Three Reasons You May Feel Like Falling Down When Intensely Emotional

Quite a few people who talk to me about their extreme emotional states will talk about their fear of collapsing or fainting – especially about doing this publicly and being labelled an ‘attention-seeking drama queen/king’.

There are a number of reasons we may feel like falling down when highly emotional; here are three:

• The Mammalian Freeze Response


• Enraged Helplessness (depression)


• Physical reasons.

The Mammalian Freeze Response

Human beings have mammalian bodies – these are the bodies of prey animals.  We do not come equipped with fangs and claws.  Our brains, however, are the brains of super-predators because they can design predatory tools that far outweigh the power of those missing fangs and claws.

This omnivorous mixture sometimes creates a confused and conflicted human animal.

When we become intensely emotional our prey-animal mammalian bodies react like those of other prey mammals while our super-predatory brains fight this unwanted intrusion.  This in-fighting delays the body in going through this natural process (it can actually delay it for a lifetime).

Most people have heard of the fight-or-flight response, but there is a third response mammals have – the Mammalian Freeze Response.  Also called the Disassociation Response.  When a mammal is being captured by its natural predator it has the ability to ‘play dead’.  This is not a consciously controlled decision – it is an automatic function of mammalian biology.

It simply lays down and becomes still.

It is also called the Disassociation Response because the brain of the mammal temporarily disconnects from the body in order to reduce pain when being eaten.

If the mammal is not eaten there and then, and the predator wanders off, a short period of time passes before the mammal gets up; shakes itself off and leaves the scene.

When people experience intense emotional responses, particularly if they are anxious, their mammalian bodies sometimes react as if being ‘eaten alive’ and go through the play dead process.

At best they may want to lie down to allow the emotional response to pass through them.  At ‘worst’ they may feel as if six pairs of hands are dragging them to the floor against their will – their body feels heavier and heavier and the muscles become harder and harder to move.

Another common symptom is when they look at their hands they appear to be disconnected from their body (hence the ‘disassociation’ part).

This is not a dangerous state to be in unless it happens regularly – but it is alarming when it happens for the first time.  I suggest you speak to a doctor just to make sure that is what it is.  Their reassurance alone is sometimes enough to help this state pass.

Enraged Helplessness

Sometimes people experience environments they have no immediate control over and feel suppressed and ‘crushed’ in them but for some personal reason are compelled to remain in those environments.  Or they lose an environment (eg a loving relationship) they felt they needed in order to be happy and the environment is taken away from them.

They become sensitised to the situation and extremely emotional and enraged at life.  There may be a specific target or cause, but basically it is ‘at life’.  They feel a desperate urge to get back something lost (rage) alongside a state of not being able to get the lost thing back (helplessness).

When children do this we call it a tantrum; when adults do this we call it dangerous, unacceptable and attention seeking ‘drama queen/king’ behaviour.  This response is very strong – so strong people sometimes attempt suicide to demonstrate how strong it is for them.

The person feels they are repeatedly hitting a brick wall in an important area of their life and may demonstrate this publicly by throwing themselves at the floor – they may do this publicly because they feel others hold the solution to their problem.

If you feel ‘enraged helplessness’ you may act in this desperate way.  You could eventually have to accept that in the particular situation concerned you are in fact both helpless and enraged.

You may now need to take steps to get the emotional reaction out in a safe, non-public way while at the same time negotiating a different route towards getting the things you value so much (but it may have to be a different goal if the initial goal is unobtainable).

Again, this is perfectly normal behaviour – but if you do not want to listen to the opinions of others you need to take the inner turmoil to a professional counsellor trained in helping with this kind of thing.

It is a painful condition to deal with and heal but it can be done and the process can be accepted and cleared.

Physical Reasons

Physical illness can be masked by emotional issues.

Feeling faint can be caused by things like low blood pressure or having the flu or a lack of sleep.  Quite often with anxiety problems we get palpitations in our chest and panic as a result can lead to a feeling of light-headedness.

