Figuring out how to begin when we want to move from where we are to where we want to be is often a challenge.  When we have not dealt with certain events in our lives and our feelings related to those events, these feelings and thoughts tend to accumulate within us and start to have an impact on our thought processes and behaviours.  We’ll be puttering along in our everyday life, something will happen that triggers an exaggerated emotional response and eventually we’ll realize that we are feeling just as awful as we felt ages ago in a similar situation. “What the…??” we might ask ourselves, having thought  that issue X had been long gone and yet here it was popping up into our lives, uninvited and disruptive. Regardless of how much we try to fool ourselves, any unresolved issue from the past can be triggered back into our lives at any moment. All it takes is the right trigger. What follows below is a recipe for consciously dealing with those past issues in a systematic and caring way so that they get resolved and lose their potential to cause more problems.

Know where you are going

A journey without destination is fine so long as you don’t mind the wandering. In our case, this journey is more like baking a cake, hence the recipe analogy and the need to define some sort of desired result or outcome. A destination/outcome for this journey could be something as simple as “I want to spend much less time feeling sad and much more time feeling peaceful.” Or it could be something along the lines of “I want to remain calm and centered when someone does or says something which today would trigger anger in me.” The destination is important, but there is no need to spend a lot of time on defining the “perfect” or most important destination. Pick any destination/result which will enhance your life and then follow the recipe below until you get there or reasonably close. You can always pick another destination in the future, and repeat this process/recipe as many times as you like. Each time you consciously release stored feelings, you will lighten your load and there will be a cumulative effect.

Ingredients Needed

Like any recipe, it helps to have some basic understanding of what is involved before beginning. You’re going to need some ingredients and some will have to be prepared in advance of the recipe itself so you don’t get bogged down in the middle. Each of these ingredients will help the other, so they are all important and interdependent. At the same time, being human, you are allowed to cultivate these ingredients as you go along, so there is no need to have them all “perfect” before starting.

Patience -  All personal growth/change takes some time. Sorry, no magic instant cures here. And, truth be told, most of the instant cures you’ve heard about don’t work that well, if at all. There might be one that truly does exist, but it has yet to become a panacea, so in the meantime, let’s just accept that we’re going to have to take some time to get to our destination. After all, we have spent most of our life until the moment we start to effect change establishing patterns and habits and world-views and beliefs which are so ingrained that we hardly notice them. Be patient, and don’t try to become someone new in a few days – life does not work that way. Think of how a ship turns at sea – it takes some time, but it turns, gently and steadily, until it is in the right direction. Sudden change = disruption, water splashing all about, and struggle against what is there. Change is also not about abruptly stopping what we have committed to in our life, but about evolving toward a balance between our existing commitments and our envisioned future.

Awareness - If we are not aware of where we are, it is next to impossible to get anywhere new, except by accident or happenstance. When we embark on a journey of change, we need to notice where we are, notice what is happening inside us, and notice our progress.   Becoming aware of the need to make changes in our life is the first step, and  once one does this, one becomes more self-aware all the time. The main things that we will be paying attention to on this journey are what I call the BETIS: Body Sensations, Emotions/Feelings, Thoughts, Images in our minds, Sounds or words we hear in our heads. Each of these is a form of inner communication and once we start paying attention to them, we are on our journey.

Persistence – If you seriously want to get to a better place, then you must do the work involved, as often as it takes. It can be hard to move on from a habit or reaction to which we have an established connection.  But, as the saying goes, when you wake up in the morning, you are faced with the same swamp as yesterday, filled with the alligators of life to fend off. One of these days, you will start to drain the swamp and that will aid in the alligators disappearing. Draining the swamp is key to being alligator free or at least reducing dramatically their presence in your life.

