Truth versus Twaddle in Emotional Healing

Twaddle is a word used to describe idle gossip or talking foolishly.

There is quite a bit of twaddle written in the world of emotional healing.  Some of it is because the author missed something in the process they are offering – the process may well work but they have misinterpreted what happened and those following their method miss out on some key information that would help them later down the line.

Some of it, however, is because the seller of the system wants to attract a bigger market and if they were to tell it like it really is their market would shrink.

Marketers sell buyers what they want, rather than what they need, and although this makes buyers feel pleasant for a while it does not clear up the really nasty long-term stuff.

I am sure I am not completely innocent myself of writing the odd bit of twaddle but I would like to clear up on some of the more common myths I see around.

Twaddle-Myth One: You do not have to revisit the past to heal serious emotional problems – it can be done easily in the present and without any real effort

Twaddle.  You have no choice – serious emotional disorders are layered as intensely written memories in your Limbic Brain (in your amygdalae and your hippocampi) and the emotional charge attached to these memories is trapped in your body with your Unconscious fighting to keep it there.

Healing an emotional disorder is the hardest work you will ever do.

Whether or not you must visit past memories to remove the emotional charge attached to them is not a conscious choice.  If the memory and the energy attached co-exist you have to visit both.  No option.

The people who do not need to re-visit these past, traumatic events are those people who do not have this kind of an emotional problem.  Not all emotional problems need this regressive type of therapy but if you do, you do.  You will not find out if you do until you start the self-work.

In some cases a hypnotherapist may help and there are other kinds of therapists with different approaches but they all work on pretty much the same client condition regardless.

The fear of finding you do have to do this may put you off trying, but the truth is if you do need to you do.  End of.

Twaddle-Myth Two: Positive thinking produces positive feelings and negative thinking produces negative feelings

Imagery, not thinking, and the emotional responses to which they are attached – this is what alters how you feel.  But even then – the emotional energy is the thing.

Thinking with words cannot undo an emotional response – it can stop it through emotional blocking or it can think its way to releasing it – but it does not cause or prevent it.  The only constructive thing your thinking can learn to do is provide a safe, appropriate environment for emotional release – and then get out of the way.

Rage drives angry imagery followed by angry words as our thinking brains try to make sense of the feelings.  The thinking is at the end of our emotional process.

Once you have produced an emotional energy response thinking will not undo it – only feeling will.  Thinking that it is our thinking driving the problem is an ego-driven denial tactic designed to stop us from feeling.

Here is a little exercise: when you are emotionally happy and at peace think about lots and lots of negative things with no emotion attached – think about war in the Middle-East; think about global warming; think about that stabbing you heard about on the news: how long do you feel strongly about these things for?  Unless you already have a real burning emotional attachment to these things it will be for mere seconds.  Seconds.  Negative thinking alone cannot make you negatively emotional – you have to already be emotionally charged for it to have a serious affect.

I am one of the most positive-minded people you could hope to meet – but when I started to heal I was told by my psychiatrist I was suffering with severe depression and I had to accept he was right.  I was full of rage I had kept in place for years with the ‘positive thinking’ approach.

I recently went through the material of an expert on healing agoraphobia who perfectly described the emotional healing process but then went and ruined it for me (and in my view misled his clients) by describing how ‘thinking relaxing thoughts’ was the part of the process responsible for the healing process and if they dominated their thinking with thoughts of relaxation this would help them stay well.

No it will not.  Discharging trapped emotional energy, and only that, is what heals emotional illness.

Thinking otherwise is twaddle.  By the way: you are capable of thinking both positive and negative thoughts at the same time without any ill affects whatsoever.  The thing that really affects you is when those thoughts are used to build images and those images are attached to intense emotional responses.

Go buy positive thinking material, I find it beneficial all the time, but do not make the mistake of thinking it can overcome an emotional illness.

Twaddle-Myth Three: Your external circumstances do not dictate whether or not you are happy – you can be happy no matter what your environment is like

Super-twaddle.  In almost every single case where I have supported someone living in a threatening environment their environment (by this I usually mean how other people were treating them) was the very first thing the person had to escape before healing could begin.

To say otherwise is a ridiculous lie.

Whether you do not suit the environment or the environment does not suit you does not matter – if it does not support you emotionally you need to get out before the healing process can begin.

Environments are real.  They are not delusions in your mind.  If you are being bullied and undermined and threatened with your job or the end of an important relationship or with financial disaster or the loss of your kids or the loss of your own life – how the twaddle are you supposed to be happy in that kind of environment?  Oh yes, that is right, almost forgot: positive thinking.

Emotions tell us what is really going on in our lives.  We need to listen to them.

I twaddle you not.

Regards - Carl