You may feel like doubling up and laying down with stomach cramps (prolonged anxiety can cause a change in stomach acid balance and lead to digestive problems).

Intense emotional states can make us feel like we are a bit of a hypochondriac and this fear of being labelled as such can cause us not to seek medical advice.  Do not do this – there may be a genuine physical problem developing.

Get it checked out and you will stop worrying about it.

Overall Solutions

When we feel intensely emotional we need to acknowledge the urge to fall down as a normal human condition – undesirable to our ego, but normal.

We should not ignore these signals – something is going on with us.  We need to get help to find out what the cause is.  A physical illness, such as a thyroid problem, can be masked when we just label it ‘emotional’.

Do not be too concerned about the opinions of others when going through this kind of thing unless their opinion is supportive.  I have found those who are negatively critical of others going through this experience tend to follow a similar path when they go through similar situations.  It is a case of ‘there but for the grace of God go I’.

Humans are built in a certain way and there is no way of getting round this.  The urge to fall down every now and again comes with the package.

Regards - Carl

Drilling for Emotional Wellness: Removing Compulsions

What is a Compulsion?

A compulsion has two main components:

• an unpleasant triggering thought that repeatedly activates our unconscious attention mechanism accompanied by


• an emotional response generated within the body that makes us feel we need to do something.

A compulsion is the urge to do something preventative in regards to a potential threat.  This can be felt physically as a lifting sensation just below the chest area – it seems to come from the stomach.  It is very strong; very unwanted; and as a result of being unwanted is seen as unpleasant, painful and often interpreted as ‘abnormal’.

We can have compulsions in regards to very simple representations – simple images or words - behind which sit more complex reflections - scenarios in which we have strong imagery of things we value, or wish to protect, being harmed or destroyed.

Trouble is, because the scenario exists only in our minds, there is nothing we can do physically.  Unless, that is, you come to regard just feeling as something you do.

In a bid to calm the urge ‘to do’ for a while we may carry out physical ritualistic acts that reduce the tension - but the urge returns again and again because our Unconscious knows the main task still remains undone.  We have not completed the ‘doing cycle’ it requires us to do to the point our Unconscious can see the task as done and will then let the thoughts and feelings related to the feared threat go by just like our other thoughts do.

Compulsions can seemingly appear from nowhere but they may be supported by a foundation of prolonged anxiety or anger about the area of concern that has been there for some time.  The person becomes more and more sensitised to the issue in much the same way we do to a real-life external negative event that keeps recurring.

This repeated urge to do meets with a repeated ‘there is nothing to do!’ argument from our logical thinking mind (our left neo-cortex) which refuses the impulse to move towards the compelling imagery because the idea of physically doing when there is nothing to physically do looks completely illogical.

Is OCD related to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?

I believe it is.  Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition in which a person has been through a real-life event and has produced such an intense, overwhelming emotional response they are unable to process the response at the time of the event.

The event may be a one-off thing or a long-term series of related incidents that challenges our understanding of life and who we are in relation to that life.  In PTSD the healing process involves the person re-entering their recurring memories of the real-life experience and re-negotiating their route through the experience; through their thoughts, feelings and interpretations; to a point they feel they can let  go of it.  Most of this work involves the imagination.

I would suggest the only difference between PTSD and obsessions/OCD is that one is initiated by real-life events whereas the other is based on mainly imagined events with a real-life anxiety creating background leading up to it.

Our Unconscious Does Not Know the Difference Between Real and Imagined Events

Because we logically know an imagined event is not real we tend to invalidate it – we say ‘it did not really happen and therefore the urge to go and undo the imagined event should not be acknowledged – it should not be there’.

This is what our logical mind says.  It is what the logical minds of some brain experts tell us.  However, we are not dealing with the logical mind – we are dealing with the workings of the Reptilian, Limbic and right neo-cortex pattern creating minds.  We are dealing with emotional energies trapped in the body.

What they want our logical minds to do is not the same thing as what our logical minds think we should do.

What Should We Do when there is Nothing Physically to be Done?

