Introducing two powerful concepts: vitality and resilience.

[Carl-Richard]

Is there a common thread that unites self-actualization, emotional mastery, physical health and spirituality? What is the basis of integrity? Which mechanisms underlie healthy emotion regulation? What is the opposite of being dependent or addicted? What is the goal of all therapy, all psychedelic drugs and all meditation? One answer to that is vitality and resilience.
 

At the most basic level, vitality is the ability to exert force, and resilience is the ability to withstand stress. To be vital is to be full of life, energy and strength, and to be resilient is to be able to tackle various challenges that life throws at you. They're two sides of the same coin, and you can refer to both as "internal regulatory capacity": the ability to control your internal and external environment. I will probably make multiple threads on this topic and how it relates to everything from cognition, emotions, neuropharmacology, addiction, therapy, psychedelics and meditation, but as an introduction, I will start with emotions.
 

Firstly, why are these concepts useful? In psychology, vitality and resilience are part of an overarching approach in psychology called "salutogenesis", which essentially tries to answer the question "what causes health?" This contrasts with the more common approach of "pathogenesis": "what causes illness?" This might initially seem like a weird distinction to make. "Isn't the mechanisms of health simply to eliminate the mechanisms of illness?" Here is the central point: the way you define a problem (epistemology) dictates the way you solve it (methodology).
 

This creates crucial differences between the two approaches: salutogenesis tends to be holistic and bottom-up (multiple, organic solutions), while pathogenesis tends to be reductionistic and top-down (singular solutions, symptomatic relief). Pathogenesis tries to assess and correct negative symptomatic deviations from the norm while salutogenesis tries to identify and facilitate the underlying principles and basic requirements for health. For those interested in self-help and optimizing one's life, especially those without chronic illnesses, salutogenesis is in many ways a project description.
 

Now, on to the main point: how does one maximize vitality and resilience with respect to emotions? The concepts of vitality and resilience are taken directly from the multi-disciplinary paradigm of "Attention Control and Cognitive Emotion Regulation", and therefore I'll simply give a presentation of that here:
 

 

Attention Control and Cognitive Emotion Regulation

This paradigm unites aspects of developmental psychology, clinical practice and neuroscience research on emotions and cognition. It's primarily used in clinical work with children, but it's nevertheless a crucial framework for understanding basic emotional and cognitive functioning.
 

In this paradigm, emotions are understood from a functionalistic perspective, in the sense that emotions exist to serve a purpose, generally a survival function, but more specifically as a means to direct attention and exert force towards a challenge in the external environment. The emotion creates a level of physiological activation (sympathetic nervous system; power) and initiates a set of appropriate behavioral patterns (e.g. direction of attention towards a threat), which when performed, eventually reduces the physiological activation, and the emotional state subsides.
 

Self-regulation is not an ability that is built-in from birth and is strongly dependent on age-specific conditioning, which is why early childhood neglect is so extremely damaging. Young children notoriously rely on the care and comfort of their parents to reduce their physiological activation. As the child grows up, it internalizes the external regulation patterns of the parents and gets increasingly more able to self-regulate its emotional state. Even as the child becomes an adult, it may utilize various non-vital coping strategies that rely on the external environment, and these may overshadow some underlying issues that the child needs to address. The different factors of external emotional dependence can be described as "non-essential external regulators", e.g. cyclical behavior of drug-taking, over-eating or social neediness, which can potentially lead to addiction.
 

Development and coping strategies aside, the core of emotion regulation has to do with how emotions are actually processed and expressed (the "dynamics" of emotional energy), and we can view this through a general dichotomy of expression vs. repression:

 

Vital emotion regulation

The dynamics of a vital/healthy emotion regulation pattern is one where the person engages in so-called expressing/externalizing patterns (again, not to be confused with coping strategies), i.e. focusing the power of the emotion outwards towards the environment in a structured and goal-oriented manner. Let's say somebody insults you and you start to feel angry at this person. The key here is "at this person", because what the emotion wants you to do is to deal with this person somehow, and an appropriate response could be to confront them and tell them how you would like to be treated (with respect). If this doesn't somehow lead to an escalation of the situation, the emotion will quickly reside and you'll regain a state of relaxation: the emotion served its purpose as you were able to express the physiological energy in the type of meaningful and goal-oriented manner that the emotion intended.

 

Non-vital emotion regulation

A less vital dynamic pattern is where the person favors an internalizing style, i.e. one of repression and rumination (shying away and retreating into your own head). Instead of focusing the attention and energy out towards the environment, the focus goes inward, into the mind and towards the subjective feelings caused by the physiological activation, which remains unresolved. Circular patterns of thought arise (fear; what-if scenarios, feelings of inadequacy, insecurity), which in turn causes the physiological activation to be reignited, which results in a state classically referred to as anxiety.
 