Acceptance – Accept that it is human to feel anger or any other feeling. You are human and we humans have emotions.  Do not try to control your feelings or resist them. Just feel them, notice them, feel them, notice them. Eventually, if you accept and allow those feelings & thoughts, they will dissipate, on their own. If you try to suppress them, control them, or make them go away, you will only delay this process and will be fighting with yourself, which usually results in frustration and feeling drained.  Yes, we live in a world in which we are taught to fight with our emotions, and look how well that is working… not!   Acceptance also means that you do not try to make sense of anything that happens at this time. Whenever you have strong emotions your brain is designed to help you survive and there will be more confusion than clarity.  Once the feeling has been released, you’ll have plenty of time to think clearly, so give yourself a break and just accept the feeling as it is, without analyzing prematurely. You can stop trying to figure it all out – the answers you seek will come in due course, as any confusing mess will disappear once you release the stored emotions.

Allowing – Your journey is not about trying. It is not about effort, but about allowing.  Feelings which are uncomfortable are normal and human. Allowing them to arise and then flow through you and out of you is the only way for them to pass, even if that takes a while. Do not try to stop yourself from feeling or thinking. Fighting your experience only delays the resolution you desire.   Allow yourself to feel anger and other feelings that you might normally avoid because they are uncomfortable. Allow yourself to feel them for as long as it takes for the feeling to flow through and out. There are techniques such as AER which can speed up the release process around a feeling, but you can also simply sit with the feeling. It is human and natural to feel anger, sadness, guilt, etc.  If you often feel guilty when you say NO, well that is just being human. What is also human and needed is to allow yourself to feel any emotion and then move on without judgment of having had that feeling.

Focus -  Concentrate, as best you can, on just one feeling at a time. Feelings are often interlinked, but if we pay attention to just one at a time it is easier to notice it fluctuating and eventually dissipating. Notice what is arising in you emotionally when you pay attention to your inner world. Those emotions are what will keep you in the old. Releasing them, will enable you to move a little bit ahead on your journey.   When you have released a feeling, you can take a break or allow the next to arise. But do not worry if feelings jump around, seeming to increase and diminish. They are like bundles of energy in flux, and when you allow them to flow, they will discover that you are OK with them being and OK with them leaving, and they will go on their way.

Time and space – Setting aside some time and having a space in which you can take this journey is very important. You want to be able to be relaxed and to be undisturbed for at least 30 minutes each time. Invest in yourself by putting aside the time and finding a private secluded place to relax and notice.

Commitment – When you start paying attention to what is happening inside, a lot of buried feelings will probably want to come to the surface. They want to escape, to be free and your role is to allow that to happen. Starting on a journey of self-healing is often like opening the door to the basement – you never know what you might find down there, and it is often more than we remember having put down there. For many people, feeling something that has been buried for years can be scary or uncomfortable at first and there will be a tendency to stuff those feelings back down. Stuffing feelings down inside us only results in more pain, as the pressure will build until it suddenly explodes. Staying committed to the journey is critical, even when it feels hard to do. The reward is freedom from each of the stored feelings that you will release and their reduced impact on your life.

Impartiality – Judging our feelings as good or bad and reacting to them only causes us to have relationships with them which keep them stuck inside. Being impartial or neutral or non-attached to these feelings will greatly facilitate the release of them. So, just notice them. “I am feeling sad”, for example. You are not your feelings, so it is not correct to say “I am angry” as that suggests a permanent condition rather than the temporary experience you are really having.

Emotional support – As anyone who has seriously tried to do anything new has discovered, most of the people around you will find it hard to accept your attempts at change. They will resist them overtly and covertly, all under the guise of wanting “the best” for you. They can’t help themselves – they want things to stay  in the “devil-known” zone. You will find it much easier to effect the change(s) you desire if you have an ally, someone who will be on your side and encourage you to stick with it when the going is not so smooth.

Environmental support – If you live in the middle of a whirlwind of activity, or eat junk food too often, or have any other elements of your life that are constantly disruptive, then this journey will be harder. Diet, for example, has been shown to have a direct effect on your mental state, so eating foods which give you a mental boost, both for mood and for concentration, will be an essential part of the support you create around you. For some interesting reporting on the diet connection, see the film Super Size Me in which the author finds himself feeling lousy after eating a lot of fast food.

