Theory of emotional relativity
Practical guide to the development of awareness and emotional intelligence
Inna Zakharova

Idea and Editor Evgeny Zakharov

Editor Alena Rabkevich

Translator Anastasia Stepanova

© Inna Zakharova, 2020

ISBN 978-5-0051-6900-6

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Preface

The development of emotional intelligence is gaining increasing importance (is becoming more popular nowadays). But what it means, no one fully understands. There are many definitions of this concept, the main one is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and those of the people around you. But is that enough? What does it mean to understand emotions?

To understand the emotion, first of all, you should know how to identify it, give it a name and change if necessary. The mechanism of the birth of emotions is not so simple, the emotion is not born in a random order, it connects with our innermost psychological processes in the structure of our personality. Emotions are not only a reaction to the real circumstances in our life, but a kind of connection with our ancestors, with the more global systems – family, dynasty and nation. We feel only 10% of emotions from the present moment, the rest 90% is emotions in the combination of systemic feelings connected with our deepest convictions which appeared far in the past, long before our birth, they are kept in our subconscious and manage our life.

But first things first.

To start, we are offering to open a test at the end of the book and define your subjective level of Emotional Intelligence to notice the changes that will happen with you while reading “Theory of Emotional Relativity”.

Gratitude

We’ve done it! Finally, the book took the very shape that is in front of you. I am happy and at the same time I don’t believe that we’ve managed to transfer the years of experience into an easy-to-read text. Perhaps, you notice, my dear readers, I always use the plural number? And this is not because of superiority complex but because of a lot of people devoted their energies to create this work. I begin with the first and the most important “heroes” of this book – our clients and those who had enough courage to dive into the ocean of unclear emotions, adapt and become a captain who manages his “Life” boat. Your endless trust, surprised and inspired eyes were that very light put us in the right way. Your sincere interest and readiness to study from the beginning unconscious flow and stabling blocks of emotional life sphere let us create and improve our models and algorithms. And your obvious transformations during our training programs and consultations gave us constant confirmations of effectiveness and usefulness of our work. Your gratitude as the main of senses (you know!), supported me and my team on the way to creation.

I’d also like to express gratitude to my parents who gave me birth and love and, as well as my countless teachers whom I don’t even dare to name so as not to miss someone. Your lectures, trainings, practical tasks, master-classes, webinars and books formed my life approach. Coaching, Enneagram, NLP, Family Constellation – mastered directions through your help. Each of these methods shed light on emotional life sides and all together acquired the necessary volume and consistency.

This book has never shaped without my “favorite osteopath”, attentive and interested listener, friend, opponent, coach, transcriber and text editor, Alena Rabkevich. A year left when you agreed to accept this challenge, and support, and help me to create this “Emotional Bestseller”, “The Book of Emotional Changes”, “The Book of Feelings” and “Practical Guide for the Development of Awareness and Emotional Intelligence”. Thank you so much for your attention, which you were listening to my emotional narratives with, asked me clarifying questions, made me look for and find simple and clear examples describing difficult things. The time together, spending on the book creation, glided effectively.

And the biggest thank to my husband, Evgeny, he is my personal trainer and coach, who was constantly urging me and terrorizing me to finish this book, that he even agreed to write these thanks to everyone involved instead of me. Here he is so cool and modest, and I love him very much, although he infuriates me regularly.

Thanks a lot.

Inna Zakharova

Human Needs

A need is a state of a living being, expressing a dependence on what constitutes the conditions of its existence. A. Maslow in his pyramid described these needs. They can be divided into three varieties: physiological needs, psychological needs, spiritual needs.

Every person has his leading psychological need. The need can be considered as a basic one if it is satisfied by the following conditions:

• if needs are totally unsatisfied, it leads to a disease

• if needs are satisfied, it cures a disease

• In conditions of free choice, a person prefers to satisfy this particular need

As for physiological needs, everything is clear and obvious. If you don’t satisfy such needs as eating, sleeping, breathing and drinking – our body begins hurting and at the end died. Even an unsatisfied need in sexual relationships leads to race suicide. Our instincts, innate behavioral patterns, control satisfying these needs. The goal of instincts is to automatize all processes which help our organism to survive.

As for psychological needs, everything is not so clear. Emotions are instincts of a higher order. Their aim is to emphasize the importance of certain conditions for fulfilling actual needs.

Since ancient times, almost all living creatures cared for unity to deal with external threats, because where alone cannot cope with – together will be able to: “One man, no man.”

So there is an important need of man – to belong, to be part of something larger, and at the same time, a very strong fear of exclusion appears, which could mean certain death.

A group of people, united by one common goal is a system and the borders of this system define certain rules, which all group members must follow them. Following the hierarchy and following the rules means recognizing and respecting the whole system. Violation of the rules is followed by punishment, the most serious one is liquidation or exclusion. Duties and rights are determined by the hierarchy, which is also an important component of the system, primarily the tribal system, and all other systems are built on its principle.

It turns out that the opportunity to belong to a group carries new dangers: how to survive within a group, how to become an important part of it, to get better conditions for existence within a group, to take its place in the hierarchy (it’s good when you have a higher position: you have more rights and better conditions, but there are more responsibilities).

Studying emotional intelligence, we cannot consider a person as a separate unit. Man is a social being, and emotions are a connection with everyone around us. Emotions are always relationships, if there are emotions, it means there are relationships. There are always emotions, so we are always in a relationship. Even if a person is moved to a complete vacuum, he will have relationships and will experience emotions, primarily towards himself.

Relations with oneself are also systemic in nature, each “I” consists of “mother + father.” Self-attitude is formed on the basis of each parent’s self-relationship + partnerships + parent-child relationship up to the 7th generation in geometric progression.

As a result, the fate of 254 people of our family can influence us, we can add to them people who seriously affected the system (aggressors, victims, philanthropists of large sums, etc.), because they also became a part of the system. It does not matter when such events happened, if at that moment the incident was not accepted, the emotional tension is maintained and transmitted on an emotional level from generation to generation.

Feelings are emotions of a higher order. Their goal is to emphasize phenomena which have stable motivating importance. For example, if your ancestors were starving, you will keep to diets or be anxious about an empty refrigerator. If there were abandoned children in the system, you will have a desire to help orphanages, pick up homeless animals, think of adopting children, or you do not want to have children at all. Usually people don’t even realize the reason for this behavior: “I just don’t like children” and this may be a systemic feeling of guilt or even belonging. In order to fit into the system, we can do not only good and gracious things, but also things that other people condemn. For example, a teenager smokes to be a part of the company of smoking friends. So a girl can easily have an abortion if her mother and grandmother did it, and will not grieve, since this has already been a systemic rule, the women in this family do in this way, and she is one of them. And it doesn’t matter that the grandmother had an abortion in order to survive, the mother, in order to feed the elders, the granddaughter can do this simply because “25 years is not the time to give birth, I need to build a career.” There are no simple cause-and-effect relationships; the logic in family systems is circular.

To realize the importance of the emotional component of our life and the influence of our emotions not only our lives, but also on our descendants, we should consider emotions from a systemic point of view. In subsequent chapters, we will consider systemic laws and feelings that monitor their implementation. So, what are psychological needs and what applies to them:

Safety is lack of anxiety about the future, balance of stability/change, adequate resources for survival, support, internal leadership, faith.

Love is acceptance, attention, communication, unity, belonging.

Respect is the protection and expansion of the boundaries of influence, significance, independence, autonomy, rules, order.

It turns out that psychological satisfaction is having your place in a larger-scale system where you are supported and respected the boundaries of your spheres of influence, which are constantly expanding with maturation. This is happiness.

A man needs to be loved, understood, recognized, respected and be close to someone; he also needs to be successful in business, studies and work; has an opportunity to fulfill his potential, develop his abilities, improve himself, respect himself. The general law here is simple: “A positive attitude towards oneself and satisfied needs are the basis of psychological health.”

What is important to remember:

1. Satisfying basic needs is a condition of survival.

2. It is distinguished between physical, psychological and spiritual needs.

3. Instincts, emotions, feelings arose in the process of evolution to automate the satisfaction of needs, that is, the conditions of survival.

4. Feelings in the present moment are a connection to the past and an attitude towards the future.

Self-perception

Having been born, the child automatically gets its place in the family system. Satisfying his needs is entire parents’ responsibility. The development level of the child’s personality depends on parental ability to cope with it. All three psychological needs are important. This means that it is important to take care of the child and help him to feel safe, at the same time to give him the opportunity to cope with problems on his own to feel respect for himself, look at him kindly, speak kind words, have tactile contact that the child feels love. On the basis of these attitudes, which determine the attitude towards oneself and the world, the entire emotional sphere of a growing-up child is formed, which comes to life.

Three main patterns:

1. The world is safe. I have all the resources to come over problems. In this case, the need for security will be satisfied by internal resources, a person trusts his feelings and thoughts, fearlessly makes his own decisions regarding his life. This attitude helps to feel calm, confident in a situation of uncertainty. Otherwise, there is a pattern “The world is unpredictable and full of dangers. I don’t have enough strength to cope with it”, it forces a person to seek security at the expense of external resources “If others support me and circumstances will help me, then I can get through them”, then all his decisions are determined by the situation, but he does not rely on his own feelings and thoughts, but on the opinion of significant people who still questioned.

Self-confidence (security)

2. I accept myself as I am. I am interesting and valuable for myself. This internal pattern is a characteristic of those people who love and value themselves, it allows them to be themselves in any situation, and don’t be dependable on the assessment of others, such people calmly remain alone with themselves, privacy for them is an opportunity to stay in company with an interesting person. Otherwise, there is a pattern: “I do not accept myself as I am. I am not interesting and not valuable for myself.” People usually treat themselves in this way and don’t even realize it, carefully hiding their weaknesses, prettifying themselves with external attributes, stories, reinforcing themselves, wanting attention and acceptance from others: “If I’m interesting and attractive to other people, I like myself.” Thus, receiving confirmation that he can be loved. Or “If others do not notice me, if they do not admire me, do not thank me, so I am not good enough for myself”. Such people are most afraid of loneliness, it is perceived as rejection, exclusion.

Self-love

3. I am, I am important, I am significant as an independent unit. This pattern allows a person to feel the strength in himself to influence his life, start significant projects with a challenge, move to his own desires, focus on himself, first of all, be responsible for his decisions and desires. With such a life position, a person decides what to do, but not to think about ideas which help him not to do anything. This is an adult position and adult freedom. The opposite self-perception is: “I don’t feel my own significance and importance, I can’t influence anything.” In this case, it is observed as an aggressive desire to make others respect himself: “If I don’t depend on anyone, people ask for my permission and opinions, listen to me, so I’m an important person”, or total sufferance when a person is absent in his own life and fully under the influence of loved ones: “Anything rather than conflicts”. Having a strong will to compensate the lack of respect for himself, a person seeks external confirmation. If he does not find it, he experiences extremely negative feelings: “If I am dependent on others, people neglect my opinion; my voice does not affect anything, which means I do not consider myself important.”

Self-respect

All three needs are important for each of us, but there are also individual characteristics – their degree of relevance is different. The need, which is of great relevance according to the structure of our personality, is the leading one. Unknowingly, most of our life time we spend on it, sacrificing others. For example, a person who has a leading need for love can be involved in deliberately unsafe situations after the person from whom he wants to receive it. A person with a leading need for respect, wants to feel his own worth and makes himself respect, can sacrifice acceptance, attention, destroying ties with loved ones.

It is the same situation with security. When a person follows this need, he does not make important decisions, as he doesn’t know what they may lead to, and eventually lose his self-esteem.

What is important to remember:

1. Safety, love, respect – basic psychological needs (survival conditions).

2. Prioritization of needs depends on self-perception.

3. The formation of self-perception of the child is the responsibility of the parent.

4. Satisfying the needs and development of a mature personality is the responsibility of its owner.

5. A low level of personality development – a stable negative attitude towards oneself. A high level of personality development is trust, love and self-respect.

Values

All people have values and treasure them very much. But some things are valuable to one person and absolutely indifferent to the other. So why do we assign the value to some things and phenomena, but not to others? Value means importance, significance, benefit. On the one hand, it seems that value is a real characteristic of an object or phenomenon and significance and usefulness are not inherited from nature, but they are our subjective measures. We consider the value important and valuable only if it is involved in our life and we are truly interested in it, and therefore need.

All values can be divided into three groups. It is connected, as you may guess, with the existence of three psychological needs. One group of values satisfies security needs, receiving them, we feel calm and anxiety is releasing. Another list of values satisfies the need for love, receiving which we feel acceptance, we feel a deep connection with the object, we feel beautiful. And the third group of values – values that satisfy the need for respect, having received it, we feel strong, large, significant, cool.

It means that values serve our needs.

The existence of valuable, in our view, things and phenomena in our lives leads to satisfaction, and the absence, on the contrary, causes states of depression and dissatisfaction with life and ourselves. There are a lot of such values in our life; it is a whole system in which there is a hierarchy. We make all our decisions on the basis of this hierarchy of values from buying products in the store to choosing a partner for business or family life.

The hierarchy of values is a system of guidelines in all spheres of human life. Usually, if you ask a person what is important to him, you can hear the answer: family, children, work, travel, etc. These are all spheres of life, contexts in which we satisfy our needs for safety, love and respect.

There is also a hierarchy in the spheres of our life, someone devotes himself completely to work, and someone to the family. The truth is that the more spheres of life which we are realized in, the happier we are. Speaking of values, we, first of all, talk about the quality of life. To understand your values, you need to answer these questions:

What is important for me in my work?
What is important for me in relations with my parents?
What is important for me in relationships
with my partner?
What is important for me in relations with my children?

What does this subjective value depend on? Why does one person, buying a chair, pay attention to its reliability and durability, another to beauty and elegance, and the third one to the price. Moreover, it’s important for someone to buy cheaper to save resources, and for someone more expensive to emphasize their capabilities and significance.

