How it All Fits Together
A Self Examination
by
Noah
Although some of the concepts of psychology can seem abstract and out of concept, most can be found useful in aspects of daily life on a personal basis. For instance attachment to people or objects can cause suffering in your life, but that does not mean you need to become a monk. Everybody uses defense mechanisms and cognitive thinking all the time, but defence mechanisms are natural reactions to stress in our daily lives. The important part to understanding the concepts we learn about is to take everything with a grain of salt and to realise that everything is self interpretive.
When learning about psychology it is very easy to diagnose yourself as crazy or whatever bad you may be learning about, but this is about as reliable as finding out you have lung cancer from the internet. When really you probably only have a cough or at most maybe bronchitis or pneumonia. Many people think they are “OCD” when really they just have habits, or like things to be very organised. Psychology can also be helpful though in seeing things you have done wrong, and why you did them.
One thing that I do, without even realizing it is that I never seem to be able to say I did anything wrong, I never can admit fault. Usually when this happens I will place fault on to others and in my mind rationalize what I did. This is a Freudian thought distortion called projection. Projection is when you take bad feelings that you have and think that others have those. For instance if you don’t like somebody you convince yourself that they don’t like you, or if you are a liar you convince yourself that they are a liar. Essentially it is a form of scapegoating. What I do is also a form of denial because I believe I have done nothing wrong. The interesting thing about defence mechanisms is that you don’t consciously do them, your unconscious mind uses them to protect you, hence the name defence mechanisms. Now how I figure that I use these defences is because they were pointed out to me. “Noah you never own up to what you did”. The only way you can help yourself when you are told things like that is to not get defensive and deny the claims against you, but to think about them in actuality and realize that other people see you in a way you cannot see yourself.
Another defense mechanism that I notice myself using is suppression, or consciously pushing thoughts down so that I do not think about them. When bad, or traumatic things happen to you sometimes you just want to forget they ever happened, so you suppress. The problem with suppression is that the events and thoughts don’t go away, they still affect us in very real ways. For instance, somebody wrongs me, and I try to forgive and forget, but then every now and again I will get mad at said person or I will snap at them for seemingly no reason. The reason for my anger is the suppressed thought that I have. Another place my suppressed thoughts come out in is my dreams, we can see that these thoughts are shown by analyzing our dreams.
Dream analyzation was mostly used by Carl Jung (young) to find hidden desires. Many dreams are incoherent, but those we remember can sometimes be meaningful. Say you have a dream that you are in a bakery talking to people and drinking coffee and eating baked goods, pretty simple dream. Lets not also pretend that you have started a new diet recently, well maybe the dream is showing your desire for baked goods you are not allowed to eat under your new diet. One big part of dream analysis is context, or things that have happened recently to you. Some aspects that are particularly dependant on context are setting and characters in your dreams. lets use my example I used for suppression. Somebody wrongs me and I try and forgive and forget. I suppress the thoughts I have and they come out occasionally in spurts of me being mad or me snapping for a second, seemingly for no reason. Perhaps I would have a dream where I fought said person, or killed them, maybe I would do something similar to them in my dream. This not only brings the suppressed feelings to light, but it also shows an unconscious desire to hurt this person in some way shape or form. Your feelings being brought to light is not a bad thing though because it gives you a chance to address them and try and get rid of them in a better way.
One way we can address negative feelings is through compassion, and realisation. As seen in The Buddha and the Terrorist by Satish Kumar the Buddha can turn a feared killer into a monk through compassion. How he does this is first by addressing the real problem, why he kills people. This can be applied to daily life too. What we can do is think of negative feelings that we have, maybe we have suppressed them, but we need to address them in good light. What we do with these feelings is that we need to see where they are really coming from, where the source is. If you can identify the source of the problem sometimes you can solve the problem itself. For instance, somebody wrongs me, and I try to forget ext. ext. I address the problem and they wronged me, but it was I who caused the cycle, say I did something that hurt them without knowing it. In that case I could make amends, or know within myself that it was originally my fault, and solve the problem with compassion towards the person who I thought wronged me.
Psychology can be a daunting thing, and sometimes a scary thing, but that is only when you are thinking about it the wrong way. The concepts can be very useful when applied to life in a modest way. Just take everything with a grain of salt, and interpret things for yourself because everything means different things to different people.
Works Cited:
Hanson, Rick. Buddha's Brain:The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. New Edition. New Harbinger Publications, 2009. Print.