How to bake your new life

Now that you have a notion of the ingredients needed, you can bake your cake, embark on your journey. Here is the recipe, and it is very simple and straightforward:

All you have to do is pay attention to your inner world and allow whatever feelings come up to be just as they are and then  flow out of you. That is it. The “tricky” part is that the normal human approach to life is to avoid discomfort, and so we normally do not willingly sit with our uncomfortable feelings, allowing them to be and to flow out of us. We run away from them, distract ourselves, medicate ourselves, stuff them down and out of sight in our inner basement. For this journey, it is crucial to pay attention and stay in the feeling, no matter how counter-intuitive that may seem at first. Eventually, like riding a bicycle, you’ll be doing this naturally.

To begin, write on a piece of paper (or copy this to a word processor and print it):

ALL FEELINGS ARE NORMAL AND HUMAN.

IT IS OK TO FEEL WHAT I AM FEELING.

JUST FEEL ONE THING AT A TIME.

ACCEPT WHAT COMES UP  – IT IS ALL PART OF BEING HUMAN.

ALLOW THE FEELING TO BE.

ALLOW THE FEELING TO LEAVE.

STICK WITH IT UNTIL IT LEAVES, AS BEST I CAN.

WHATEVER I AM ABLE TO FEEL TODAY IS OK

Have this paper in front of you when you are in the process of being fully aware, to remind you that it is OK to feel whatever you are feeling, as millions of other humans have felt before you today and millions will feel tomorrow.

Now go and bake

Go to your secluded place, get comfortable and if you want, listen to this guided relaxation meditation:

http://awareness-expression-resolution.com/images/file/mp3/relaxation-meditation-with-Robert-Vibert.mp3

(you can right-click on that link and save the file to your computer)

As you listen, you will notice the BETIS I mentioned above. Just notice them. If you find yourself getting distracted, just notice that. If you don;t want to listen to that recording, then sit in silence or listen to some instrumental music.

To track your progress, start a journal and note down what feelings come up during an awareness session, giving each feeling a subjective intensity rating on a scale of 0-10 when you start to pay attention to it, and then when you finish noticing it for that session. Perhaps it will be 6/10 when you start and 4/10 when you finish. That’s OK. Perhaps it will be 4/10 when start and 6/10 when you finish, and that’s OK, too. There is no right or wrong, there is only noticing what is there. Just the act of conscious noticing is enough to facilitate the natural human process of release of those long stored emotions.

Do this noticing each day if you can. Notice what comes up for you and allow it to flow through and out. Just do your best, whatever that is for you each time. No judgment, no analysis, just notice and just be.

After a while of doing this awareness exercise, you will start to notice that some feelings that used to pop up don’t do that so much anymore or not so intensely. Others will arise for their turn at being released. You’ll get a bit closer to your destination each time.

Copyright 2010 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved. Constructive feedback and suggestions welcomed.

For more than twenty years, I carried around the weight of loss from the death of my father when I was barely out of my teens. Like most people, I created for myself a series of coping mechanisms to avoid touching the pain I held inside. In fact, although I did not consciously think about it, my coping mechanisms were designed to keep me safe from the grief, the anger, the sadness, etc. that had lodged in me the day I was told of his death. These feelings had never been fully felt since that day. I was walking in the middle of a crowd of thousands when someone who knew me approached and expressed their condolences. I was baffled – what were they talking about? In a moment, they blurted out that  my father had died while traveling. There I was, in the middle of so many people, and like others who find themselves in similar situations, not feeling comfortable to express openly all the emotions which surfaced. I stuffed the feelings inside that day and it was only 20 years later that I finally felt it was safe to really feel them.

My story is like that of many – we experience a traumatic shock to our system and instead of allowing the feelings to flow through us, we bottle them up. In the end, it does not matter why we bottle them, the fact that they are stuck inside us is what really needs to be addressed. Searching for the “why” is really a distraction from releasing those feelings.

