Human Doing instead of Human Being

Emotion triggers behavior. You feel an emotion and you always act on that. Just sitting with an emotion is something we’re not very good at, we find feeling difficult. It has also been unlearned from childhood; vulnerable emotions are a sign of weakness; you are a human doing and not a human being. Furthermore, we have been taught that behavior is a cognitive choice that you can change if it is not desirable.

The behavior in response to emotion does not always have to be an escape, it can also be a manifestation of a feeling. For example, you can feel joy and do a dance, or feel love and hug someone. You often have a cognitive choice in this; what am I going to do…? But if those emotions are fear or panic, you create stress hormones that prevent you from making conscious decisions. Then we want to get away from it as soon as possible; DO something so we don’t have to feel it. That kind of reactivity to emotion is usually automatic; before you know it, it has already happened. We call this a coping mechanism because it arises from survival; going to the emotions is very dangerous.

You are not your behavior

For example, you can react angrily or aggressively to a feeling of rejection, but someone else wil seldom see that behavior as an expression of powerlessness because you don’t know how to deal with certain feelings. Our culture also believes that punishing such behavior “corrects” someone, but it will have the opposite outcome. Send away a child who feels unseen and therefore is mouthy, you then confirm his fear and thus the validity of the presence of his coping mechanism. A person who exhibits narcissistic behavior is seen as the devil and not one who behaves in such a way to survive the unbearable pain, so this is confirming him in his survival strategy.

When fleeing from the same emotion, but by a different person, it can express itself in completely different behavior, such as: doing sports excessively, intensive social interaction with others, a lot of thinking and analysis, a lot of work, many hobbies… And this strategy may be more difficult to recognize as coping by yourself and others, because the behavior itself is characterized as ‘good’. These are coping mechanisms that you see a lot in people who have an avoidant attachment strategy, that is about 20% of the entire population. In fact, they are often encouraged and praised for their behavior and because of that pushed further into their coping.

Another way of dealing with anxious feelings that you don’t know what to do with is the so-called ‘please and appease’. That means that you don’t have to consult your own feelings about your needs and you don’t have to indicate them or your limits. I’ll make myself small and invisible. This behavior is translated by our culture as sociable, cooperative and sweet, especially with children. So if a child makes itself invisible out of fear and it is praised because it listens so well to the teacher, you are actually saying: don’t listen to yourself, that’s good or even better (for those around you).

What is your motivation?

So when it comes to behavior, it is very important to ask yourself what the motivation is to do it, although it is not always nice to be honest with yourself and recognize that you are actually afraid. Because that kind of emotion is weakness and you’re in the subconscious belief that you can’t handle it, so it’s unsafe to look at it and feel it. By cognitively changing your behavior you are actually saying: you are no longer allowed to flee. It’s like keeping the door of a burning house shut so no one can get out. That doesn’t reduce anxiety, it increases it. You will have to understand your behavior because it points to the cause: usually the belief that you are not good enough the way you are.

Transforming your system

This is the cognitive explanation, but so many of the fears and beliefs are subcortical; under the cortex. You cannot solve it by observing, analyzing, and acknowledging what is happening and also giving it a name. Most of my clients have many diagnoses and cognitively understand exactly what they are doing and why, but have no idea how to solve it. You can approach that subcortical world with Internal Family Systems; it is focusing inwards in a concentrated state on parts of you that carry the reactivity and vulnerability. Let’s understand it and help it to get out of that compulsion. It usually started very early in childhood and has not developed into adulthood. It ensures a transformation of your system, an integration of all your parts, guided by you and not by automatic behavior and vulnerable feelings.

The goal is to go beyond just coping and naming.

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“Trauma is how you function in life from survival, NOW”

Nikki Nooteboom