See Differently Feel Differently – Shifting from Objective to Subjective Viewpoints and Back Again When Working with Mood Disorders

This post looks at unemotional Objective versus emotionally Subjective Viewpoints, explaining how they are interchangeable and how acquiring new Objective Viewpoints can become your most effective mental tool.

Sit awhile and look at something with me, will you?  I would like to share some Objective Viewpoint models with you.

When we look at something from a certain position we call this our ‘viewpoint’. We have two main types of viewpoint:

• Objective


• Subjective.

An Objective Versus Subjective Viewpoint Model

Draw an imaginary line with ‘Objective’ written at one end and ‘Subjective’ at the other.  Imagine yourself moving along this line between these two viewpoint extremes.

Can you see that the Objective end of the line is a very wide black line, several metres wide in fact, and it tapers down to a very thin black line when it reaches the other, Subjective, end?    Just walk up and down the line a minute to check this out.  At the Subjective end of the line it is only a millimetre wide.  If you cannot see this please take a closer look – thick line at one end tapering to a thin line at the other.  See it now?  The thick-to-thin tapering line you see is an indicator of how wide angle your viewpoint is according to where you are on the Objective-Subjective viewpoint line.

Now see yourself as just a pair of eyes.  All you are is a pair of eyes, sitting on the Objective-Subjective line.  The degree to which your eyes are open or closed matches with the thickness of the section of line you are currently standing on.

You move to the Objective end and your eyes open several metres wide (amazing, eh?); at the Subjective end of the line your eyes narrow to a millimetre.  Problem is, you do not have full control of where you stand on the line and you are not quite sure how this mechanism works quite yet.

You can deliberately move yourself to another position on the line for a while, but some kind of natural gravitational force eventually pulls you back to your original starting place.  The width of your view seems fixed.

In the distance a very large circle appears.  In the middle of the circle a message is written.  You cannot quite read the message and you do not know if you can, or how you can.  The message starts flashing for your attention; but because you cannot read it you get quite frustrated.

You notice that getting frustrated causes you to move towards the Subjective end of the line a little and your eyes start to narrow, matching the narrower width of the thinning line.  As a result, your focus starts to change and you can see the message in the circle slightly better but not enough to read it.

You also notice the narrower your viewpoint becomes the more the circle seems to move a little towards you.  In some ways this is a bit alarming – you suspect the circle up close must be really huge and overpowering.  You are not sure how you will cope with it up close.  You do not know whether being close to the circle and its message is a good or a bad thing.

Suddenly the circle starts changing all colours of the rainbow to get your attention and the message is flashing even more intensely than before – it looks really important, but still you cannot read it.  You feel yourself getting really frustrated about this and this upset state is creating a tingling in your battery.  You have got a battery? You did not realise you had a battery, did you?  Well you do now and now it is tingling you notice it.

For the first time the tingling sensations cause you to look at what is behind your eyes and there it is – a battery.  Well, I never did, where did that come from?

It dawns on you the frustrated sensations you are producing as a result of not being able to read the message on the circle are charging the battery fixed to the back of your eyes (in real life you call this your body).  The more frustrated you get over not being able to read the message on the circle the more charged your body-battery becomes and the further towards the Subjective end of the viewpoint line you move – and so the narrower your vision becomes and the closer the circle with its message gets.

Each time you move towards the Subjective end of the line the tingling increases in intensity and now it is so painful you start to fight it.  You no longer want to read the message; you do not care about the message; you want to get off the line!  You do not like the whole system!  How do you stop this and make it go away?!

All of a sudden you get so emotional the energy propels you straight to the end of the viewpoint line and you are totally Subjective.  At the same time the circle with the message on it comes rushing towards you – wham!

The circle is now so huge in your narrow viewpoint, and the tingling sensations so strong they are agonisingly painful, you have nothing but confusion going on both mentally and sensually.  You are a mess.  To top it all now you are too close to be able to see the message let alone read it.