Feelings need to flow

Research by people like Dr. Peter Levine, Dr. Robert Scaer and Dr. David Berceli into how humans experience and then store trauma in our brains and bodies confirms what I had noticed in my own journey of healing and then helping others: feelings are supposed to flow through and out of us, just like they do for animals.

Unfortunately, our evolutionary path has provided us with a double- edged sword – the prefrontal cortex. This part of our brain is excellent for analysis and figuring things out. It is also a serious impediment to letting go of trauma, as it constantly ruminates over traumatic events, keeping the trauma alive inside us.

As a result of personal experimentation and systematic analysis of all the healing modalities that I was exposed to, I came to a simple but important conclusion: if we don’t release our stored feelings, we will always carry
with us the pain of the past.

Pain, Pain Go Away, Come Again Another Day

The most common human response to an exposure to pain, especially trauma-related pain, is to move ourselves away from it. We use distractions such as TV, movies, sports, etc.  or medications to numb ourselves (alcohol, drugs, ice cream, chocolate, etc.).   We take trips, we engage in intense activities and endeavors, and we generally do whatever we can dream up to avoid feeling the pain.

While these are natural responses to pain, they are also counter-productive. The pain does not go away  – it is merely masked or ignored momentarily. The neural circuits in our brains which store the thoughts, the sounds, the images and most importantly the emotions/feelings related to a traumatic incident are all fully charged and ready to pop into our consciousness in a flash, triggered by something that reminds us of the incident.

My research and work with many people has shown that to release a stored emotional charge (activated neural circuits) one has to feel the emotion. Resisting it only keeps it present. Avoiding it only delays the inevitable. Feeling the feeling, and allowing it to flow through and out of us is what we were designed to do.

Ah, that sounds pretty simple, right? Just let go of the pain. Actually, it is that simple – but the fly in the ointment is your thinking brain. Emotions are not stored in the thinking parts of your brain, so just thinking about something traumatic is not enough to release it. If it was, people would go to see a talk therapist, tell their story once, and the trauma would be gone. This has not been the case, as countless people who have been in therapy for years can attest. Talking about trauma does bring some relief, but rarely, if ever, provides a release from it.

Three Steps to Success

The approach that I take with people is to facilitate this natural releasing process using three steps. The first is Awareness. We must be aware of the issue that we are experiencing, in particular the feelings that come up around an incident.

The second step is Expression, in which we briefly express what we are feeling. This expression can be as short as a single sentence such as “I feel anger” or a little longer if we want to be more specific. The key here is that we are honestly acknowledging the feeling, not engaging in a long talk about it – that would shift us into the thinking parts of our brain, and away from feeling.

The third step is Resolution and we get there by Releasing the stored feeling, allowing it to be as it is in the moment, and then allowing it to flow naturally out of us. I have borrowed from several traditional systems and modern healing techniques to come up with an efficient method to facilitate this natural releasing process. I call this method AER – Awareness Expression Resolution.

The word Resolution is important, as there are many systems which will enable a partial release of stored feeling, but essentially leave the neural circuits charged enough to be re- activated. With AER, our goal is to allow all the stored feeling(s) around an incident to flow out. The majority of people are able to release all of a feeling around an incident in less than 1 hour (often in minutes) , and once the feeling is fully released, it does not return to their system. The feeling flows out of them and they are free of it. As it is common for multiple feelings to exist in relation to an incident, each of these feelings in turn is released until the incident itself is only a flat, emotionless memory.

Practical and Inexpensive

One of the design principles that I kept in mind as I developed AER was that it should be something that anyone can learn in about 30 minutes and that should be available in an economical form. To that end, I have
created guided AER sessions for some commonly stored feelings that can be downloaded and followed. Each session takes 1 hour to complete and can be used as many times as desired. You can release sadness, for example, from as many incidents as you can recall using the same recording for each incident.