We need to do what our emotional minds need us to do – we need to go into the compulsion, find the Reflection behind it, and, ever so slowly, explore and come to understand what it is that drives it.

Behind the imagery connected to your compulsion; behind the Representation and within the Reflection; you will discover things you are really passionate about; what you care deeply about; what it is in life you want to hold onto.

You need to validate this overly intense experience – accept it – but at the same time feel and release the emotional energy attached to it with a view to removing the intensity.  It is the shocking intensity of it that grabs at your attention mechanism rather than the images themselves.

Releasing emotional energy in this way is ‘doing’.

At some point you will come out of the other side of the Reflection, having fully explored it, having discharged most of the emotional energy attached to it.

The compulsion becomes milder and milder in its attention grabbing affects until one day you see the whole thing as a neutrally charged memory and are able to let go of it.

Regards - Carl

Drilling for Emotional Wellness: Emotional Representations and Reflections

I want you to imagine your inner life consists of two main elements:

• Representations


• Reflections

Representations

Representations represent Reflections – they can be a simple shape, a word or our mental image of a person.  They are quick to appear in our minds and in most cases we are quick to let them go.  We might call them thoughts – but they are the kind of thoughts that lead on to other things.

We let a Representation come and go easily when it briefly catches our attention mechanism because we do not see it as important.  When the Reflection represented has either already been fully explored or is so emotionally uninteresting to us we have no urge whatsoever to explore it it will flow through our mind without our trying to stop it.

Reflections

A Reflection is an experience in which several Representations interact with each other.  Each interacting Representation offers us another journey into another Reflection.  They form a ‘scene’ in which different directions are offered to us each with an alternative possible outcome.

The result of entering an unfamiliar reflection is to find yourself in a state of uncertainty.  This does not cause too much stress if the reflection is built around an area of thinking to which you do not have a lot of emotional energy attached.

For example, two scientists discussing alternative theories of particles produced by a particle accelerator may hold your attention for a short period of time.  If they argue over the possibility of the next accelerator test creating a black hole that could swallow you and your family they may get more of your attention.  If they tell you they are building the accelerator where your house currently sits well, it is unlikely you will pay attention to much else for a long while.  You may be particularly emotional about it.

In the above scenario you might select the image of the scientists or the image of the accelerator or the black hole as your Representation – but what it represents is the Reflection containing information about what you expect to lose and how you feel about it.

Emotionally intense Reflections produce ‘flashing’ attention-grabbing Representations.

Emotionally charged Representations grab the attention of your unconscious attention mechanism and may enforce a compulsive response we would rather not have  Compulsion is a physical urge to do something about the content within the Reflection.

We usually feel compelled to pay attention to representations when they represent a survival-related threat to us or trigger a response designed to protect something of value.

What one person regards as a survival-related issue may be different to what others do.  This is why different Representations mean different things to each of us at different times.

A couple of quick examples of Representations/Reflections:

• college certificates represent money; success; respect; a life of purpose and enjoyment – you see this represented by ‘certificate’ – you feel compelled to physically go somewhere and do things to obtain your certificate but not to get the certificate – to get the things in the Reflection behind it


• a bullying boss represents losing a big battle and getting sacked; blocked career paths; bad references; you being labelled a trouble causer; emotional illness – all this is represented by the image of the boss – on the surface it appears you feel physically compelled to go places or stand up to or run away from your bad boss but in the reflection you discover the true things feared are your own possible failures.

How Does This Information Help in Drilling for Emotional Wellness?

In obsessions and phobias we are quite often presented with the Representation and shy away from it because it looks silly or unnecessary or we just do not understand what is going on when this apparent simple image appears with a very strong set of emotional responses attached.

The emotional response, however, is not really attached to the Representation – it is attached to the Reflection behind it.

A phobic afraid of lifts (elevators), for example, may have a reaction to the lift door (the Representation) but the Reflection contains information on how it felt to be helpless; how it felt to feel suffocated; the imagined embarrassment of having to go to the toilet in a lift if you were trapped there and then have your rescuers discover the result– imagery like this may lurk in the reflection and be the real thing behind the obvious image of the lift doors.

