SELF HELP

 

Releasing the Stored Emotions That Cripple Your Life

This article explains how pre-verbal trauma lies at the root of relationship troubles and provides self-help instructions on how you can release it. However you can use the techniques described here to deal with all sorts of personal issues as well.

Enjoyable personal and work relationships often elude us. While some feel uncomfortable about getting close, many others endure power struggles, stone-walling, abuse and/or indecision about 'getting out'. Trying to pinpoint the events in our past that caused us to be the way we are, and making efforts to change ourselves or others, rarely helps. The harder we try, the more we usually suffer.

However, there is a self help approach that can bring us a lot of peace and healing. It is based on sound principles about emotions and trauma from the fields of psychology, hypnotherapy and various somatic psychotherapies.

Psychologists' experiments have repeatedly shown that it is impossible to detect a physiological difference between a strong positive emotion and a strong negative one. From this it has been concluded that emotions are bodily sensations to which we attach a mental interpretation according to the context in which they occur. Because most psychotherapies involve interpretation and our minds can deliver complicated interpretations ad infinitum, working with body sensations is a more direct, simple and effective way to heal our difficulties.

You have probably noticed that when mild feelings occur, sensations arise to a gentle peak intensity and then dissipate in the same way as happens with other forms of energy, such as sound waves and electromagnetic radiation. However, this doesn't happen with intense emotions. The reason is because in the period before, during and after birth, when we were 'emotional sponges' soaking up the feelings around us and our egos couldn't comprehend what was happening, we developed defences that prevented us feeling the full intensity of the sensations. The energy that could not dissipate then became locked in the musculature of our bodies. Of course, accidents, crime and war may add to this normal load of infant trauma. For existing views on this trapped energy and ways of releasing it, see the work of Wilhelm Reich, the bioenergetics of Alexander Lowen, Janov's primal therapy, and the holotropic breathwork and bodywork of Stan Grof.

Unfortunately, every time our mind associates anything with past trauma, we compulsively repeat the behaviour patterns developed to prevent us from fully feeling it in the first place. No amount of rational thinking and logic can prevent this. Further, trying to get rid of our patterns frightens our unconscious mind and strengthens the defences, entrenching the patterns more deeply. The same happens if we pressure someone else to give up their patterns. From this perspective it is easy to see why relationship problems can be so intractable.

The repetitive difficulties we have with particular people in our lives persist because the circumstances that our defences require to avoid fully experiencing a suppressed intense emotion are the same circumstances that the other person's defences need to avoid to prevent an experience of one of their blocked feelings.

Instead of trying to talk each other out of behaviours that bother us, one or both people need to release the trapped body sensations from infancy that are the real cause of the conflict. When this happens, the defences fall away because there is no longer anything to defend and the conflict disappears

To release blocked feelings, we need to briefly feel their full intensity. This is possible because an intense brief pain is much more bearable than a slightly less intense chronic or intermittent pain, (in fact, it's the latter rather than the former that is the cause of retraumatisation). We can develop the trust to do this by practising with a small discomfort first.

Think of a minor issue that bothers you. Notice the feeling. Locate it in your body. Notice what shape, size and intensity it is. If you are unaware of a feeling, use the hypnotic technique called revivification.

Hypnotherapists have learned that if you vividly imagine something, the mind does not know the difference between what is vividly imagined and what is real. Even if you think you have a poor imagination, you can do revivification. All it involves is engaging as many of your physical senses in the visualisation as possible. For example, if you imagine seeing and feeling a piece of lemon in your fingers, holding it to your lips, smelling it, and tasting the sour flavour as you hear yourself sucking it, your saliva is likely to run.

To use revivification for this exercise, pick a particular occasion when your issue bothered you (you cannot imagine a generalisation) and engage as many of your physical senses as possible in the recall. If a future event is bothering you, make up the details. The mind will make the necessary associations whether it is real or imagined. Now notice the feelings in your body. Where are the sensations? How big are they? What shape are they? How intense are they? It is important to become as fully aware of them as you can.

Now take a few breaths to circulate some oxygen and carbon dioxide around the body. Oxygen gives you energy and carbon-dioxide helps bring unconscious feelings and thoughts into consciousness. This is the basis of the breathwork therapies. Also, because we block ourselves from experiencing intense emotions by holding our breath, it is important to breathe consciously and continuously.

Now tense up the muscles in the area of the body where you can feel the sensations. If you are feeling nothing or aren't sure where the sensation is, tense up the whole body. Doubt, confusion and numbness are defensive patterns that can be worked with and released in the same way as feelings like fear, grief and anger.

Tense up rapidly and as hard as you can. Let go, and keep your breathing going afterwards. Now notice what has happened. Sensations may have become more obvious, larger or smaller, more or less intense, shifted to another part of the body or dissipated altogether. If you are feeling anything other than complete relaxation, tense up the non-relaxed parts again, remembering to keep breathing. Continue intensifying the energy wherever it moves in your body until it dissipates.