Internalizing people tend to use various non-vital coping strategies to reduce activation, most commonly avoidance of said anxiety-provoking situations (as well as drugs, over-eating and social neediness), which can lead to social isolation, loneliness and other cascading emotional effects (depression, pent up anger and violent outbursts etc.). All in all, there is an obvious lack of vitality and resilience here, and to simply become aware of these patterns within your own life (excessive internalizing and subsequent non-vital coping strategies) can start to unwind various neuroses and evil spirals. The goal would be to maximize the ability to externalize emotions and facilitate a meaningful pattern of activation and relaxation.
 

With that said, there are situations where an internalizing style is preferable with respect to various social and cultural norms. For example, it's probably not such a good idea to openly express anger during a church sermon. It's probably a better idea to wait until later before you potentially confront the person about it. Here is where the cognition aspect of emotion regulation becomes more pronounced, because merely externalizing an emotion when you feel like it is a rather intuitive and straightforward process, but on the other hand, to be able to know when it's socially appropriate to externalize vs. internalize requires more cognitive finesse and is nevertheless an important part of healthy emotion regulation. There are also other positive cognitive patterns like reappraisal and refocusing that contrast with generally non-vital cognitive patterns like rumination (CERS = Cognitive Emotional Regulation Strategy):

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Figure-The-hypothesized-model-CERS-cognitive-emotion-regulation-strategies_fig1_299415064

 

I touched briefly on how problems with emotional regulation can make you dependent on so-called "non-essential external regulators". When (or if) I'm writing more on vitality and resilience in the future, it will probably be about how the reliance on hedonic drugs is a reflection of underlying problems with one's general internal regulation capacity, and also how things like therapy, psychedelic drugs and meditation all go about addressing this in their own way. Until then, I'll leave you with a prescription: try to become aware of the ways in which you deal with emotions in your daily life and maybe consider changing some of them. Do you carry a lot of emotional baggage from moment to moment? Do you mainly express/externalize or repress/internalize your emotions? (or vice versa) etc. Things like that

[Rishabh R]

@Carl-Richard Thank you for sharing these powerful concepts.I have one question for you - Does questioning assumptions in every situation leads to Vitality or Resilience or both? 

[Carl-Richard]

48 minutes ago, Rishabh R said:

@Carl-Richard Thank you for sharing these powerful concepts.I have one question for you - Does questioning assumptions in every situation leads to Vitality or Resilience or both? 

Questioning one's assumptions can work to uncover unconscious biases and expose certain limiting beliefs and behaviors (analogous to cultivating "attention" in the paradigm I presented).

This can open up the possibility and increase the potential for vitality and resilience, but there also needs to be a larger and more general/overarching type of attention (goal-directed purpose for your life) for this potential to manifest into actuality. This is for example why taking psychedelics without being interested in truth or personal growth often won't do much for you. They similarly open up the possibility for vitality and resilience by directing your attention for a moment, but you must align it with a higher-order purpose and work on it over time for it to create a consistent pattern of growth.

If you feel that you lack a sense of direction and that your life isn't going anywhere, consciously setting a goal for yourself (like a life purpose) is useful for this. If you have problems with executing on that, therapy can help. Therapy is essentially about internalizing vitality with the help of a vital external regulator, a.k.a the therapist (which is analogous to how children learn emotion regulation from their parents). The therapist exposes you to challenges (exposure therapy) while teaching you to externalize emotional power to deal with these challenges (goal-directed expression of emotional energy), within a frame of higher-order purpose (overarching goal), which produces a consistent pattern of growth.

As you refine your vitality and resilience, it becomes self-sustaining. It becomes its own goal. This is the lesson of meditation: true psychological independence. Once you've built up enough internal power to function independently of all non-essential external regulators, you're naturally turned off by them: you don't even want to take hedonic drugs, eat greasy food, engage in overstimulation. The only goal is to perpetuate health itself, in yourself and others: long-term, self-sustained, organic, internal stability: vitality and resilience; internal regulatory capacity.

[Bernardo Carleial]

@Carl-RichardWhat a beautiful concept/paradigm!

I loved it!???

And I appreciate the fact that you were kind enough to share it to us, you presented in a way that is "very easy to digest" but I can see how much thought you have went through in order to convey this information in a more "simpler manner ". 

Congratulations!??

And I'm looking forward to see your next thoughts on that topic???

[Bernardo Carleial]

51 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Here is the central point: the way you define a problem (epistemology) dictates the way you solve the problem (methodology).