The individual internal hierarchy of psychological needs prioritizes values exactly.

Nominalization

You must have noticed that different people, speaking the same definitions, often mean the different experiences that lie behind them. For example, when you say “I will be soon”, what period of time do you mean? “Soon” – it is when? Is it 5—10 minutes, 1—1.5 hours, immediately? To feel what we are talking about, answer yourself this question, and then ask it to your relatives.

Nominalization means words that do not denote a specific object, their meaning is often subjective and can be interpreted in different ways. Examples: happiness, support, individuality, control – each of these concepts can be understood in different ways by different people.

To estimate your values, you need to be as sincere with yourself as possible, it is 100% individual work, you have to unveil on your own what experience and meaning are behind such words as “love”, “support”, “freedom”, “responsibility”, “respect”, “justice”, etc. Sometimes people say: “I need your support”, but actually they feel the lack of love, presence, the other person’s attention and call all these things “support”.

“Support” as a value which means the need for security, is not only the presence or approval of another person, support implies very often specific actions, assistance in some business, taking on some responsibility. In this case, support will have a broader meaning. Of course, there are situations when it’s enough to be near and just say: “Well done! Everything is Ok! Do as you do.” Such support helps to resolve internal doubts which sound something like this: “Am I on the right way? Am I looking in the right direction? Am I normal? Am I good?” In this case, approval really gives strength, because confirmation from a significant person weakens doubts and self-confidence increases.

“Attention” means the need for love, and when it comes to this, it is enough just the presence of another person nearby. A man can do nothing for you now, but if he looks at you with a keen look, catches your every word, at the very moment you feel loved, special, beautiful internally and externally. There is a message “you are what I need now”, it creates a very favorable state and satisfies the need for communication and acceptance.

In the same way we very often put different concepts into the word “freedom”. The value of “freedom” is more related to the need for respect. Freedom is to do what I want, I decide what I do, no one can limit me in making decisions, in actions, in movements. It is important to understand that such freedom cannot exist without responsibility. If I’m in charge, I make decisions, so I’m responsible for everything. Thus, the need for respect is satisfied and in this case:

However, there is another kind of freedom that satisfies the need for security. In this case, a person feels safe when he is free FROM expectations, FROM responsibility, FROM obligations. We also call such freedom “childish freedom”.

Freedom = Carelessness, the absence of responsibility

How do Values Form and Where do they Come from?

Why is one kind of values important and other kinds are not so significant? Why do different people have different values?

Someone, for example, is ready to shout aloud, give up relations, leave work, remain without means of living in order to prove justice. This behavior will indicate that for a person at the moment the most important is the need for respect.

Another person will remain silent in the same situation, tolerate the fact that nobody listens to his opinion, it will be more important for him that he knows where he will be tomorrow, what he will eat and that somebody will take care of him if such a need arises. This is about the need for security.

And the third case, when the need for love is leading: “My God, it doesn’t matter if I have any justice or work, I can give up it at any time, if my love requires me to go to the world’s end, the main thing is that we are together, together we can cope with anything.”

These examples are a bit exaggerated to demonstrate the difference in the attitude towards life according to the basic psychological needs.

Depending on leading psychological needs, the values
relating to this need are in the limelight.

How do leading needs form? Where do they originate?

First of all, each person has all three psychological needs. As an analogy we can draw your attention to the body needs, which are more obvious and understandable. We have a need to sleep, a need to eat, a need to breathe, all of them are vital. It’s impossible to decide what’s best for you – sleeping or eating, breathing or drinking. It is all necessary for survival. But! Having a certain level of satisfaction, when you cope with the satisfaction of all these needs, you will give preference to one of them. You can bother more about what you eat than whether your sleep is full, and the other person will not pay so much attention to food (it doesn’t matter if he eats or not), but will take care of his healthy dream: “If I sleep well, I won’t care whether I eat or not, I’ll have a good mood, I’ll feel good.”

Psychological needs work in the same way. One person may be indifferent what others think of him, what kind of relationships he has with his colleagues, what he is wearing. A coffee stain on trousers, a dingy yesterday shirt for someone can be nonsense, and someone can bother so much about his look that he will not leave the house in this form. These are our inner preferences.

As a rule, a hierarchy among needs arises genetically, i.e. there is a certain predisposition as a result of events that took place before our birth. It is usually said about children: “He looks like his grandmother / grandfather / mother / father”, i.e. there is a certain similarity of characters with a member of the family system, there is a certain transmission of information through genes. This genetic predisposition to a certain temperament, and therefore to certain needs, comes from birth.

And then the period of childhood and education that parents give us comes into force. We are brought up at the level of beliefs, thoughts that our parents offer us every day, talking about this, declaring some values, ideas, meanings. And it is inserted into us very clearly, as if it doesn’t exist in other way.

For example, parents broadcast to the child that it is not necessary to make a bed every day, but when guests come to the house, the bed needs to be made up. It means it’s not important whether you make the bed or not it’s important what people say. This belief is quite safe in the context of the bed, but it is insensibly woven into other contexts of life. No matter what you think and feel, the main thing is how it looks in the eyes of others. And then a person in an effort to receive acceptance and approval may contradict his desires and principles.

If a child was born with a leading need for love, he will pay a lot of attention to relationships with other people, be interested in creative work, will strive to decorate the space where he lives, he will pay attention to his appearance. But if the parent has a leading need for security, he sees danger everywhere and every day he says to the child: “Caution! You may hit here. Do not go there, there may be a deep puddle. Around the corner you are waiting for an evil man. A monster will come for you. Trust no man”, and with the passing of time, having a leading need for love, the need for security becomes the next in the hierarchy. And the values from the security group will also become important, because the person was taught this way, these values were inserted into him. The experience gained in childhood is personal, this experience had already existed in your life before your birth.

For at least 12 years, our psychological needs and their satisfaction lie entirely in the responsibility of the parents.

To grow their children, it is important to create a safe space, an atmosphere of acceptance and opportunities for achievement.

• Safe space is a feeling that there are enough resources to cope with any situation that may arise (there is always something to eat, there is where to sleep, the doors in the house are closed). The internal routine in the family also creates a sense of security: we go to bed at a certain time, we have dinner at a certain time, etc. If you don’t have enough money, resources for safety, if your parent is constantly under pressure and anxious, thinks where to get money to buy food, shoes, textbooks, then, of course, this situations affects a child’s life (and there are also situations in which parents do not care about these things, i.e. the child is left alone with these problems). In this case, the need for security becomes very urgent for him, and an adult child will think about it all his life, even when he has all the resources to compensate for his childhood experience.

• Love, acceptance – it is a feeling that you are exactly the very person as your parent imagined in the most beautiful dreams. Any free time is given to me and a parent’s face has a slight smile and a gentle, friendly, interested look. A sense of unity, communication through joint activities, praise, a sense of self-worth and exclusivity in the life of the parent. If the child is not paid attention, shoved by one, the other nanny, then the need for love and acceptance is not satisfied, the child does not receive communication with the parents.

• To satisfy a child’s need for respect, parents must create a space in which he understands that he is doing something what he is able to do. It is worth giving small tasks for a child to help him to demonstrate his independence, improve and cultivate self-esteem. Children of 2—3 years old are trying to get the pots off the table, stir something on their own, sweep, carry. Boys of 7—9 years old want to hammer a nail, saw off something on their own. Girls of 7—9 years old want to cook, sew, clean. If parents create such a space for the child, he gets the experience “I can. I manage to do it by myself. I am independent” – this directly refers to respect. Often adults ask the child what he wants to do, where he wants to go, offer a choice of purchases, etc. If at the same time the adult does not listen to his opinion, this attitude shows disrespect. Therefore, if you are ready to give responsibility to the child for something, so that he feels more mature, more meaningful, so do as he said, as he chose. After all, it often happens that the choice of a child does not coincide with those criteria that the adult determined himself, as a result it turns out that his opinion is not important. Children, through their desire to be adults, may begin to demand something, to discuss, but this, ultimately, will not be useful for them. Up to 12 years old, important, big decisions should not be given to children, it is better to act as wizards and create space for them in a magical way, without involving them in all kinds of household activities (for example, buying furniture, choosing a school, choosing a place for spending vacations). A very cool space to content the need for respect is sports, dancing, creativity. These are areas where there are results and they are obvious. All sports clubs organize competitions where the child gets the obvious results – whether he was able or not, whether he succeeded or not. Thus, a child can give himself feedback in an adult way, because respect is always associated with a certain completed action. The competition system is loyal to children, almost always all participants receive medals or certificates. By the way, certificates on the wall or a place of honor at home with awards – this is what gradually creates a base of respect. At the end of stage performances, there are always recordings; after the concert, the child feels the process is complete and at home he can review how it was.

In conclusion we summarize the forming conditions of a leading psychological need:

1. Genetic predisposition.

2. Education and the process of growing up.

We are born with a certain type of personality, i.e. with some predispositions, and we acquire the level of personality development as we get older. When parents educate us in some way, a certain level of development is formed. The level of personality development depends on the process of growing up. We go into adulthood, each of us do it at different time, someone at 18, someone at 20, 25, or 40 – this is an individual process. We come out the parent system as a formed personality, and further we can develop ourselves independently. The further contentment of our needs is only our responsibility. Dad and mom did everything they could. It is worth accepting that they did everything right as much as they could do. In order to be happy, you need to be able to value your life on the conditions under which we got it and with the conditions of growing up that we were.

A Great Delusion

Many people unconsciously actually devote their whole lives to satisfying their leading psychological need. Someone is throwing all his strength into creating external conditions that allow them to feel safe. For others, the meaning of life is the search for another person and love. Someone’s life is dedicated to seeking outward recognition and respect. But such a path, such a meaning of life is almost always pure Utopia. It is impossible to become happy by satisfying only your leading need. As the need is leading, we have a conviction in our subconscious that this is the most important thing in life, we make all efforts to get this satisfaction, and whatever you do, you have the feeling that it is not enough. The paradoxical way out is the satisfaction of another, not leading psychological need, this is a necessary condition for personal growth.

How does it work?

• If a person has the leading need for security, there is an illusive idea that a happy life will begin only when he organizes a stable life full of material resources, when he is supported by trusty partners, when he collects all the necessary information, when he double-checks everything. And only then he will become calm and a happy life will begin.

However, a person can fully satisfy the need for security only when he refuses it for some time and takes bold steps towards his goals (for this they need to be known and set). Having achieved these goals, first of all he will satisfy the need for respect. Step by step, cultivating your self-respect, at one moment you realize that you are big, you have a lot of internal resources, you can cope with everything, you become an authority for yourself, and suddenly that same security comes to you that you needed so much. And then you begin to build relationships with loved ones in an adult way, stop being afraid to fall into some kind of dependence, you find a safe connection in these relationships, you want and are ready to take responsibility and bear it. At the same time, you decide what you will be responsible for and easily give up responsibility that you do not want to bear, without fear of losing the support of authority.

A sense of security arises inside, a longing for it outside leaves. If you have ever met people who are filled with inner strength and tranquility, you probably noticed that you want to create relationships with them and go towards the common goals because “They will do to take along!” (such people are very reliable)

• If a person has the leading need for love, there is a deceptive idea that you can find a person for whom you will be exceptional, who will endlessly look at you and will devote all his free time only to you.

This is also a kind of Utopia, it is impossible to achieve such relationships, they can only be reached by rejecting them, which is paradoxical. Often the way out of such a utopian thinking lies in satisfying the need for security. When you can say to yourself: “You are like others. So, you have enough power inside to cope with everything, like other people”, you turn your attention to other aspects of life. When you redistribute your attention and organize your life in such a way that you can cope with it by yourself (at least at the level of simple survival: to have a job that will provide your minimum needs, take care of your health, be able to relax, constantly learn to go up with the times), then a person appears in your space who doesn’t have a desire to get love from him, and he begins to want to be near you in this safe space.

Love arises within, the longing desire to receive it from the outside leaves. In this case, a strong developing connection arises in the relationship, because energy is redistributed. Otherwise, if all energy is directed only to one sphere of life, it turns out to be too much a burden for another person and literally strangles him, limits his freedom. If you have ever met creative people who learn to look at life in a realistic and pragmatic way, who can organize their own comfort, you probably noticed that you just want to be with them, live and build your life with them.

• With a leading need for respect, a person unconsciously believes that if others respect him, then I myself can respect. A person who is striving to meet the need for respect spends his time and energy maximally to prove to the whole world: “I am big. I am significant. Listen to me. Here are just my rules.”

But no matter how much he does, he does not come to the conclusion that he is truly an authority for everyone around him. There will always be some person who can devalue your influence, your achievements, and this will always be perceived painfully. Here the solution lies through shifting one’s attention to satisfying the need for love. First of all, love for yourself, perhaps for that part of yourself that you consider small and fragile. Building close relationships redistributes excessive energy directed towards respect and achievement. When you really know how to respect yourself from within, to respect your weakness and your strength, relaxation appears, this is a completely different level of life quality. Respect arises within, a longing desire to get it outside leaves. If you have ever met people who are worthy of respect and respect themselves, as a rule, they do not seek to prove anything to anyone, they are calm and very sincere. A strong person who respects himself has the courage to be sincere even in front of a wide audience. Sincerity is a value that satisfies the need for love, and it is through love we come to a sufficient level of respect.

When you excessively want to be very strong, this can only mean one thing – you want to hide your weakness, because a strong person does not reflect on how strong he is. A brave man does not say that he is not afraid of anything, he simply does not think about it. A person who loves himself does not bother with how he looks in the eyes of others.

Value-forming

The information above is more about the formation of actual needs. Values, in fact, are people, objects and objects in the outside world that can somehow satisfy our need.

Values were formed in the process of choosing strategies with which we learned to satisfy our needs. Parents offered us some strategies in the process of upbringing, others we developed on our own in order to cope with life.

