By David Viscott, M.D.
Book Report by
Eric Swanson
The Language of Feelings by David Viscott was a very insightful and detailed view of classifying, understanding, and dealing with emotions. The author clearly presented his ideas in an easily jargon free language. In the book Viscott dealt with the emotions of hurt and loss, anxiety, anger, guilt, and depression and how we can identify those feelings and manage them correctly to our betterment.
Hurt and loss was the first topic covered in The Language of Feelings. Viscott recognized that hurt can occur everyday and is more intense as the loss of that something has more value. Hurt is natural and can help clarify what is important to you. Though good can come out of hurt, it is not always that way. Hurt becomes a negative result when a person does not manage hurt correctly. Some people do not allow that emotion to take its natural course. By not expressing your hurt in a feasible and rationale manner, hurt can build up and destroy a person emotionally. Hurt is the fertilizer that aids all other negative feelings to grow. Viscott recommends in this book that a person should “be entirely honest” (44) when you are hurt and “to identify the original source of hurt and to suffer and grieve for the original loss that caused it.” (43) By allowing time and expression to heal the hurt, a person will be able to move past the hurt. However, many people do not and regress to deeper negative feelings.
Anxiety is the “fear of being hurt”(51) or losing something of value. When a person does not promptly and properly deal with hurt, anxieties of being hurt again will rise. Fear plays an important role in our lives, but when fear rises needlessly it can handicap us from performing at our best. Fear elevates our defenses and guards us from emotional hurt, but if anxieties rise over past hurt it will raise our defenses and we will lose control. “The sense of helplessness gradually undermines our ability to take charge of our private lives.” (57) as Viscott says. To take charge, Viscott recommends that the person should recognize if the stress “causing the alarm is in the present or in the past” (68). If it is the present the person just needs to stop, organize their thoughts, and rationale see through the situation. If it is in the past then the person needs grieve or suffer completely for the hurt or loss they experienced until they can completely come to terms with their anxieties.
Anger is the feeling of being “irritated, teed off, irked, …enraged. “(75) Anger is the result of being hurt. Again, everyone experiences hurt so everyone experiences anger. Anger is a very strong emotion and to “express anger over the hurt that causes it allows an emotional wound to close.”(77) But even though expressing it might be the best thing for emotional wounds, it might also cause others for the receiving person or thing. It is sometimes hard to know how much anger is appropriate to express. Expressing your anger in a sane way and at the object of your hurt is the best to relieve the hurt. Now, of course, there are people that bottle their anger for many different reasons. This is very dangerous, because it causes a person to go to an extreme to release it. Either they will blow up at an unrelated object of their hurt or they will continue to bottle until they are consumed and can not function. These two extremes do not have to happen if we can become comfortable expressing the anger at the object of the hurt appropriately.
Guilt is the feeling of “being unworthy, bad, evil, remorseful, self-blaming, self-hating.”(99) Guilt is the result of containing anger inside and not appropriately releasing it. Guilt brings the individual to punish themselves. The person continually emphasizes the bad and ignores the good. Guilt will “ begin to direct energies inward as it begins to punish, often in illogical, uncontrolled ways.”(102) This feeling can grip a person and be “excruciatingly painful”(114). To free yourself of guilt, Viscott recommends, just as Socrates did, to know yourself. “To resolve ambivalent feelings, nothing is as helpful as a strong sense of ones’ self.”(115) Once you know yourself, you can know that being guilty about doing something is all right. No one is perfect, and beating yourself is not going to help yourself. This recommendation sounds easy to do, but many people can not do it and fall deeper into negative feelings.
Depression is the feeling of “being ‘blue’, unhappy, melancholy, ‘down in the dumps’.”(121) Depression is result of anger and guilt severely held within. A depressed person finds no comfort in any part of life. Everything a depressed person sees or feels, no matter how spectacular, contributes to the negativity due to the person’s pessimism. Depression can end in “either as a cry for help or as a real attempt to end their life.”(126) Since depression is the final step in the downward spiral of negative feelings Viscott recommends that the person seek medical attention. There are many ways to resolve feelings of depression from psychotherapy to even electroshock. Any professional psychologists will be able to give the proper treatment.
The Language of Feelings by David Viscott was a readable, in depth look at emotions like hurt and loss, anxiety, anger, guilt, and depression. The author presented his ideas clearly to have the reader classify, understand, and be able to deal with their emotions. The book was very well written and interesting.
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Date this page was last updated: 12/06/2002