Some people will find this happens on the first or second attempt and others will have to persevere for half an hour or more. Then when your whole body is relaxed, think of the bothersome circumstances again and notice if you are still relaxed. This is the test. If you are not completely relaxed, continue to intensify the body sensations until you can recall the issue and it no longer produces unpleasant feelings.

If you tensed up your whole body because you were not sure where the sensations were and you still cannot feel anything, do it again, harder if you can. The intensity is important. Sometimes people have to do it six times before they feel any sensations. Once you get a sensation, work with that in the way already described.

If you tensed up your body and the sensations didn't change, do it again, harder if you can. Also remember that you are trying to make them worse. If you hold the intention of 'getting rid of them', you delay the process. The paradox is that you have to be willing to accept and experience whatever is there, forever if necessary, and then the release can happen quickly.

Often people experience a sudden warm glow or pleasant tingling. Enjoy it. The energy has moved and you have healed something. Another indication of healing is a sense of deep peace. When a seemingly unbearable feeling explodes into bliss, deep serenity, euphoria or the like, you have experienced an ego death-rebirth (see the work of Stan Grof for more details).

A common obstacle in the above process occurs when a person experiences an intense point of pain they are unwilling or unable to physically intensify even for an instant. The pain might be in a sensitive or physically damaged part of the body. If this occurs, keep your breathing consciously connected and imagine the intensity in the centre of the pain spreading out to the size of a golf ball. Then when you have done that, spread it out to the size of a tennis ball, then a basketball, then an enormous beach ball, and finally fill the room with it. If you notice that the middle is still more intense, just start spreading it out from the middle again. Persevere. Some people may need to imagine spreading it out to fill the whole of Australia, the planet or the Universe. Sooner or later it will dissipate because, if your mind gives a limited amount of trapped energy permission to move beyond its current boundary, it must get weaker as it gets bigger. Some people notice it weakening as they imagine it expanding. Others notice it suddenly transform into something pleasant when they have been willing to let go and drown in the pain: the necessary attitude that permits healing.

Another obstacle to developing trust in this process can occur if you accidentally pick a big first issue rather than a small one. If this happens, you may feel that the pain is getting so intense it might annihilate you. The more intense it is the more real it feels and this makes it hard to believe that it is just an 'old feeling' coming up for release. It is easy to go into overwhelm when this happens. So, if you can find a smaller issue to work with, then do that, and develop some confidence in the approach first.

However, eventually you will need to face the bigger issues, and I know from personal experience, as well as from working with other people, that if you can develop the trust to be willing to totally surrender to being swallowed up by the pain, that a very significant breakthrough is likely to occur. This does not mean you should do it alone. Although I have at times faced extreme challenges on my own, I much prefer assistance from someone who has experienced those horrible places. It can be very comforting and even necessary to enable us to trust that we can let such feelings happen without being destroyed by them.

However, for many people the trapped feelings are not all that bad, and remembering to do the process is a bigger problem. It is easy to get caught up in what is happening and totally forget that you have this tool at your disposal. The only answer is practice. The more you do it, the more often you will remember to do it. It took me months to remember to keep breathing when something upsetting occurred. It seems easy now. But it wasn't at the beginning. Persevere, and if you have trouble, get assistance.

Another occasion when we need assistance is when we prefer to talk about our bothersome experiences rather than re-experience them. Talking can be useful if the listener provides the safe space for us to open up further and we experience our feelings more deeply as we speak. However, talking is more often used as a defence against feeling. In this kind of talking, we speak from the mind, rather than from our present experience, and this removes us from feeling intense emotions.

The biggest difficulty occurs if someone feels the process is endless because there is 'always' another horrible sensation to release. This can happen with people who suffer from anxiety, depression, insomnia, physical problems, severe addictions or a history of abuse. Even with appropriate help, they can doubt the very real progress they are making. So it is important for the assistant to record and point out the changes. It also helps enormously if the helper has travelled an equally difficult journey and can say, 'I know you can do it because I have done it'.

In addition, no one can lead others into emotional territory they have not been through themselves. When something we are unwilling to face arises in someone we are assisting, we will steer them away from what they need to experience for their healing.

And now, having drawn you a map, best wishes in your journey into the territory of rewarding relationships.

Linda developed the above approach to healing relationships as a result of interviewing international 'exceptional helpers' for her counselling psychology Ph.D. research at Monash University.

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Healing Relationships Through Nurture

This article describes four ways to enhance and heal your relationships through nurture. Don't underestimate the power of simple techniques. The trick is to do them when you least feel like it, then miracles can happen. If you find yourself resisting, get some professional help.