A habitual strategy or pattern is a usual, constantly repeating way of thinking, acting and handling emotions. It means that in thinking, emotional response and behavior there are repeating patterns, we are doing the same things over and over again, despite the fact that situations can change. For example, if I’m used to suppressing my emotions, this is my strategy for using emotions. They “stepped on my foot”, and I think: “Well, that’s okay.” On the subconscious, with the help of such a strategy, the need for security is satisfied – “I will tolerate, and I will not cause a conflict or scandal.”

All our strategies (and therefore values) appear for a reason, they are developed as a result of the fact that you got what you needed by behaving in a specific way at some moment of your life. You needed security, behaved “as quiet as a lamb” and nothing bad happened – it means success! This is how a successful strategy for satisfying security needs is formed. And if your parents, grandparents used this strategy, then your attempts to act differently in order to satisfy the need for security will subconsciously mean the fear of death. When you go beyond such a behavior, you will feel such discomfort that you will always want to go back, do it the way your parents did.

It is very difficult to overstep an established strategy of behavior, for this you need a high level of awareness and will.

For example, you want to realize yourself in a professional activity, and at business meetings you sit quietly and are afraid to express your opinion, promote an idea. By such behavior, such a strategy, you hardly take a leadership position. And if you have far-reaching plans and they include leadership activities, then you will have to raise your hand and say, “I want to express my opinion on such an issue.” In order to start declaring, you will have to give up security for some time. At first, your voice will be shy and diffident (thus, fear affects the ability to speak), but the more you force yourself to take this step with your willpower, the more likely that a new strategy will take root. You declared yourself once, you already have one fact that nothing bad happened, the more such confirmations will be, the greater the chances will be.

Asserting yourself, expressing your opinion is unsafe. This is just about what was discussed above – you need to give up a little security for a while in order to get more. When you asserted yourself and received the support of a leader, you get a large portion of security. When you repeat this 5-10-20 times, they will tell you: “You are good at your work, you have leadership abilities and you are an initiative person.” A leadership position implies an increasing level of responsibility, which, again, is unsafe, but at the same time, you get more resources for this responsibility, therefore, there is more security.

In this example:

• Need – Security

• Value – peace of mind

• The strategy is to sit and not to push yourself forward

• The way out of the situation is through the need for respect:

a. goal setting

b. development of a new model of behavior

c. repetition of actions from a new model of behavior

• New value – professionalism

• Strategies for getting it – assert yourself

The goal setting in our example is to assert oneself, to become more significant. When we consciously set such a goal, automatically the values of the need for respect take higher priority. Then you need to be strong, your voice should become louder, you should speak bluntly (the strategy of smoothing corners is not about respect, but about security), you should have your opinion, your vision, you must have goals. All of the mentioned values are about respect. When you draw up such a plan of action for yourself, the values come out of the need for respect, and as a result, your need for security is satisfied to a greater extent, instead of little security you will get much security.

Security. Strategies and Values

Let’s look at the values from the need for security. What makes our life safer? What is valuable when security is relevant right now? This is what will bring more peace to life – these are resources. They can be tangible and intangible.

Values from the need for security:

• Money. It is important to have money in my pocket, in some sufficient amount for peace of mind. It is important to know that I have enough money to eat tomorrow, in two days, and preferably in two months. The longer this period of calm will be, the better it will be for me.

• Information. I must understand that I have enough knowledge and possess the necessary material to cope with a specific job. It is important for me to know what will happen tomorrow. All that concerns information is about the need for security. A simple example: you have a sore leg, you haven’t got enough a body resource. Lack of body resources is a direct hit in the zone of need for security, you have anxiety or even fear, the first thing you do is to start googling. It means that fear makes you search for information. When you have enough information, you feel calmer. Of course, there is a trap – the Internet offers you an infinite amount of information, sometimes contradictory, sometimes about the worst thing that can happen, and then the level of anxiety can turn into a panic, so in such cases it is great if there are reliable sources of information.

• Development. If we don’t learn anything new for a long time, if we don’t get new resources, at some point our anxiety level will begin to increase. Previous resources are being depleted, the world is moving forward, and you get the feeling that you are not fit, that you do not know something from what you may need at the moment or literally tomorrow. And then again you start looking for new information.

• Support. This value has a high priority of security needs. It becomes even more important if a person does not have a very confident adult position. In this case, he wants to find a “parent” (a better parent than your own), i.e. there is a certain authority under whose wing you can hide, someone you can ask for advice that indicates in which direction to act, how to act right and wrong. Such a life expert nearby allows you to get rid yourself of responsibility and to stand on your feet more firmly. Confidence appears: “If I am together with him, get his support, I will be safe, because I objectively see that this person is smart, strong, he has a lot of resources, he copes with life”.

It is important to note that the values of the need for security are the most controversial. On the one hand some things may be a source of security, on the other hand they may be a source of danger. For example, authority can simultaneously protect you from the outside world, give you support, but at the same time you can completely fall under his influence and your level of freedom will be very low (this is not safe at all!). In such situations, a lot of doubts arises.

It’s worth paying attention to the theme of people communication with the same leading need for security and difficulties, which appear in such relationships.

➤ The Value Conflict

For both of them, freedom (value) will be important, that freedom which is WITHOUT responsibility, without expectations, without obligations. At the same time, both of them will be interested in information (value) about each other (what will happen tomorrow? What are our plans? What will we do? What will we eat?). Two people with the same leading need, in principle, should understand each other well, but the following can happen between them:

One is calling to the other:
– Hi! What are you doing?

What does the first think at this moment? “They control me! Why is he asking me? What does he want from me? What should I do? They want to accuse me of inaction? And what does it threaten? And if I say now that I’m not doing anything, what will make me do it? What if I don’t want to do this …», i.e. he feels that his freedom is being invaded, he feels anxiety and the need for security is not satisfied.

If you continue the chain of his thoughts, this simple question can lead to some serious consequences in communication. However, a person who asks “where are you?” “what are you doing?”, he wants to calm himself, he just needs information for clarity. People with a leading need for security very often ask such questions in order to get information about what is happening between them, is everything okay with me, can I organize your time and mine.

➤ Unwillingness to take responsibility.

Taking responsibility for decisions is unsafe. And when security is a leading psychological need, it is not easy for such people to take responsibility for themselves and their lives, and to be responsible for two partners is totally unsafe. In such relationships, the ball “who will make decisions” will constantly roll, there will always be expectations from each other that someone will do more in terms of responsibility. Moreover, if one constantly takes it upon himself, he feels the insult “why me?” and will feel unsafe. And the other one at the same time will also feel unsafe, because “if I do not make decisions, then I can’t influence anything, I’m nobody”, the partner’s responsible behavior is perceived as aggression and a desire to suppress.

If partners in such relationships are perceived, able to agree, they can say all the moments of interaction aloud and strengthen each other. To do this, we must share the responsibility: “I’ll do this, you’re doing that, I’m free at this time.” You need to say everything. If you arm yourself with this honesty and clarity in relationships, everything becomes cool. But if a person is not conscious, he is not ready for sincerity, because it is very unsafe. In the pattern, a person with a need for security lives a little bit secretly, just in case there should be workarounds: “I’m kind of with you, but I have hidden the waste routes. “I have 5 rubles, and I don’t tell you that there are 10 more in the back pocket”. There is always a desire to protect yourself even more.

There are three main strategies to satisfy the needs for security. As the strategies differ, values also may be different.

Strategies of getting values:

• Get support. In order to feel security and self-confidence, a person stocks up with the support of others. “I want to be friendly with everyone, I want to answer expectations of others so that I can count on reciprocal support and be in an environment that is well disposed towards me.” In this case, support will be a high priority value.

• Do not get involved. In order to feel security and self-confidence, a person tries to the maximum to not get involved in any relationships, so that others do not have any expectations of him. In this case, we are talking about the high priority of the value of freedom. “My safety is in my freedom, in the decline of responsibility for other people. I want no one to have any expectations about me. Let me not have support, it doesn’t matter. I can provide for myself, take care of myself, I can manage it. The main thing is that people around me do not press me and do not expect anything of me.”

• Get information. To feel security and self-confidence, a person constantly learns, reads, studies, watches popular YouTube channels, reads news sites, loads his mind with various kinds of information. “If I know, I’m safe. I’m prepared for any situation, I know a lot and can maintain a conversation on any topic using specific linguistics, give the impression that I understand the subject (even if not very deep and in theory).” Information is a high priority value.

Love. Strategies and Values

What is valuable when the need for love is important right now? This is what will bring to life the attention and acceptance of other people – relationships, close ties, sincere interest, compliments, praise, a sense of personal worth and uniqueness.

If I need love (this is a need), I want close relationships, so I need to find an exceptional person for such relationships. To achieve this, I need to attract him (even if we are not talking about relationships in a couple, but about a group of interesting people, which I want to belong to). What do we do to get attention? We are starting to decorate ourselves, we want to look in some interesting, attractive way, to fit into society, to please some specific people. We can decorate ourselves in different ways: through the appearance or through creativity we can express our inner world. Both these things in this case become values for satisfaction of need for love.

Values from the need for love and acceptance:

• Close relations. It is important to find the very one person among a million others who will become the most important for me, to whom I can discover something very sincere, secret. Intimacy here also means. In close relationships, we can touch each other, hug, kiss. Sex is the ultimate closeness of man and woman. A strong desire for intimacy often leads to complete loss, to the loss of a sense of own boundaries.

• Feelings. Feelings are a criterion of intimacy, so they are also very important if the need for love is significant. Of course, it is more preferable to have such feelings as tenderness, desire, joy, but if we do not have such feelings, so at least it is better to have any rather than to have nothing. Indifference means a lack of communication, a lack of love, so people with a leading need for love provoke a partner to show vivid and bright emotions, they can get hysterical in order to knock out at least some kind of emotions.

• Self-expression. Usually people with a leading need for love are very creative. Creativity is an opportunity to express your inner world and present it to others to receive attention, recognition, praise, understanding, emotional reaction, etc. Criticism or indifference to creative products is experienced very painfully, as it is perceived personally “If they didn’t like my poem, they didn’t like me.”

• Personality. As love is a feeling of exclusivity in the lives of other people, individuality becomes a high order value for people with a leading need for love. “In order to be loved, I need to be special, have my own distinction, uniqueness, and be different from millions of other people. Having a bright personality, I will have more chances to get love.” However, in this quest for individuality, a person can fall into another trap. Love implies a feeling of unity, similarity and individuality emphasizes the difference. Therefore, an imbalance in favor of individuality leads to a feeling of loneliness: “I am different, different, there are no more such people”.

• Sincerity. Sincerity is another criterion of intimacy. If we are close people, we should know everything about each other, we can and should share sincerely all our thoughts and feelings, talk about all events in our life. It also has some traps. A strong desire to get love often makes you talk about yourself only pleasant things, it is essentially a lie or not complete sincerity, which creates an internal conflict: “Sincerity is very important to me, but I’m afraid to lose your love, so I embellish myself.”

What strategies do people use to get values and satisfy their need for love?

Strategies for getting love:

• Deserve love. In order to feel love and connection with others, a person constantly pays attention to the object of his sympathy, fits into his problems and tasks with some help, constantly strives to be near. “I want to be so necessary and useful to you that you cannot live without me.” Such behavior greatly stresses the other person with the amount of help, attention and love that is given to him. In this behavior, values of the highest order are closeness and dependence.

• I am a delicate flower. To feel love and connection with others, a person demonstrates his uniqueness, beauty, weakness and vulnerability in order to attract his “parent”, who will fulfill all desires, because the parent must take care of his “tender flower”. Such a person constantly requires attention: “Put on all your matters, devote all your time to me, do something good for me.” This behavior of a capricious needy child aggravates a loved one. Such a strategy is often based on the manipulation of resentment. Here the values of the highest order will be individuality, feelings, beauty, creativity.

• Buy love. To feel love and connection with others, a person works hard on himself to build a smart shape that everyone will like. This strategy of getting love is built on high activity, productivity and the pursuit of status. The standard is the generally accepted current understanding of success, and all activities are aimed at achieving the status of “smart”. The guarantor of attracting love is all sorts of success attributes – brands, positions, achievements. Here the highest order values are fashion, style, image, attention, admiration.

• Avoid pain. This is a clever variant. In order to feel love and connection with others, I doom myself to loneliness. “I need love and acceptance so much that I can imagine in advance how much I will suffer when I lose love. Not to experience this suffering, I abandon relationships and love in advance”. In such cases, a person can be a recluse, a hermit, however, creativity will fill his life, although “for the desk drawer.” Here values of the highest order will be creativity, self-expression, individuality, feelings, beauty.

Respect. Strategies and Values

What values are the most significant, when we speak about respect and self-respect?

Values from the need for respect:

• Power. Self-esteem is directly related to self-respect. “I could. I managed, although it was hard, but others could not do it at all.” If we can say this, it allows us to be proud of ourselves, to respect ourselves and those others whom we can think about in this way.

• Autonomy. Autonomy is a criterion of strength, because if you can cope without outside help, you are strong enough. Autonomy and independence also allow you to feel clearly your boundaries, this is necessary for self-respect.

• Power. Power is also a criterion of strength. “I am so strong that I can influence the situation of other people. Everything happens according to my will.”

• Struggle. Despite the fact that we all try to avoid it, the struggle is a circumstance in which we can show our strength and, therefore, satisfy the need for respect. Struggle is a proof that the strong can fight and defeat circumstances and other people.

• Achievements. Achievements are victories that we record on our own account. “I am strong, my achievements are a real demonstration.”

• Professionalism. Professionalism is a tool for achievement. “I am a professional in my field. Significantly, my opinion is authoritative, they will listen to it and respect me.”

• Responsibility. Responsibility determines the degree of influence. “If the influence on the situation is in my hands, then I’m the main one. I will decide what, how and when to do, while I am ready to be responsible for any consequences.”