In compulsion what happens is the emotional energy in the Reflection ‘flashes’ at us through the Representation; telling us there is something behind the Representation we need to go into and explore.

By going through our Representations into the Reflections behind them and exploring their hidden meaning we discharge the energy within.  We turn those Representative flashing attention-grabbers into just neutrally charged thoughts that appear for shorter and shorter periods until one day they hardly bother us again.

A lack of understanding of this process can leave us standing at the flashing doorway to an emotionally charged Reflection wondering what it is we are supposed to do next.

Regards - Carl

Removing Obsessions – What Is It that Really Lies Beneath?

Obsessions are concerned with the prevention of bad things happening (this also applies to some types of phobias).

Prior to the obsession coming into being there may have been a long period of worry related to the area of concern, of which the obsession is just one specific image or aspect.

Because it likes efficiency the brains strips out all unnecessary additional information and eventually just keeps flashing a representative image at the sufferer.  This may just be something as simple as a partial shape; for example the image of a nose (believe it or not, that is how specific an obsession can be – the person has an intense emotional reaction to something they know in their logical mind to be completely banal).

Memories of the context of the long period of worry leading up to the obsession can be blocked due to the memory-wiping affects of anxiety.  The sufferer of an obsession has trouble building an understanding about the source of the imagery now plaguing them from the centre of their obsession and they fear ‘what lies beneath’.

Once they decide to start facing it through the process of exposure therapy, however, the context is gradually revealed.

Context is rebuilt through mixing both the memories already contained within the trapped emotional response and from new interpretations of the gaps between available information.

As the emotional history becomes more available the sufferer starts to see where they went wrong in their understanding and how they should adjust their way of seeing in order to remove the obsession.

Confusion in Regards to Responsibilities and the Difference between Real and Imagined Events

When first starting to develop an obsession the sufferer may believe they are solely responsible for preventing the act at the centre of the obsession because they are the only one concerned about, or seemingly even aware of, the imagined threat.

This sense of isolation may be the result of an environment in which sharing worries and information about feelings is either prevented or seen as undesirable.  This sets up a self-fuelling internal worry cycle in mind and body.

Sufferers believe if the act were to happen it would be their fault because they had refused to listen to the pre-alert warning in their own heads.  They deliberately mimic the guilt response, as if the imagined horror story had really happened, and do so as a motivator to take early action in order to both prevent themselves from being in that situation and the event itself happening.

Unfortunately this mimicry can be so convincing the Unconscious, which cannot tell the difference between a real and an imagined scenario, buys into it as a current emergency situation and now starts warning the upper mind of the constantly ‘real’ threat as if it were happening right now.

Seeing this reaction in themselves as illogical the sufferer recoils and tries to eradicate the thinking and feelings attached to the process but this instead makes things worse.

As the person who contains ‘the imagined act’ they may see their obsession as a form of punishment for having the unwanted thoughts and feelings inside but also think they need to keep it as a preventative measure.

The sufferer can misunderstand subtle differences such as the difference between the act and their reaction to the act – it becomes meshed into one..

So, for example, when talking about healing an obsession through ‘emotional acceptance’ they can easily confuse accepting their emotional response to the act with accepting the unacceptable act itself (‘but then I might be agreeing the horrible act is OK?’).

They fear that removing the obsession will reduce their alertness.  This will lead to the act happening and they will then fail to cope with the knowledge they knew all along the act could happen but chose not to listen to the warning signals.

Problems Sharing with Others

Sufferers of obsessions struggle with some strange fears that delay or stop them seeking help or even sharing the content of their obsessions with others.

These fears can include:

• being locked up as someone capable of performing the acts in their obsessions because listeners will not understand the condition


• spreading their obsession to others (sufferers can have trouble believing that once the information is shared others will not develop the same condition)


• sharing information on their obsession will make it worse.