David came to see me about work stress. However, it soon became clear that his problems involved more than an irritable boss. His wife Diane was unhappy about the state of their relationship. David had no idea what was wrong, or what to do about it. He was reluctant to look too deeply at this painful area of his life.

Couples respond in different ways when the emotional tone of their relationship deteriorates. Some, like David and Diane, resort to denial. Many seek professional relationship counselling. This usually involves talking with the couple to help them understand the cause of their troubles and to negotiate ways of behaving, which are satisfactory to both parties.

There are other options. When we focus on our experience, rather than intellectual understanding, difficulties dissolve a lot more quickly. The most powerful and simple way is through nurturing touch.

Psychologists have long known that humans need nurturing touch for their emotional development, and tactile healing practices are recognized in most parts of the world today. Registered nurses in the USA practise therapeutic (nurturing) touch. The National Health Service funds 'hands on' spiritual healers in British hospitals and medical clinics. Reiki has become a popular alternative tactile method of healing in Australia.

Nurturing doesn't need to be done by trained practitioners. Anyone can give nurturing touch to another person, and it is far more effective, not to mention less expensive, than conventional counselling or therapy.

I discussed a number of nurturing activities with David. These possibilities included hugging until relaxed, stroking, therapeutic touch and holding hands. Some people feel uncomfortable about hugging for more than a few seconds at any time, but David recalled that he and Dianne had enjoyed it, so he decided to try that first.

Hugging until relaxed can be done standing up, sitting down or lying in bed. Hold each other gently. Apart from the need to adjust your position so you can be comfortable for a prolonged time, the aim is to help each other focus on the feelings in your bodies until both of you are relaxed. Limit talking to descriptions of sensations and encouragement to notice the details of what is happening. For example:

"I'm feeling anxious."

"Where do you feel that?"

""Mostly in my stomach."

"Can you describe it?"

"Yes. It's about the size of a rock melon and it's moving a little as I speak it is getting bigger and less intense."

Emotion creates bodily sensation and if we pay close attention, it becomes free to move and eventually dissipate. Persevere with sensations that are particularly intense. The more we resist experiencing our feelings, the more intense they become. It is the resistance rather than the actual feeling that produces the greatest discomfort. If necessary, take a big breath and sigh out into the part of your body where the feeling is located and notice how it moves and eventually dissipates - this happens because it is hard to resist a feeling when you are sighing and letting go.

People often refuse to believe that profound healing can happen like this because they are convinced that it can't be so simple! Couples think that understanding the cause of their problem will cure it. However this is no more true than believing that understanding how a person got killed in a road accident will bring them back to life.

For couples who enjoy hugging, the above exercise should be used when they feel tense or the emotional tone of their relationship starts to deteriorate. Those who feel uncomfortable with cuddling could try holding hands instead. Once again, the focus is on helping each other to explore bodily sensations until both are relaxed.

When I saw David the following week he was smiling. He and Diane had practiced hugging until relaxed, three times. On the first two occasions, Diane experienced tightness in her throat, and when it dissipated, she felt safe enough to talk about a couple of issues that had bothered her for the entire 12 years of their marriage. David initially felt attacked. However, because he paid attention and fully experienced his bodily sensations until they subsided, he was able to resist the temptation to defend himself.

By the third hugging session, there was pleasurable, re-assuring warmth, reminiscent of their courting days. I encouraged David to continue with this practice and the following week he expressed an interest in trying the stroking exercise.

One person lies on a bed while the other lightly strokes his or her naked body for 15-30 minutes. Response to physical stimulation varies greatly, so it is important for the person doing the stroking to stay focused and aware of what they are doing. The aim is to gently and tenderly pleasure your partner in a non-sexual way. The person being stroked should lie still and observe their body sensations, pleasant or otherwise. They should make sounds that show their pleasure whenever appropriate, and sparingly indicate when something is unpleasant.

Even if your partner is a little heavy-handed, he or she will learn best what you want if your feedback consists of gratitude for the moments in which they manage to succeed in pleasing you.

David reported that while stroking had been pleasurable, there were some new developments in the hugging till relaxed exercise. Diane began to fear loosing the good feelings that she was starting to experience. She felt she didn't deserve them and that her partner deserved someone better.

It is not unusual for prolonged hugging to lead to a level of intimacy in which we express our deepest fears. While much is said amongst therapists about the difficulty of healing the wounds of early childhood, it frequently happens that if a person is able to provide an atmosphere of acceptance and non-judgement, while their partner fully experiences these feelings, profound healing can happen.

This happened for David and Diane. Something meaningful started to blossom again in their relationship.

David also told me that Diane had recently taken on a new job, and although she loved the prestige, challenge and income that her new position provided, she came home each night tired and drained, and had developed a habit of drinking to unwind. At this point I suggested he introduce her to the therapeutic touch practise.

