wonders and living among them requires giving up the never-ending search for causes. In other words, it requires full acceptance (choosing) of whatever comes our way in terms of feelings; otherwise, our mind will keep looking for causes. Finally, Jung believes that the way into the unconscious, where secrets and essence of one’s personality resides, is through emotions and feelings. He believes that an active complex makes itself known by disturbing us with emotions. This disturbance then gives us an opportunity for psychological growth towards our highest potential, a process that Jung calls individuation[7]. Acceptance of the feelings and emotions is the key here to unlock their potential for growth.

In the end, I should clarify a few points and common misconceptions before concluding this post. First, I should note that acceptance of what comes our way in terms of feelings and emotions does not necessitate living in a passive state. Rather, one can actively partake in life and do their best while being content with what comes out of their efforts. It, also, does not mean giving up on the rights and privileges embedded within social structures and laws. Taking full responsibility for ones’ emotions is purely a personal approach for the purpose of psychological growth and does not apply to social structures and relationships. Consider the following scenario: Person A tries to harm person B and he succeeds to some extent. In this case, person A is fully responsible for his actions toward person B. At the same time, this approach suggests that person A should also be personally and fully responsible for feelings and the internal processes that led to harming person B. In this case, the law may allow for holding a third person (e.g., person C) responsible for hurting person B as well to some extent. However, this social provision should not affect how person A accepts the full responsibility for his emotions that led to hurting person B if he intends to take advantage of the embedded psychological growth. In this situation, person B is also fully responsible for his feelings and possible actions that he may take towards person A. By taking full responsibility for feelings, person B can potentially exert full control over his emotions and actions, and such control may lead to the act of forgiveness. And once more, accepting the full responsibility of our feelings does not mean completely stopping our search for causes, it means acknowledging that arriving at childhood causes is not the final goal in our journey of self-knowledge and psychological growth and at some point, we have to give up this search and be content with the hand that we are dealt with.

References & Notes:

1. The title of this post is a quote from the movie Revolver (2005) by Guy Ritchie
2. Meaney, M. J. (2001). Maternal care, gene expression, and the transmission of individual differences in stress reactivity across generations. Annual review of neuroscience, 24(1), 1161–1192.
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung
4. Divan Hafez, Ghazal 26
5. Baba Tahir Couplets, Couplet 28
6. Rumi, Divan Shams, Ghazal 617
7. Stein, M. (1998). Jung’s map of the soul: An introduction. Open Court Publishing.