Strategies of getting values:

• Seize the power. To feel his worth and respect for himself, a person directs all his resources to ensure that one of his species says that he is a big person and that he needs to be obeyed. A loud, assertive voice, a heavy look and wisecracks help him to get respect. “I’m the boss, and just try to argue with that.” Here the value of the highest order will be power, authority and struggle. In relationships, other people feel aggression, often perceive a person as a tyrant.

• Depreciate a need. To feel his worth and respect for himself, a person depreciates his importance as much as possible himself: “This is garbage, I do not need any respect. Well, they take my things, well, OK. They didn’t listen to my opinion, well, they just didn’t hear it. This is unimportant for me. My opinion is not important.” Your opinion is depreciated on your own in order not to worry painfully when someone else does it. Such a person often chooses a lifestyle in which communication with people is minimal, life is organized away from others so that no one can insult, offend or devalue. This is a strategy of escaping from oneself, from one’s needs. Here, the highest order values are autonomy, non-interference.

• Earn respect. To feel his worth and respect for himself, a person strives to be a perfectionist, to be a super-professional in some narrow field. So that no one would even have the thought that such a person cannot be respected. “I will be irreproachable and people will be forced to respect me”. By definition, it is impossible not to respect him, because he only does what works. He works more than others, everything is fine, if you turn to such a person, he will always do everything clearly and on time. Everyone respects such a pronounced professionalism, even those who do not like him: “I do not like this person, I will not communicate with him. But he is worth respecting him.” For a person with such a strategy of behavior, the highest values are professionalism, principles, rules, discipline.

Values and Anti-values

Anti-values – this is exactly the opposite of values. If support is a value to me, then pressure will be an anti-value. Attention is a value, ignoring is an anti-value, strength – weakness.

Sometimes we find ourselves in conditions that create even more urgency in need. It is as if you want to drink and get into a dessert, where there is not even a shadow nearby, then you want to drink even more.

It also happens with psychological needs. For example, you need some attention from a person or a group of people, and instead you get complete disregard. Or you want praise, approval in order to feel your value, for this you do some work, and in return you get criticism. It turns out that in addition to the fact that you did not satisfy your need for love, you also got a greater deficit in this need.

For example, the anti-value of security is “uselessness” and “waste of time.” We are talking about situations where you, moreover, do not get the resource you were counting on, but also lose what you had. A common case: you go to an event to get a resource, for example, a weighty opinion or some new information, and when you come, you do not receive an authoritative opinion or useful information, but you spend money and your time (money and time are values from the need for security). As a result, you got “uselessness” and “a waste of time and money”, you feel no more relaxed as planned, but more anxious – the need for security has become even more urgent because you have just lost your resources.

“Weakness”, “inability to influence,” “helplessness” are examples of the anti-values of the need for respect. Usually we meet with them when life circumstances are irreversible or the opponent is much stronger than us.

What do we feel at the thought of a possible encounter with anti-values? Disgust. We do not want to meet our anti-values, we want to maximize the distance from them. For example, if you have a leading need for security and you have to communicate with a person whose level of knowledge is much lower than yours, most likely you will experience arrogance, which includes disgust. When information is very valuable to you (informed means warned), and a person cannot be its source, you feel a security risk because you are wasting time, instead of this conversation you could be at home and read a book, such time would be of great benefit for you.

Some things can be a real value for one person
and an anti-value for another one!

This is called a values conflict. It can be inside one person or in the relationship of people. In such cases, we say: “I don’t understand how you can live like that!”

That is why we want to have close people with whom we’ll have common values from a high priority list, everything else is not so important, there is always the opportunity to come to an agreement. When something very important does not coincide, when it is a value for one partner, and it is anti-value for the other one, it is impossible to go through disgust that arises, it will be so strong and create such a great distance that you can’t even start a relationship with this person.

For example, one person has a need for respect, and values of autonomy, independence are at a high level of priority, while the other one has a leading need for love, and communication, closeness is very important for him. If you don’t realize these differences and do not control your feelings, then the following situation may arise: when one strives for greater intimacy, the other will move away due to the feeling that his boundaries are violated and he loses autonomy. One calls the other 5 times a day, wanting to be closer, to be initiated into all the circumstances of the other’s life, and the other gets angry every time, because it looks completely different for him. It seems he is controlled by your partner and has to report about your working day every time, which means that he is losing his independence.

When we face anti-values, we have not only disgust, but also other emotions. If we are talking about the need for security, when we meet the anti-values of this need (lack of money, a situation of uncertainty, pressure, any direct danger), fear always arises sharply. When we face anti-values of the need for love (ignoring, criticizing, condemning, humiliating), we feel shame. When faced anti-values of the need for respect (injustice, lack of obligation, weakness, lies, evasion, irresponsibility) a strong anger arises.

When the situation of meeting with anti-values has passed, we experience sadness or feelings that contain sorrow (resentment, guilt). It is explained by the fact that we did not get what we needed, besides we created a deficit for ourselves, made your own life even worse than it was. When we face any anti-values (pressure, ignoring, injustice, etc.), there is always the temptation to relieve ourselves of responsibility for what has happened and shift it to another person or to the situation as a whole. However, the sadness that inevitably arises in such cases always tells us: “Something, that YOU’ve done, haven’t led you to the result, you haven’t received or even lost your value”. A good understanding of yourself will be that you’ll understand what exactly valuable you wanted to get.

For example, you wrote an article and received a critical statement towards it: “It is dull, there is nothing in it that would attract the attention of the reader”. This criticism deeply hurt your heart. At the moment of this criticism, you are likely to feel shame (awkwardness), and then sadness (in its purest form or as part of resentment, guilt). What makes you so sad? What didn’t you get or lose? This is a question that needs to be answered within yourself. In this example, we are talking about a person with a leading need for attention. When such a person expresses himself creatively (writes an article), he is subconsciously motivated by the satisfaction of psychological needs – to receive praise, admiration, attention. But in the end, instead of them, he receives criticism that deprives the remnants of self-love. It hurts. Realizing such things, you should rethink your motivation and set a conscious goal for writing an article. For not just getting praise as a result of writing an article, but for expressing in it what is really important to you. And then you will get satisfaction from your work, and it won’t be important to you how it will be met by others. Thus, self-respect appears and when you find it, self-love will also become greater.

Three Types of Joy

1. Calmness

When we meet the values that relate to the need for security (support, knowledge, financial resources), we feel joy, it seems to confirm: “You do everything right, go ahead, do it again.” If it comes to security, then joy will be in the form of calm, lightness, relaxation. When you are in your fortress, there are people around who will support you, you know and possess information, there is enough money in your account – you are calm.

Security + value = calmness

2. Pleasure

When we meet with values relating to the need for love (intimacy, communication, compliments, attractive appearance), we will also feel joy, but in this case it will be in the form of pleasure, enjoyment. When you look at a picture that you like, you feel pleasure, when you communicate with a person who you like, you feel enjoyment.

Acceptance, attention + value = pleasure

3. Satisfaction

When meeting with values that relate to the need for respect (strength, justice, integrity, honesty, responsibility), we feel joy in the form of satisfaction. When you see your cool results that required commitment, you feel deep satisfaction from the work done.

Respect +value = satisfaction

Let’s look at the table and find out what a person with the leading need for security wants to be eager for and what he wants to get rid of.

Security

According to the list in the table, you can notice a values conflict, for example, stability and diversity, or care and freedom. Any diversity implies changes, except in situations when you, having diversity, choose the same. Care, however, implies a connection, and therefore, dependence on another person, and in this case, there can be no talk of complete freedom. There are special relationships with value rules. They are very necessary in order to understand how others should and will act, but I don’t want to act according to the rules myself, as this means a lack of choice and diversity, which are also values. When there are no rules, it’s also bad – chaos (anti-value) arises, you don’t know from whom and what to expect. It turns out that such people need rules and clear instructions, but they themselves violate them.

It turns out that a person with a leading need for security is often very controversial and indecisive, constantly doubting.

The list of values of a person with a leading need for love, acceptance, attention is given in the table below. There are practically no contradictions inside this table. With the exception of sincerity and image, often the image involves a certain embellished look. It turns out that a person with a leading need for love highly values sincerity, but does not want to show himself real.

Love

The third basic psychological need is respect. The values of a person with a leading need for respect are practically the opposite of the values of the need for love.

Respect

There are also practically no conflicts in this list, with the exception of a couple of justice and injustice. As justice is always subjective and is determined basically by systemic rules, it happens that, in an effort to restore justice, people with a leading need for respect are often not fair according to other people.

Let’s remember that all three needs are important for each of us, and look at all three tables with values. You may notice multiple conflicts. For example, autonomy satisfies the need for respect, but denies communication, which is very valuable for satisfying the need for love. And the availability of options, which is so important for satisfying the need for security, means evasion and unwillingness to make decisions that do not satisfy the need for respect. Only a good understanding of yourself, clear internal priorities and conscious goals allow you to resolve these internal conflicts and find the necessary balance among your needs. There are possible value conflicts in the table below. Columns indicate needs, and rows indicate conflicts.

It turns out that we are all constantly in a state of internal conflict. To resolve this conflict, we need emotional competence. Only emotions can show us the truth about ourselves if we learn to hear and understand them.

How to Define your Values?

Anything can be valuable to you if you have an emotional response to this (phenomenon, object, creature). If you have “skipped a beat” inside, then you have some relation to this phenomenon, action or event. You somehow distinguished it from others. So a connection has developed between you and something, “this” concerns you more than anything else.

For example, you come to some event and the first thing that impresses the most you is the beauty around: “God, how beautiful it is here”. We conclude that you are touched by the appearance of things, style, you pay attention to beauty, which means that it is in your system of values. And most likely, if you ask yourself the question “What do I feel?”, the answer will be “I feel pleasure, I am so pleased, comfortable, I feel good here.” Accordingly – what is your need being satisfied now? For love, because everything is so beautiful.

And if at the same event you say: “God, how comfortable it is, how fresh, what are comfortable sofas” – this is more about comfort, about security. However there may be variations. If you are sitting on a comfortable sofa and cannot relax, then most likely there are some other factors, values and anti-values that affect your condition. But if a comfortable sofa is enough for you to relax and do what you want, most likely this indicates that you have a body psycho type and it connects to the need for respect.

Ways of defining values:

1. In order to understand your values and anti-values, you just need to observe yourself in everyday life, note what you are emotionally reacting to, what response you have to different situations.

What am I paying attention to?
What do I like?
What is unpleasant for me?
What don’t I want?

If something feels unpleasant, you don’t want it that means you have met with an anti-value, and something opposite to it will be a value.

The criteria that we rely on when choosing purchases also tell us a lot about our values. A person with a leading need for security will choose a mobile phone out of the criteria: the model should be modern, but not too modern; it must be expensive, but at a discount; it must have a certain status, but not stand out much (so as nobody will ask questions for what money it was bought, what taxes you pay, etc.). At the same time, it is important to be at a higher level when you put the phone on the table and feel support among people from whom you want to receive support. Pay attention to the conflicting values. Many functions, features, bells and whistles, time saving, additional features, bonuses – it’s all about security.

The phone that a person with a leading need for love chooses should be, first of all, special, nice, pleasant to touch, he must express his owner, be like him. “God, he’s lilac! I like it.” Model, cost, modern functions, status are nothing in comparison to the pleasure of the aesthetic part of the subject. The prestigious, expensive model that is bought here and now is about a person with a leading need for respect. “I can afford it! I am a champion.”

2. In order to help ourselves determine the values, we suggest looking at all 3 tables, looking through them (they are very different in character from each other) and feeling the qualitative difference to the values that are listed there. Then answer yourself honestly:

Which of these tables is more about me?

We regularly note at the trainings that one of the tables is for each person, people immediately determine which values are more relevant for them as a whole in life.

• Next, it is important to establish a hierarchy of needs. It is necessary to note which table is in the first place for you, which is in the second, which is in the third. For example, in the first place is a table with the need for security, in the second – the need for love, in the third – respect. This means that you don’t pay much attention to values that are in third place.

• In order to study your values much deeper, it is necessary to work with each table separately. Write down those values that are important to you on a piece of paper from each table. This stage is important because one and the same need for security can be met through different values – someone satisfies the need for security with the help of information, someone through a large number of connections with other people in order to receive support.

• Then you need to build a hierarchy among your values. There is a special exercise that demands time and sincerity, it will likely seem unpleasant. The exercise aims at double-checking your value system. You need to remove one value from your list, each time answering the question: “And if you had to give up one thing, what would it be the first?”

When you crossed out one value, the next stage – “What would you give up now?” And so on until the end of the list.

This exercise is usually painful, because we gradually refuse the lower value for the sake of a greater value, and in the end, priorities will be set in their real way. After completing this exercise, a surprise will wait for us. After having lived through each value and sensation, you have to give up it; you look at your value system with tenderness, with a sense of inner agreement. The value which you gave up first will be at the end of the list. The value which you have not completely given up will be at the top of the values. Since we will have values from all three needs on this list, it will be obvious what your need is really leading. For example, it may turn out that all the values from the need for security will be at the bottom of the list, and at the top there will be values of the need for love, or vice versa. In this way you can look honestly at yourself. Perhaps, you worry about things that are actually not so important to you most of the time in your life. This is worth realizing while doing this exercise.

What is important to remember:

1. Values are something that satisfies our current needs.

2. Anti-values create even greater urgency of need.

3. Each need has special values that may conflict, or contradict each other.

4. Knowledge of our values and their hierarchy can resolve internal conflicts, set true goals.

5. The saturation of life with true values leads to a feeling of happiness.

6. Happiness is a real satisfaction with oneself and one’s life.

Emotions

Emotions are a mental process grabbing the whole person, which change his thoughts, biochemistry, sensations and behavior. As have already been mentioned, the purpose of emotions is to establish the significance of certain conditions to meet actual needs. Based on emotions, we unconsciously conclude whether there is anything valuable in the upcoming event or phenomenon and make a decision how to act.