With this exercise, David sat on a chair beside their bed with a pillow on his lap and instructed Diane to lie in a relaxed position across the end of the bed with a blanket over her body and her head resting on the pillow in his lap. David then placed the palms of his hands under her neck with his thumbs resting lightly against the sides of her neck and focused his attention on the sensations in his hands.

Expect feelings such as tingling, warmth, love and other good sensations to arise in either partner. However, the objective is just to observe, and experience, whatever feelings or sensations arise. There is no need to talk. This practice should be continued for 15 minutes or longer if desired.

Diane was delighted and her wine consumption fell off rapidly.

Of these approaches to nurturing, one is not better than another.Couples should choose whatever appeals to them both, and adapt it to suit their needs.

However, here are a few general principles worth keeping in mind:

Do the practice regularly, regardless of what you feel like. Just reading about it, or talking about it, won't achieve anything. Make an agreement with your partner about a time and place and stick to it. No excuses! When you are experiencing relationship difficulties, you probably won't feel like it.

'I'm too busy' and 'It feels artificial', are simply defences against feeling uncomfortable. Note which ones you tend to use, and nurture each other anyway.

  • Notice your thoughts, feelings and body sensations rather than suppressing them or dumping them on others.
  • If possible tell your partner what you are experiencing but do it in a non-blaming, non-judgemental way.
  • Acknowledge and affirm what your partner says. Avoid discussion. It takes people away from feelings and leads to argument.
  • Persevere. Do not stop the practice in order to avoid uncomfortable feelings.
  • All feelings and sensations, both pleasant and unpleasant, dissipate over time. Learn to be 'warmly okay' with being uncomfortable. It can have a significant, positive effect on your whole life.

The last time I saw David, he was busy planning 'dates' with his wife, and those stressful work issues? They too have 'magically' improved.

Linda teaches couples how to use nurturing activities, love-making and body-oriented emotional release skills to resolve relationship problems and sexual difficulties.

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Making Love Last

This article deals with the difficulties that many couples encounter trying to meet society's misguided expecations of what is normal in a sexual relationship.

Wendy came to see me because of dissatisfaction with her life, although on the surface, she seemed to have it all. She told me that her 15-year relationship with her husband Pete was fine.

However, when I asked about her sex life she said Pete had been impotent for most of their marriage and she wasn't interested in sex anyway.

Sex… We are taught in Western Society, especially by Hollywood, that sex should be goal-oriented. Hollywood-style sex focuses on stimulation and sexual pleasure, especially orgasm. What will surprise most people is that orgasm is only a relatively minor part of real lovemaking. Focusing on orgasm is like throwing away all the filling of a sandwich and just eating the crusts. It is a very poor substitute for what is possible!

From 1926 onward, Van de Velde's very popular marriage manual, Ideal Marriage, taught men to focus on clitoral stimulation. In 1966, Masters and Johnson made a surprising discovery. They found that the response to sexual stimulation in females was the same as in males. At the time, the Women's Liberation Movement was in full force. This created a focus on female orgasm and put pressure on women to work out how to have one. This pressure came through books, magazines and the movies.

As a result, men and women started treating themselves or each other as objects - as instruments for either their partner or themselves to get an orgasm. This agenda created sexual problems such as:

  • Loss of chemistry, sexual boredom, infidelity and other substitute interests.
  • Dealing with the pressure to have an orgasm by faking it.
  • Feelings of resentment and being used due to begrudgingly helping the partner to have an orgasm.
  • Performance anxiety and sexual dysfunction due to a focus on trying to behave sexually in ways that society expects.

It wasn't until the publication of the Hite Report in 1976 that the focus on orgasms for either sex was questioned. Shere Hite discovered that many women do not orgasm naturally but that some who had never orgasmed could enjoy sex and intercourse immensely. She also found that most women were more interested in sexual relations lasting longer and experiencing more love, tenderness, hugs, and whole body sensuality than in having orgasms. As a consequence she called for a redefinition of sex in a way that did not focus on orgasms. Unfortunately, most people remain unaware of these findings and 'Hollywood style' sex continues to be conveyed as the only option despite being unworkable in long-term partnerships.

Hollywood sex usually works best during the honeymoon phase of a relationship when sexual excitement is at its highest and before real intimacy has had a chance to develop. Sexual chemistry is very delicate. The slightest emotional upset can kill it.

The first sign of a problem is usually the loss of interest in sex. Each issue that remains unresolved becomes another unconscious reason for lack of interest. When the good feeling goes, many people focus even more on orgasm to try to regain those good feelings. However, this only compounds the problem. Feelings of boredom, emptiness, being unloved, uncared for, unconsidered and used, often arise. Some find it difficult to perform sexually. Others move from partner to partner hoping that will fix the problem. However the quality of sex in a long-term relationship cannot improve until the emotional issues behind the disappearance of the chemistry have been resolved.

