Theoretical aside

The serious mental ill health conditions to which Emotional Chaos may contribute (severe depression, bipolar disorder, paranoid thoughts, and psychotic states) all include delusional beliefs, false beliefs that are held in the face of contrary evidence. There can be grandiose false beliefs, but commonly they may include fears of oppression. It is a fundamental claim of Emotional Chaos Theory that self-beliefs, and then beliefs about the world, arise out of patterns of emotions, which themselves arise out of movement within attachments tugging on our values. Thoughts summarise, describe and arise out of, or compensate against, those background self-beliefs.

Emotional patterns are relationally driven, not having an existence in and of themselves (as the Theravada Buddhists say). They are preparation states, but people may not have named what they are preparing for. People reflectively try to understand their preparation states (dependent arising of thought), and it is this process that generates the sense of ‘I’ in a ‘Me-and-You’ context of adjustment that is festooned with ideas and illusions.

‘Me-and-You’ is a relational context for thought; sameness and otherness make a continuum within it. Connection (attachment) is a relative concept only if there are at least three independently self-organising continuous-creations in the same environment that interact (or interfere!) with each other. This allows one to observe the relation between the other two, and to compare this with its own movements in connection to each of them.

Three independently self-organising creatures interacting in the same environment creates sufficient unpredictability and variability for chaos. That’s Life! Higher order organisation emerges out of this chaos when each self-organising creature is sensitive to and learns from (adapts and changes its future responses to) the feedback from its environmental attachments with the others. That's Love!

An example of ‘higher order’ is consciousness. In consciousness, memory or ‘visualisation’ gives the ‘person’ a character with a choice of responses to a perceived risk of loss in its attachments. This higher order identity develops a life of its own ‘above’ that of the environment in which, for example, loss is perceived. That is not necessarily to say the conscious mind has existence in and of itself, but the choices that are its hallmark do feed unpredictably back onto the functioning of each creature’s inner parts in a shared environment. For example, the choice in Anger to exert effort to a purpose (whether clearly defined or not) moves muscles, heart rate, blood circulation, sugar reserves, and so on in a very different way to the withdrawal that accompanies self-questioning in a Guilt preparation frame.

Habitual whirlpools of emotion (described by Emotional Logic) seem to over-power that choice. Fleeting whirlpools of emotion remove the consistent framework needed to make the choices. Both affect that person’s sense of identity.

Therefore, understanding the patterns of emotion that drive all this can rapidly feed back into a renewed sense of identity, self-respect, empathy and capacity to make choices.

Between absurdity and mystery

To re-organise life, having let go of an unhelpful way of organising chaos, there are basically three ways in which to explore focusing your attention on new possibilities:

You can look at physical aspects of life (such as body-fitness, home-making, gardening, cooking, crafts, and so on.)

You can look at psychological aspects of life (such as learning new subjects or skills, changing habits, altering your priorities, developing relaxation-prayer-meditation, and so on.)

You can look at social aspects of life (such as choosing to spend more time with certain people, joining clubs or societies, resolving difficulties with some people, commiting time to charitable activity with others, and so on.)

Each of these can be pushed and explored to an extreme, where they are no longer satisfying something in your inmost being. There is a longing in most people for inner integration balanced with a sense of true belonging with other people. So having pushed any area of exploration to a limit of absurdity, for example, physcial body-building, the time  comes to re-integrate what you have discovered with the way life looks from the other two perspectives, in this example the mental and social aspects.

THAT PROCESS OF RE-INTEGRATION CAN LEAD once again TO EMOTIONAL CHAOS! Certain things may not fit! Choices and priorities need to be re-made, relationships re-valued, other physical aspects of life re-assessed. The resulting mixture of ideas, values and relationsips is UNPREDICTABLE, but it might be good! There is a certain MYSTERY about what may emerge from this re-integration. It is true personal development. It is, in the terms of Emotional Chaos Theory, the spiritual dimension to personal life.

There is no need to postulate a non-material life force. That is not what is meant by 'spirit' in Emotional Logic or Emotional Chaos Theory. I'll write more on this later. The point to be made here is this: Suspended somewhere between mystery and absurdity, we each are trying to make sense of our lived experience, and that process of making sense is deeply emotional becuase emotion is our personal energy on the move to make adjustments in life.

E-motion = energy in motion.

In emotional Chaos Theory terms, personal energy emerges within, not from some external impersonal force, but rather by joining-into organised patterns of living. It is synergy.

Safely re-engaging with chaos when stuck in a blind alley

Most people don't like living in chaos, but they may get stuck with a habit of organising it. The fear of more chaos makes us put up with difficult or unpleasant situations.

So... the toolkit and mental structure of Emotional Logic provide the insights and understanding needed to help people slip safely back towards chaos, and to float around a bit there with less distress and more unpredictability while waiting for some fresh feedback to re-order life in a new way. 

It's like the stage before life-coaching. It gets people to map the chaos and unhelpful simplifications that have trapped them. Then the goal-setting becomes more realistic, and the feedback within unpredictable situations becomes more constructive. 

Adjusting to change

When adjusting to changing life circumstances, we often do not recognise how much we need to let go of in order to move on to the new. We may not adequately count the cost in advance.