Going Into the Response

The feelings attached to an obsession are so strong they convey a sense of reality and a physically felt compulsion to do something about the alleged threat.

It is this compulsion to do something that can be most frightening because the sufferer knows there is nothing to do in reality so they keep backing away from the urge.  Unfortunately backing away strengthens the urge and its hold on the mind.

By taking the alternative approach and going into the urge and examining what drives it, the sufferer can start to undo the affect.  Do this work enough and they move into a stronger and stronger Objective Viewpoint - of seeing themselves from the outside – this is their self-image position.

What the self-image observer now sees is their most important value systems under threat and their reaction to them.

Obsessions and other anxiety disorders are usually built around imagined threats to what we value most but in the confusion caused by these conditions we see ourselves as the threat.

In one of her books on panic disorder Dr Claire Weekes talks about an exhausted midwife patient of hers who began worrying about how her tired state could impact on the quality of care she was able to give to the babies she cared for.

Passing an open upper floor window one day the midwife imagined accidentally dropping a baby through the window opening and this was enough to start an obsession/phobia about windows.

To the midwife the welfare of babies was an obvious core value – and it is around our core values, when we sense they are threatened, we are most likely to develop anxiety disorders.

What lies beneath our obsessions are things we can like about ourselves – things we agree with and positive things we can embrace again, but next time around we must do so in the right way.

If you have an obsession ‘what lies beneath’ are your core values – once you connect up with them again you can understand and clear your obsession and like yourself even more in the process.

Regards - Carl

Drilling for Emotional Wellness – the Pilot Hole Pressure of Facing Your Obsession

Perhaps for the first time in your life you have now decided to face your obsession instead of continually running from it.

You have set up a ‘drilling platform’ consisting of medical professionals, a counsellor and a private, distraction-free place where you feel safe enough to practice your ‘drilling for emotional wellness’ at regulated intervals.

Before you go in for the very first time there are some things you should keep in mind:

• obsessions are driven by trapped emotional energy – not by the repeating images or thoughts


• those repeating images and thoughts are the doorways through which the emotional energy driving your obsession hopes to escape.

Where to Place Your Pilot Hole Drill Bit

The drill bit we use when drilling for emotional wellness is our Conscious Point of Focus – what we deliberately pay attention to.

Obsessions are not driven by the imagery repeatedly appearing in the mind of the sufferer.  They are driven by an emotional response trying to escape through the imagery.  You eventually create the state known as ‘emotional acceptance’ by continually allowing the energy to discharge through the image.

You achieve emotional acceptance when you have fully discharged the emotional energy and the obsessive imagery stops appearing as a result.  What you ‘accept’ is the nature of the energy release process – commonly known as feeling your feelings.

The imagery you currently see as a never-ending curse is actually the route to emotional freedom.  The emotional energy you sense coming up through your body is telling you it wishes to escape through the route provided but you are currently stopping it from doing so.

So, when deciding where you should place your drill bit in order to start your first pilot hole the answer is straight through the imagery.

If even considering this an option fills you with dread this is because you have encountered your Secondary Belief Layer.

A Hard Outer Shell of Secondary Beliefs and Emotions

To stop the release process you have set up a series of belief systems, with their own supporting emotional responses, designed to hold the trapped emotional response powering your obsession in place.  These additional belief systems combine to tell you one simple thing: if you allow yourself to feel the emotional response and listen to any information it contains it will kill you.

To allow the energy behind your obsession to gain escape you may first have to drill through this secondary layer repeatedly.  This allows all the energy in your body to come up into conscious awareness and it begins releasing.

Originally set up to protect you from emotional pain this wall of false secondary beliefs now becomes your main immediate obstacle and it may take a long time to get through.

What Should You Expect as a Normal Part of this Early Pilot Hole Process?

Emotional gushing – feeling overwhelmed to the point you may need sometimes to lay down with emotional exhaustion.

