You Aren't A Robot
Feelings are not bad, but capitalism sure is.
As a therapist, I see it as my mission to help clients stretch towards the ideals they set for themselves. This is their work. So I usually step aside when setting intentions for that work. You want to work on being kinder to yourself? I ship it. You want to have coping skills to navigate emotionally difficult terrain? Let’s go on a hike. You want to be more confident putting yourself out there so you can sing karaoke in front of strangers? Pass me a mic because it’s time to duet, my dear.
But there’s a couple I don’t immediately hop on board with. The most troubling ones (at least for me) being “I want to be more productive” and “I want to control my emotions.”
“Let’s consider that for a moment”
^^This is one of those magic phrases therapists use to not say “I agree with you” nor “I think that’s rubbish.” But I do want to actually consider this for a moment. Firstly, why do I have such a large reaction to this?
Countertransference is not an enemy. It is information. I am my own instrument as a therapist, and so when I feel something it is useful to pay attention to it. Perhaps because I am not the only person in this client’s life who feels this way when the client speaks and acts. Maybe I am noticing a growth edge of my own understanding, empathy, or biases. Or perhaps it contradicts my own values as a therapist.
There may be some truth to the first two of those, but let’s focus on the last one because I’m not ready to unpack and air out my own shit on here. I’m sure we’ll get there at some point.
Anyway, as a social worker, I think of myself as a professional troublemaker. It’s my job to put sand in the gears of capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, cisheteronormativity, and other systems that grind myself, my communities, and my clients down. I try my hand at larger, macro-scale change when I am able. But mostly I am working on the individual level to root out the invasive weeds in the gardens of my client’s minds to help them nurture the hopeful seeds they choose to sow.
This is not done to manipulate my clients, but to examine with them where things come from, what they result in, and whether they want to keep them around. So I have to be careful to come from that place of counsel and collaboration rather than control. I know I have power in this relationship, and I must be mindful of how I am inevitably using it. Shaming someone’s desires will not build the trust I want, and so I ask if I may offer my thoughts and let them take from them what they will. It can be frustrating for it not to go how I had hoped, but if frustration were enough to take me out, I wouldn’t be in this job.
Producing what?
So what exactly are those thoughts I ask to offer? Let’s start with productivity. I don’t think there’s inherently anything wrong with getting things done. There’s accomplishment, pride, and satisfaction in a task well done. But being productive has taken on a very distinct flavor to it, and frankly, I don’t love it.
Often productivity is used as a measure of effectiveness at their place of employment. Productive people strike up sales, pound out reports, or whatever it is that they do at work. These are the employees of the month and the ones who get the raise. The idea is that if you just work as hard as these people, you will get more done and you will be rewarded as well.
Is that true, though? Two salespeople may work equally hard but one gets easier clients or has natural advantages the other doesn’t. And yet, at the end of the day, one of them gets a pat on the shoulder and the other is told to just try harder. It is not effort or labor that is being rewarded here. It is how much you can line the company shareholder’s pocketbooks.
I know I lost some people there. Sorry to inform you, but there’s no room for capitalism on this substack. I’m not trying to be cynical, though. I am merely pointing out that a business’s motivation is to make money. Without it, businesses could not survive in the world as it is. And so it will incentivize those who help it continue to exist.
Effort is often necessary for getting cash, but my point is that it is not sufficient. All the hard work in the world does not guarantee results, but results are what are rewarded. Different businesses will vary in how hard they incentivize revenue or punish substandard performance, but that is the name of the game. Look at the word productivity. Its name comes not from “labor,” but “production.” In this case, the production of capital for the employer.
Now I’d love to go into how even the kindest of employers must inherently pay you less than what your labor is worth in order to earn a profit, but I’ll put my commie hat down for a second. Let’s look at the actual human cost of this. This system tells an entire society that their worth is based on how much they can benefit the economy. It says that if your efforts fall flat, you are deep down not a hard enough worker, a dependable coworker, or a good enough person.
But this doesn’t end at work. This worth is then used to decide where they live, what they eat, what schools their children go to, and potentially whether their water or walls are filled with poison. It’s no mistake that when we ask people what they do for work, we ask “What do you do for a living?” This system has decided that people’s quantity and quality of life ought to be based off their productivity. Furthermore, if you can’t work, then you don’t even deserve to live. And that’s just the ableism part of this. We haven’t even touched on slavery, stolen land, genocide, or war.
If fish don’t recognize that they are even in water, then this is the water we swim in and don’t notice until we take a step out of it. There’s a grim despair to it all said out loud. I don’t support this tyranny of arbitrary numbers in a bank account. Might as well be a high score on a pinball machine. I resent that this is what the miracle of sapient life has been reduced to, and I will never forgive it.
Deep work
So. When I hear a client say they want to be more productive, I get that sour taste in my mouth. Not at the client, but at the system that injected that idea into their minds. The intention is positive, and I try to get to the root of what makes productivity feel so important to them. Do they want to feel good about the things they do? Do they want to support the people that matter to them? Do they want to find sustainability and stability in their lives? There are legitimate values deeper down, but sometimes you have to go looking for it as a clinician.