One of the tricky things I have found doing this work is that most people cannot believe that it is possible to actually release some strong emotion that they have been carrying around for years. And, truth be told, until I experienced it for myself, I would not have believed it either. Words alone are not enough here – one must actually have the experience of releasing to relate to it. And, once one has released one bothersome feeling, the door has opened to release any others that no longer serve you.

Copyright 2010 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved

First, some examples. Let’s think of some times when people do something to you, something along the lines of taking your generosity for granted. Maybe one day you let someone have some of the compost from your garden because they wanted to try their hand at growing a plant or two. You gave them some of your compost and were happy to help them out. The next time they came by to visit, they asked for some more.  And the next time,  the same thing happened. And again, and again. Until they were constantly taking compost, and started to do so without even asking. Hmmm… I imagine you can extrapolate this to any number of situations besides compost – the principle is that you were generous once, and the other person then assumed that you would always be willing to give and give and give, of your time, your energy, your belongings.

Another example would be when someone presumes upon your good-will. Let’s say that they are rude or insulting to you. You respond with dismay or disgust and  maybe they apologize, explaining that they’ve had a hard day, week, life. A little while later, the same thing happens – they are out of line, say something inappropriate, accuse you of something inane, etc. They expect that you’ll always accept their behaviour, no matter how inappropriate, because they have mitigating circumstances,  explained themselves once, because you didn’t constantly make a fuss about it or because they think they simply have every right to express themselves however they wish.

A third example would be when someone constantly imposes their worldview on you. For whatever reasons, they have formed their own particular vision of how the world is and works. They see things in one way, and expect everyone else to see it in the same way. They are not shy about telling you how wrong your ideas are, how much superior their views and opinions are, and how it would all be so much better if you’d simply agree with them.  They never miss an opportunity to tell you what you are doing wrong, and how much better their ideas are. Some people would call this fundamentalism, but they certainly do not need a religious context for this zealousness. Even when you ask them to respect that you may have a differing perspective, they insist on “being right“, perhaps even raising their voice to drown you out.

We draw the line, they pop

When we draw the line, tell them to stop what they are doing, that we’ve reached our limit, the usual response is that they get upset with us. And that is when you’ll see and hear what amounts to a protest against their “right” to carry on with behaviour that is not kind, compassionate, generous or life-enhancing. They may be shocked that you would actually tell them to stop.

This protest will come in various forms, ranging from pouting to bullying to misbehaving to pleas for forgiveness. The pouting and sulking is pretty much what you know from watching child behaviour. The bullying can be a bit more subtle, as they have often developed skills to enhance it. They can try to browbeat you with arguments as to why they should be allowed to continue as they had been. They can try to use shame to manipulate you, often bringing others into the discussion in an attempt to gang up on you. They can become insulting, suggesting that you are not man or woman enough to stand up to their manner and that you need to toughen up. They may resort to anger or belligerence, hoping to intimidate you into backing down from your position.

If all of those tactics fail, they may beg forgiveness, hope that you’ll soon forget your position and then plan to revert back to their old ways within a short time.

After all, they are entitled to be the way that they are, right? They are the Entitled Ones.

Why do these people get so upset when asked or told to respect a boundary? More than likely, no one ever told them NO or STOP before.  People have been polite to them for most of their life, and not pointed out the rudeness or inappropriateness of their behaviour, generally to avoid getting into a conflict with them.  Their propensity to be conflictual becomes quite evident early on in their relationships with others, and since most humans prefer to not be in conflict, the people around these Entitled Ones walk on eggshells.

Finding Balance

Given that when denied what they want, whether it is more of your generosity, your goodwill or your acquiescence,  the Entitled Ones react like spoiled kids and engage those around them in a battle they need to win.