Panic attacks; imagery of death through various causes; physical changes in such things as blood pressure; stomach acid; general anxiety and so on may be produced as a result of these beliefs.  You can find yourself turning into a bit of a hypochondriac taking multiple trips to see your doctor and even midnight journeys to hospital when unexplained symptoms arise and you are not sure what they mean.

You should consider this a normal part of the emotional release process and do not enter into a phase of self-criticism over any of this behaviour; especially when others do so – self-criticism just delays healing.

Seeing this behaviour in yourself you may wonder if you should now turn back to your old approach of avoiding the inward direction (I found this impossible to do – it was a bit like tipping over the edge on a downward rollercoaster).

What Should You Focus On?

What you should start to focus on is difference.  Things may be much worse – but they are different; they have not been different for a very long time, have they?

Continue to drill your way down wondering what different things there are still to be discovered.

My personal goal when I began my self-healing programme was to get rid of the entire thing within three months.  Although that pilot plan did not work to schedule I made so much progress in those first three months I knew I had to continue due to the level of difference I could sense.  I may have been in pain, but I felt empowered.

I did not like the journey, but finally there was a journey to be had and I was going to take it even if it might kill me.

You learn to focus on what you do, rather than how you feel, because doing is what makes the difference.  You can feel the emotional pressure releasing.

The action of repeatedly taking your conscious attention into an obsession may not look to the outside world much like action but it will certainly feel like action to you.  It is this ‘drilling down’, repeated daily, that brings results.

Like most other areas of life that first journey into the unknown is often the most painful, prolonged  and sharpest learning curve to be had but without it nothing else can happen.

Regards - Carl

Drilling For Emotional Wellness – Setting Up Your Platform

What is the first step towards turning a blocking emotional system into a flowing system?  The first thing you need to put in place is a drilling platform.

A drilling platform offers a stable place in a world of chaos you can return to again and again.

Your Emotional Energy Drilling Platform

Your emotional drilling platform is an artificial structure set up temporarily only during the energy release process.  Once it has achieved its purpose your platform can be dismantled or left to operate unmanned by itself until the next time you need to use it deliberately.

Nothing in life can guarantee total emotional freedom at all times.  I may see myself as a bit of an ‘expert’ in removing such things as obsessions, phobias and panic attacks – but I am only in this position because I learned how to set my healing platforms up.  I still get new emotional issues – I just know now how to get rid of them quickly because I have developed the understanding and skills set.

Prior to this I was a complete emotional wreck inside.  People would say they could not believe how calm I was in some external situations where others were very emotional.  Truth was, compared to how I felt inside, these external situations were barely noticeable. Now I get the best of both worlds.

Before we take a look at setting up a new emotional drilling platform, consider those platforms already successfully operating in your life.

What platforms have you already got set up?

Do you go to work?  If you go to work in any organisation the way in which that organisation is set up is a ‘platform’.  Multiple staff working together to mine something of value that leads to something else of value.  You all get together and you drill.  How much would you get done working alone?

Have you ever had a conflict situation at work that made you feel bad – did you get together and sort it out and then feel better?  You drilled the situation and released the energy using the platforms designed to sort out  such disputes.  Was there a meeting, or an informal discussion or something in writing?  What did they release?  What did they drill for?

Do you go shopping? If you go shopping your own shopping platform may consist of your transport arrangements; your shopping bags; shopping trolleys at the store; the contents of your purse or wallet and a grocery list.  All those staff at the shops you go to are working together in multiple platforms to support you in operating yours.

Where do you go that makes you feel good?  Do you read books or watch television for pleasure?  Do you set aside a specific physical place, create a certain atmosphere and devise a specific time slot?  Experiential Platforms.  Eat dinner off a plate sitting on a table and cook the meal on a cooker?  Platforms.

Your life is unconsciously full of platforms involving support from different people and tools applying different types of knowledge to resolve what would otherwise create multiple stressful issues.

All these things are important, right?  All these things are of value to you?  So why do we all, nearly every one of us, have so much trouble when it comes to creating a platform to drill down for the most important thing anyone can have in their lives?

A happy you.

