Emotions: How to Unlock Your Healthier, More Authentic World

By Jack G. Rudolph, LPC

Embark on a captivating journey into the fascinating world of emotions with therapist Jack G. Rudolph LPC in "Emotions: Unlocking Your Healthier, Authentic World." This thought-provoking and insightful book offers a comprehensive understanding of emotions and feelings, providing readers with valuable insights from an experienced therapist.

 

Rudolph expertly explores various facets of the human experience, delving into relationships, childhood development, generational effects, and cultural influences. By weaving together scholarly research, sociological and biological studies, and real-life examples, the author sheds light on the intricate interplay between emotions and our daily lives.

 

Fearlessly tackling the impact of emotions on the world of politics, Rudolph illuminates their profound influence. Furthermore, the book offers relatable examples and practical suggestions for managing emotions, serving as a transformative guide towards leading a healthier and more authentic life.

 

Unlock the power of your emotions and embark on a transformative journey of self-discovery with "Emotions: Unlocking Your Healthier, Authentic World" by Jack G. Rudolph LPC. Immerse yourself in this captivating world today and gain valuable techniques to manage your emotional well-being.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andre J. McDonald C.Ht.
• Release date: Nov 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215024713

Jack G. Rudolph, LPC

In the heart of the therapy world, there's a man named Jack G. Rudolph, an Licenced Professional Counselor, whose journey spans over 30 years.With a heart brimming with compassion and a relentless dedication to guiding individuals towards positive life changes, Jack's story is one of unwavering commitment to humanity. He doesn't see his clients as mere cases; he embraces a client-centered approach, recognizing the significance of understanding the unique story that each person carries. In this world of ever-evolving therapy, Jack's belief in continuous learning and growth knows no bounds. He thrives on the inspiration drawn from the very people he aims to assist. Jack's toolkit is as diverse as the clients he serves. Over the years, he has mastered various therapeutic techniques, each a potent tool in his practice.With every passing day, he seeks to refine his skills, staying at the forefront of therapeutic approaches to better aid those on their transformative journeys. Within his arsenal of skills are the keys to unlocking healthier, more authentic lives. Whether it's family therapy, group therapy, psychotherapy, or any of the numerous skills he has honed, Jack's mission is clear: to make a profound difference in the lives of his clients. Behind this seasoned therapist's journey are two significant milestones. Thefirst, aMaster of Science (MS) inGuidance and Counseling from the University ofWisconsin - Whitewater, earned between 1990 and 1993. The second, a Bachelor's degree in Special Education and Teaching from the University of Wyoming, achieved between 1980 and 1986. These academic achievements serve as the foundation upon which Jack's remarkable career is built. Jack's story is one of passion, dedication, and an unwavering commitment to helping individuals find their path to well-being.He stands as a testament to the transformative power of therapy, and his journey is far from over as he continues to evolve personally and professionally to be the best guide he can be on the road to health and authenticity.

Book preview

Chapter 1 - INTRODUCTION

I'm a therapist, for Christ’s sake, I told myself as I looked at the wooden platform that led off the side of the cliff. It's safe. Thousands of people have walked on it and haven't fallen through. There's people on it right now. There's nothing to fear. But I felt the fear seeping into my body anyway. I put my foot on the first board. With each step forward my anxiety increased. I was on the verge of panic when I finally made it within a couple of feet to the fence at the edge of the platform. I bent forward until I was able to grasp the metal railing. This brought the anxiety down a notch or two, but it was still uncomfortably high. I slowly willed my feet forward, first the right, then the left. I was almost standing upright now like a normal person would do while enjoying the view at a scenic overlook, but I wasn't enjoying it and my words of reason weren't helping. My fear wouldn't listen to them. There’s no way you can fall over the edge with this fence here. I heard my mind say as my body began rushing to the safety of the solid ground. Wait, we're not done with the experiment, I told my body but it wouldn't listen. If we wait long enough the fear will subside. It's called exposure therapy. But the body didn't give a damn about exposure therapy, for it holds the emotions. It was bound and determined to get off the platform and, as usual, it got its way.