The truth of the matter is that all involved in these scenarios need to use a more mature approach. The Entitled Ones need to learn self-restraint, respect and consideration for others. Those on the receiving end of the entitlement request need to learn how to say NO and stick to it. In some ways, it is harder for the second group than for the first. The Entitled Ones are used to taking and taking and not being challenged often, so they have precedent on their side.  Their learning includes releasing the fear of scarcity and being alone that drives a lot of the behavior. When people are always looking for more, it is usually because they sense that they will not have enough – that explains a lot about why people who already have a lot of money are driven to keep getting more. This fear is not overcome, it is accepted as part of our human inheritance and then released. The other part of this, the constant need for attention, even if gained only by creating conflict with others, is also possible to release. Having released these unhealthy drivers, the Entitled Ones can find it much easier to interact with others in a manner that enhances the lives of everyone involved.

For the second group, those who have some trouble establishing boundaries, the path to a better way is rather straightforward. They start by noticing what comes up for them when they imagine themselves confronting an Entitled One they know, and then releasing those feelings. With those feelings gone, often ones of fear of rejection and battle, it becomes much easier to stand one’s ground, firmly but kindly establish boundaries and help the Entitled Ones evolve into more respectful folks.

For both, the key is to release the underlying feelings that drive the behaviours.

Copyright 2010 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved.

Please spread the word, or at least these

Hair-splitting? Perhaps… and perhaps not. You see, in my world, thoughts and feelings are really not the same thing, even though they often arrive together on the scene. It is normal that we feel a feeling/emotion (I’ll use both terms interchangeably here, for the sake of convenience), and have a thought or two about it at the same time. And vice versa – we can have a thought and then a feeling arises. Thoughts and feelings are usually linked together, so we tend to have them pretty much simultaneously in our inner world. And, as I’ll explain in a bit, being aware of the difference between thoughts and feelings can be quite important to our happiness.

Think, think, think

The interesting thing these days is that in most situations we are discouraged from feeling and encouraged to think instead. One of the earliest examples of this was when IBM put up “THINK”  signs in their offices starting in the 1930s. The intent was good – IBM wanted people to act consciously, not just go charging ahead without a thought for outcomes. This is a wise approach, and it certainly worked well for IBM for years.

The psychoanalytical community has contributed to this thinking bias as well, successfully convincing many of us that we need to think about everything, analyze it ad infinitum and if we happen to notice that we are having a feeling, that we should think about that feeling, determine why we feel that way, and think real hard about when was the first time we felt it, and finally, analyze it all, in the hope that we’ll discover some way to better manage whatever is bothering us. One of the ways this thought bias works against us in this particular realm is in suicide prevention, where a lot of attention is placed on suicidal thoughts and little on suicidal feelings. There is a big and potentially fatal difference between thinking about suicide and having the desire (feeling) to act upon those thoughts.

TV and films are full of examples of people going to see counselors as soon as they have some issue, and counseling/talk therapy has become a standard remedy prescribed by almost every advice “guru” out there. What is funny and sad at the same time is that while people are constantly pointed at talk therapy as the solution to their issues, rarely is there a pause for reflection on what is actually the appropriate course of action for the situation. Alternatives to going to see a talk therapist are rarely contemplated, so well has the campaign to instill the belief that talk therapy/counseling is the best approach succeeded. Be aware that I am not trashing talk therapy here, but merely pointing out that people often jump on that bus without actually giving it much…err… thought.

In addition, those who use their minds as their primary means of relating to the world, otherwise known as intellectuals, are revered in modern society. If you do not have a PhD, then you’d better be a rock star or TV/film celebrity if you intend to write a book and expect it to succeed or want to comment publicly on anything and be taken seriously. Yes, those prized letters after your name give you instant credibility, regardless of what your actual knowledge on a subject might be. Those who work in specialized fields such as anti-virus/anti-malware research bristle when the general computer security PhDs start to talk about the subject, as the generalists often get malware protection wrong, and assume that their academic degree was sufficient to allow them to draw conclusions about something they had not actually studied in depth.

