David Viscott presents Emotional Resilience

Emotional Resilience Simple Truths for Dealing with the Unfinished Business of Your Past by David Viscott, M.D. (358 pp.)

The late Dr. David Viscott believed that each of us could learn to be our own therapist. He also believed that w can heal our problems very quickly, so long as we are willing to be completely honest with ourselves. This book sums up Dr. Viscott's lifework. It is a guide to dealing with your emotions, based on Viscott's experiences with thousands of patients, and his own constant inquiry into how people get better.

Here are Dr. Viscott's own words about his book, taken from his talk at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore: “This is the best thing I have ever done, and it is designed to help you. The book reads you, you don't read the book. It helps you understand your feelings, and what is happening to you at all the various stages of your life experience. It gives you a perspective that allows you to have the courage to risk being more open. It also helps you understand the people around you. It makes you more tolerant of the tough times that you're going through; it helps you see them as part of the healing process, so you can take advantage of them instead of feeling diminished. I'm very proud of this book and I think it will make your life better.”

Emotional Resilience is almost encyclopedic in it's explanation of our emotional life. At the same time, and as you might expect, it is clear and straightforward. Dr. Viscott includes many of his patients' life stories to illustrate his points. Although he died quite suddenly, Dr. Viscott left us with this gift: a brilliant and creative therapist's understanding of human emotions, and how they hinder or help our journey of self-discovery.

"Your emotional resilience depends upon your capacity to accept what happens to you without prejudice. Just because you're hurt doesn't mean you're weak, and just because you're sad, it doesn't mean you are lacking a sense of strength or identity."—David Viscott

What follows is an edited version of Dr. Viscotts’s Bodhi Tree presentation. Due to space considerations, we have had to exclude many of Dr. Viscott's stories (and jokes) and much of his lively give-and-take with the audience. However, if you find something here to help you live more fully in the present, that will be the best memorial we can offer this gifted therapist and healer.

David Viscott: We spend our lives struggling to find meaning and direction and purpose. Yet often, the only direction and purpose that we have in our lives is the organization that our anger creates for us. You know, some people don't have anything going for them except that they're angry and they have something to be angry about. That's all they have in their lives. They are totally lost, and, very often, hopeless as well.

I'm really proud of this book. The initial concept for it is old, 25 years old. I've been trying, struggling, to say something forever. If you listen to me on the radio, you'll know I've been struggling to define the ground theory of human emotion. It's been a preoccupation. I've always been trying to find out, why do people get better?

The secret of mental health is being able to tell the person who hurt you that they hurt you at the time they hurt you. Think of the economy of that! If you could do that, you wouldn't store up your feelings, and you would be free. I think all our religious philosophy, which is represented by this institution (The Bodhi Tree), all the Eastern and Western religion is wonderful. But it doesn't really mean anything until you understand why you are here.

The truth is: You are the answer. You are supposed to be seeking the question that you answer, and the answer is this: You are here to give your gift. The purpose of your life is to discover and perfect your gift.

If you think about what the world has evolved into, if people didn't give their gifts, not much would happen. You must see that your role on the planet is simply to discover your gift. And you must take responsibility for giving it, no matter what your origins were, or who your parents were, or how limited your education was, or your opportunities . . . you're still here to give your gift.

There is no other meaning in life. If you're not giving your gift, you're adopting someone else's meaning, and your own life becomes meaningless. You merely become a member of the audience. You are a religion unto yourself, and you have a truth unto yourself. What you're here to share is the experience you have of your life, honestly felt and honestly recorded.

When I was in training, I had a lot of "transference cures." Do you know what they are? You talk to someone for a session or so and they say, "Ah! My life has changed! I'm free!" My teachers called it a "flight into health," because they didn't think I - a first your resident -- could be doing meaningful therapy that changed peoples lives. But I was; because I simply told the truth as I saw it and experienced it. I was freeing people up in a way that was just natural to me. I didn't know how to be complicated! I came into psychiatry not because I wanted to, but because I found it.