Back in the car my body and those emotions inside it still wouldn’t be quiet. They started communicating in the way emotions do, calling me a failure. You’re the ones who forced me off the platform and now you want to bitch? Shut up! I told them. Of course, they didn't do that. They quietly pouted, like emotions often do, all the way to the motel.

Once in a while, I get this certain view of humanity. I see us all as children pretending to be adults. Our actual children think that we are so we fail them. Wait a minute, Mister, not all of us do, just the drug addicts and abusive parents. You’re right, there’s a distinction. Those two groups are outwardly having problems controlling their emotions in obvious ways; but unless we’re totally self-actualized, which few if any of us are, in a sense, we’re still children. In Christianity God is referred to as the Father, and his followers refer to themselves as children of God. We know we have limitations. I think the greatest gift we can give our children is to be humble enough to let them know that. Otherwise, when things go wrong, if they think we’re perfect, they’ll always assume it must be their fault, for if we’re perfect it couldn’t be ours.

We go around all day being adults, doing adult things, showing how we’re mature and responsible, but inside we don’t necessarily feel that way. We try hard not to show it as we interact with others doing the same. We play a game of hide the emotions. One could argue, We can’t go around showing and expressing our feelings all day. As adults, we have things to do to keep society going. I can’t vent at my annoying co-worker when I’m supposed to be getting a report done, or cry in the kitchen when customers at my restaurant expect their food. Plus, what if the emotions boil over and all hell ensues? Then we, and possibly others, are going to lose control. This leaves us in a pickle. Boiling over implies the emotions have been building up, that we have been suppressing them, and that releasing them is going to be like a geyser. What if we developed a plan so they’re not suppressed? Maybe that would diminish the invisible and mute undercurrent of emotions in human interactions, leading the way to more honest communication between people, but to do that, we first have to be honest with ourselves.

For those who say this is silly, that learning to deal with emotions is only for children and the weak, look at your greatest fears and see if you can will yourself to overcome them. Call your father out for always being so critical. Let him know how much it hurts. Tell your wife you had an affair. Look at the photos of your deceased parents who you never grieved. Call your old friend you had a falling out with years ago. Tell your adult child you're consumed with guilt over not being a better mother. Admit to yourself and others when you make a mistake.

If not addressed, emotions will control our lives in some form or another. They will limit what we do in life and cause a rift between who we are and who we want to be. In this book, I will make the case that emotions not acknowledged and dealt with bring unnecessary pain into the world.

Between 1941 and 1945, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party, along with outside collaborators, exterminated six million Jews (1). For a span of over a decade, the Sudanese Government wounded, displaced, tortured, raped, and murdered over three million people (2). Stephen Paddock, through the window of his hotel room in Las Vegas, gunned down fifty-eight people, and injured over eight hundred, attending a country music festival (3). On a summer day in Iowa, Karen Duncan intentionally drove a pickup truck, with her three young children in the back, into the Missouri River, drowning them and herself inside (4). Each year there are approximately 700,000 suicides globally (5).

Don't get me wrong. I'm not demonizing emotions. They can lead to great acts of kindness also. Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi Party, at a high personal risk to himself, saved over one thousand Jews from the concentration camps. He did this by convincing German authorities he needed them at his enamelware factory (6). Harriet Tubman, who herself had escaped slavery, later helped free approximately seventy slaves through the Underground Railroad - a network of routes and safe houses established by individuals concerned about the welfare of other human beings (7). During World War I, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day of 1914, German and British soldiers engaged in an unsanctioned truce - exchanging gifts and singing carols together (8). At Sargent Daniel Price's funeral in Holland, Michigan on August 12th, 2013, protestors from the Westboro Baptist Church, who hold the deranged belief that military deaths are God’s punishment for America’s sin of accepting homosexuality, had come to protest. A large group made a human shield around his family, allowing them to grieve without being harassed (9). During the winter of 2012, at Time Square in New York City, officer Lawrence DePrimo decided to purchase boots and socks for a homeless person. He put them on the man’s cold feet (10).