For example, you are invited to a birthday, immediately there is an emotion of either desire or resistance. It most likely depends on how much communication with this person satisfies your needs. If the communication with him satisfies your needs, you will agree, if not, you will find a reason to refuse. But it happens that the person who invites you is unpleasant in communicating, but you think that he can affect your life, and communicating with him will bring satisfaction to needs in the future. Then you will feel several emotions at once, which will unite into a single feeling.

Feelings are emotions of a higher order. Their goal is to single out phenomena that have stable motivating significance.

Let’s compare feelings and emotions, what are their differences.

Emotions and feelings arose in the process of evolution, but feelings are associated with the ability to think, reason and draw conclusions, and only the modern part of the brain – the neocortex is capable of this. Emotions are born in the more ancient part of our brain – in the limbic system.

Emotions show us what is important for us now, while feelings indicate a direction towards unchanging values.

Emotions are fleeting, they can change dozens of times per minute, if it is eventful. Feelings are very stable, they are based on deep convictions and they are not so easy to shake and change.

There is a simple example: a person can sit in a comfortable apartment with a loved one, experience emotions of joy and tenderness, but feel fear in the background, as changes are coming at work, and this situation according to the personal experience and beliefs, does not lead to anything good.

A feeling can contain one and many emotions at the same time and can express any of them. For example, a person may experience a surge of tenderness when he sees a small kitten – it will be an emotion. And if he always feels tenderness at the sight of any kitten, as he had a cat in childhood and convinces that there is nothing nicer in the world, so this is a feeling. This is an example where a feeling contains one emotion, and that’s why the external expression of a feeling and an emotion will coincide.

It is more difficult when the feeling is multi-component and contains several emotions. For example, guilt contains 4 emotions: fear, anger, sadness, desire. A person experiencing this feeling can express it through any of these emotions. For example, his emotional habit may be an expression of the emotion of anger when he feels guilty. Feeling guilty is very uncomfortable for living, a person experiences unpleasant sensations, so he often wants to run away from them, in this example, to anger. It will seem that such a person does not feel guilty, that he is angry, but this is not true. Another emotional habit is to express guilt through sadness, then a person seeks to retire, dive in himself, cry and do nothing. Sometimes it seems that the mood is changeable, as the expressed emotions can replace each other in a chaotic manner. So a guilty person can first swear loudly, then shut himself up and even cry, the next moment run away, afraid of punishment, then swear and scream again, and at some point become too helpful to compensate for the damage.

In general, feelings of guilt and resentment deserve special attention and a separate chapter, as they monitor the implementation of the system law, which we will consider later.

Let’s first understand what emotions tell us. Everything is actually very simple if you read and use the information that emotions convey to us from the present moment, right here and now. If you do not understand your emotions and ignore them, then they are woven into tangles of emotional tension and turn into multi-component feelings that are difficult to understand without special knowledge and training.

At first, there are many psychological models that offer different emotions as basic ones. We suggest taking emotions that differ in internal sensations. Our task is to learn to distinguish them within ourselves, and then to learn how to express them in such a way as to live them in the present moment and not to pull a long emotional train through our lives. Darwin also identified 7 basic emotions: fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame, surprise. After a while, S.S. Tomkins added interest to this list, and A. Lowen added tenderness as an experience of agreement and acceptance.

1. Joy
2. Desire
3. Tenderness
4. Surprise
5. Sadness
6. Anger
7. Disgust
8. Shame
9. Fear

These are 9 emotions that are very different in their internal sensations according to various criteria, 8 of which carry information about the current state of person’s psychological needs, define the direction for actions and release energy for them. Five of them we call the emotions of scarcity (when we are missing something) – these are fear, anger, shame, disgust, sadness; and tenderness, joy, desire are emotions of fulfillment (when we get what we need). There is an important emotion to remember —surprise. We did not include it in the composition of neither emotions of fulfillment, nor scarcity, since it does not carry information about the state of psychological needs, but it is important for our development and is transitional between them. Surprise tells us that we met with something that we did not expect and it is part of such feelings and conditions as insight, awareness, consciousness, etc.

Any feeling consists of these 9 emotions. It is like a palette of paints of primary colors, combining which in different proportions, you can get an unlimited variety of shades.

As colors have saturation, and emotions have intensity. People do not often have enough words to name their emotions, there are some ways to name these emotions in different intensities:

Fear

Fear, numbness, nightmare, panic, horror, dread, perplexity, confusion, misgiving, excitement, frustration, anxiety, worry, fear, commotion, doubt, fright, surprise, uncertainty, indecision, funk.

Anger

Anger, wrath, rage, fury, indignation, resistance, resentment, bitterness, rampage, irritation, aggression, discontent, protest.

Shame

Shame, awkwardness, shyness, embarrassment, inferiority, disgrace, absurdity, worthlessness.

Disgust

Disgust, rejection, hostility, antipathy, nausea, loathing, aversion, abomination.

Sadness

Sadness, loneliness, hopelessness, boredom, indifference, laziness, pain, melancholy, bitterness, doom, grief, meaninglessness, unhappiness, longing, apathy, frustration, despondency, emptiness, frustration.

Desire

Desire, urge, interest, motivation, curiosity, aspiration, inspiration, impatience, attraction, thirst.

Joy

Joy, happiness, pleasure, peace, satisfaction, fun, delight, calm, euphoria, ecstasy, relief, bliss, enjoyment, lightness.

Tenderness

Tenderness, deification, intimacy, affability, love, sympathy, acceptance, admiration, communion, worship, heartiness, adoration, goodwill, kindness, warmth, gentleness, affection.

Surprise

Surprise

Any emotion is information about the degree
of satisfaction of psychological needs and energy
for actions that can satisfy these needs.

Besides the fact that you need to be able to notice and recognize an emotion, you must be able to use the energy that appeared in the body due to biochemical processes, in other words – to process an emotion. Otherwise, this unused energy will destroy us from within. So unplanned emotions first lead to tension in the muscles, which accumulating, passes into clamps and blocks, disrupts the proper blood flow and eventually transforms into physical body diseases.

Unfortunately, most people do not have a focus on emotions, people know one thing for sure – there are negative emotions that you don’t want to experience, but there are pleasant emotions, but they need to be earned and not to be shown to anyone, as they are not decent and too personal.

Actually real emotions are sincere; this is information that exposes us to real ones. Not many people in the modern world are ready to take off their masks and face themselves true, and to show others – just beyond the line. But there is no other way to happiness, if you do not want to be happy, do not read on this book.

Life Cycle of Emotions:

•  Sensation
•  Awareness
•  Mobilization
•  Action
•  Final contact
•  Satisfaction
•  Withdrawal

Life cycle of emotions is described in Gestalt approach.

At first, an emotion is born somewhere deep in the subconscious, we still do not know, but it already exists. Then it rises to the level of our inner sensations, at some point it is not yet visible from the outside, but already at the level of sensations it let itself know. The next stage of the life cycle of emotions (mobilization) begins when the emotion expression covers the whole body, when each of its cells responds to the call. At this moment we are processing an emotion, we allow it to express out-of-body. This is very important, it is healing the body. Emotions that we do not process hide inside our body. As our emotions are not only information, but also a large amount of energy, which has its own characteristic and direction, this energy gets stuck inside our body and begins to destroy it. The next stage in the life cycle of an emotion is action. What does it mean to understand an emotion? Firstly, it should be noted what it is and give it a name. Only then we can say that we have realized the emotion. The process of action does not end there, it is very important to decipher the information that the emotion carries.

Why has it appeared now?
What does it mean?
What important things are happening with me now?

The energy that is contained in any emotion is designed to meet our current psychological needs, so it is very important to ask yourself important questions and direct your activities to an acceptable and ecological way to get what you want.

And then the next stage begins – the satisfaction stage, in which we transform the energy of emotion into our real actions. Thus, the transition to the final stage – the withdrawal of an emotion is smoothly carried out. We can say that an emotion leaves our body, giving an empty space for other emotions.

Here is such a natural life cycle – birth (sensation), adulthood (awareness), mobilization, action, transformation (final contact), satisfaction, withdrawal. This cycle is suitable not only for emotions, but also for any life processes. It is important to understand how necessary it is to process emotions, otherwise severe conditions and illnesses will not keep you waiting.

For various reasons, people express emotions differently. In order to allow emotions to be shown, you need some inner courage, an inner willingness to see your needs and stop considering them as weaknesses. The ability to admit sincerely your needs is the position of a strong person.

But instead, we often protect against our emotions, hide them under different masks guiding by various limiting beliefs.

4 Types of Expressing Emotions

1. Switching off. I feel, I notice what I feel, but I decide not to express this feeling as the time and place are nor suitable. And in general, emotions are bad, so I do not express them outside.

2. Ignoring. I feel, but I don’t even know how I feel. I do not recognize and block any emotion. Consciousness blocks information about the emotional state. Such people to the question “What do you feel?” always answer that everything is OK.

3. Processing. The most resource and ecological way to express emotions. We touch each stage of life cycle of emotions.

4. Reacting. The most usual way to express emotions. People around us use it very often. At the moment when the emotion was born, you wisely thought that this was not the time and place for its expression. So you tolerated and suffered. Some time passed, you moved to a different context and there you acted out this emotion, let it show. For example, you didn’t cry not at a party, but at home, expressed dissatisfaction not in the store, but in the kitchen with his family, was angry not at his colleague, but yelled at children at home. But as this process is all unconscious, we do not realize whom the emotion was actually directed to, what it tells us, we simply respond to the one who comes to hand.

The most difficult thing is to develop emotional intelligence for people who tend to forget information about their emotions, completely block it, especially if this happens from childhood, if it is already a family culture of dealing with emotions. It is not at all easy to find contact with one’s own feelings in this case, as they need to be explored from the very beginning. It is not easy, but possible! This is hard work that can only be done in a state of high awareness and a very strong contact with the body.

Welcome to the world of emotions…

Fear

Fear. How does it Serve?

Fear is a fundamental emotion, because the purpose of fear is to save life, this is its main goal. If we talk about the life value, fear is never too much, there is nothing more valuable than life.

We face fear too often, because it is primarily to take care of life. It controls our actions, if it were not there, we would not understand at all where we could stumble and fall, it would not even occur to us. And even if we stumbled and fell, we could not use this experience on a simple logical level, because this painful experience usually reminds us of fear.

Pain is some kind of harm to the body, the highest degree of pain usually leads to death. Even when we pricked a finger and got the experience of this pain, the next time we’ll be afraid a little bit of such a situation, but we feel fear. So we should think in this direction when we talk about fear, because in our brain there are ancient departments that work very quickly at the level of instincts. In these parts of the brain (the reptilian brain, the limbic system itself), very strong primitive pain-fear relationships are stored. If we are very afraid of something, it means that our ancient brain perceives the situation almost as a situation of “life and death.” And only owing to the “modern” part of the brain (cerebral cortex) we can reorient ourselves and help ourselves cope with this fear.

According to Jung approach, the most terrible fear for humanity is the abyss. On a large scale, people are afraid of death when they think of it as the abyss, after which there is nothing. Any religion gives us an understanding that there is something else beyond death, and if you believe in it, you will escape the abyss. Such knowledge allows you to feel calmer. So a person should follow a set of certain rules about what to do in order to avoid a bad scenario after life. The good purpose of religion is to create conditions for a person to live in a state of faith. In this state, a person can look at the desired future, set goals and move towards them calmly and confidently. But at the same time, when there is a certain set of rules that must be followed, a person has a fear of violation of these rules. It turns out a paradox: tools that are designed to make our life more relaxed, i.e. deliver us from fear, they also bring this fear.

We should be thankful to our fear that it saves our life
and gives us the cue how to avoid danger and pain.
Fear is careful of preserving our life
and protecting us against pain.

We all have habitual behavior, habitual emotional reactions, family scenarios of relationships with others. The habitual means the successful. Why do we declare so categorically, because at first glance our behavioral strategies very often do not lead us to a desired result?

In past experiences (in your own or in the experience of your ancestors) it was this particular pattern of behavior that was successful. It means that once such a behavior, such a position in life allowed someone to save life or allowed to continue life, which led to the birth of new family members, so this model was imprinted in ancient memory as a successful one and it doesn’t matter how much time have passed, but unconsciously you still use this model. Going beyond such behavior at a subconscious level is perceived as a threat to life. The subconscious mind tells us: “Do like that – and it will save your life.” Despite the fact that now such a behavior may not lead to where we want, we should be grateful to it, because once it has already saved a life.

In order to change the usual model of behavior, you need to make much effort, because we will need to face fear, which greatly inhibits us from giving up this strategy, identifying any other behavior as a threat to life.

For example, an attitude about money. Most of our ancestors in the post-Soviet space had money savings and material wealth, but during the political and historical events they were deprived of them, they were subjected to repression and dispossession, they suffered. This situation could not but affected the descendants. A large amount of time has passed, but now a lot of people is still, desiring material prosperity, unconsciously refusing the opportunity to earn a lot, as there is a stable model in the memory that leads to suffering or death. According to this fact, many of us have to re-learn at the level of will and awareness to withstand the discomfort (fear) that accompanies the presence of large sums of money, to save and accumulate them, despite the fact that all the time we want to waste them or get rid of them.

Everything unusual and unknown causes fear. Accordingly, the information becomes very valuable. What is around the corner? What awaits me tomorrow and the day after tomorrow? What are the prospects in this area? What do these people expect from me? What is the economic situation in the country? Information helps to calm your fear.

When we start something new, even if the business we desire, we always experience fear, because the unknown is ahead. And the more valuable the goal for us, the more fear we will experience in the process. It is human nature to exacerbate his inner state: “What will happen if it doesn’t work out?”

In order to cope with your anxiety, you always need to remember your ancient brain, this allows us to sober up a little.