An alternative to Hollywood style sex is a form of lovemaking espoused by spiritual teachers, such as Barry Long and Isaac Shapiro. Researchers and psychologists, such as Alfred Kinsey, Rollo May, Alan Watts and others have also reported these practices.

When a man focuses his attention on pleasing his partner by doing things for her which she enjoys - such as stroking her back and gazing into her eyes, she feels loved, and if she shows her appreciation, the love in his heart grows. In this way, the couple literally make love. The more she feels loved, the more she gets turned on sexually. Chemistry builds in both partners, and the sexual organs respond.

No genital stimulation is necessary. The vagina lubricates naturally and opens up in response to her feeling of being loved. Likewise, as love expands in the man's heart, his penis responds.

It is important for both parties to stay focused on what is happening. They should establish and maintain eye contact. The setting should have soft lighting sufficient to see each other's faces. Incense, music and candles can be added to create an inviting atmosphere.

Contrary to popular opinion, a man doesn't need a hard erection to successfully make love and please his partner. He may choose to use the tip of his partially erect penis to gently massage around the entrance to the vagina. This 'knocking at the door' should continue until the vagina opens up naturally.

Sometimes there is a 'rush' when entering the woman that can cause the man to ejaculate. He must learn to be still. He doesn't need to thrust madly; he just needs to focus on pleasing his partner. If he is doing something that isn't working, she should gently let him know about something else he could do that she does like, and if he does it, she shows her appreciation for that.

It is important that women don't take men for granted by neglecting to show their appreciation. They need to be considerate and sensitive with their responses. Statements like 'Don't do that again!' are likely to trigger an emotional response in the man that will finish up being a turn off for both of them.

The man doesn't have to give up orgasms but he should stop focusing on them as a goal. In time he will gain full control over his ejaculation and will choose whether he wants to have an orgasm or not. When he does want to climax, he will leave this till the natural end of their lovemaking session. Sometimes he may simply choose, after hours of intense sexual pleasure, not to bother with the relatively inconsequential experience of an orgasm.

If this seems a very strange and difficult requirement for men, it should be remembered that it was reported by the well-respected psychologist, Rollo May, that men miss out on pleasure through their focus on orgasm. Alfred Kinsey also acknowledged the Hindu male practice of prolonging the pleasure of intercourse through enjoying multiple orgasm-like-experiences preceding full sexual arousal and ejaculation.

Not only do men short-change themselves by focusing on a single ejaculation, but they also miss out on the experience of being with a partner who enjoys love making as much as they do.

However, in order to enjoy this more rewarding form of lovemaking, it is necessary to deal with emotional problems as they arise. Even if we have no initial resistance to trying this new approach, there may be other feelings, conscious or unconscious, interfering with the delicate sexual chemistry. Self-help techniques which have been helpful in dealing with these issues have been described in my previous Living NOW articles (September 2001, May 2002) which are available for download from this web site.

Having explained the difference between conventional 'Hollywood' style sex and true lovemaking to Wendy, I suggested that she ask Pete to spend half an hour each night simply pleasing her, and that while he did that, she focus on thanking him whenever he succeeded.

Two weeks later she returned with a huge beam on her face and announced that Pete wasn't impotent any more and that they were enjoying themselves immensely. Life was great!

Six months later I bumped into them at the local newsagency. They looked like they were on their honeymoon.

Linda teaches couples how to use nurture, love-making and body-oriented emotional release skills to resolve relationship problems and sexual difficulties

 

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Self-help for Depression

This article discusses the nature of depression and provides techniques for people to help themselves to overcome the less serious forms of depression on their own. However, in cases of severe or chronic depression, assistance from someone experienced in this approach is likely to be necessary in order to make significant progress.

The word 'depression' is used to refer to a wide range of moods and behaviours from those linked with the normal sadness of life to suicidal despair. However, clinical depression is distinguished from normal grief and sadness by its severity, duration or persistence, and effects on day to day functioning. Ten to twenty percent of the population experience serious depressive episodes at some point in their lives. Depression is generally considered to be a chemical imbalance that creates real deep psychic pain over which the person has no control and treatment is generally by medication.

However, my experience has taught me that depression causes chemical imbalances rather than the other way around and that self-help techniques aimed at dealing with the real cause of depression can bring peace and healing. These techniques are based on sound principles of emotion and trauma from the fields of psychology, hypnotherapy and various somatic psychotherapies.

Psychologists' experiments have repeatedly shown that it is impossible to detect a physiological difference between a strong positive emotion and a strong negative one. From this it has been concluded that emotions are bodily sensations to which we attach a mental interpretation according to the context in which they occur. Because most psychotherapies involve interpretation and our minds can deliver complicated interpretations , working with body sensations is a more direct, simple and effective way to heal our difficulties.