The aforementioned acts of extreme cruelty and kindness were motivated by emotions. Yes, all of the acts mentioned above required thinking to carry out but what led to such thoughts? Neuroscientists tell us the brain can be divided into three parts: the reptilian, the limbic, and the neocortex. The actual brain is more complicated. This simplification is used to make the concept understandable and applicable. 

The reptilian controls automatic responses. The limbic holds the amygdala, where strong emotions are processed. Perhaps the most deadly part is the neocortex. It’s the newest and most evolved part of the brain. It’s where we, for better or worse, acquire knowledge and understanding - or possibly misunderstanding. It’s where we make judgments about the world, about ourselves, and about others. The three parts of the brain interact with each other. Thus, our emotions influence our reasoning. It explains why at a Green Bay Packers vs Chicago Bears football game, the referee's call of holding against the Bears seems right to those living in Wisconsin but not to those living in Illinois. If there is one actual reality, and one event that occurred, why are there such differences of opinion? Karen Duncan driving herself and her three children into the water seems stupid or evil to most everyone else, but she did it. Was it really out of stupidity or evil? Was she really so dumb she didn’t know she and her children would die? It took functions of the neocortex to complete the unhinged act but surely her reasoning had been distorted by her emotions.

Thanks to our evolved brains we can build a bomb powerful enough to kill millions of people. But that  would seem to go against our best interests, not be reasonable, so we must be safe from that happening. I think that would be true if not for our limbic system. Besides, why did we build the bomb in the first place? There have been countless wars throughout our history. Are they really reasonable?

The Israeli and Palestinian conflict has been going on for seventy years, leaving both sides filled with fear and hate. It’s not reasonable. In couples counseling if there are circular disagreements, ongoing conflicts bringing pain to both people, a main idea is to go deeper, to get to the underlying emotions, to address and accept the presence of them. It seems easy enough but like with much of what will be written in this book, in the words of the Dali lama in the Art of Happiness, It’s simple but it's hard. (11)

Our neocortex has helped us do extraordinary things. But without emotional intelligence, an understanding of how our reasoning and behaviors are influenced - at times controlled - by our emotions; it can also lead to our demise. Besides being able to build weapons of mass destruction, our technological advances have added to global warming and we seem unwilling to seriously address it, putting our children and grandchildren in jeopardy. Is that reasonable?

Oops, I might have just lost some readers who are skeptical of man-made global warming, but wait, don't go. If you would, allow yourself to feel the uncomfortable emotions of reading something you believe to be false. It's okay. It doesn't mean you believe it for reading it. Surely there are things in here where we’ll agree. It's not a threat for you to continue reading even if your amygdala is telling you it is. Our brains will sound the fire alarm at times when there is no fire.

I realize up to this point, I’ve demonized emotions more than I’ve advocated for them. But would life really be worth living without them? Would it have any meaning? Emotions are like children, who are also stressful but give purpose to life; and like children, they need to be tended to and understood. Think of the effort put in by a parent to help soothe a baby, calm it, so he or she can be still and go to sleep.

I also realize that writing a book, or reading it, is mainly exercising the neocortex - the reasoning part of the brain and not the emotional part. It’s the same dilemma with talk therapy. How do we tap into the more primitive parts of the brain, the emotional and autonomic responses, through words? It’s simple but it’s hard. It’s simple because it doesn’t require huge demands on the neocortex. It does require awareness of how the three parts of the brain interact within our skulls. This requires a willingness to view things differently and a courageous honesty to do so.

I also want to make it clear that I don’t think human nature is getting worse. In fact, there are compelling arguments that it’s getting better. The problem is, how long can we go on without acknowledging that the human brain was not built for modern society but rather for survival in a hunter and gatherer period of our history? How long can we go on without taking a more serious look at how emotions cloud our judgments?

People often come to counseling when their old ways of getting by no longer work. This is due to life changes such as getting married, getting divorced, getting sick, leaving home, the death of a loved one, etc... . A crisis often propels them into a therapist's office. Up to that point, they just get by living on autopilot, with all their flaws and neurosis. But they realize they need to adapt. They need to become more self aware. As advances in technology increase we may be reaching that crisis point. It might be time for humanity to take a seat on the couch and begin its therapy session.

My plan is to keep this book focused on how emotions affect humankind and why they need to be addressed. Though I touched on it, I’m not going to go deep into the neuroscience of emotions. Admittedly, that’s partially because I can’t. I will barely mention the role mood altering substances play, but that is a good issue and should be addressed. I also am not going to delve deep into cultural, religious, and socioeconomic influences on emotions. It's best to leave that for someone more qualified. My goal is to make a convincing case that the study of emotions alone is important. Some do study them, but I believe they are not taken as seriously or given the due diligence they deserve. In fact, it seems there is a prevalent belief that looking at emotions is silly and on a lower level than analytical approaches.

There’s a saying that’s been making its way around the internet, Science doesn't give a damn about your feelings. Perhaps it should if it wants to be inclusive. Gabor Mate, a physician and author, in his book, The Myth of Normal (12), makes a compelling case regarding the role emotions play in various medical diseases and their interconnection to the body. More physicians are dispelling the myth of the separation between the study of human behavior and emotions, soft science, and the medical field, hard science.

It seems this hesitancy to study emotions is partly due to a fear of them, that talking about them is uncomfortable. This makes for a weird scenario since fear is itself an emotion, thus the emotion of fear suppresses the other emotions. That would make sense because fear was paramount to our survival in the early days of humanity. Love was also important, for even though we were in constant competition with each other, we also needed each other to survive. Love involves a desire for acceptance, and maybe that’s why fear has won out in this case. We must have learned that expressing our emotions can cause conflict with others, thus putting us at risk of being ostracized.

Chapter 2 - ME vs ME

What is an emotion? For sure, it’s an internal feeling but what’s the difference between a feeling and an emotion? Rachel Allyn puts it this way: Despite the words being used interchangeably, emotions and feelings are actually two different but connected phenomena. Emotions originate as sensations in the body. Feelings are influenced by our emotions but are generated from our mental thoughts. (1)  Thus, through the lizard brain we feel raw emotions in our body, such as arousal and fear, which directly affects our autonomic responses - increased heart beat, shallow and rapid breathing, sweating, muscles becoming tense. After all, the Lizard Brain is the part closest to our body. To keep it straight for me, since I'm using feel as a verb and feelings as a generic noun, I'm going to use raw emotions to describe emotions and complex emotions to describe feelings.

Complex emotions are mainly in the limbic system: love, contentment, resentments, restlessness, and motivation. This is oversimplified but I believe anger is mainly in the limbic system, and to a lesser degree, fear can be there also.

Raw anger can zap us. Have you ever banged your head or stubbed your toe and immediately felt a jolt of anger? That seems to be more primitive. But have you ever watched someone act like a pompous ass and sat back and stewed over it? That anger is interacting with your thoughts and belief system. It doesn't feel like an automatic response. Anger that marinates becomes resentments, which affect our thoughts and views of the world and the people in it.

Have you ever been startled by a loud noise in the dark? That fear seems primitive. I have an example of a primitive surge of energy that can be interpreted as fear or inspiration. In high school I ran the mile and two mile. Every night before a race I would begin to experience fear. It would gradually build until the starting gun was fired and the race had begun. One day after practice a sprinter was talking to me. He talked about this surge of energy he would