“My life is out of danger, in reality there is no danger”

Yes, there are places in war in the world and bullets are whistling —this is a real danger. But there are a lot of peaceful places in the world and all the dangers are largely invented by us. The ancient man really had dangers around every corner: wild animals, bad weather, bad harvest. In the modern world, people have learned to organize their lives in such a way that we always have something to eat, where to sleep, what to wear, etc. In this sense, we have largely secured ourselves. Of course, there are and always will be those people who are still fighting for survival in the modern world.

Interestingly, people who have to survive are much braver than those who live in comfort. When you survive, you have no choice, you act on the basis of vital necessity. If you try to steal a bun in the store when you’re full, you will begin to have a lot of psychological barriers, thoughts, you will worry what others will think about you, about the consequences if you get caught. But if you haven’t eaten for 5-7-10 days, you don’t think about anything at all, you just take it and eat it right in the store, and you don’t care that they look at you, that you are being led somewhere, the most important thing you did eat.

Why do we worry so often about what others think of us? Why is it so often the fear of condemnation or “sidelong glance” stops us? In the ancient world, the affiliation and location of the tribe to which you belonged was important at the level of survival. If you are excluded “you are bad, get out”, it would be tantamount to death; to cope alone with those severe conditions was almost impossible. Relationships with society at the level of the ancient brain are issues of survival. And now the reptilian part of the brain continues to equate situations “they don’t like me” to death, seeks to avoid such situations and build its behavior, its life like everyone else.

Only a man himself, at the level of conscious work, can control his fear realizing that fear is only a familiar strategy to cope with life.

Fear. How does it Show up in the Body?

Fear is revealed brightly in our body, we should learn how to notice it.

Body. The very first reaction of the body to fear is the increase of tension in almost all the muscles of the body. The muscles of the shoulder girdle are tightened, the shoulders rise up to the ears, the body slightly deviates back and freezes. There is some muscle tonus in the arms, legs, buttocks, lower abdomen, back of the thighs. You can notice fear expression in raised, tense shoulders. At a low intensity of fear, many small movements of the fingers begin to appear: touching hair, a face, a neck, clothes, etc. Small movements are a clear marker of anxiety. In order to look confident, men often hide their hands behind their backs, but fingers keep tugging behind their backs. A person often shuffles his feet.

Hormones. Adrenaline

Body language. The micro motion “eyebrows up” lasts literally a split second at a slight intensity of fear. Horizontal wrinkles appear on the forehead, the forehead is tense. The eyes widen precisely at the moment of fear, the lips are tense, the mouth is usually horizontally stretched.

Breathing. A vivid breathing pattern appears in fear: it is very superficial, breathing fades. It seems that a person breathed some air in the form of a resource and froze not to give it away.

Look. At a low intensity of fear, when there is no obvious danger, a person searches for the source of this danger, so his eyes are running, twitching and moving sharply from object to object. When the intensity of fear is increasing, the gaze begins to slow down, stop and lose focus. When a person has a very strong fear, he seems not to see anything neither outside nor inside himself, his gaze goes to nowhere.

Inner sensations. Anxiety begins with tremor, a vibration occurs in the body, which is expressed outward through small, fussy movements. Usually in the inner sensations this is accompanied by a strong heartbeat, constriction and pulsation are felt in the abdomen. When fear is increasing, the pulsation goes inside, it accelerates so much that the body becomes immobilized. If you imagine the rotation of the wheel of a bicycle, at first you see the movement of the spokes, but with an increase in speed it seems that it stands still, you see neither movement nor details. When the intensity of fear increases, twitching movements disappear, a state of “freezing” appears, the body is like a wooden one, you do not own it.

Direction. The body slightly deviates back and freezes. There is no motion.

Speech. The voice often has a high tone, phrases become interrogative, intonation rises “yes? …”, “will we go? …”, affirmation is lost, because a person is not sure. Speech becomes fast and steel. At high intensities of fear, the tongue gets numb, a person has lost tongue. At a low intensity of fear, there are fast changes in topics and distraction is observed.

There are people who hide their fear behind their anger “I am so scared that I am angry.” This is a characteristic of counter-phobic behavior. In such cases, the voice becomes louder, but the larynx is pinched and the voice becomes loud, sharp and steel. There is fear behind such allegedly angry behavior.

A fearful state is an insecure state.

It is said that in fear a person unconsciously chooses one of the strategies: fight, flight, freeze. But that is not quite right. In order to “fight” you need to find energy somewhere. We take it from a state of anger when you find aggression in yourself in order to fight back. In order to “flight,” the movements of the body must be very fast – it is also a mixture of fear and anger.

Pure fear without other defense reactions is a stop

And then when you choose a strategy of survival, you can fight or flight. But at first you will freeze.

Fear. Processing

Fear has many names. This emotion has over 20 titles – a record among other emotions. This suggests that we very often face fear in everyday life.

It is believed that anxiety and fear are different emotions and conditions, that anxiety, unlike fear, does not imply real danger. We adhere to the opinion that anxiety and fear are not differentiated. If there is no danger in the real world, we imagine it very real within ourselves.

Doubt is fear of low intensity. When a person doubts, it means that he is in a certain state of anxiety, he looks for the right solution and is afraid to make a mistake. The more fears a person has, the more doubts he has. The doubting person does not always realize that he is now experiencing fear.

Low levels of fear: anxiety, worry. There are a lot of slangy and colloquial words for such states: (he bitches out, he pusses out, I get cold feet).

High levels of fear are horror, nightmare, panic, shock. Moreover, there is still a lot of movement in a panic, but in shock, we become paralyzed.

When moving over the scale of fear intensity, the range of movements varies from an excessive number of fussy movements to complete immobility.

Fear always signals us that our need for security is not satisfied. This need may not be satisfied right now, or we may be afraid that it will not be satisfied tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. Fear is strongly connected with our future.

When does fear appear?

When a person faces with an unknown situation, subconsciously, he calculates whether he has enough external and internal resources to cope with the current dangerous situation.

Fear appears when you understand
that you don’t have enough resources now

For example, if you meet a child in a dark alley who is trying to fight you, you won’t be afraid, it will be funny for you, you will take him by his little thin hands and lead him to his parents. Subconsciously, you have calculated the resources that you own and which are necessary in this situation. But if you have met a person who is three times taller than you and behaves aggressively, understanding on whose side the physical advantage, you will most likely regard the situation as extremely dangerous. However, if you have additional resources in the form of black belt in karate or bits in a backpack that you know how to use, the level of your fear decreases.

There are cases when you are not so knowledgeable that you cannot calculate whether you have enough resources to control the situation. Then it happens that a person feels confident and calm because of his ignorance and self-confidence. For example, a person is interviewed for a job that he has never done, he does not even know what he may not know, as a result of it he feels calm. In the same situation, a person, who does such work and knows what level of skill he needs in this area, will value his skills and knowledge more adequately and critically and, of course, worry more. The effect is “the more I know, the more I know how little I know.”

If you were invited to an interview to be headhunted to another organization, you will feel extremely confident because you have a job and a large number of resources: your immediate future is secure (you have something to eat, where to sleep, where to rest), and in this confident state you talk to people about whether they can increase your amount of resources and how many times. The level of fear will be minimal. But when you have no work, you are searching for it, there is much anxiety and fear, you are constantly estimating the amount of your resources (think about what you will eat tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, how the situation that you don’t work will affect your professional level).

Our physical condition is also a very important resource. When we didn’t get enough sleep, didn’t eat on time, our body feels bad – we have few resources. If you sleep badly, the next day you will be more anxious. If you had enough sleep you wouldn’t feel anxiety under the same conditions. We separate physiological needs from psychological ones, but when we talk about the need for security, it is important to understand that it is directly related to the amount of resources of the physical body.

After physical trainings, a person feels very calm, and if a person regularly goes in for sports, then his background condition is generally calmer, because the body is a very important resource. If you don’t eat on time, at the level of consciousness you understand well that you just don’t have time, you are busy with something. However, the subconscious mind will regard this situation differently: if you are hungry and do not eat, you have no food. And as a result, the level of anxiety increases. Due to prolonged dissatisfaction with physiological needs, you may notice that a person’s adequacy in behavior is lost. Typically, it happens to people with a leading need for security. People with other leading needs do not have such a strong connection of mood, diet and rest.

Fear. Ways to Cope

Switching off the emotional sphere. There are people who separate themselves from their emotions and live as if they don’t feel fear. If a person switches off his emotions, he agrees with himself: “There is nothing important in life to worry very much.” Accordingly, such people have no reason to really want something or to be very happy. The result is a computer mode when you logically decide what you need and what you don’t need. On the one hand, it helps you live more calmly, because you are not involved in your experiences, but at the same time your life is losing its color. In this case, a person does not understand his fears, he does not notice that he is experiencing fear, the mind blocks these states.

Phobic model of behavior. Such people feel their fears and perceive them as a trigger to give up doing anything. Even if fears are realized, they stop a person from acting. Internal doubts and thinking over all possible scenarios up to the worst, all possible negative consequences (punishments) capture the brain of such people. A lot of energy is spent on this, while the body is prostrated in fear, and actions are not born.

Counter-phobic model of behavior. Such people feel, but do not realize their fears, perceive fear as a command to action. The desired goal is to free oneself from fears that are constantly prostrating and bothering from within. If such a person is asked whether he is scared, he will always answer: “Of course not”. Subconsciously, he creates dangerous situations in his life in order to cope with them and say to himself: “I am not afraid of anything.” At the moment when it is possible to overcome fear and the first dangerous step has been taken, you experience very intense euphoria, at this very moment you feel freedom from fear, so you strive again and again to fill your life with similar events.

People with this pattern of behavior love dangerous, extreme sports. At the moments of extreme peak, hormones are produced and create a feeling of euphoria. The body perceives the unknown situation as dangerous, and throws out all the hormones just to mobilize and anesthetize as much as possible. In such situations the hormonal cocktail will consist of adrenaline, norepinephrine, endorphin, serotonin, dopamine. Thus, a model of behavior is creating “I will always overcome dangers and it will be cool”. Many people consider this type of drive as fullness and brightness of life. Not being able to appreciate other less intensive, but diverse emotions.

Fear. The Need and Strategies for Satisfying

The need that fear speaks of is security. Let’s see what security is.

Security is a feeling that you are able to cope
with any situation, which will appear in future,
that you have all possible resources.

If the level of satisfaction of the need for security is high you feel calm in any situation of uncertainty, i.e. you have so much control over your body, mind and feelings that you don’t care what the next moment will be, you probably know that you will act in the best way. Of course, there is a share of fear in such a life, but it does not work as something that stops, but as an interesting, exciting, tickling feeling that makes life more spicy.

A person who lives in contact with himself, does what he loves, eventually comes to a point where he trusts himself and the world so much that he is ready not to control and spontaneously express himself in even an uncertain moment. But this is only possible with very clear goals and full self-awareness, because there is no control without awareness. Otherwise, it will go with the stream in the bad sense of this word – it doesn’t matter for you where to swim, you are neither good nor bad anywhere, life has no taste and there is no quality of life. A good sense of this phrase is to be in a stream, i.e. know what you want, use the current moments to move to the desired.

Let’s talk about those for whom the need for security is leading and very important, because there are people who give up on security.

Ways of satisfying the need for security:

• Little security

With this model of behavior, a person lives his life and avoids any danger. However, any development, any way out of the comfort zone is always associated with danger. Desiring to maintain a small safety zone, a person limits himself in development, and, accordingly, in pleasure, in achievements. Over time, such a life leads to the fact that you have a feeling of resentment at other people, at life, at yourself, it is quite possible that a person will feel some guilt. Thus, the quality of life begins to decline.

For example, you wanted to be an actor, you have the ability to do this, and the theater department is located next to the house. But there are disturbing thoughts: “Oh, everything is so uncertain there. Only a few people can feed themselves by this profession. But an accountant is an understandable, terrestrial activity. I’d better go there and I will definitely know that every month I will have some money for bread and milk.” This is that little security that you create for yourself, while limiting yourself in the quality of life, in development and pleasure.

The main fear is to remain completely without resources, not to come up to the expectations of significant people.

When your life passes in dissatisfaction, when work does not bring joy, when income is modest (you have money for bread and milk, but you can’t go somewhere to rest, you can’t afford some quality thing), you begin to shift responsibility to someone from the outside or to eat yourself from the inside: “Why I didn’t do it then, now it’s too late”. Most often it is a phobic model of behavior.

• Surrender security

Subconsciously, in such a model of behavior, a person declares: “I do not need security.” He looks outwardly fearless, he is constantly poking his nose and provoking various situations. For example, he may leave for another country without knowing anything about it, without a plan on how he will work and where he will live. In other words he creates deliberately unsafe conditions. Their main fear is the creation of long-term relationships. Strong, loyal connections and self-confidence are a real challenge for such people.

When you do not trust yourself, you yourself do not know what you want tomorrow, you avoid any responsibility and decisions. Faithful relationships become unsafe because they are weighed down by certain expectations.

Such people are prone to inconstancy, are in fear of being unfaithful and unreliable. With such a position in life, the most terrible word is always.

Of course, everyone understands that we cannot guarantee at least something forever. There are very few things in the world about which we can say “this is forever.” But the very intention of “forever” is very important in business and in personal relationships. But for people who are characterized by a state of anxiety and distrust of themselves, this “forever” seems impossible: “How can I guarantee you anything? Don’t trust me much, for me it’s too big a burden.”

With time, such a life leads to the fact that all relationships, both professional and personal, become like a strange dance “one step forward, two steps back”. Forward – closer relations, back – estrangement. There is no certainty in development either, such people try a lot of new things, learn a lot, but constantly depreciate their own experience, starting from point zero again and again. Most often, this is a counter-phobic model of behavior.