You have probably noticed that when mild feelings occur, sensations arise to a gentle peak intensity and then dissipate in the same way as happens with other forms of energy, such as sound waves and electromagnetic radiation. However, this doesn't happen with intense emotions. The reason for this stems from the period before, during and after birth. During this time we were like 'emotional sponges' soaking up the feelings around us. Unfortunately our egos couldn't comprehend what was happening and we consequently developed defences that prevented us feeling the full intensity of the sensations. The energy that could not dissipate then became locked in the musculature of our bodies. Of course, accidents, crime and war may add to this normal load of infant trauma. For existing views on this trapped energy and ways of releasing it, see the work of Wilhelm Reich, the bioenergetics of Alexander Lowen, Janov's primal therapy, and the Holotropic Breathwork and bodywork of Stan Grof.

Unfortunately, every time our mind associates anything with past trauma, we compulsively repeat the behaviour patterns developed to prevent us from fully feeling it in the first place. No amount of rational thinking and logic can prevent this. Eventually we reach a limit where we have suppressed so many emotions that we suffer the classical symptoms of depression. This may happen through a single painful event such as a marriage break-up, the death of a loved one, or the loss of a career. In this case, it is called reactive depression. If it follows childbirth, an event which triggers our unresolved infant and birth trauma, it is called postnatal depression. However, if there is a slow build-up of many things that we have suppressed over the years, then there is no obvious single cause and it is called major depression or endogenous depression. Finally, bipolar depression occurs when the need to escape the pain and discomfort of normal reality is so great that the psyche uses an immense amount of energy to generate manic periods of unrealistic perceptions such as delusions of grandeur which then collapse back into periods of endogenous depression when the energy runs out.

The more serious forms of depression usually persist or get worse unless we engage in a deep experiential healing process or there are dramatic changes to our life circumstances. Anti-depressants are not a cure. They simply suppress the bothersome emotions for us, and in so doing, often take away our ability to feel joy or sorrow, so life becomes meaningless.

Instead of trying to talk ourselves out of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that bother us, we need to release the trapped body sensations from our early life which are being triggered by events in our lives today but which are actually not appropriate to today's events. When this happens, the mental defences (conscious and unconscious attitudes and beliefs) fall away because there is no longer a bad feeling to avoid.

To release blocked feelings, we need to briefly feel their full intensity. This is possible because an intense brief pain is much more bearable than a slightly less intense chronic or intermittent pain, (in fact, it's the latter rather than the former that is the cause of re-traumatisation). We can develop the trust to do this by practising with a small discomfort first.

Think of a minor issue that bothers you. Notice the feeling. Locate it in your body. Notice what shape, size and intensity it is. If you are unaware of a feeling, use the hypnotic technique called revivification.

Hypnotherapists have learned that if you vividly imagine something, the mind does not know the difference between what is vividly imagined and what is real. For example, if you imagine seeing and feeling a piece of lemon in your fingers, holding it to your lips, smelling it, and tasting the sour flavour as you hear yourself sucking it, your saliva is likely to run. To use revivification for this exercise, pick a particular occasion when your issue bothered you (you can imagine a generalisation) and engage as many of your physical senses as possible in the recall. If a future event is bothering you, make up the details. The mind will make the necessary associations whether it is real or imagined. Now notice the feelings in your body. Where are the sensations? How big are they? What shape are they? How intense are they? It is important to become as fully aware of them as you can.

Now take a few breaths to circulate some oxygen and carbon dioxide around the body. Oxygen gives you energy and carbon-dioxide helps bring unconscious feelings and thoughts into consciousness. This is the basis of the breathwork therapies. Also, because we block ourselves from experiencing intense emotions by holding our breath, it is important to breathe consciously and continuously.

Now tense up the muscles in the area of the body where you can feel the sensations. If you are feeling nothing or aren't sure where the sensation is, tense up the whole body. Doubt, confusion and numbness are defensive patterns that can be worked with and released in the same way as feelings like fear, grief and anger. Let go, and keep your breathing going afterwards. Notice what has happened. Sensations may have become more obvious, larger or smaller, more or less intense, shifted to another part of the body or dissipated altogether. If you are feeling anything other than complete relaxation, tense up the non-relaxed parts again, remembering to keep breathing. Continue intensifying the energy wherever it moves in your body until it dissipates.

Some people will find this happens on the first or second attempt and others will have to persevere for half an hour or more. Then when your whole body is relaxed, think of the bothersome circumstances again and notice if you are still relaxed. This is the test. If you are not completely relaxed, continue to intensify the body sensations until you can recall the issue and it no longer produces unpleasant feelings.

If you tensed up your whole body because you were not sure where the sensations were and you still cannot feel anything, do it again, harder if you can. The intensity is important. Sometimes people have to do it six times before they feel any sensations. Once you get a sensation, work with that in the way already described.

