Your entire body and brain, every cell, is a cyclical information exchange system.
Thoughts in your brain make judgements regarding life experiences and convert these judgements into pictures which then sometimes attach to and release intense feelings throughout the body (particularly when your deeper value systems feel threatened).
These feelings compel your brain and body to focus on the triggering experience and then you either take physical action in the external world to resolve an external problem or simply willingly feel, without taking action, in order to release the initial triggering life experience by converting the feelings back into pictures then into thoughts and then into powerless memories.
I say ‘willingly’ because if, as you begin to convert the feelings back into thought, you make a negative judgement about the conversion process itself, such as resenting the time needed to manage the process; or you judge a certain type of feeling wrong; or you intellectually fight the imagery as being unacceptable in your thinking – you will continue to block the information and energy transfer process.
During reverse conversion you should pay attention to any negative judgements that come to light in regards to the experience and change these judgements to positive and accepting. There is no such thing as an abnormal emotional experience; we are designed to react the way we do and emotional disorders are a result of believing otherwise.
Pain as a physical warning system is a good thing; without it we would have no mechanism telling us when our bodies are being physically injured. We need to have the same attitude towards our negative emotional responses.
Once you have gained insights into the thinking that triggered the blocking disorder and you change your thinking the disorder disappears of its own accord. You are now able to free it from conscious attention and move on.
When you block emotional release the information contained within your feelings, waiting for conversion back into thoughts, keeps knocking on the door of your Conscious attention.
If you have an emotional disorder of any kind the knocking is loud but the urge to keep the door closed is strong because during conversion of such an intense response normal conscious thinking is closed down.
Our Unconscious mind sees this as our being ‘swallowed up’ by a predator. During full, effective, emotional release you are only able to focus on the central triggering imagery and nothing else – even if it is in relation to an imagined scenario.
To gradually open the door and go into the release and conversion experience we can gain leverage from a number of external tools. One such tool is journaling but, due to the fact the logical mind is mostly shut down during intense emotional release, it is unlikely to be a tool you can use when first going in.
The most helpful release tool at this point is a good professional counsellor – with their help you begin converting trapped emotional information back into thought information and this begins to normalise the inner journey for your resistant, unaccepting mind.
Initially, while being overwhelmed by the experience, you may only be able to draw pictures or use single words and short sentences to create a spider diagram – these kinds of things are useful as a basis for discussion when you see your counsellor and to provide clear guidance to a currently confused mind.
However, once the initial emotional energy intensity level starts to lower, and especially after you have healed, you will need to think about how you deliberately bring your emotional energy conversion system under direct control in the future.
You have little control over what unpleasant and unfair things may happen to you in life but you do have control of your emotional reactions to them - if you take responsibility for the process early enough. I have found journaling (that is, writing life experiences out onto paper or computer in a private setting without early self-judgement) a really useful method of maintaining emotional happiness and also in preparation for dealing with fresh difficult external circumstances.
We often see, and are told to regard, our emotional responses as blunt instruments of destruction but they are nothing of the kind. Emotional responses are full of information regarding opportunities, threats, strengths and weakness both in our large external environments and also in regards to our thinking about who we are at our core.
By paying closer, rather than less, attention to ‘what ails us’ we open ourselves up to accessing all kinds of life-improving resources. Through journaling we can prepare for the worst while working for the best; transfer and remove the energy attached to worrying; acknowledge, accept and deliberately deal with the emotional process so returning ourselves to a peaceful inner state, confident we are prepared for what may come next.
The most useful journaling technique for me, which I used even before taking an interest in journaling itself, has been the unsent letter technique.
We respond to a negative life experience by writing a letter to the source of the experience, or to the people involved, deliberately leaving the decision as to whether or not we will send these letters out to a future debate.
Such letters may be written to ourselves; to our current internal way of thinking. For example, if you have taken responsibility for a situation over which you have no true right of control you may need to ‘have a word with yourself’, challenging your current guilt trips and setting the internal record straight.
Your intention when writing an unsent letter is to move from the subjective viewpoint– acting as though you are trapped within the situation – to an objective viewpoint – viewing the situation from without, so forming a properly informed opinion.
You will gain insights, views within, both in terms of your own attitudes and behaviours and those of others. You may find a single situation produces several unsent letters. But having got your letters ready for all aspects of the situation, past, present and the potential future, you can now let go.
Some of these unsent letters may act as prompt notes for future discussions – others become letters you do actually send.
The external world may not want to hear a lot of what you have to tell it; but you should never copy that model in regards to whether or not you take the time to listen to, and transfer the information stored, within yourself.
I suggest you positively fester on such things through journaling – works wonders.
At the moment I am using a software called Lifejournal which includes the ‘unsent letter’ and several other journaling techniques, and I am also reading Journal to the Self, one of the resources listed below.
Please leave comments on this or any other journaling techniques and resources you find personally useful.
Regards
Carl
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