In a somewhat related example, until recently many couple therapists in America could earn their doctorates without actually working with couples for more than a few hours. Their courses focused on theory and research, not working with live people. PhD or Masters in hand, they could pen works that talked about the theory of couples, relationships, personal growth, etc., and have the entire work based upon theoretical knowledge. Given how humans are a tad complex, it may make more sense to actually interact with them before writing something purporting to contain some valuable insight. When these ivory tower therapists started seeing clients, they often had to learn the hard way how to properly deal with a real human sitting in front of them, feeling upset over their relationship. I wonder if the clients got a discounted rate while the real world learning was taking place…

But I digress in my thinking about thinking.

I’m sure that if you take a moment, you’ll find plenty of examples in your life where you are encouraged to think about things, not have feelings about them. Thoughts are nice and neat, and feelings are messy and often out of control or overwhelming. At least, that is what we are told. Obviously, I’m not against thinking. I used it to prepare and write this. In fact, I use thinking all the time, regardless of what some people might say…

But, there is a need both for thinking and for feeling, at the the appropriate time. Living in our thoughts constantly is no better than living constantly in our feelings. Each can inform the other and we can achieve a level of balance when we pay attention to all aspects of ourselves. We’re not our thoughts and we’re not our feelings, even though they happen to us in such a way that we could be easily led to believe that they are.

Why do they say I feel when they mean I think?

In pondering why people might so often use the expression “I feel” when really they mean “I think”, I concluded that this is because there is a pent-up desire to express their feelings, and so it is a sort of warped Freudian slip. They really do want to express their feelings, but society has us managing them, or regulating them, or suppressing feelings to such an extent that when they do pop out, it is with a large POP. In the meantime, there is a tension just beneath the surface that creates situations in which someone wants to express a feeling, but knows that thoughts are more acceptable, and we get mixed up expressions. Of course, hearing others use incorrect expressions all the time trains us to use them as well, part of our mechanism to fit it. Using the expression “I feel” to express thoughts is a way to stay safe in the tribe and yet still suggest that one has feelings, albeit ones that are well managed to the point that they are hardly distinguishable from thoughts.

Why do we need to be more precise?

When people are encouraged to think instead of  feel or not express their feelings, there is a danger that those feelings will come out in some other way that is destructive. Men, who are constantly constrained in terms of feeling expression, suffer more heart attacks and die years younger than women, who are given a little more lea-way in terms of expressing feeling. This lea-way is not so great however, as no woman wants to be seen as hysterical, and so they too stuff down a lot of their feelings.

Allowing feelings to arise naturally and flow through and out is one of the key aspects of having a healthy relationship with them. Releasing old feelings which were stored inside is a necessary part of achieving a balance between healthy emotional expression and over-the-top emotional reactions. When one releases the stored feelings, the new ones that arise are not burdened with the excess charge of the past combined with the present response.

Becoming aware of this little mind game we play with ourselves is important, as it allows us to be more present in the moment and more congruent with our thoughts, feelings and actions.

The next time you say “I feel”, finish that sentence with a mention of a  feeling, not a thought or opinion.

Copyright 2010 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved

Using a coping mechanism approach is normal, acceptable and makes a lot of sense, when dealing with temporary issues, as it is usually quick and economical. However, it is not an ideal long-term strategy, particularly when confronted with emotional matters, as coping mechanisms are not usually designed to resolve the underlying problem.

We cope, we live

Humans have developed many coping strategies and mechanisms over time. These coping mechanisms keep us safe and serve a useful purpose, as relatively efficient short-term solutions to problems. One definition of coping is “the process of managing taxing circumstances, expending effort to deal with personal and interpersonal problems, and seeking to master, minimize, reduce or tolerate stress or conflict.” Managing, minimizing, reducing, tolerating… all of these presuppose the continued existence of the problem and a continued effort to deal with it each time it appears. As the problem is not really dealt with, it will continue to present itself.

After a while, we get so used to reaching for a coping mechanism that we might not stop and consider if we could take another approach. Given that a coping mechanism is really only a temporary fix, it is not surprising that many of us keep looking for new ones when the old ones no longer do the trick. Out of this ongoing need for more and better coping techniques, a whole industry has arisen, providing us with a plethora of coping tools to try:

- relaxation techniques
- improved communication skills
- problem analysis approaches
- empathetic problem discussion
- acceptance of personal responsibility
- improvements in assertive behaviour
- trust building exercises
- techniques to handling insecurity
- affirmations
- enhanced forgiveness
- development of detachment
- development of patience
- Critical Thinking skills

as well as the old standards of simple denial and distraction, where we try to distance ourselves from the issue.