If you tensed up your body and the sensations didn't change, do it again, harder if you can. Also remember that you are trying to make them worse. If you hold the intention of 'getting rid of them', you delay the process. The paradox is that you have to be willing to accept and experience whatever is there, forever if necessary, and then the release can happen quickly.

Often people experience a sudden warm glow or pleasant tingling. Enjoy it. The energy has moved and you have healed something. Another indication of healing is a sense of deep peace. When a seemingly unbearable feeling explodes into bliss, deep serenity, euphoria or the like, you have experienced an ego death-rebirth (see the work of Stan Grof for more details).

A common obstacle in the above process occurs when a person experiences an intense point of pain they are unwilling or unable to physically intensify even for an instant. The pain might be in a sensitive or physically damaged part of the body. If this occurs, keep your breathing consciously connected and imagine the intensity in the centre of the pain spreading outwards. If you notice that the middle is still more intense, just start spreading it out from the middle again. Persevere. Some people may need to imagine spreading it out to fill the whole of Australia, the planet or the Universe. Sooner or later it will dissipate because, if your mind gives a limited amount of trapped energy permission to move beyond its current boundary, it must get weaker as it gets bigger. Some people notice it weakening as they imagine it expanding. Others notice it suddenly transform into something pleasant when they have been willing to let go and drown in the pain: the necessary attitude that permits healing.

Another obstacle to developing trust in this process can occur if you accidentally pick a big first issue rather than a small one. If this happens, you may feel that the pain is getting so intense it might annihilate you. The more intense it is the more real it feels and this makes it hard to believe that it is just an 'old feeling' coming up for release. It is easy to feel overwhelmed when this happens. So, it is best to find a smaller issue to work with initially to develop confidence in the approach.

However, eventually you will need to face the bigger issues, and I know from personal experience, as well as from working with others, that if you can develop enough trust to totally surrender to being swallowed up by the pain, that a very significant breakthrough is likely to occur. This does not mean you should do it alone. It can be extremely beneficial to have assistance from someone who has experienced those horrible places. The fact that they have gone through the process and survived can be very comforting and even necessary to enable us to trust that we can feel these sensations without being destroyed by them.

However, for many people the trapped feelings are not all that bad, and remembering to do the process is a bigger problem. It is easy to get caught up in what is happening and forget that you have this tool at your disposal. The only answer is practice. The more you do it, the more naturally it will come to you. Persevere, and if you have trouble, seek assistance.

Another occasion when we need assistance is when we prefer to talk about our bothersome experiences rather than re-experience them. Talking can be useful if the listener provides the safe space for us to open up further and we experience our feelings more deeply as we speak. However, talking is more often used as a defence against feeling. In this kind of talking, we speak from the mind, rather than from our present experience, and this removes us from feeling intense emotions.

The biggest difficulty occurs if someone feels the process is endless because there is 'always' another horrible sensation to release. This is frequently the case with people who suffer from major depression. Even with appropriate help, they can doubt the very real progress they are making. So it is important for the assistant to record and point out the changes. It also helps enormously if the helper has travelled an equally difficult journey and can say, 'I know you can do it because I have done it'. In addition when something we are unwilling to face arises in someone we are assisting, we will instinctively steer them away from what they need to experience for their healing. If this is happening, find yourself another mentor for the journey into freedom from depression.

Dr. Linda Edwards developed the above approach to healing depression as a result of interviewing international 'exceptional helpers' during counselling psychology research at Monash University. She has taught pastoral counselling at university, and is a registered psychologist, experienced hypnotherapist, certified Holotropic Breathwork practitioner, and internationally published author. She is currently in private practice in Camberwell, Victoria, where she uses her life coaching approach to assist many of her clients to become free from depression.

 

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Releasing Executive Stress in 5 Minutes

This article deals with the difficulties that many couples encounter trying to meet society's misguided expecations of what is normal in a sexual relationship.

Stress is an uncomfortable experience in the body which occurs when we brush up against people and circumstances that we would rather avoid. Consider that knot you get in the pit of your belly-it might come when you are called upon to do some public speaking, or when you have that crucial interview. Even if you believe that your stress is caused by worrying, you would not take worrisome thoughts so seriously if there wasn't an accompanying anxious sensation in your body. We believe strongly those things which are confirmed by our body feelings. The stronger the body sensation, the more we believe the thought that goes with it.

Some of us are so used to these feelings that we don't even realize we are stressed unless it is extreme. Alternatively, we might notice signs of chronic stress. Do we suffer from any of the medically accepted physical effects of stress such as migraine, asthma, digestive disorders, hypertension and so on? Do we have a psychological or psychosomatic problem such as headaches, insomnia, or sexual difficulties? Perhaps we have an eating disorder or drink too much, or suffer from chronic emotional patterns such as anxiety, resentment, or low self-esteem?

