Emotional Stability Is a False Concept: A Stable Personality Lets Emotions Flow Naturally

I. Emotional Stability Is a False Concept

1. Emotional stability has now become a new form of emotional labor and psychological manipulation. In the dating and marriage market, “positive and sunny” has evolved into “emotionally stable.”

1. If someone else demands that you be emotionally stable, block them. If you demand emotional stability of yourself, this is dangerous repression and self-manipulation, one of the most basic kinds of problems that psychoanalysis most strongly opposes. Often, when you are in a difficult situation, focus on dealing with that situation. There is no need to manipulate yourself into being emotionally stable.

1. Even therapists themselves are not expected to be all-capable, stable, and without emotions. What matters is having emotions that remain under control, are accompanied by awareness (of complex psychological processes such as various forms of transference, projection, and projective identification), and are natural and appropriate. (Many excellent psychological dramas portray this: the moment in *Good Will Hunting* when the therapist played by Robin Williams loses his temper with Matt Damon’s character; the female patient’s sexual advances toward her therapist in *In Treatment*. These all involve patients using violence, anger, sexual desire, and so on to unsettle therapists as a means of projection, control, and negation. Therapists should remain aware and respond in healthy, professional ways, rather than becoming embarrassed or doubting themselves. Sometimes a third-party supervisor needs to become involved, as happens in *In Treatment*.)

1. Emotions are natural human responses, and much anger is very healthy. Repressing emotions is the problem. For example, when children at twelve or thirteen, or even as early as five or six, learn to repress their emotions out of fear, numbness, and learned helplessness, that is where a whole series of subsequent problems begins.

1. See, understand, and support. Psychotherapy is about listening and seeing the person. This is Rogers’s person-centered approach. It is like someone drowning in shallow water, grabbing a hand in their panic. Simply being able to listen attentively and well is an enormous help. Look at all those military films: when a new recruit wets his pants in fear, the political commissar does not ridicule or belittle him, but says, “I was like that too when I first went into battle.”

1. The philosophy of Japan’s Morita therapy is relatively practical: let emotions take their natural course, even when they get out of control, while continuing to engage actively in life, get things done, and do what needs to be done. In other words, coexist with emotions that are out of control.

II. Personality Stability

With a mature, healthy core to their personality, a person experiences joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure naturally, rather than being controlled by emotions. Many people have a weak personality structure, readily become “emotional,” and easily fall apart. Some people have pathological personalities, readily become consumed by destructive obsessions, and hurt others and themselves.

I previously made a video about this, using Liu Bang as an example. His strong personality naturally made him less likely to fall apart: neither arrogant in victory nor discouraged in defeat, indomitable, confident without being conceited or feeling inferior, and authentic in his laughter, teasing, anger, and criticism. His personality was healthy: he did not kill indiscriminately, and he was kindhearted and cared for others.

Having a thick skin like Liu Bang’s is a sign of personality maturity.

Human growth means following the guidance for self-cultivation offered by humanistic psychology, Zen Buddhism, Daoism, and Marxism-Leninism, gradually developing a mature, healthy, stable personality. Inner strength brings a steady, vibrant vitality.