Buried under all that energetic gunk there is you, and the real you deserves to be let out.  Your emotional release platform needs a place, a time and proper staffing just like all the other platforms in your life do.

Place

In order to drill for emotional energy effectively you need a safe place for an extended period of time.  This safe place could have somebody else there, as long as they are acting as your Guardian and not your Judge, Jury and Executioner.  They should be there to help undo those aspects of your own negative self-talk – not to reinforce them.

Most of the time though, you will probably be alone when you do this work.  Drilling for emotional energy needs to be very focused and by its very nature tends to be focusing – especially if you get an emotional gusher.

There is a real risk if you are in untrained company you will take your mood out on others – or they will notice and ask you about it.  There is also a risk of certain places being dangerous to you – such as when crossing roads if you are not paying attention to traffic.

So I recommend either a private room with no distractions (and nothing in it with moving parts) or, for short periods, time spent with a trusted Guardian figure.

Staffing

Drilling for emotional energy needs the support of different people at different times.  There are physical, mental and long-term planning issues, including concerns about affects on the environment, when you set up such a drilling platform.

Releasing emotional energy affects your physical body.   You have to make sure what you experience is both normal and is not masking illness not related to intense emotional release.

Doctor

During emotional release things like stomach acid balance; heart palpitations; sweating; nightmares and the ‘mammalian freeze response’ – also known as ‘disassociation’, may take place.  Got a good doctor?  Make them a part of your platform team – you will need them to speak to whenever you hit a physical situation.

Include here the possibility of a Psychiatrist – just a note: psychiatrists are medicinal professionals; their job is to prescribe medicine.  Your doctor will refer you to a psychiatrist if you wish them to and your psychiatrist will offer you medicinal support as well as giving you the opportunity to talk.  There will be room for negotiation here so do not think you should just do as you are told when it comes to medication.

I discussed my healing strategy with my psychiatrist and he agreed to keep me on the lowest level of Prozac – after a year I no longer required it (I am not sure I required it at all, to be honest, but I wanted the option).

Psychiatrists are used to people turning up on their door with no plan whatsoever, but if you have a plan they will listen to it and support you.

Something that surprised me at first was when I described my plan my psychiatrist would agree what I was saying was correct – but would not give me the whole plan!  This is most likely because they are trained not to.  As I say, they are medicinal practitioners.  They will probably refer you for counselling – and your counsellor is someone you can really start to develop your plan with.  You do not need to wait, however, until your psychiatrist or doctor refers you for counselling before getting yourself a counsellor.

Counsellor

There are several types of counsellor – a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist will help change negative thoughts to positive thoughts; a Person-Centred Counsellor will assist you in assisting yourself while at the same time offering a very light form of challenge (this kind of counselling is flexible to your needs); an Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practitioner will help you release intense emotional charge gently; a Neuro-llinguistic Programmer (NLP) works with mental modelling.

All and any of these types of counsellors are effective in their own way.  You should speak to your doctor and psychiatrist about which type they recommend but also do a bit of your own research as well.  Pick one, stick with that counsellor for a time and then speak to that counsellor as to whether or not you both feel they are the right type to assist you in your drilling for emotional wellness.

Your Board of Governors

Most platforms operate using a ‘Board of Governors’.  A governor is any source of advice called upon to help shape the nature of the development of an organisation.

We can take on and let go of our governors as we see fit and some governors may only serve the needs of our drilling platform for a short period of time – others become semi-permanent.  The only permanent member of your staffing team is you.

Your governors can be helpful real-life friends (I do not mean critical friends with agendas they want you to stick to – I mean people who value YOUR experience and agenda) or other advice sources.

They may be well-known authors – I remember going through a couple of years regarding Dr Claire Weekes, the panic attack expert, as my main ‘governor’.

Governors are useful not only for drilling down to release intense emotional energy – they are helpful in maintaining emotional happiness once it has been achieved.

You

The main member of staff you will need on your drilling platform is you.  If you do not turn up to take lead of the operation drilling for your emotional energy release cannot take place.  You could be the one member of drilling staff you have most trouble getting to show up.