If we do find we are stressed we can release it by working with our body sensations. This is possible because body sensations are the root of all stress-related problems. The reason that working with body sensations is the answer to freedom from stress lies in our infancy and prenatal history. Our limbic brain, a rudimentary part of the brain, develops immediately after conception to look after our physical development and survival as a foetus.

Until the age of two, when we begin to talk and think, we live in a sea of our mother's feelings and emotional resistances. These emotional resistances become programmed into our limbic brain. In this way, at a time when our cognitive processes have not yet developed, we can be conditioned to automatically shrink from or avoid fully experiencing unpleasant sensations. Every time our limbic brain associates anything with past unpleasantness, we compulsively repeat the behaviour patterns developed to prevent us from fully feeling that unpleasantness in the first place. No amount of rational thinking and logic can prevent this.

Our neocortex (that hallmark of humankind-our 'thinking brain'), which developed years after the limbic brain, does not know about the emotional programming of our infancy and womb life. Also, because it is not part of the more primitive brain that looks after the survival of the body, it is too slow to intervene when limbic brain reactivity sets in. This is why we cannot remove stress through mind-based approaches.

Reducing stress involves learning to become fully aware of the sensations in your body which your limbic brain defenses have led you to ignore. The following exercise will increase your awareness of sensations. You can do it sitting in a chair.

Because we block stressful experience through shallow breathing and breath-holding, it is important to consciously and continuously breathe throughout the practice. Begin the exercise by taking three rapid deep breaths.

Follow this by tensing ALL the muscles throughout the body as hard as possible, then let go. Put ALL your energy into it. What about the muscles in your face? Your mouth? Duration is not important-the exercise might only take a few seconds-intensity is what counts. Now take one more very deep breath and sigh out hard and fast.

Notice what happens. Sensations may become larger or smaller, more or less intense, shift elsewhere in the body or dissipate altogether. If you are feeling anything other than complete relaxation, repeat the exercise focusing on the non-relaxed parts, and in addition, press the palms of your hands hard against the areas where you are tensing your muscles. Continue using breathing, pressure and muscle tension to intensify uncomfortable sensations anywhere in the body until they all disappear. Some people find this happens on the first or second attempt, others need to persevere for half an hour or more. People often experience a sudden warm glow or pleasant tingling. Enjoy it. When this happens, the stress has gone.

You should do this exercise six or eight times a day. You can do it sitting at your work station or you might link the practice to visits to the toilet or getting up and going to bed-this will make it easier to remember to do it and gives you some privacy.

To reduce the build-up of new stress, you need to release the trapped body sensations you acquired from infancy which your limbic brain has associated with certain life events. One way to do this is to deliberately expose yourself to an actual life event which causes stress and then use the exercise above to release that stress at the time of the event. Provided you briefly feel the full intensity of the body sensations, you should not experience stress with any similar life event in the future.

Alternatively you can use mental imagery to reduce future stress. This works because when you engage as many of your five physical senses in visualisation as possible, your limbic brain does not know the difference between what is vividly imagined and what is real and the body responds accordingly. Imagine seeing half a lemon. Hold it to your lips. How does the skin feel? What does it smell like? Taste the sour flavour as you squeeze it and hear yourself sucking it. Result? Your saliva is likely to run. -Try it!

To use vivid mental imagery, we need to pick an occasion when we felt stressed and then recall the details of what we could see, hear, and feel (and smell and taste too if these are relevant). If an upcoming event is bothering us, we can imagine the likely sensory details. Whether real or imagined, the limbic brain will make the associations. Now notice the stress in the body. Explore the feeling. Locate it in your body. Does it have a shape, size and intensity? Now intensify the sensation using the exercise described above. When your whole body is relaxed, you can think of the bothersome circumstances again and notice if you are still relaxed. If not, you can continue to intensify the body sensations until you can vividly recall the issue and it no longer feels stressful.

There is a paradox here and it is that we have to be willing to feel worse temporarily in order to fully experience the original suppressed emotion together with its uncomfortable defenses. Only then can the limbic brain recognize that there is no danger and let it all go. The more you practice the more it will become an automatic resource to help you through the most stressful situations.

A word of caution-sometimes when we do these exercises we experience such an intense feeling that we are unwilling to intensify it even for an instant. If this occurs, we need to seek assistance from someone experienced in this life-skills coaching approach.

Dr. Linda Edwards developed the above approach to stress management as a result of her research at Monash University. She is a registered psychologist, and internationally published author. She is currently in private practice in Melbourne, Victoria.

 

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Other articles coming soon!

Copyright Dr Linda Edwards 2001-2006, Art of Living Psychology, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia. (Consulting Rooms are in Melbourne in the Camberwell, Surrey Hills, Burwood and Canterbury region, also serving Ashburton, Balwyn, Box Hill, Glen Iris, Hawthorn, Kew and Malvern).

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