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Chapter 15 : THE SECURITY SYSTEM
What I discovered was that the key point to understand in order to deal with emotion-based problems is that we carry around feelings from past experiences and then bring these feelings from the past into the present in response to cues. Cues turn on responses. The cues that turn on the responses are everything.
Literally everything is a cue - being in a certain place, with a certain person, a certain time of the day, the month, the year, a look, a touch, a taste, a smell, a song, the way the sun rises, the way it sets - all of these things are cues. Now, to some of the cues we respond comfortably. We like those responses and so we go back to those cues over and over again because we like how we feel when exposed to them. To other cues we respond uncomfortably. We do not like those responses and so we typically try to avoid those cues and if we do not, for whatever reason, we develop means of trying to cope with our discomfort in those situations - coping mechanisms - and everybody has their collection of coping mechanisms.
Since discomfort is the focus of my attention as a doctor, and since everyone seems to carry around uncomfortable feelings from their past experiences and then bring this discomfort from the past into the present in response to cues to make ourselves feel miserable all over again, the obvious question is "Why do we do this to ourselves?" Nobody enjoys it but we all do it. What is the logic in this pattern? What is its advantage?
The answer is protection. We understand our present through our past. For example, after you finish reading this you will go somewhere else or do something else. Before you actually enter that new situation, you will read the cues of that oncoming situation as you are physically and/or mentally approaching it. If those cues happen to turn on a comfortable type of response then you will begin to feel and therefore act comfortably. You will behave like a comfortable person - someone anticipating something pleasant about to occur in its life, typically turning on a relaxed style of behavior so that when you are actually entering the situation you will be ready for the comfort that you are anticipating there.
On the other hand, if the cues happen to turn on an uncomfortable type of response then you will begin to feel and act uncomfortably. You will behave like an uncomfortable person, someone anticipating something unpleasant about to occur in its life, and will therefore typically turn on defensive, protective behavior patterns intended to enable you to ideally totally avoid or at least to minimize the perceived oncoming discomfort.
Therefore, what we have is an early warning system, a security system. The cue turns on a response. So that my communication is clear, in this context please understand the word response to be defined as a collection of feelings triggered by a cue.
These feelings turn on behavior patterns intended to enable us to maximize our comfort, minimize our discomfort, and to prolong our survival, both personally and from the perspective of our genetic information - the basic agenda.
Now let us imagine that tomorrow you got a new home for yourself and in this new home there was a security system, but a very special one. First of all this security system was on twenty-four hours a day and it was impossible to turn it off. However, you would be able to program this system in order to get both high quality security and a very high level of utilization of your new home. In other words, you would be able to enjoy your new home to do what you wanted to do there but be very safe there at the same time. If such were the case, a couple of points would be very important. First of all, you would have to know that you had the system. Otherwise, you would walk into the home and the alarms would start to go off. As a result you would say, " My goodness, what a terrible house this is. It is so noisy here all of the time." You would be upset and confused.
It would also be very important to understand how to use the system. You would have to know how to program it and, when necessary, to reprogram that system according to your ever changing needs. The point, of course, is that every human has a security system. This system operates twenty-four hours a day throughout our lifetime and we cannot turn it off.
That is impossible. People have tried everything imaginable and it cannot be done.
Many people do not seem to realize that they even have this system. The alarms are going off all of the time and they respond by saying, " My goodness, it is so noisy here all of the time!" They are upset and confused. If they happen to recognize that they have the system, they usually do not know how to use it effectively - how to program it and when necessary to reprogram it according to their ever changing needs.
Therefore, a very important part of Rational-Emotional Integrative Updating is that I introduce individuals to the idea of the security system. First of all, I tell them that they have one. I explain to them how it works and I show them how to use it more effectively. I teach them how to get both higher quality security and higher quality utilization with the system - how to be able to enjoy their lives and be safe at the same time - both of which are very important.
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