basic emotional need, which then produces more of an unmet basic emotional need and more resulting stored anger. If we’re not engaged in any extended talking, these frustrations can quickly become an unrecognizable reason for our currently becoming emotionally uncomfortable to a severe degree, or for our developing a severe emotional problem. With greatly decreased emotional strength from this, what might be recognizable trivial frustrations to others, with a more well met basic emotional need, can become major frustrations to us, and an added reason for our becoming more emotionally uncomfortable. Some emotional problems that we might develop won’t be consciously recognized by us as an emotional problem. But these unrecognized emotional problems will also become unconsciously experienced as greater or lesser problems depending on how much emotional strength we currently have.
Coming home from the war in Afghanistan, might be an unexpected stressful event on the unconscious level, where one would expect the reality of the home-coming to be very conducive to meeting well the basic emotional need of the veteran. But for some veterans, the talking that a veteran might do on returning home may not adequately meet that veteran’s basic emotional need, and just as importantly, may not adequately allow getting rid of recently accumulated stored anger from small unrecognized daily frustrations of that need, resulting in insufficient emotional strength. In contrast, veterans, while in the service, with a very adverse reality, but regularly involved in on-going talking with squad buddies, and often expressing recognizable anger in combat, as well as expressing both recognizable and unrecognizable anger in that talking with buddies, might have been adequately meeting their basic emotional need and adequately getting rid of anger so that anger wasn’t excessively stored. What can result for those veterans now at home from war is the exact opposite of what those combat squad members showed, where one would expect that their basic emotional need would be immensely frustrated from having to live in the extremely adverse reality of a combat zone, when it wasn’t. This was because they were meeting so much of that need in their unconscious while getting rid of anger in their extended talking, as well as in their daily expressing anger to the enemy in their combat activities. They weren’t accumulating an increasingly unmet basic emotional need or an increasing amount of stored anger, as they now might at home.
A returning veteran might have an emotional situation like what became evident in WW2, when a replacement soldier, or “repple-depple,” from the army’s replacement depot, or the “repo-depot,” would often have a difficult time fitting in with his newly assigned front line infantry squad. Although a “repple-depple” knew he was now part of the squad, he often didn’t “feel” that he was. The squad members also knew he was now part of the squad, but they too often didn’t “feel” he was. He wasn’t just felt as an “outsider” to the squad. Because he was a replacement for someone who very much had been an “insider,” but because of death or severe wounding, was no longer there, he was often initially felt as an emotionally unacceptable replacement for someone whom they might have felt could never be replaced. Because of this, the emotional attachments weren’t easily formed because any extended talking with the replacement soldier wasn’t likely to occur. It took a while for a replacement soldier to become emotionally accepted by the squad and equally involved in the squad’s extended talking where he could then meet better his basic emotional need and just as importantly, more easily get rid of his stored anger without accumulating it. During that time, the replacement soldier would appear more as a “by-stander” to the group’s talking than a participant. He was a “by-stander” to others who were meeting well their basic emotional need and expressing well their anger. As a result, he was more prone to becoming a psychiatric casualty.
For the returning veteran from combat in Afghanistan, those emotional attachments with those he, or she, had left behind on first entering military service, might not be as strong now, as they might have previously been when the veteran left home. Veterans might “know” without question that they very much do “fit in” on returning home, but they may not “feel” as though they do. Emotional attachments may not have had a chance to be re-established, or strengthened, and that might be because of not enough involvement in extended talking at home. These veterans may be much more emotionally attached on returning home, to their squad buddies left behind. Rather than an active participant of any talking at home, the returning veteran may feel more as a “by-stander.” Not enough time in talking can mean slower emotional re-attachments, less emotional strength, more stored anger, and more emotional problems. With less emotional strength, there’s less ability to emotionally cope with the home situation. Coping with that home situation might involve a majority of unrecognized or trivial frustrations of the basic emotional need that can result in excessively stored anger, after having become exaggerated frustrations to the returning veteran from a lessened amount of emotional strength. We might call it the “repple-depple syndrome of the returning veteran,” who too easily can show a very “bad case of nerves,” where nothing recognizable seems to be the immediate cause, and who may then become a high suicidal risk, as a result of that syndrome. It is these unrecognized exaggerated frustrations of the basic emotional need, from a lessened amount of emotional strength, that are the real “invisible wounds” for the veteran. More talking can heal those “invisible wounds.” This Author has long noted that a person’s change of job, or address, can decrease the opportunity to talk enough with others to maintain a sufficient level of emotional strength and a comfortable level of unexpressed anger from daily recognizable and unrecognizable frustrations of the basic emotional need. As a result, a person can become more prone to becoming emotionally uncomfortable to a severe degree, even to the point of becoming suicidal. The error can then be too easily made by medical doctors and psychologists in believing that the emotional problem that a returning veteran might have, is directly attributed to having been in combat, rather than the induced stress from having had a “change of job” and a “change of address” with an abrupt loss of previous emotional attachments, and opportunities for extended talking that he, or she, might have daily had on active military duty. A sudden change of job and address may explain why a soldier in basic training can quickly become a psychiatric casualty, where he, or she, previously hadn’t been in civilian life. What can result from a change of job, or a change of address, for anybody, is a temporary loss of emotional strength and more stored anger. The remedy for this is meeting better the basic emotional need and getting rid of any uncomfortable amount of stored anger in the unconscious. That remedy can come about with talking more. It doesn’t come from being talked to, or being lectured to, or being, as many veterans have told me, “pumped full of drugs!”
Why people feel that “everything is all right,” or, with an even better met basic emotional need, “everything is more than good enough,” and why they have so many “good” feelings in what to others is a most stressful situation, may have a lot to do with the emotional attachments that are formed with any extended talking, and with the emotional strength gained from meeting well their basic emotional need from that talking. In contrast, why people can feel that “everything isn’t all right,” or why they feel “everything isn’t good enough,” and why they may be experiencing so many “bad” feelings in what other people might feel is a situation that doesn’t appear unpleasant, even if they can’t explain why they have these “bad” feelings, may have a lot to do with insufficient emotional attachments, from insufficient talking, resulting in a lessened amount of emotional strength, and too much stored anger.
People, in unconsciously creating a rationalization for feeling “good,” or feeling “bad,” unconsciously choose the facts of their reality to support the “good” or the “bad” feelings they already have. Those “good” or “bad” feelings often come more from how much their basic emotional need is being met, and its accompanying level of emotional strength, and less from the facts of their reality that people present as to why they feel the way they do. Their “I feel good because …,” or their “I feel bad because .…,” are more likely to be rationalizations for feelings that are arising, not as much, if any at all, from the reality facts that these people might give as causes for their statements, but more from the degree that their basic emotional need is currently being recognizably, and unrecognizably, met. Meeting well our basic emotional need, which can be predominantly done in our unconscious, as it can in our taking time to talk with others, generates those “everything is all right,” and “something good is going to happen to me – it’s only a matter