New Ideas

DEALING WITH FEELINGS

Anger, fear, sadness: the Big Three. Most of us learned at an early age that there are only two things to do with them: you either express them, spilling them out onto others; or you sit on them, stuffing them into the body and trying to forget you ever had a feeling. ("Angry? Nope, not me. I never get angry." "No, I'm not sad. I didn't even cry when my mother died...")

But there are drawbacks to both these approaches to so-called "negative" feelings, aren't there? Expressing our anger, fear or sadness can create a lot of trouble for us when others withdraw or even outright reject us because they're uncomfortable with feelings themselves. And closing down our feelings - well, that often leads to depression , not being able to feel at all. Even worse, those "stuffed" feelings are now chemically locked into our cells, giving rise to physical ailments of all kinds. (Most people know ulcers have something to do with repressed fear and worry; but do you know that asthma, allergies, tumors, endocrine disorders, auto-immune diseases and many heart issues are now considered to arise from stuffed feelings?)

The good news is that there's a third alternative: when a feeling arises, just feel it, healthily and completely.

Read the full article here.

WHO RUNS THE PROCESS?

In the spring of 2003 I and my therapy practice were both in the doldrums, and I was upset with myself. After all, I was certainly helping people to come out of past trauma and live functional, reasonably happy lives; why wasn't that enough? Out of answers, I issued a wild call to the Universe: "Help!"

Help arrived. A week later a client dropped a book into my lap: The Journey, by Brandon Bays. Ten days after that I went to the Boulder Journey Intensive weekend in equal parts hope and doubt: Is this a cult?

Read the full article here.