How Do You Really, Really Feel?

Regrettably, emotion has become the order of the day. It is the latest and greatest banality from our therapy culture.

The old idea, made familiar by the Spice Girls, that you should “tell me what you want, what you really, really want,” has yielded to the more emotional-friendly slogan: what do you really, really feel. 

The truth is, if your pretentious efforts at theorizing produce concepts that feel like pop slogans, you are doing something wrong.

You might consider that the new ethos is advising us to tell other people what we really, really feel, but, in truth, in the hands of Harvard Business School professor Arthur Brooks and famed celebrity Oprah Winfrey, it is more about journaling our feelings, the better to get a grip, than on telling anyone what we feel.

Considering that Harvard University has recently hired failed mayors like Bill deBlasio and Laurie Lightweight, we take its appointments skeptically. We maintain the greatest respect for Oprah Winfrey, who has accomplished great things, but she is neither a philosopher nor a psychologist, so we do not grant her great credence on the subject of emotion.

As for the larger question, I have already raised it in my book, The Last Psychoanalyst. There I asked: if you want to get in touch with your feelings, where do you put your hands.

The authors of a new book and a Wall Street Journal op-ed will tell you to write it all down, in a journal. Presumably, that will save you from the indignity we read about in the book of Proverbs: “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

Of course, it all boils down to more, better therapy. This rather shopworn theory suggests that we should get a grip on our feelings, so that they do not control our behavior.

The authors even have a fancy term for this activity, metacognition:

Metacognition (which technically means “thinking about thinking”) is the act of experiencing your emotions consciously, separating them from your behavior, and refusing to be controlled by them. Metacognition begins with understanding that emotions are signals to your conscious brain that something is going on that requires your attention and action. That’s all they are. Your conscious brain, if you choose to use it, gets to decide how you will respond to them.

If you did not know what to do before you wrote down your feelings, you are probably not going to know what to do after. If you are playing chess, your actions will depend on your analysis of the situation at hand, the possible moves, and the possible countermoves.

Introspection will get you nowhere. Feelings do not have moves or actions attached to them. When you are involved in a complex negotiation, for example, your ability to negotiate will depend on your command of the material and your experience negotiating. You cannot use a shortcut, by writing your feelings in a journal, and expect that it will lead you to the most constructive and productive action.

It gets worse. 

Emotion does not tell you what to do and what not to do. Worse yet, the more you wallow in your emotions the more likely it is that you will forget who you are.

No one identifies you by your emotions. No one recognizes or acknowledges you for who you are because they feel your feelings, empathetically. You do not become who you are because you feel your feelings.

Your emotions do not define you. Your name tells people who you are. People recognize you by your face, your roles in society and the duties that attend to those roles. An ethic that promotes filial piety defines you as a member of a family and a child of parents. It also prescribes certain actions that you must perform. You do them by force of habit, not because you have been journaling your emotions about your parents.

Getting in touch with your feelings will simply alienate you. You may feel mad, bad, glad or sad, but other people will still see you as Percival or Melissa. You will have or lose face, have or lose reputation, not as a function of your ability to write down your feelings, but as a function of your ability to act honorably and ethically.

For example, you either keep your word or you do not. You either show up on time or you do not. You fulfill these social duties because you are obliged to do so, and because you have made them into good habits.

You might spend half the afternoon journaling your emotions about how you would rather not show up for your brunch appointment. The more you do so the more you are rationalizing dereliction.

Reducing this all to an emotional soup is clever and even seductive. It does not really help you to take action in the world. If you want to know what to do in difficult situations, you need to know the nature of the game, the players, the rules, the desired outcome and so on. You will learn nothing about any of them by journaling your feelings, or even by pretending to be less emotional. 

The authors suggest that you reflect on your anger as though it were happening to someone else. You might or might not have a reason to feel angry, but this journaling exercise will not tell you what to do about it. 

Similarly, if you are feeling scared or anxious or afraid, the chances are good that you are facing a threat. You might decide that the threat is real or unreal, that it is more or less dangerous, but what happens if it requires immediate action.

You might not have time to write it all down in your journal. And besides, even if you manage to numb yourself to the danger, that does not mean that the danger has gone away. It means that you have retreated into your soul, the better to feel your feelings and to imagine that you have undergone the proper therapy.