The mind can make a mess of emotions or lead us to a sense of deeper fulfillment

Most people tend to carry around some version of a chronic “negative” emotion.  The emotion might show up every day for some, or come in cycles, or sporadically.  Some examples of chronic “negative” emotional experiences that clients discuss are boredom, depression, low motivation, sadness, irritability, low confidence, anger, loneliness, co-dependency, etc.  When a client comes into the office I often explore with them how they react to these emotions.  There are many types of internal reactions such as trying to push an emotion away. distracting oneself, absorption into it, hating it, wishing it would go away, pretending it’s not there, or feeling flooded by the energy of the emotion.

Strangely, our culture has trained us to somehow create a problem out of “negative” emotions, when really “negative” emotions might not actually be a problem in and of itself.  Emotions have a natural course of moving through the body and changing. They actually don’t tend to stay around very long when we are able to learn how to not react in certain ways to them.  Emotion can be thought of as energy in motion (e-motion).  Our mind has the capacity to redirect that energy, stop it, change it, and even cause it to stay.  Learning to be with the natural flow of emotion is kind of an art form, but it is also very simple.  In time a wide range of emotion that is naturally flowing becomes more fulfilling than troublesome.  The natural flow of emotions is really just an expression of our life force.  But if you are like me, it takes some practice to learn how to experience a wide range of emotion and feel the life force behind it.  It seems the default way with “negative” emotions was to make them a problem and sometimes even create a mess in our life because of them.  I think it is time for a new way of experiencing emotion.  A way that can include things that might appear at first to be troublesome, but really can lead to a deeper sense of liveliness.

ADDICTION RECOVERY GROUP:
A NEW KIND OF GROUP FOR DEEPER RECOVERY

In this 12 week addiction recovery group, we will harness the power of the group to support you in making big leaps in your recovery process. Utilizing therapy methods, council, ritual, meditation, contemplative frameworks, body awareness exercises, and group engagement, we will look at the roots of addiction, relationship to self and other, and how to use recovery as an evolutionary process. This group is best suited for individuals who have at least three months of sobriety and feel they are ready to dive deep in a supportive environment. I have taken individuals in the past who are actively using if they are ready to commit to sobriety during the group.  This group will not utilize the 12 step model, although that is not discouraged in any way. Participants may find that this group is a powerful supplement to a twelve-step journey.
When: Tuesdays, 5:00-6:30
Duration:12 Weeks
Start Date: TBD

Why do so many people have chronic pain and undefinable illness?

As someone who has dealt with chronic issues, such as pain and fatigue, I know the incredible frustration of trying to heal my body, which often feels like a very complicated puzzle.  In the world of psychiatry, more and more patients are not easily fitting into any one category of mental illness.  Their symptoms span categories and also remain somewhat unique.  In the larger medical community there has also been an increase in sufferers of chronic pain, fatigue, headaches, nausea, and other symptoms that don’t easily fit into a diagnosis, with unclear origins of what is causing the symptoms.  Over 25 million Americans suffer from chronic pain alone.  Why are so many of us suffering indefinable ailments with unknown origins?

It could be that we have lost touch with our natural environment and the instinctual wisdom of our bodies.  Maybe we are not in tune with what the body needs in some fundamental way.  For example, often I think it is very difficult to feel what my own body needs to eat to feel nourished when I walk through a supermarket filled with extravagant foods that aren’t necessarily all healthy and vitalizing.

Another factor is that we also can’t always move in ways that allow our body to release and discharge stress like most of the animal kingdom.  Exercise can help, but it seems that the natural way animals release anxiety is to allow the body to take over and move, run, roll around, make noise, etc.  Imagine if we were all moving erratically whenever the body needed to–like in the mall or at movies?  Probably to odd and not going to happen anytime soon, so we need to find another solution.

Learning to listen to the body and to the very natural process of the body seeking health seems more pressing than ever before.  I think the answers are really close to home.  It really takes discipline to retrain our minds that we need to pay attention to the body all the time.  The body has needs constantly.  I’m starting to think we can easily miss those needs a good portion of the day, which in my past definitely led to unpleasant consequences.