I actually appreciate the conversation that “I want to be more productive” can open up. Besides giving insight into a person’s values, it can help us begin to approach conversations about where worthiness comes from and how they can find meaning for themselves.
But these are the steps so often ignored by therapists who are complicit in working with the system. Again, they might not be doing so maliciously, but there are still plenty of practitioners bound either by the restraints of their organization or their own misunderstandings to do so. Yet I can’t help but see these efforts as metaphorically patching up a soldier’s wound to ship ‘em back onto the battlefield. While cognitive reframes and mindfulness techniques are valuable, they don’t undo an intergenerational, global spiderweb of trauma, oppression, and exploitation.
This is going to take deep work on the macro-, mezzo-, and micro-scale levels. It’s going to involve abstracting concepts like trauma healing, attachment repair, parts work, bodily experiencing, and so much more to global proportions. It’s going to require trust and space and compassion. In my heart of hearts, I am a little sheepish to believe it might be possible. But it will require working with raging, haunting, and visceral emotion. I believe that–just as people contain much of the inner wisdom needed to heal if they can just get in touch with their body, emotions, mind, and soul–we can as a society take at least a single step towards greater systemic harmony when we notice what we feel.
Which is of course why emotions are squashed by the current system. It can’t risk us noticing how we feel. Which leads us to the other goal I can’t get behind: “I want to control my emotions.”
I don’t want it
A natural response to pain is to do whatever it takes to make it stop. We reflexively pull our hand away from the hot burner, we slow down when our lungs are aching for breath, and we go to sleep when we are exhausted. This is our body’s natural protection. It gives us feedback through sensation so we can make decisions about what to do next.
I think of emotions the same way. They are like a dashboard simplifying many physical and mental signals into something we can notice at a glance. Happiness might encourage me to stay in the moment. Sadness might lead me to notice and acknowledge that something is wrong. On the other hand, anger might want me to acknowledge something is wrong and fucking do something about it. Fear yearns for safety, and shock demands stability. Disgust will shepherd us away from things that might cause us harm or illness. Emotions are a check engine light that encourages us to look deeper and evaluate what’s going on underneath the hood, even if it’s a good thing.
So when I hear that someone wants to control their emotions, stop feeling one way, or feel only one way, this does not compute. To me, that sounds like someone wanting to control the temperature outside or not feel it altogether. There’s a reason we call emotions “feelings.” Because they are sensation.
Life happens in seasons around here, and we need to be able to adapt to those changes over time. We need to be able to feel that it’s getting chilly and put on a sweater. We need to recognize that we’re sweating and get something cool to drink in the shade. Feelings are information, and we can’t afford to lose those inputs.
Imagine putting tape over your entire car dashboard because it made you uncomfortable to look at the empty fuel gauge. I will tell you this: if you do not take your car to the mechanic, it will take itself there. And it will cost much more than refilling your tank with gas.
And yet we live in a world where emotions are criticized as irrational, weak, or–worst of all–girly. If you want men to avoid something like the plague, call it feminine. Misogyny is incredibly efficient at hurting everyone.
Why do this? I already told you: feeling is fatal to the system as it is. If we felt emotions, we would take more breaks, stand up for ourselves more, and listen to our bodies and souls. That’s terribly inconvenient for companies who want to suck value from your veins and toss you back home to recoup just long enough to come back for more.
Capitalism wants robots. Just look at its head-first dive into AI without thinking for a moment about its consequences. Check out the automation that has occurred for over 100 years. And yet, despite boasting about taking jobs from humans, your worth is still dependent on working. We are surrounded by machines that could allow us to turn our attention to focus on what machines can’t do (yet): being alive. And yet we are instead turned into even more machines to save a buck.
But you aren’t a fucking robot!
You are a human being with worth and feelings and dreams and abilities beyond what you even know. You don’t have to earn your worth because you’ve always had it just by being alive. You don’t have to justify your feelings to prove they matter. Things matter because you have feelings about them. You deserve to do more than survive. You deserve to live! You deserve to feel!
This is what I wish more than anything I could tell everybody in the world. I tell my clients this and pray they will listen. I tell my friends and pray they will listen. I tell myself and pray they will listen. Because this is where it all starts from. The kindness to dare to ask for what you need. The wisdom to know what you need. The softness to hear what others have to say and the bravery to not take shit that isn’t yours to take. It all starts from the belief that you matter and the trust that you will figure out what you need by listening to yourself. That we will as a society figure out what we need by listening to ourself with the understanding that there are many good intentions that can be directed more capably into positive action.
There is a time and place for restructuring how we think or examining if what we are feeling fits the facts. But we must not deceive ourselves, and we must be wary of who decides what is “fact.” I’m not saying we should be driven purely by emotion, but we ought not to shut it away either. We have many parts, and we can consult all of them to get a bigger picture and make wiser decisions. Take care that you listen to yourselves and to others. It will get you farther than any productivity hack ever will.