unthought known (part 2)

a game to befriend hard feelings

In part 1 of this post, I asked you to be open to something itchy, and that was for you to observe and embrace all internal emotional data, both pleasant and painful. I asked you to do this because it’s a human-potential power move and that is what we do here, but also because of the following truth. Read it a few times to let it mingle with your awareness:

I assume we’re similar in that reading this makes us wonder, Why would we want to observe our inner motivations? What good is done when we pause and consider an impact? How does this help in our actual lives? And, how is this done?! These are reasonable questions, particularly since research suggests that self-deception - namely, hiding our inner motivations from ourselves - reduces cognitive load. To address all of that, I bring you the subject line of this post and the last: unthought known. Unthought known leads to the heart of the matter, also conveniently priming us for an intersectional game. So I suppose the real question is, ‘Are you Ready, Player One?’

The unthought known is a phrase coined by British psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas (it’s also a gorgeous Pearl Jam song). It refers to an experience that is in some way known to an individual, but about which that individual is unable to think. Let me de-weird this concept and say it another way: An unthought known is an embodied knowing that occurs outside of conscious awareness, while simultaneously driving behavior. It’s an ‘un-thought’ because cognizance hasn’t fused with the originating emotion, but it’s ‘known’ because we’ve given life to that emotion through action. So there is cause and there is effect but the drama plays itself out with breathtaking speed, before pause and choice come into being. The unthought known might look like us yelling at our partners instead of making a request that they listen. It might look like us binge-watching Revenge instead of having a crucial conversation. It also might look like Rebecca Bunch snorting ibuprofen in lieu of cocaine then crying out, “Why did I do that?!” For me, the crux of the unthought known is this:

To bring in the visual metaphor, when the unthought known is operative:

the elephant = motivating emotion
the rider = us pretending to be in charge
the outcome or direction = possibly downhill from here

From one of Dr. Lou Cozolino’s books, here’s my paraphrase of how an unthought known works:

Implicit emotional memories are derived from summations of our early experiences and are laid down in the "old" brain regions that formed before the cortex came fully online. These are the unconscious processing structure of our brains. These processing structures form ideas and beliefs about reality that become automatic predictions of outcomes, which shape our conscious experience of others by activating lightning-fast systems of emotional evaluation and subsequent action.

Let’s say someone has experienced early abandonment. That person may be perfectly capable of starting new relationships as an adult but, at a certain point, intimacy may trigger an implicit memory leading her to become frightened and fight, freeze, faint, or flee, even from a potentially healthy relationship. That impulse to run, driven by primitive brain circuitry, is overpowering and inescapable. And the true reasons for her decision, stored in her brain within implicit networks dedicated to fear regulation, are unknown to her conscious mind.

Many of you may read this and feel resigned, beset by deterministic survival hardware over which we have no control. But I invite you to read this and feel hopeful, because the good news is that unthoughts known don’t seal your fate. In fact, they’re a gateway to maturity and personal power. Emotions and emotional memories are information and we have it entirely within us to pause, turn toward that energy and get curious. The pause is the moment of choosing your own adventure, of changing the valence in a charged situation so the Bigger You can attend to the Deeper Need, which is probably comfort, connection, or belonging. The real work then is to practice noticing, respecting and guiding the elephant of our emotion - often a herd! - before it becomes a stampede. What we tend to do - see Norm from the last post - is deny, suppress or try and dominate our emotions, all of which is understandable but in the end a fool’s errand. In the future, I’ll write about the Dark Triad, and it will be crystal clear just how foolish - even lethal - it becomes to avoid emotional data. But let’s start light with the game below. It’s a strength-training game for befriending the elephant so you can more skillfully influence its path. There are nine short steps and every single one of them you can do - maybe not all of the time, but definitely some of the time. If you need to see a man’s man acknowledge this kind of work, here’s Marine-turned-actor Adam Driver (start at 3:08) describing a personality trait that changed for him as he became more emotionally literate.

Now Player One, let the game begin.

GAME: I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore

GAME MECHANICS:

I’d love to know how that went for you, and also let me put this stake in the ground: No matter what misinformed cultural or familial beliefs we carry, and no matter how much we resist the itchiness of hard feelings, coming alongside difficult emotion changes everything that matters for the better. We do have choice, and the aggregate of those choices forges the kind of human beings we become. So s-l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-w. . . . . .d-o-o-o-o-o-w-n, notice a tough feeling when it arises, breathe into it, and meet it differently. The yelling, binge-watching, and ibuprofen-snorting will always be an option when we can’t take the high road. And that okay, too. It’s all practice.

Love,
Sun