 

 

55 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

In this paradigm, emotions are understood from a functionalistic perspective in the sense that emotions exist to serve a purpose, generally a survival function, but more specifically to direct attention and exert force towards a challenge in the external environment. The emotion creates a level of physiological activation (sympathetic nervous system; power) and initiates a set of appropriate behavioral patterns (e.g. direction of attention), which when performed, eventually reduces the physiological activation, and the emotional state subsides.

These two can be summarized with just one phrase:

"Structure influences Behavior" 

[Rishabh R]

@Carl-Richard Sorry but I have a life purpose and also I understand what I love most about life .So there is direction in my life .So isn't that a great deal ?And whenever I remember it a smile on my face occurs with a sense to move in that direction. So, I have made a habit to daily remind myself of my life purpose and also I just have a doubt that will I be able to get a job related to my life purpose (just that )?

Edited January 5, 2022 by Rishabh R
Forgot to include lines

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Bernardo Carleial said:

@Carl-RichardWhat a beautiful concept/paradigm!

I loved it!???

And I appreciate the fact that you were kind enough to share it to us, you presented in a way that is "very easy to digest" but I can see how much thought you have went through in order to convey this information in a more "simpler manner ". 

Congratulations!??

And I'm looking forward to see your next thoughts on that topic???

Hehe wow thanks! 

 

3 hours ago, Bernardo Carleial said:

These two can be summarized with just one phrase:

"Structure influences Behavior" 

I agree, however, overly abstract concepts or formulations tend to lose nuance, which is kinda what I felt when I started writing this. On the surface, vitality and resilience seem almost synonymous with "health" and "strength" and even "good". On the other hand, I think there is a Goldilocks zone of abstractness; where it's both overarching enough and specific enough to provide some descriptive utility and serve as a springboard for a deeper (or wider) understanding. This is essentially what systems theory is able to pull off (understanding complex phenomenas from a multi-disciplinary and meta-theoretical level). Systems theory concepts seem a bit vacuous on the surface, and everybody has an intuitive understanding of them (e.g. words like "self-organization" or "adaptation"), but simply mentioning the words doesn't do justice in conveying the depth of the concepts. There is a lot of unpacking to do (which like I said, I'll probably do in separate threads, although you got a little teaser in that second comment).

[Bernardo Carleial]

2 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Hehe wow thanks! 

 

I agree, however, overly abstract concepts or formulations tend to lose nuance, which is kinda what I felt when I started writing this. On the surface, vitality and resilience seem almost synonymous with "health" and "strength" and even "good". On the other hand, I think there is a Goldilocks zone of abstractness; where it's both overarching enough and specific enough to provide some descriptive utility and serve as a springboard for a deeper (or wider) understanding. This is essentially what systems theory is able to pull off (understanding complex phenomenas from a multi-disciplinary and meta-theoretical level). Systems theory concepts seem a bit vacuous on the surface, and everybody has an intuitive understanding of them (e.g. words like "self-organization" or "adaptation"), but simply mentioning the words doesn't do justice in conveying the depth of the concepts. There is a lot of unpacking to do (which like I said, I'll probably do in separate threads, although you got a little teaser in that second comment).

That's totally true @Carl-Richard. 

Even me saying that phrase doesn't feel  intuitive at all...

I had to read an entire book on Systems Thinking* in order to grasp (just conceptually) the significance of what that quote really meant...

 

 

*the book is called "The Fifth Discipline"

[Carl-Richard]

19 hours ago, Rishabh R said:

@Carl-Richard Sorry but I have a life purpose and also I understand what I love most about life .So there is direction in my life .So isn't that a great deal ?And whenever I remember it a smile on my face occurs with a sense to move in that direction. So, I have made a habit to daily remind myself of my life purpose and also I just have a doubt that will I be able to get a job related to my life purpose (just that )?

Sounds great. About the job, as long as you see the value in having a higher-order purpose, things will work itself out. Your goals and the way you pursue them may change, but the important part is having a goal in the first place. Goals, purpose and meaning facilitates movement through the environment, which exposes you to different challenges and leads to growth.

 

18 hours ago, Bernardo Carleial said:

That's totally true @Carl-Richard. 

Even me saying that phrase doesn't feel  intuitive at all...

I had to read an entire book on Systems Thinking* in order to grasp (just conceptually) the significance of what that quote really meant...

*the book is called "The Fifth Discipline"

Cool  

[Carl-Richard]

Made it a bit more concise, removed a paragraph.

[Epikur]

The next level is antifragility. You believe you are god the more you die the more x you become.