I interviewed for my residency with the head of the Boston Psychoanalytic institute. I told him, "I think all psychiatrists are full of shit, and I think analysis is bullshit." I didn't know who I was talking to, because I had never heard of him. He was actually a very famous man. And he said, "Then why are you going into this?" "Well," I replied, "because I think it's going to be fun. It's fascinating." And he said, "You're accepted for the residency." I said, "Excuse me, don't you have a lot of people applying?" He laughed, "Yes, but you're going to be great."

After I finished my residency (I was still having "transference cures" all over the place), I decided to go into private practice. And at that point, I made a decision. I was trying to figure something out. I didn't know whether what I was learning was helping me, so I decided to stop reading. I had read enough all of my life. I read Freud. Freud was very interesting, but I couldn't follow him. Penis envy, what is that? I never met a woman with penis envy . . . or a man who didn't have it. I decided Freud was projecting and didn't know what he was doing. So I decided not to play this game. I decided to treat people and figure out what the hell is going on in their heads. I didn't understand, and I wanted to find out: Why are the people that I'm treating getting better?

Then I was offered a commission to write an article called, "Free yourself from the oppression of bad moods." So I asked myself, "what is a mood?" I thought about it, and I asked, "What are feelings?" And then I had one of those seminal thoughts that only happen about once in your lifetime. I realized that the name we give to pain depends on when the pain occurs. Pain in the future is anxiety; pain in the present is hurt; and pain in the past is anger. I thought about that for a minute and sat down, devastated and weak in the knees, and said, "Oh my God, that's a new thought." It linked together everything I knew about therapy. It made therapy easier.

Now these feelings -- anxiety, hurt, and anger -- are common in all mammals, and all serve a purpose. The purpose of anxiety is to keep you out of danger. The purpose of hurt is to limit your contact with something: "Ouch! That pot is hot! That hurt!" The purpose of anger is to keep you at a greater distance, to energize you: "Don't put a hot pot on the stove and not tell me! What a thing to do!" Everyone understands the anger that is related to a hurt. You just wait until the pain is past, and once it feels better, you are forgiven. Being forgiven is being told that the hurt has stopped. But this is the place where it all gets screwed up.

I have a Cocker Spaniel. They are wonderful dogs, almost human, you know. If I accidentally step on my dog's paw . . . "Oh, no!" I lift his face and give him a kiss and put out his favorite food for him. Does the dog say, "Don't try to buy me off with food! You stepped on my paw! I weigh 22 pounds, you weigh God knows what, and it was all on one foot. I'm not forgiving you, what the hell do you think you were doing?" The dog doesn't think like that. He just goes; "FOOD, ME," and dives into it. But as people, there is something wrong with our heads. We don't stay in the moment, we stay in the past as well. Soon, we're looking for revenge and all manner of horrible things, even with the people we love. We have a lot of screwed up things going in our mind.

Anger is stored up in the human condition. I call that emotional debt. I think it is the most serious condition of humankind. It is what undermines your ability to be flexible, or resilient, because you become top heavy with emotion. Then those old feelings are easily triggered. It is not a good condition to be in, but unfortunately, emotional debt is the state in which most of us live.

All these old feelings and memories are living in you, and they set you up for an episode of what I call “toxic nostalgia”. Toxic nostalgia is the sudden triggering of a feeling that has been locked in place, so that it superimposes itself on the present. It causes the present to be seen in an entirely different, distorted context. When you have a toxic nostalgia episode, some unresolved pain is asking to be settled. At the same time, this toxic nostalgia episode also an opportunity for you to heal.

Here are the components of toxic nostalgia. They are the same, whether you're having an anxiety attack, a sudden decompensation of emotions, or you 're becoming controlling and rigid. The first is the unresolved pain that you have not completely dealt with. Now the toxic nostalgia episode allows you to get on with the work of healing. It's a gift, so embrace it, be at peace, tolerate the pain. You can deal with it.

The second thing is, as the pain is suddenly released, it is released from something. Your defenses have been holding the pain in place. And they are the same defenses that operated at the moment the pain occurred.