You have to value yourself enough to be willing to carry out the drilling process in a safe place without distraction – this means being ‘selfish’.  It means turning up to do the work without whining about how inconvenient the process is.  When you get frustrated at the process; the way in which your organic emotional system works, what you are really saying is ‘I do not value myself much’.  You do not think you deserve the time emotional release takes.

Staffing your platform with a doctor, a psychiatrist, a counsellor and a Board of Governors really starts to reinforce the idea you are an important person in your own right.

Part of the reason we become emotionally unwell is we have spent far too much time valuing the platforms being operated by other people.  We love to help them drill for their ideas; their viewpoints; their wants – even to the point we adopt them when they work directly against our own emotional well-being.

Setting up your own platform to drill for emotional release may be the first time you have ever considered you have something in there of value to drill for.

Regards - Carl

Drilling for Emotional Wellness – What Are You Drilling For?

You were born to be happy; then unhappy; then happy again.

If you are emotionally unwell, by this I mean long-term emotionally unwell as opposed to dealing with a one-off external issue, it is not because you have not got something you need from the outside world.  It is because you have got something you have to get rid of from your inside world.

We sometimes call this emotional baggage.  Emotional baggage comes in the form of trapped emotional energies produced in relation to what may be now finished external situations or imagined events.  We have not completed the internal emotional release cycle attached to them and it causes them to remain alive inside of us; we feel as though these things are still happening now.

When our emotional baggage shows itself in our behaviours we hear, and automatically re-tell ourselves, criticisms such as ‘get over it’ and ‘pull yourself together’.   What we really need to understand is we must ‘get through it’ and let ourselves ‘fall apart in private’ for a while before we can do this; and then get back to happy, baggage-less you.

Happy You lives inside and emotional illness occurs when multiple negative emotions layer in your body, blocking your conscious from accessing your true self.

Whenever you mentally approach the memories in your brain the trapped energy erupts against your will in a bid to escape.

It is as though there were a cave system in your brain with the emotional energy in your body acting as lava bubbling up.  Every now and again you either travel down a cave and open up a route to the lava (and wish you had not) or the lava pressure builds up so much it causes an eruption that seems to overwhelm and ruin everything.

When you work at healing using systematic de-sensitisation or exposure therapy you deliberately drill down into these trapped energies to enforce release.  Thinking about drilling?  Put your hard hat on..

What Are We Drilling For?

Trapped down there below all that energy sits a happier you waiting to be released.  You may not believe this though if you have been ‘out here’, looking for distractions for a long time.  You may be wondering if the happy you down there could have survived all this time.

The risk you face is you could spend a long time drilling down to find ‘nothing’.  All that work – for nothing.  The irony is, nothing is exactly what you will find, because nothing is what happiness is.  Nothing is what you should drill for.

Can you draw happiness?  Can you picture it?  The answer is no - but that does not matter because this is what you are drilling for.  I know this may sound strange – but if you have been looking for things in the outside world to make you happy for long enough you may well now be looking for the thing inside – a definite target to aim at when there is no thing to be found.  I remember, as I spent several years drilling down to release my obsessions, phobias and panic attacks, occasionally trying to ‘see’ happiness.  What was I working towards?  There came a time when I just knew I was much happier, but still could not picture it.

I can draw a smile; a can re-live an emotional buzz – but happiness I cannot do in the same way and neither can you.

This is because happiness is about the freedom to move within our own being – not being hemmed in by our thoughts; not feeling pressurised by our feelings.  Feeling free.  Happiness is about having choices and space. To achieve this all you need is an absence of intense emotional energies.

To create this you must release emotions.

Confidence comes from knowing you are able to create the space whenever you need to.  It does not come from never having an intense, difficult to deal with emotional problem ever again.

Rather than just achieving emotional release what we really want to establish is emotional flow.  Once we open up the cave network in our brains, and keep it open, the trapped emotional lava gets released but also any future lava releases safely without building up again inside.

Regards - Carl