All you see now is a small section of the line of curvature of the circle.  This battle of how you position yourself on your viewpoint line is so overwhelming, so painful, you just give in and decide to feel your pain.  You surrender to it.

After a while, you notice yourself starting to move back towards the Objective Viewpoint.  It is slow, but you start to move and the circle starts to move slowly back to its previous position.  One day you are able to look up at the circle and you can read the message clear as day.  It says:

‘To empty your emotional battery just look at this message and release your energy for long enough and you will naturally return to your Objective Viewpoint’.

By the time you get to read the message you have already learned how this works and the message just confirms it.  Now if you could have been told what the message said before you went to all that trouble …

You and I have just shared an Objective Viewpoint.

Objective viewpoints are wide-angled and emotionally neutral; Subjective viewpoints are narrow angled and highly emotionally charged.  To remove an extreme Subjective Viewpoint such as an obsession or a phobia, you must move towards, experience and release the emotional charge attached to the image or situation.

Once you have done this you will return to an Objective Viewpoint position..

Objective Viewpoints as Maps

Objective Viewpoints are relatively low energy mental patterns that work for us in a similar way a paper map from your local newsagent does when you are planning to go hiking in unfamiliar territory.

If you are familiar with using these types of maps, and have come to trust them, you will just open them up and start planning your route straight away.  So let us pretend you are walk leader for a group.

You open up your map and first thing you do is look at the map scale to plan distance versus time ratios and assess contour lines to select the appropriate path through those too-steep hills.  You look for features of interest to visit and those to avoid.

The map so far is based on the past experiences and impressions of other people but past experience is not all you consider – the next thing you look at and plan for are more serious, present-time, potentially subjective experiences.

You check the weather because some of those hills may be safe in good weather but in rain they become treacherous slippery slides.  You plan your start point and your end point according to the abilities of what you and your companions can do today.

You have your grandmother with you and she has a hip problem.   Three miles into the walk your grandmother tells you she can go no further.  You all come to a complete stop.  On your map you see there is a cottage nearby and you go to the cottage to ask for help and advice.

You are now having a very Subjective experience.  All you can think about is helping your grandmother.  How is your Objective viewpoint working for you right now?  The walk is forgotten – all you see is your grandmother.

Subjective Viewpoints as Experiences on the Map

Your viewpoint becomes Subjective when you see some specific element of the map relating to you personally which suggests you need to change direction.  Something in this particular map is moving towards you or you must move towards it.

You expect either conflict or see a need for co-operation between you and the thing identified and to overcome the situation you release emotional energy as a stimulant.

Subjective Viewpoints have intense emotional energy attached to a very narrow range of features in the Objective landscape:

• the triggering issue


• your emotional response to it.

The emotional response is produced in order to help you physically overcome the triggering issue.

Once the triggering issue has been dealt with (eg once your grandmother tells you either her hip is now fine or she has been taken to hospital) and as long as you have discharged the emotional energy produced, you will return to an Objective Viewpoint.

Mood and Emotional Disorders

If you have an emotional disorder of any kind you have become trapped in a Subjective Viewpoint position by the intense energy attached to it.  By studying how you transition between viewpoints in regards to relatively mild emotional experiences you can come to understand and apply the same model towards extreme emotional experiences -  achieving eventual freedom from their affects.

If you suffer with an obsession, for example, you are stuck in the Subjective Viewpoint of a Subjective Viewpoint.  You are looking at yourself from a short distance away, watching your emotional reaction, then emotionally reacting to what you see in yourself.

If you discharge the energy attached to the second Subjective view by feeling the energy out you will gradually move to a position where you can see the Objective Viewpoint and then develop the confidence to undo the primary emotional response and any other underlying emotional issues you have.

Once you have seen and embedded the new Objective healing model in your brain, and proven to yourself it works for you, you will keep applying the same model.

How did you get this way in the first place?