• Depreciate security, depreciate resources

In such a model of behavior, a person, having no resources, claims that he does not need them. For example, if a person does not have money to go abroad to relax with his family, he will say: “Why do we go abroad, nobody needs it, there is nothing to do there, I don’t like this type of vacation,” if he does not have the necessary things for a comfortable camping trip (tents, sleeping bags), he will go to the forest with one knife “Because I am an adrenaline type”, if someone builds a house, he immediately begins to condemn, etc.

In conversations, in the behavior of such a person, denial of his values will always be traced. A whole life strategy is taking shape: to depreciate those goals that you cannot achieve because you have neither material resources, nor internal.

The main fear is to see your failure.

With time, such a life leads to the fact that everyone ceases to take such a person seriously, avoids together activities, and close people cope with all things, including development, on their own. This is also a counter-phobic behavior, but with a different connotation.

• Accumulation

Because the uncertainty is terrible, it’s not safe to not know what will happen tomorrow, not to know how everything is arranged. So the value of information and knowledge is very high for all people with a leading need for security.

But there are people who ensure their safety in this way: they are protected from the outside world and collect information about everything until they consider its quantity sufficient to reach the world and people. They often send themselves to isolation and loneliness. As a rule, these are very erudite people, well-read and educated. Often they are not adapted to an ordinary, simple life, but have a large amount of knowledge. Well, if there is a person who can use their mind in practice, but in the worst case, such behavior leads to an encyclopedic life detached from the real world.

The main fear is to be unprepared, not to know, to be stupid.

With time, such a life leads to the fact that… a person limits himself in spontaneous actions to a narrow circle of people and defends himself from the world with pronounced intellectual arrogance.

Could there be a mixture of traits of each behavioral model? Of course, we described the extreme expressions, more often there is a tendency to a greater extent to one of these strategies, while others manifest themselves from case to case. For example, a person can usually move bravely towards fear, but can sometimes be scared.

Fear. A Healthy Way of Processing

Each emotion carries information about our current state and has unique energy. If you use the energy of emotion in order to get what you want, to move towards your goals, which you accept at the level of consciousness, then emotion performs its true function.

What is the energy in the emotion of fear? Even if we realized why it appeared, our body is filled with energy. The question arises: where can we use it? We must understand why our body is straining and mobilizing in fear, because the main idea of this state is not to immobilize us and make us ill. We usually freeze when we misuse this energy.

Adrenaline is responsible for fear at the hormonal level. Inside the body, this hormone works very interestingly. At the first stage of the release of the hormone, the blood rushes to the head: the pupils dilate, the eyebrows rise, some people may have a red face or spots on the neck. This moment lasts a split second, the body feeds the brain as much as possible in order to instantly decide at the moment of danger how to proceed. But very often in the modern world in a general atmosphere of security, a person experiences fear and is not aware of the danger that the subconscious mind perceives as a threat and, accordingly, cannot decide “What should I do next?” and take the necessary actions.

At the second stage of the action of the hormone, the blood goes to the extremities, because cannot stay in the head for a long time. At this moment, a very strong flow of blood strikes from top to bottom, as if the body was poured with a bucket of cold water, heaviness is felt in the pelvic area, knees become weak. Such a feeling is usually described as “my heart is in my throat right now” or “I am shit scared.” When the blood was in the head, it was necessary to make a decision, and then, when it goes into the body, the head is no longer able to make decisions and think, you must follow the decision that you have already made. When all the energy sinks into the body, the muscles become tense, the body says: “I am ready, let’s act!” They often say “if you don’t know what to do, do at least something” and this is true. In such situations, it’s worth doing at least something not to get stuck, your body muscles are ready for focused actions.

It is important to ask yourself for:

What can I do useful right now?
What steps can I take to achieve my goal?

Therefore, it is important to have these goals. When you begin to act, you spend your mobilized body, you spend your internal resources in the direction of your goals; otherwise they are simply burned at the hormonal level inside you and bring discomfort.

So, a healthy strategy of processing fear:

Step 1. We notice the expression of fear at a low intensity

As soon as the shoulders tightened, and tension appeared in the stomach, we immediately say to ourselves:

I have started to worry now, what am I afraid of?

It is necessary to list all the possible dangers that come to your mind.

Step 2. Explore which of these fears are real

We remove all unrealistic fears that are wound up by our mind and cannot happen, we leave only what really can happen.

How real are these dangers?
What is the percentage of probability
that this is exactly what will happen?

Fear is often inadequate to the current situation, but it is an echo of some system dynamics or some previous experience. We must check the correspondence to the current moment. If you usually discover a real fear that concerns what is happening to you right now, the body begins to relax. After all, emotions are lights which task is to warn. And when the emotion does its work, it begins to leave. That is why it is said that awareness of emotions in the current moment is one of the first steps to manage your state. It is often enough to take only this step.

Step 3. We make a resource calculation

How many resources do I have now
in order to cope with this situation?

Resources are material and immaterial, internal and external. The amount of material resources affects our psychological state.

For example, I need to move to another city, I worry about how to do this. We calculate the resources:

• I have a car

• I have some petrol

• I know the way

• who can I ask for helping me to load heavy things? Will I find these people among friends or hire anyone for money?

If you calculated resources, made a plan, pulled up additional necessary resources, for example, support for loved ones, missing information, then you calm down and begin to treat the situation as a current task. When we set a goal and calculate the steps towards this goal, a sensation of a certain future appears and, accordingly, our peace of mind and confidence grow.

Step 4. Release tension

To release tension, you need to use the body. Hard physical work is great, especially if you need it now. For example, things for moving can be packaged right now, loaded. After the muscles of the body have worked, they naturally tend to relax. Dig something or lay a brick, do cleaning in the house.

If there is no hard work at hand, just offer yourself some physical exercises. For example, make your hands into fists, tense shoulders, abs, and then release this state sharp, relax (such an exercise is recommended even before a public speech). Another great exercise is a plank for at least a minute. After such exercises, relaxation and pleasure come. In this way, we help our body to process fear.

Step 5. Set strategic goals

What do I want in a long-term prospective?

In the example of moving, we should not think about the move itself, but about more distant future, about what it is associated with this moving. It can be housing, professional or personal questions, and goals should be set according to these questions.

You should have a prospective goal which will
connect not only with the search for security
but will also give some development and, in the end,
more calmness in your life.

If we looked into the future and set a strategic goal, it means we coped with our fears in a quality manner.

If strategic goals are set in a state of fear, self-deception will occur. In a state of fear, we are not able to focus on the future. So the first step to take is to get rid of fear. In this case it is necessary to create a more secure environment:

• make a plan;

• gather all necessary resources;

• give your body a good workout;

• set future goals in the calm state.

In the next situation, in which you will experience anxiety or fear, the long-term goal that you set will create a sense of direction and the feeling that you are managing your life, this will be your guideline.

If you act this way gradually and constantly, your future will become predicted for you and created personally by you.

Fear. Release

If a person often experiences fear, anxiety, doubts, the first thing to do is use to our strategy, which we have described.

We are scared when we believe that we lack resources, when we feel small, poor, unable to cope with the situation, with life. The more often we prove to ourselves that we are able to manage the situation and achieve goals, the more intensively we turn from a small and poor little man, first into a normal one, and then into a champion for ourselves, because we have objective results.

Release from fear is possible only through
another need – a need for respect

If we do not set goals, and everything happens by itself in our life, we cannot estimate the result of our activity and life in general.

We cannot independently estimate ourselves, we need feedback from the outside world. And now the outside world evaluates us and reports: “Look, you’re good at this field, and you have done it perfectly, this is great,” but you cannot understand whether this is your result or not, because you didn’t set such goals.

We need goals to cultivate self-respect

Setting a goal, taking some steps towards it and achieving a result will lead to a large number of accumulated results and, of course, to self-confidence. You will have confirmation that you can, that you have resources, skills, abilities. But in this whole story, you need results.

People who focus only on the process do everything in their life with pleasure, but they have no self-respect, because there is no result of this activity. The feeling of respect “I can” creates security from the inside.

Fear. How to Help others?

If there is a person near who is in a state of anxiety or fear, the first thing we can do to help is to talk with him, so that he speaks out loud all his fears, feelings. We should draw his attention to the body and its condition gently. Ask some questions:

In relation to what things do you have such a state now?
What exactly are you most afraid of?

When a person lists everything that worries him, he gradually begins to free himself from all these fears. At the same time, when you ask questions, he receives emotional support from you, and support is also a resource that satisfies the need for security. There is a feeling that he is not alone in coping with this situation, but as if we are doing it together. It also relaxes.

After a person has realized his fears, you can ask questions that are listed in the strategy for yourself:

How real are these dangers?
What do you need to overcome this danger?
What resources do you have?
Where can you take resources that you don’t have?

You can help a person to make a plan where to get the necessary resources. And then it would be great to turn on the body: go for a walk or run, do some work in the garden together, change the position of the body to move actively. After some body activity, a person will definitely calm down.

When a person calms down, ask him the following questions:

What do you want in the distant future?
What do you really want?
In what way will be the problem
solved in 3—5 years?

It will allow you to start dreaming in the direction of your desired future. And if he is ready, he will be able to set real goals, the achievement of which will have criteria.

Fear. Security and Responsibility

We must always remember that fear mobilizes us, i.e. takes out all our resources, collects them so that we use them. Our responsibility is to determine life goals, the direction of development to know how to use all our forces and mobilized resources and what steps we should take.

Responsibility is a complex feeling that contains an emotion of fear. If there were no fear, we could not take decisive actions in any other way. Thanks our fears for that.

Having goals in life, of course, does not preclude the presence of fear. When scared, you are active and keep your eyes clean in search of this danger, you know where you need to throw all your strength. In this state, you can cope with any situation. If you use fear in the right direction and to the right degree – this is a successful action strategy.

If there is only fear, and there are no desired goals, then we have danger and nothing more. And wherever we go, this danger is always with us, even when we move away from it, we only see it. Is it possible to calm down with only danger in front of my eyes? It’s impossible. The quality of life will be very low, you will only move from danger to danger, because your mind is tuned to it. Why are we talking about the importance of setting goals to deal with fears?

Goal setting is a conscious redirection of attention
by the effort of the will to the regime of the goal,
not a danger

And then a part of the fears leaves us, because we begin to move to the goal. A person who knows how to manage his attention controls his life.

This is deliberate work: tear off, peel off, unhook the inner gaze from danger, move it to the zone of the desired result and attach, glue, pin it there. And you begin to move there – to the desired and pleasant with ease and joy. And if suddenly some danger nevertheless arises in the way of your movement, your fear will be enough to activate forces at the right moment and put them all to achieve goals.

On the last day before passing the exam you suddenly have so much strength! Three days ago, you were not capable of such absorption of information, i.e. it is fear that makes you mobilize and prepare as well as possible in a very short period of time.

At work, when you do what you did not do before, it happens in a similar way. It is fear that activates you, pushes you to search of information, new strategies, opportunities, your abilities. And you want to do all this in order to achieve your goal. You get it naturally, because your interest lies in this plane. Fear and desire work together. Therefore, fear is a very useful emotion. If someone says: “I want to get rid of my fear,” he does not understand what he is signing up for.

The most important condition for freeing
yourself from fear is setting goals and keeping your
internal focus on the desired result

If your inner view is focused on the search for dangers, you will not see your goals by yourself, this is only conscious work.

Shame

Shame. How does it Serve?

In ancient times, people united in tribes in order to withstand external dangers. If for some reason a person was left alone, it meant death for him. That’s why for each of us it is very important to feel like a group, because the ancient part of our brain perceives the lack of belonging as a danger to life. But how do you understand that you are one of them or a stranger? How to fit in a tribe, how to become part of this group, so that it protects you and helps you to withstand external threats? It is a feeling of shame that tells us that we are doing things, for which we can be condemned, for which we can be expelled.

In the modern world, it seems that we can live outside the group, that there is no external danger. However, our brains are millions of years old, we can convince ourselves as much as we like, but there is a clear connection in our subconscious: belonging to a group is life, exclusion is death. So shame is a social emotion that is always associated with comparing yourself and other people.

We call the sense of affiliation in ordinary life – love. When we love someone, he is very close, valuable, exceptional to us, we want to devote time to him, our attention is always directed to the object of love, we want to take care of him, we are ready to sacrifice for him. Being loved is a successful strategy for life. We need to have the same attitude to ourselves in order to take care of ourselves, in order to give ourselves priority over others, in order to be happy.

Self-love is a criterion of belonging to the family

If you accept yourself, take care of yourself, pay attention to yourself, like yourself – this means that you accept your ancestors, you are a part of them, because everything that is in you has come from them. When we love ourselves, we know that we are a part of something larger, ourselves among ourselves. When we do not love ourselves, do not recognize our strong qualities, our resources, and consider ourselves insufficiently attractive, it means that we exclude ourselves from our system and look for another group, we want to be liked to this group in order to feel belonging.

If a person is often met with excessive shame, this situation means that he does not feel his belonging, does not accept some of his qualities, constantly compares himself with others and loses in this comparison. There is a good cartoon from our childhood “The Ugly Duckling”, about how a little swan suddenly, being in a bird’s yard, tried to attach itself to hens, then to ducks, to geese and nowhere felt like his own. Shame, melancholy, loneliness filled his life, danger waited for him around every corner. His life changed radically when he found his own group of swans and flew with them to distant lands. So we, having claims to our parents and family, are looking for a better place among other people, but there is no better place like your family for you. When you understand this, you begin to appreciate, a lot of strength and energy appear, and suddenly you become attractive to the whole outside world.

Ironically, the mission of shame
is to take care of love

A little later we will talk about tenderness, as a criterion of belonging and communication, and shame is a criterion of disconnection. Shame reports that now you do not fit in the environment you want to fit in, now you feel that you do not meet the expectations of those observers with whom you would like to be together as one.

Thus, shame takes care of love, of communication, of belonging. The law of belonging is very important in systems. We want to receive a message from the society in which we live: “You are as you should be. You are ours. You are like us. You are with us.” If we receive this message, we feel safe, we feel accepted (we receive love), so we experience a lot of positive emotions.

