TECHNIQUE OF EMMOTIONAL COMMON SENSE

Date: January 9, 2020Author: ACCREDITED FELLOW - PSYCHOTHERAPIST LONDON UK 6 Comments

Emotional Common Sense has been applied through: large participation-discussion groups focused upon a particular topic; smaller human relations workshops in which people are invited to exchange their thoughts and feelings on common problems; reading the basic text (Parker, 1973); a teaching component in group and individual psychotherapy. The participant is invited to learn and accept these assumptions:

Degradation and manipulation of others poison the emotional atmosphere in intimate and business relationships,and are thereby self-destructive.
There is rarely any excuse to permit ourselves to be degraded by family, friends, employers, colleagues, etc.
By not erasing destructive experiences and images of the past, weretain out-of-date values, feelings,and memories that affect our self-esteem, perception of authority, etc.
People may not express their emotions appropriately. They holdback anger and pain, or exaggerate them to manipulate others through abuse.
Our own feelings are not always trustworthy. Displaced anger, lowself-esteem, over-sensitivity, and the like are examples.
Substantial differences exist between people which derive from persistent constitutional (bodily) and temperamental (mood) qualities between people.These have their origin in the body’s biological structure and functioning.

Achieving Emotional Common Sense involves:

Improving self-understanding. People are encouraged to be sensitive to their dark moods (anxiety, depression, anger, loneliness) and to the social situations that arouse them. The question, “What sort of a person am I?” helps us to improve the balance of constructive to self-destructive actions.
Recognizing out-of-date values. It is important to live life according to the values taught by our own experience, not those of yesterday’s world taught by parents and teachers, or the media, etc.We must be particularly alert to values that are unsuitable for a person with our history and personal qualities.
Resist the temptation to act according to “unfinished business”from earlier experiences. The pain, humiliation, anger, and frustration of earlier life are compensated for at that time through fantasies, goals, and expectations about the future.We develop ideas while growing up as to how we want to be, what kind of a partner we want, how we ought to behave, fantasies of love and revenge, and so on.These scripts are played out by themselves toward our children, employers, lovers, and friends. Since the other party is not aware of the role we project on him, there is resistance and we may try to manipulate him to fulfill our needs. This is particularly true when people don’t take no for an answer in love affairs.

Emotional Common Sense is designed to help people evaluate their needs and take action according to today’s world.