Some of the coping skills mentioned above will certainly benefit us in many areas of life. However, just as putting a daily or hourly band-aid on a cut that requires stitches for it to close, using a coping mechanism inappropriately can become quite tiring and ultimately quite expensive in time and effort.

Don’t cope, resolve

Rather than constantly coping, which really is mainly about dealing with the symptoms instead of the underlying problem, it is wiser and more efficient to seek out the most effective way to deal with the issue itself.

For example, if you were someone like me who suffered a loss of a parent at an early age, you might adopt coping mechanisms like mine: I would avoid at all costs any situations which would remind me of my father’s death. I would not attend funerals, would not discuss him, would not spend any serious amount of time in the town where I grew up, etc., etc. I moved to another country, lived an entirely “different life” and yet, the pain I felt around his death remained with me. My coping approach dealt with the symptoms by keeping me away from that pain, but never actually resolved anything. I dove into the business world and became a workaholic, studying business techniques and eventually running two companies simultaneously. I was distracted, yes, but the pain was always there, waiting for the day when I would finally face it and release it.

When I retired from running companies, I entered into the world of personal development and tried out many, many of the standard coping mechanisms available – I spent countless hours using my large collection of relaxation and affirmation recordings, attended numerous workshops on everything from hypnosis to meditation to communication skills to living from the heart, went on inner quests, etc., etc. I learned all kinds of ways to temporarily get myself into a better state of being or feeling, but soon it would be obvious that the pain was still present, waiting for me. In reality, these techniques are all good ways to cope better with what life throws at us, much like talk therapy can potentially teach us. But, bottom line, the pain was still there.

When I finally found myself in a situation where it felt somewhat safe to dip my toe into the pain, I knew I had to finally do something serious about it. 20 years of denial and avoidance and another five years of intense study of even better comping techniques was enough. Still with the results orientation I had cultivates as a businessman, I set out to find a way to release the pain, set it and myself free.  I did not need to seek out any more band-aids – it was clear that that approach was not effective nor cost-effective. I needed something that would help me, once and for all, release the pain I held over my father’s death years earlier.

The funny thing about what I have discovered on this quest is that the answer is incredibly simple and yet missed by so many due to a natural feature of humans – we avoid pain. This pain avoidance means that we look for the sugar coated pill that will magically dissolve our ills and pains, without our suffering. It can also be likened to wanting to win the life lottery – all our pains and tribulations dissolved away without our having to do much of anything. Given the constant influx of the latest and greatest coping tools (new meditations discovered by some guru in some distant land, new mind tricks we can use to cover our internal cow patties of pain with better whipped cream, more and better magical thinking involving aliens, ancient lands or dolphins, etc.) it is nor surprising that we get perplexed as to why they are not helping us beyond some minor pain alleviation.

The answer is simple and yet counter-intuitive. Research and field work by people like Dr. Peter Levine and Dr David Bercelli, just to name two, have shown that we can allow feelings to pass through us instead of “storing” them. If we do store them, we can access them and then release them, and that is what my AER (Awareness Expression Resolution) process facilitates. Learning how to release stored feelings is not hard and does not take a lot of time, does not require mind trickery or the intervention of anyone else, and can be learned in an hour or so.  But, since releasing requires us to become aware of our pain and consciously let go of it, people tend to seek out magic painless pills instead. And, while they get some feel-good sugar for the moment, their pain continues to be with them.

So, if you are tired of searching out that perfect band-aid, and ready to actually let go of your pain, try something radical: feel your feelings (stored and new ones) without resistance or judgment, and let them flow through and out. You might just find they are ready to leave…

Copyright 2010 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved.