The Calculus of Emotion
Social Identity
Imagine we live in a special society that values only one quality: intelligence. In this society, people strive to survive by identifying themselves based on how intelligent they perceive themselves to be in comparison to the collective sense. Let’s say John is a member of this society. He sees himself as moderately intelligent and, therefore, feels quite secure living in this society.
In general, the Self-Identified Social Identity (I) of a person can be viewed as a vector, that change over time, in a space of n qualities Q1, Q2, …, Qn. Examples of these qualities include success, compassion, intelligence, friendliness, and so on. Typically, these are the attributes we want to embody to show to other people that we are worthy to be in the society.
As John grows up in society, he learns to adapt his identity to social preferences. For example, John notices that people treat him well when he shows intelligence (Q1) and compassion (Q2). However, he feels that people value Q1 more than Q2.
Vital Perspective
One day, John went to school and faced the reality that he is not as intelligent as others. For example, he did not get a good grade, or perhaps a teacher inadvertently made him feel stupid, causing him to doubt his social worth. This situation created a very first emotion in him: ambition or inadequacy, depending on whether he perceived the situation positively or negatively. This gave rise to another identity, toward which John felt the need to improve himself in order to survive, known as the Vital Perspective (V). The intensity of the emotion determine the magnitude of this identity.
Emotional Resolution
Improvement usually takes effort and time and is not always feasible. During this period, John may experience emotional distress, especially if his vital perspective makes him feel overly inadequate and rejected by society. John has four solutions to deal with this emotional distress:
- Swallow the pain and keep improving: This process takes time, and John has to endure the emotional distress until he succeeds in updating his identity. The distress will lessen as he gets closer to his vital perspective.
- Let go the vital perspective: John can reflect and find proof that his vital perspective is overly aggressive, reducing its magnitude closer to his self-identified identity. During this process, John will have to embrace the emotional distress until the two identities become one.
- Avoid or suppress the distress: John can distract his attention with other activities or try to override the shame by forcefully thinking of something else that causes other emotions of higher intensity. This is the quickest solution to remove the emotional distress and continue living as if nothing happened. However, it comes at a cost. The distress is not removed; it is merely bandaged by an emotional bias, meant to be temporary. It is a loan that John will eventually have to repay.
- Deny: John can use other means to compensate for his perceived inadequacy without admitting it. Instead of finding sustainable improvment, he might burn himself out by skipping sleep and overworking, or constantly seeking indirect proof to show others that he is not inadequate.
Demon Identity
If John chooses to deny his inadequacy, he creates a Demon Identity (D) within himself as a coping mechanism to maintain his pride. However, he does not realize that this comes at the cost of hidden self toxic shame or self-denial, which can ruin his entire life in the future.
Shame, Criticism and Hypersensitivity
As John continues to feed the demon, he develops identity dissonance or self-doubt about his identity. He devalues his original identity (I) and sees it as a “pig.” His identity bounces between the demon and the pig. Gradually, he becomes hypersensitive to any criticism that might reveal the inadequate self he tries to deny.
Criticism means other people are telling John how his identity is perceived by society. Since John lacks confidence about his true identity, he is easily affected by how people see him. He takes any feedback about himself and maps it to another identity in his mind, which we’ll call the Critical Identity (X).
The emergence of this identity creates emotional pain for John in two dimensions.
- The first is the pain of feeling inadequate, stemming from the gap between his pig identity (I) and the critical identity (X).
- The second is the “shame” that arises from the gap between the critical identity (X) and the demon (D). This kind of pain is well-known as one of the main root causes of suffering. Our automatic double interpretation, or emotional reasoning, causes us to assign overly intense emotional meaning to situations that would otherwise be only mildly distressing or even meaningless.
Conclusion
The variety of emotional pains we face in life serves as a mechanism for adapting our identity to align with social preferences. We suffer and fail to adapt to social feedback because we rely on the demon to maintain instant pride, running away from admitting our inadequacies.
To end this suffering, the first step is to accept the inadequate identity within us and rediscover the true self that we have long rejected. We need to return to the point in the past where we drifted off track and start from there. Let’s make it right this time by using the proper emotional resolution methods. There is no need to rush.
Accepting inadequacies is the starting point for genuine improvement.