Kumar, Satish. The Buddha and the Terrorist. New York NY: Workman Publishing, 2006. Print.
by
Noah
Although some of the concepts of psychology can seem abstract and out of concept, most can be found useful in aspects of daily life on a personal basis. For instance attachment to people or objects can cause suffering in your life, but that does not mean you need to become a monk. Everybody uses defense mechanisms and cognitive thinking all the time, but defence mechanisms are natural reactions to stress in our daily lives. The important part to understanding the concepts we learn about is to take everything with a grain of salt and to realise that everything is self interpretive.
When learning about psychology it is very easy to diagnose yourself as crazy or whatever bad you may be learning about, but this is about as reliable as finding out you have lung cancer from the internet. When really you probably only have a cough or at most maybe bronchitis or pneumonia. Many people think they are “OCD” when really they just have habits, or like things to be very organised. Psychology can also be helpful though in seeing things you have done wrong, and why you did them.
One thing that I do, without even realizing it is that I never seem to be able to say I did anything wrong, I never can admit fault. Usually when this happens I will place fault on to others and in my mind rationalize what I did. This is a Freudian thought distortion called projection. Projection is when you take bad feelings that you have and think that others have those. For instance if you don’t like somebody you convince yourself that they don’t like you, or if you are a liar you convince yourself that they are a liar. Essentially it is a form of scapegoating. What I do is also a form of denial because I believe I have done nothing wrong. The interesting thing about defence mechanisms is that you don’t consciously do them, your unconscious mind uses them to protect you, hence the name defence mechanisms. Now how I figure that I use these defences is because they were pointed out to me. “Noah you never own up to what you did”. The only way you can help yourself when you are told things like that is to not get defensive and deny the claims against you, but to think about them in actuality and realize that other people see you in a way you cannot see yourself.
Another defense mechanism that I notice myself using is suppression, or consciously pushing thoughts down so that I do not think about them. When bad, or traumatic things happen to you sometimes you just want to forget they ever happened, so you suppress. The problem with suppression is that the events and thoughts don’t go away, they still affect us in very real ways. For instance, somebody wrongs me, and I try to forgive and forget, but then every now and again I will get mad at said person or I will snap at them for seemingly no reason. The reason for my anger is the suppressed thought that I have. Another place my suppressed thoughts come out in is my dreams, we can see that these thoughts are shown by analyzing our dreams.
Dream analyzation was mostly used by Carl Jung (young) to find hidden desires. Many dreams are incoherent, but those we remember can sometimes be meaningful. Say you have a dream that you are in a bakery talking to people and drinking coffee and eating baked goods, pretty simple dream. Lets not also pretend that you have started a new diet recently, well maybe the dream is showing your desire for baked goods you are not allowed to eat under your new diet. One big part of dream analysis is context, or things that have happened recently to you. Some aspects that are particularly dependant on context are setting and characters in your dreams. lets use my example I used for suppression. Somebody wrongs me and I try and forgive and forget. I suppress the thoughts I have and they come out occasionally in spurts of me being mad or me snapping for a second, seemingly for no reason. Perhaps I would have a dream where I fought said person, or killed them, maybe I would do something similar to them in my dream. This not only brings the suppressed feelings to light, but it also shows an unconscious desire to hurt this person in some way shape or form. Your feelings being brought to light is not a bad thing though because it gives you a chance to address them and try and get rid of them in a better way.
One way we can address negative feelings is through compassion, and realisation. As seen in The Buddha and the Terrorist by Satish Kumar the Buddha can turn a feared killer into a monk through compassion. How he does this is first by addressing the real problem, why he kills people. This can be applied to daily life too. What we can do is think of negative feelings that we have, maybe we have suppressed them, but we need to address them in good light. What we do with these feelings is that we need to see where they are really coming from, where the source is. If you can identify the source of the problem sometimes you can solve the problem itself. For instance, somebody wrongs me, and I try to forget ext. ext. I address the problem and they wronged me, but it was I who caused the cycle, say I did something that hurt them without knowing it. In that case I could make amends, or know within myself that it was originally my fault, and solve the problem with compassion towards the person who I thought wronged me.
Psychology can be a daunting thing, and sometimes a scary thing, but that is only when you are thinking about it the wrong way. The concepts can be very useful when applied to life in a modest way. Just take everything with a grain of salt, and interpret things for yourself because everything means different things to different people.
Works Cited:
Hanson, Rick. Buddha's Brain:The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. New Edition. New Harbinger Publications, 2009. Print.
Kumar, Satish. The Buddha and the Terrorist. New York NY: Workman Publishing, 2006. Print.