The third critical thing is perspective. This is why you go crazy. Since most of the injuries occurred when you were younger, in the present you have a more childish perspective. As a child, you don't feel confident about yourself, you feel overwhelmed. You feel powerless and helpless in the world. So, this old, toxic nostalgia feeling of defenselessness and helplessness is not a good place to be.

The other thing that happens is that this is old anger, anger that has never been expressed, so it is stored. It wants to be expressed, but you direct it inward, and then it becomes guilt. The purpose of anxiety is to protect, the purpose of hurt is to limit the damage, and the purpose of anger is to give some action and energy to the process. What is the purpose of guilt? There is none. Guilt is the mind's capacity to internalize the anger and deal with it by sending you guilt messages: You are not lovable, worthy, good, smart, strong, right or attractive . . . and you're a failure. These are contrary to the messages you are supposed to learn as you grow up and develop.

When you have the toxic nostalgia experience, the old loss, the defensiveness, the posture of being a child again, and the guilt message all come up at once. You think bad thoughts about yourself.

But there is one other point, which is the most important: You are not the way you were when the original incident happened. No matter what pain you suffered in your life, no matter how severe it was, or how abused or cheated or rejected you were, you are in better shape now then you were then. You're better now. That is the healing perspective that you need to acquire, so you can tolerate visiting this old pain, and then heal. So please, tell yourself, “I'm better now”.

You are better now. That's the secret of toxic nostalgia: attaining the position of being healed and letting go. And letting go means saying "I'm better now" and releasing the early part of your life. That's also what forgiving is; it is destroying the evidence that you could have used to prove your case against the person who offended you. You have to be willing to destroy the evidence and let the other person have their day. The reason you keep pain alive is to justify your anger. If you didn't have a reason for being angry, you would be an evil person. So therefore, you end up feeling self-pity, undermining the good in your life, and removing yourself from passion in order to show how damaged you are. What a hollow victory, and what a silly thing to do.

Question: Does there always have to be hurt, to lead to anger?

David Viscott: Yes. People who don't express hurt think it's safer to be angry. Here is an example. Often, people who don't express hurt are controlling people. What they do is to express anger, but they don't express anger the same way as other people. The express anger by being punitive. They don't say, "I was upset about what you did, I was hurt, I was worried," they say, "That's it, you're in trouble now!" Why are they so angry? Because they were hurt. Can they admit it? No, they are just going to teach you a lesson. And that is that. If you say "I really love you" to them, these are the same people who say "Right back at you!" or "Ditto."

Question: What about shame?

David Viscott: What about shame? Shame versus guilt? Good point. There is a big difference. Guilt is the anger that has been mobilized over the hurt. Shame is the belief that you were bad for being angry. Shame comes from a family that doesn't allow you to express your feelings openly. It's not what happened to you that determines how you turn out, but how free you were in being permitted to express your feelings. Therefore, if you had a family that compressed your feelings and did not permit any expression of hurt -- since it would mean admitting that something was wrong -- then the hurt is internalized as anger. The anger builds. Then you say, "Gee, I must be bad for having this feeling," and you feel shame. The reason people feel shame in alcoholic families is that everybody knows something is wrong, but no one admits what it is. You're not allowed to speak of the hurt, which gets internalized as anger, and you feel, "It must be me." You feel somehow that you are the one who is never good enough, and must make things better.

We are all on a journey, which no one else has ever taken. You want to emulate other people, but you cannot. You can only seek what they have sought. But it has to be of you. No teaching, no plan, and no sense of direction is going to be right for you. In the end you have to discard everything and be wholly yourself. It doesn't mean that you are a rebel, but it means that you stop holding on to things merely because they comfort you. The only comfort you know is that you've done what you are here to do. You are the answer. You must seek the question you answer yourself. Your life has meaning only in so far is it answers your question. When you really find yourself, it will be right there in front of your eyes, and it will have been obvious all along.

Your emotional resilience depends upon you capacity to accept what happens to you without prejudice. Just because you're hurt doesn't mean you're weak, and just because you're sad, it doesn't mean you are lacking a sense of strength or identity. Be willing to accept your course in this life as a gift at all times. Nothing more is expected of you and nothing less will suffice to make you happy. Thank you for having me tonight.