These 'hidden losses' generate loss emotions even if the losses remain un-named. These emotional 'states of preparation', which protect us when faced with potential loss, may break into our overly-hopeful picture of the future, as if from somewhere indefinably deep, or as if slapping us on the back of the head like a 'wake-up' call. We end up criticising ourselves for having these emotions, such as anger and guilty feelings, because they may appear as if from nowhere. They make us believe there must be something wrong with us, generating negative self-beliefs such as, I'm dangerous, weak, useless, bad, going-mad, and so on.

But in fact all of our loss-related emotions are there for a survival purpose, as our energy on the move to make different sorts of adjustments to our changing circumstances. That's Emotional Logic. The process of adjustment is logical. It's also an emotional process, because emotion is your energy on the move to enable you to do what is necessary to re-connect. E-motion = energy in motion.

That's the useful purpose of grief. Loss-induced emotions move us to re-connect with others when change disrupts our existing connections through separation, brokenness or misunderstanding.

Negative self-beliefs, arising out of unrecognised grieving, mis-inform our sense of identity. Out of negative self-beliefs emerge our very thoughts. Curiously late in the process, these thoughts and day-dreams often seem to justify (in retrospect) our knee-jerk behavioural reactions.

In that time-delay, in the shadow, our false sense of identity nestles down to conceal its naked error from those who would love us - love us even with our grief.

So, much of our sense of identity, emerging as it does from emotional chaos, is partial adjustment. It is 'suspended not adjusting' in all the change going on around us, out of which, moment-by-moment, we are continuously forming.

It is resistance. It is rebellion.

Catch-up, and overview

Hey, sorry about the long gap. Holidays, and then preparing for a trade stand created... unpredictability.

I plan to steadily build a model of personal development, showing how the sense of being a person self-organises out of chaotic experiences - at least when it works well with adequate feedback. But, the more I plan to do that, the more unexpected obstacles arise to my time. And then I get frustrated by the waiting...

To my surprise I have found that emotional experience is far more important for self-belief and the negative thoughts that arise out of those beliefs than is currently being given credit for in the psychological professional circles. I come from a medical background - biochemistry, physiology, social inter-action, stress and tension - you know, the sorts of things that underlye illness and health. I think of human beings as dust that has an amazing capacity to understand and consciously relate to other shifting piles of dust.

Sometimes, you stick a bandage on a pile of dust, and it self-heals. Sometimes you need to inspire it, if it is self-heal. Both methods are relational, not just physical.

It's amazing stuff, dust. It speaks, if you can see what I'm getting at. Or, is it the pattern of organisation that speaks?

That's where this is going next. We need to look at 'patterns', and entanglements if we are to see where self-beliefs arise.

I'll get back to this shortly, if there are any gaps in the throng of people I dream will gather at our trade stand for 'The Emotional Logic Centre'.

What is a 'safe place' in Emotional Logic terms?

The central and vital feature of Emotional Chaos Theory, the one that moves on from understanding chaos in physical systems to understanding chaos in inter-personal systems, is the notion of a 'safe place'. A cloud has no need of a safe place (as far as we know!), but chaos theory can predict when it might burst into rain - can describe its 'bifurcation point'. A human being bursting into tears is participating in a far more subtle system.

In Emotional Logic terms, a safe place is more than just a hide-away from danger or risk. The Emotional Logic toolkit - such as the Activity Pack or the CD Home Study Programme - is a set of resources to map the emotional terrain out of which your responses in difficult situations emerge. The purpose of a safe place is to give yourself some time and mental space to do that mapping. Your safe place is not a bomb shelter; it's your war office; it's your planning department.

When life is getting stressed, many people will go to bed as a safe place. There's nothing wrong with that! All we suggest is that you take your CD set, or your Activity Pack, to bed with you, and you turn that place of rest into a place of gentle learning.

Human beings, ALL human beings, need safe places out of which to emerge and turn life's chaos into creative order. There are three sorts of safe place: a physical place; a state of mind; and, for some people, a trusted relationship. As a general rule, people know that if they can get to their safe place quickly they will be better able to assess their resources to handle this next situation.

We would add that, with effective mapping of your emotional terrain, you will be able to handle the situation with less distress and more choices of influence.

More about why that is so later...

Re-humanising organisations to reduce emotional chaos

Part of the beauty of Emotional Logic is that it can get inside the patterns of relationships that have been established among families, or staff, and with ‘clients’ or recipients of a service, and then map the values that need to be Bargained during change, or Accepted as lost. Its strategy can re-humanise organisations by thus introducing a factor for morale into the equation for change. Picturing in card and tick patterns how connection (love) between people has been frustrated into grief can ‘put a handle’ on this intangible feature of organisations, and of families. The insight and understanding so pictured is the ‘x factor’ needed to re-humanise choices where individuals and communities interface.

A tick-pattern on an Emotional Logic Loss Reaction Worksheet is immeasurable, but very influential. To reflect on it creates sufficient time for insight at this depth to influence the personal connections, decisions and action planning that continuously re-make an organisation.

Then people feel heard.

If people do not feel heard, emotional chaos starts bubbling.