Unfortunately it can take just seconds to transition from Objective to  Subjective viewpoints but weeks or months of effort to transition back; this does not just apply to emotional problems:

• a pleasant looking letter turns out to be an unaffordable bill


• a man coming towards you with a leaflet in a city centre turns out to be your long lost brother


• a boring report up for discussion at a meeting turns out to be a report on your personal low productivity levels


• your sixty year old mother, who has lived with you for twenty years without having a boyfriend, tells you she has a new man staying the night and he turns out to be a friend of yours in his thirties who sleeps around and often brags about his exploits with older women to you and all your friends.

Just think about how quickly these kinds of events affect your ‘way of seeing’ and how long it might take for you to recover from their emotional and real-life practical affects.

Awareness comes in seconds; recovery happens over weeks or months; this is the standard pattern, am I right?  But when we become Subjective about our own emotional responses we crave quick removal of them and because we cannot achieve this we get frustrated and emotional with ourselves and tell ourselves something is wrong with us.

We become Subjective about our Subjectivity and this creates a self-perpetuating feedback loop that keeps us emotionally charged and charging.

The transition back to an Objective Viewpoint, when it comes to how we see our emotions in this situation, is the same long, unwanted kind of journey we face in regards to any other unpleasant experience we face in life. We do not recover overnight.

Objective Viewpoints are More Powerful than Subjective Viewpoints – But You Have to Get Subjective About Implementing Them

Behind every Subjective Viewpoint there is an Objective Viewpoint driving it.  Behind your emotional reaction to your own emotional reactions is a view telling you your condition cannot be healed; this is you and you just need to keep avoiding the problem and holding it in check..

When you choose to go into the painful experience repeatedly and long enough, however, a new cold, mental model starts to appear and this is the opposite of the model currently running the show.

As you start to implement your new model – the one you believe will lead to healing – your currently held Subjective view rises into your conscious mind and starts to fight its corner.  It searches for every piece of ammunition it can throw at you to stop you implementing your new plan.

Your new Objective Viewpoint must become narrowed and emotionally charged in order to begin to fight the old version.  You get frustrated and more determined and Subjective.

Emotional and mental ambivalence is produced as your different viewpoints engage in war with each other inside your mind and body.  Your new Objective Viewpoint must win if you are to heal.

To defeat an obsession you must become more obsessed with going towards it than you currently are with moving away from it.  To beat a phobia you must become more aggressive about going towards what you fear than you are about staying away from it.  To relieve depression you must be more determined to feel and release the anger driving it than you currently are with not doing so.

All of these new approaches require new Objective Viewpoints driving them and the only way to find and develop the new is to go take a very close look at the old first, regardless of how painful it is.

Observation is everything.

Look long enough and you will see the cause of your pain is you have remained emotionally charged but were not willing to go through the viewpoint transition process.  It hurts, just like any other Subjective viewpoint situation in life does, until you face up to and deal with it.

Confused?  Why Not Seek Advice?

If we feel overwhelmed by all this emotional tension we can start to freeze up in confused indecision.  We are aware our viewpoint is narrow and want to widen it so we can see the bigger picture before making a decision.

We seek advice with the intention of borrowing more informed Objective Viewpoints from trusted sources who do not wish to take unfair advantage of our situation.  Our intention is to find, select and apply a new Objective Viewpoint like a mental overlay on the situation in order to bring about a resolution so we can forget about the issue and move on.  We decide to trust and apply an Objective Viewpoint given to us by another person because:

• they demonstrate they understand our experience


• they convince us they have consistently applied or seen others successfully apply the new viewpoint recommended.

Can you think of a borrowed Objective map you applied to any area of your life that helped you sort out your thinking and behaviours eventually leading to a resolution despite how you felt about the situation – particularly where it took months to achieve the outcome?  I can think of several I use regularly.

Usually when we look at our mental maps with a view to resolving a Subjective Viewpoint issue our wish is to return to the pre-subjective place we came from.  In real life this option is rarely available – we are forced to take some kind of experiential journey during which we work through our fears and emotions, and arrive at a new place with new knowledge.

Things we found unacceptable previously become gradually acceptable; things we felt we could not do we find we can.  We grow; we detach from old beliefs and the emotions linked to them and move on to the new.

Regards - Carl