Squaring Circles, Psychologically Speaking

 

How does one square a circle at the best of times? Psychology, spirituality, emotions can so easily conspire to make us go round in circles when trying to analyse ourselves, let alone help us break an inhibiting and constraining emotional pattern. When mathematicians have argued from their standpoint on how it might be done and fallen out over it, it can be no surprise that to square a vicious circle of emotional behaviour can challenge a psychologist or counsellor even more. Yet I believe in large measure it can be achieved.

We are each a bearer of our own behavioural patterning, much of it established unwittingly or ignorantly in our childhood and if uncorrected, it is then borne by us into and onwards through our adult lives. Evidence of it, when it resurfaces, can even puzzle or shock the bearer when he or she experiences it.

Any ten things can leave any one of us unmoved, untroubled, undisturbed. Yet an eleventh can trigger in us unaccountable hurt, anger, fear, depression or a multitude of other emotional responses. Try this exercise in a group and in the unlikely event that two participants apparently will experience a similar response to a stimulus, analysis will soon show that the detail of each person’s response is actually fundamentally different.

Questioning any person experiencing the unusual response can often seem to set in train an increasing circle of a stimulus leading to an unaccountably disturbed reaction to it, then to more emotional contemplation of the stimulus, which in turn heightens the disturbed reaction still more, which further accentuates the effect of the stimulus and so on, round and round.

Sometimes if you try to break the circle and ask the person experiencing the response if they can recall any link back to its origin, they can. But very often they cannot. It can reside in the dimmest part of our childhood only to be identified after detailed personal reflection or professional help.  Without that, such emotional patterns remain circular and unresolved, perpetually crippling our self-esteem, self-confidence and sense of self-worth. More weird, is that we are often ignorant of their presence within us.

If we are to try to square any of these emotionally driven circles, to make them less wearing, draining, inhibiting for ourselves – and certainly less disorientating for our partners and friends caught up in this process, then first we really need to want to address the issue or issues. Without that declared choice being made, no amount of self-reflection and will power will change anything permanently.

However with that desire present in us, we will be motivated to find the cause, analyse it, understand it, and then begin to modify its impact on our behaviour.

In conclusion, I have to say three things though.

First, just as the notion of squaring circles emotionally is difficult to grasp, so is it difficult in most cases to achieve more than a substantial moderation of the adverse effect of a behavioural pattern we have borne for years. Yet I am convinced that much can be done, even if it cannot be entirely eradicated.

Second, the more I have studied in terms of the psychology involved, the more of a mistake I believe we make about what each of us actually is as a person. Most will see our obvious and maybe exaggerated response to certain things as evidence of what inherently we are as a person. I now don’t! I have joined the school of thought that says these reactions are not what we really are and they cloud the picture of what we truly are. These apparent personality traits are no more, nor less than patterned responses adopted to try to handle emotional challenges which were beyond us at the time.

And to those who say, ‘Ah! But it runs in his or her family! The father or the mother was the same!’ I would ask this: ’Yes, so the parent may have been, but couldn’t the child have copied the behaviour rather than inherited it?

Third and last, I suspect that until further cognitive research is completed, squaring circles will be as difficult for the psychologists to master as it is for mathematicians to crack completely!

Notes From The Author:

Sir Gerry Neale recommends those needing help with constructive introspection read a book by  Tim Laurence called ‘You Can Change Your Life: A future Different from Your Past With the Hoffman Process.’

Sir Gerry is a mentor, an artist and an author of a cognitive based novel called “Squaring Circles: From The Dark Into The Light.’ More information can be obtained from www.squaringcircles.co.uk or by scrolling down the publishers page at www.pearlpress.co.uk to find the book cover.