But if we do not receive such a message from society, we immediately have an inner feeling that we are doing something wrong. You feel that you are a little bit different in order to fit into your important environment. It is shame that gives us such a clue.

Of course, someone can say that shame appears without people. But in fact, if you are ashamed, and there is nobody around, it means that inside your head are observers, witnesses, they are looking at you. Perhaps, the ideal you look at the imperfect you, if there is a certain image inside that you would like to match. Perhaps, you look at yourself with the eyes of your parents, with their expectations and hopes, which you would like to meet and be good, to receive love.

That is why we say that shame is a social emotion, and it is worth looking for the eyes of observers, even if it is obvious that there aren’t any witnesses around you. If there is shame, the eyes of the observers are always there.

Shame is an emotion that is generally not discussed about at all. People talk about their fears, show their anger, joy, sadness, but about shame everything is “as quite as a lamb.” We are usually silent about things that are associated with shame, we hide them, so that no one knows as much as possible. And if there are witnesses (those who know), then they must somehow be bribed or destroyed, or hidden from their eyes. As soon as witnesses disappear, shame will diminish. Because shame is a social emotion, a person who is ashamed always wants to hide his eyes, and he always feels the eyes of strangers.

Shame helps to tell us what is not worth doing, what qualities are not worth cultivating. If you cultivate qualities that are not accepted in society, it will push you away. This often happens in the first grades of the school, when children still do not have the ability to hide their feelings, they can sometimes be cruel, too forthright. At some time, society begins to give feedback about your unacceptable behavior, for example, when a child lags behind at school in comparison with other pupils, they do not want to be friends with him, even to sit down at one desk. As a result of it, important people will be further from a child, the distance between them will increase. Let’s see how it works.

Shame is formed in childhood. In the kindergarten, children first begin to be interested in their genitals, in their characteristics, and differences. Then interest arises towards each other, a self-demonstration arises: “Now, look, I have something that you don’t have”. But then comes the period of strong, bright, exaggerated constraint, when the children begin to hide from other children. When a girl, for example, gets dressed in three blouses, she needs to take off the top, and she is shy and hides behind a locker, goes to the toilet or somewhere else. In other words excessive shyness appears. For some time, the child did not know what shame was and could swim or walk naked and didn’t even think about it. But at some point the question of shyness, excessive shame, sharply arises. If you notice this behavior in your child, be calm, it is very good. This suggests that the child begins to enter the age when social instincts appear, there is a desire to fit into meaningful communities, groups and not to do what is not accepted in these groups.

For instance, there is an idea to put a carton box on a head and go to school looking like that. But you can’t do that. You know for sure what will be told: you are a stupid, narrow-minded person. You are not fitted in the group.

There are societies in which there are special norms of social behavior. Aborigines can walk only in beads on any island and this is normal for them, they are not shy. They are shy about something else, for example, going out without beads.

In situations where you do not fit in, shame comes first. Of course, then fear arises, the fear of punishment and consequences.

Shame helps us not to forget to put on a skirt or pants when you go to work, to zip up your trousers when you leave the toilet. We don’t even think about these things, because we are uncomfortable when some very personal things come out and become obvious to others.

In the same way, we estimate our skills, knowledge and character traits. We are ashamed to not know anything, we are ashamed to demonstrate qualities of character that are socially unacceptable. No matter how we want to be individuals, to be different from others, we experience a huge, sometimes unconscious desire to belong to a significant group, society as a whole, in order to receive love and protection.

Of course, if there was only shame in us, it would be difficult to cultivate individuality and go beyond certain norms. But other emotions and complex feelings: tenderness, desire, courage, determination will already be responsible for this.

Literally at the level of instincts, shame aims at observing important norms of behavior, cultivating certain qualities in ourselves, looking in a certain way in order to fit in, being a part of the group that is important to us. What is the main group? Of course, it is your family. When you do something that your loved ones do not accept, it becomes a big problem right up to the desire to exclude you from the family system. For example, to go to another country and not communicate at all, as if you don’t know each other. In such cases, the family tells: “You are not ours. You are not like us. You are a stranger now” and such messages may be heard “You are not our son now, you are not my father” and so on. Of course, no one can be expelled from the family; this can only be done at the level of consciousness, thoughts. At the level of the patrimonial system, we cannot exclude anyone, we can only think that we have done it.

We can say that shame is a social fear, because at the hormonal level, adrenaline is also produced when shame appears. It’s very difficult for people with a basic need for security to distinguish their shame from their fear. When such a person experiences shame, fear is immediately connected, and because they have the same hormonal expression, the body processes a more familiar emotion – fear. Thus, shame is disguised as fear.

Shame cannot be ignored; it is a very vivid emotion. How does shame arise in our bodies?

Shame. How does it Show up in the body?

Body. The head goes down and to the side (most often to the left). The look goes down after the head and a person looks at the left heel, as if he wants to look away as much as possible, but his legs are standing still. The body twists, as if it wants to run away and hide. The shoulders are twisted as far as possible, the chest is pressed inward as much as possible. As if a person wants to shrink to occupy a minimum amount of space. All gestures are very close to the body, hugging themselves. Hands often cover his face, he wants to hide his eyes with his hands. Sometimes we can rub our nose or scratch an eyebrow to be able to hide behind our hand. The knees and legs are soft. As we have said, a person’s cheeks turn red, this reaction almost always appears.

Hormones. At the hormonal level, adrenaline is also produced when shame appears. Under the action of adrenaline, blood rushes to the head so that a person can quickly make a decision. Under adrenaline, our face gets red in shame.

Body language. When the intensity of shame is not still high (shyness), the first thing that appears on the face is a stupid smile and the person begins to giggle. He lowers his head down and giggles. When the intensity of shame grows, the lips tighten and the person begins to prim them.

Breathing. A person holds his breath when he exhales. When exhaling, he physically becomes smaller, so he wants to exhale and hold his breath.

Look. The look goes inside, although it is physically visible that a person is looking at the floor. As shame is a social emotion, from time to time a person looks at witnesses: “How are they? Are they still there? Do they still hate me? Did they somehow change their attitude towards me? Are they gone?” It means that a glance from time to time furtively looks at the observers.

Inner sensations. The inner feelings of shame are very bright. A person feels one point – the solar plexus (the upper abdomen part between the ribs, where they begin to diverge). There is a very strong burning sensation in it, it burns there.

Direction. There is no direction either forward or backward, neither upward nor downward, the body wants to roll in place, as if a person wants to run away from himself, but you can’t run away from yourself. Like a dog who wants to catch its tail and runs in a circle. And while a person is so “running”, inside he feels a collapse, he wants to shrink to the point of the solar plexus and disappear – “go bright red with shame.”

Speech. At the moment of shame, blood rushes to the head, and then goes to the legs. So a person, as in fear, becomes speechless, his speech becomes tongue-tied, speech defects and stuttering appear, a person cannot formulate what he wants to say.

Shame. Processing

Shame is felt only in the moment. If the situation has passed, and you feel shame, it means that you reshape the situation inside yourself in secondary emotions. For example, you were at the school board and said some nonsense, the whole class laughed at you, the teacher looked down on you, you wanted to melt into the ground, run out of the classroom, forget about everything. When you were at the blackboard, you burned with shame, but when you came home, you no longer felt shame. If you remember a story and again burn with shame, it happens already in secondary feelings. Most often, the repeated shame that occurs in the memories, and not here and now, will be much higher in intensity than it was in the moment, because you wind it up. In the moment, we always live primary emotions (shame in this example), and at home, outside the situation, we process secondary feelings based on our beliefs, and it will be a completely different story.

Shame is actually an aversion to oneself; you don’t like yourself. You say to yourself: “You are not worthy expressing yourself, to be as you are, you must be some other.” This is the key issue. You can feel shame, as an emotion born in the moment in the current situation – this is a completely normal situation. But if you feel shame at the level of feeling that often haunts you in life, if it hurts you at the level of your inner convictions, it means that you have a problem, there is no love for yourself, you feel disgust with yourself.

When we see an object outside, towards which we are disgusted, we want to move away as far as possible, distance ourselves from it. How does this mechanism work with shame?

If you want to belong to a significant group (i.e., to reduce the distance as much as possible), you yourself move away from it because you feel shame and disgust with yourself. You do not push others aside “You are not worthy”, but push yourself aside “I am not worthy.” It means that you distance from society on the basis of your inner beliefs that something is wrong with you. And that can be a big problem. A person in need of love, with a basic need for acceptance and attention, distance himself and does not allow other people as he is afraid of feeling shame.

If there is no reason for shame in adequate reality (you are smart, well-read, you look decent and everything is fine with you), and you are too shy, afraid to show the products of your creativity to the world, you cannot convey your thought because of shyness, there is a high probability that you do not love, do not accept yourself, do not consider yourself worthy to belong to the group with which you are currently interacting.

And, of course, this will always be accompanied by an internal comparison, i.e. assessment. If you compare yourself with someone, it means that you constantly evaluate other people (bad/good, able/unable). It turns out that you demonstrate things from which you yourself constantly suffer in society. It cannot be that you are afraid of an external assessment, but you do not evaluate yourself. After all, you already have the focus of attention on comparison, it is important for you, it happens inside you. Such duality occurs very often.

Shame. A healthy Way of Processing

As we say that shame is associated with self-love, it is a criterion that you do not like yourself for some reason now. And you need to understand the details: “What exactly don’t I like about me right now?”

For example, we can be ashamed of the fact that we do not know anything, we cannot answer the question. So, I do not accept that I do not know everything in the world, I am ashamed to be stupid. In general I consider myself stupid and I’m afraid that they will expose me, they will catch me on stupid things.

The same thing can happen when I paint a picture and present it to the world. I feel embarrassed inside, ashamed, and think: “Is this picture worthy of attention? Is it well painted? Most likely it is not very well painted.” Then the desire to look into the eyes of a person who will now evaluate my canvas comes. At the time of evaluation, a person who is ashamed perceives that people around are not evaluating the canvas, but himself. For a person who has an acute need for love and who is very close to shame, such things are indistinguishable at the subconscious level. Showing the results of his work to the world, a person says “Here I am”, and if in response he hears criticism about his work, he always perceives it as a sharp pain and a dagger in his heart. For such a person, any criticism is always perceived as personal.

Let’s turn to the strategy of processing shame.

Step 1. Ask questions to yourself and find answers:

If you feel burning in the solar plexus, you begin curling up and giggling, hide your eyes, it is important to ask yourself:

What don’t I accept in myself now?
What don’t I like in myself now?
What do I judge in myself?
What censure do I fear from my environment?
What quality do I consider awful now?
What my behavior do I consider disgusting?

Step 2. Find tenderness to yourself

We need to understand what is good in this situation. What is the positive intention of this quality? Our task is to find a context in which this quality or behavior is good. “Yes, I can’t find the answer to this question now, but if you want, I will find out. After all, if you don’t know anything is basically good, how to live if you know everything?” We must find tenderness to ourselves, tenderness = acceptance. Or, “Yes, I don’t feel the time because I am very involved in the current process, and as a result I am often late, but the people next to me also don’t notice the time because they are completely involved in interesting communication. After all, when we are OK, we do not notice the time.” Finding a positive intention of our quality or behavior, we must make friends with this quality, otherwise shame won’t disappear.

Only acceptance cures of shame.

Step 3. Find the observer’s eyes

Whom do you compare yourself with?

Having answered this question, you need to find the eyes of the observer and realize for whom you now want to be beautiful and whose love you want to receive. This awareness is too unexpected. For some reason, you felt shame in front of an absolutely stranger who doesn’t want anything from you (the seller in the store or a casual passer-by), but looking for the eyes of an observer, you can often find mom or dad in this role.

Unconsciously, we cannot notice such things, such reactions are already a part of our established personality, so we need to learn to be conscious.

Step 4. Do something pleasant for yourself

You need to offer yourself some action that will confirm that you love yourself, to give yourself some pleasure. What does pleasure mean? Pleasure is doing what you like. It can be anything: write what you like, watch or listen to what you like, absolutely any action that brings pleasure to you. When we love another person, we are very observant, it is sincerely interesting for us to notice the most delicate moments in what he likes, we strive to ensure that our loved one enjoys what we do or offer. And it is very nice. When you can treat yourself in the same way – this is love for yourself. To do it, first of all, you need to learn to look at yourself with acceptance and sincere interest, observe yourself and allow yourself to do what you like.

Shame. Release

If shame does not release, you can help the body processes it. To do it, we exaggerate all those movements that are in the natural expression of shame. If your head is leaning to the left side, then, without bending your knees, bend over, touch your left heel with your right hand, and twist yourself as much as possible. If the head pulls to turn to the right, then touch the right heel with your left hand. In other words, you need to twist as much as possible, exhale as much as possible, and then rise sharply, raise your hands up and jump.

To change any state, first of all you need to give it a place to show itself up, and then offer some other state in return. If you fail to do it the first time (and you often fail to do it the first time), then you should repeat this movement several times. It does not mean that the outlook on life and life itself will immediately change. As a result of these movements, a new resource arises in the body. There are few resources in shame: the body is all constrained and tense, there is no movement, you cannot speak, you cannot think, you have no resource. And the resource is needed so that the body can perform a further purposeful action. In this case, show love for yourself, i.e. make yourself comfortable, spend time on yourself, fill it with activities that bring you pleasure. It can be simple body pleasure and care: take a bath, go to the sauna or massage. It can be anything, depending on how you love yourself. And then you will have a new thought, a new idea about actions in life. You will be free from shame.

Shame. Ways to Cope

When we talk about emotions, there can be no single explanation. It is important to understand not only the nature of emotions, their purpose, but also to consider the strategy for dealing with them. Feeling shame, different people can behave differently. What does it depend on? There are various ways to handle emotions:

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