Learning Deep Feelings

Learning Deep Feelings lets you become happy through a natural process that makes your mind quiet and puts your heart at peace.

In addition to these three overviews, there are
more than fifteen other pages of knowledge about Learning
Deep Feelings. To get to those pages, make use of the links
at the lower end of this page and all other pages.

QUICK OVERVIEW

The complete substance of Learning Deep Feelings comes down to only two things:

• the time-limited process of acknowledging deep feelings
• the one-time operation of making deep-feeling contact

These two behaviors are physical acts which have little or no connection with thoughts and words. (But for young boys and girls and their mother or father, body-to-body touching is NEVER a part of deep-feeling contact.)

The two physical acts are simple, straightforward, intuitive and natural. Learning them is open to everyone. Using them lets persons become happy by freeing them from their noisy minds and troubled hearts.

For Learning Deep Feelings is nothing more than good mothering put to use with a person whose deep feelings had their growth stopped at some time in the past, frequently when the person was a young boy or girl or even a baby. Like good mothering, Learning Deep Feelings is intensely human and humane. Its purposes are the nourishment, enhancement and healing of persons.

NEW OVERVIEW

Two Sorts of Feelings

Feelings come in two very different sorts: deep and surface. Deep feelings have a strong connection with the body and well being. Surface feelings have a strong connection with the mind and disease.

Going through deep feelings lets persons become healthy, happy and free from their past. Going on with surface feelings keeps persons ill, unhappy and fixed in their past.

The list of deep feelings is short because deep feelings have a feeble connection with language. While playing with feelings, 98 times out of 100, one of the deep feelings on this list will come up:

• terror
• horror
• loneliness
• pain (hurt, rejection, used, anguish, agony)
• fear (afraid, frightened, scared)
• embarrassment
• helpless or trapped
• grief
• lost or bewildered
• sadness
• gratitude
• aloneness
• wonder
• joy
• contentment
• happiness

A list of possible surface feelings would be very long. (You may see a list of surface feelings by using this connection.) Surface feelings are made clearer by sorting them into one of five groups:

• the anger group
• the anxiety group
• the guilt group
• the pride group
• the "feeling good" group

The list of surface feelings is long because surface feelings have a strong connection with language.

Here is an important way in which deep and surface feelings are different. Let us take the deep feeling of pain as an example. Pain comes in thousands upon thousands of different forms. But no two forms of pain are the same. (It may take some time to become expert at separating the different forms of pain from one another.) This is the key point: The experience of a given form of pain takes place only once. Then that given form of pain goes away forever. On the other hand, the experience of a given form of surface feeling, say anger, takes place over and over. That given form of surface feeling never goes away because it has work to do, namely, covering up a deep feeling.

It seems that no one makes additions to his or her store of deep feelings after he or she becomes 16 or 17 years old. So a person's store of deep feelings may be great but it is limited. If the person keeps working at experiencing his or her deep feelings, then, in time, they will all go away. On the other hand, a person's store of surface feelings is unlimited because any one surface feeling may be experienced over and over for as long as the person is living.

Deep feelings have great value. But for covering up deep feelings, surface feelings have no value. In society, surface feelings are frequently acted upon, causing danger to, damage to or destruction of the self, others or property.

Two Sorts of Persons

Persons come in two very different sorts: communicators and noncommunicators. Communicators are able to make a connection with other persons by way of deep feelings. Noncommunicators are completely unable to make a connection with other persons by way of deep feelings. Please take note that communicator and noncommunicator are special words that are used here from the viewpoint of deep feelings and deep feelings only.

Communicators go about society much better than noncommunicators do. Communicators do better than noncommunicators in society because communicators make a special connection with other persons and because communicators are older than noncommunicators. That is, the development of communicators' deep feelings has gone past the two-year-old level.

From the viewpoint of deep feelings, men and women who are noncommunicators are very young, somewhere between zero and two years old. (Being zero years old is representative of the deep-feeling development that is present at birth.) From the outside, noncommunicators may seem much older than two years because the development of their bodies, decision-making, language and thinking is complete. But when their deep feelings are troubled, these men and women undergo a change into little boys and girls or even babies who have very limited powers of body-control, decision-making, language and thinking until their deep feelings become quiet again.

In one of his songs, Bob Dylan gave us a sense of this change back to a younger self.

Ah, you fake just like a woman, yes, you do
You make love just like a woman, yes, you do
Then you ache just like a woman
But you break just like a little girl.

Take careful note that there is nothing wrong with the deep feelings of a noncommunicator. The development of his or her deep feelings simply came to a stop at some point between birth and the time he or she got to be two years old.

Deep-Feeling Contact

A communicator never becomes a noncommunicator. But a noncommunicator may become a communicator through an operation named deep-feeling contact. The operation takes no more than a second or two and has to be done only once with a given noncommunicator. But for young boys and girls and their mother or father, body-to-body touching is NEVER a part of deep-feeling contact. In fact, body-to-body touching would get in the way of deep-feeling contact.

Without deep-feeling contact, the deep feelings of a noncommunicator will never get older than two years even though he or she has been given chemicals for the mind and talk-based care for years. After getting these sorts of attention for a long time, a woman named Deborah gave us a sense of the stopped-at-two condition of her deep feelings by saying, "I want to grow up before I grow old."

From the time of deep-feeling contact, the full growth of a person's deep feelings is completed in less than an hour. From the time of deep-feeling contact, it takes between six weeks and six months for deep-feeling growth to become fully united with a person's thinking. From the time of deep-feeling contact, it takes at least 2 years and as much as 10 years for deep-feeling growth to become fully united with a person's behavior in society. It is the persons who have a bad disease of the mind who take the longest time for their deep-feeling growth to become fully united with their behavior in society.

After deep-feeling contact, I have seen all persons automatically go through the same steps of deep-feeling growth and of uniting that growth with their thinking and behavior. So I have the belief that the one-time operation of deep-feeling contact gets awake or lets loose a natural growth process which is waiting, as if sleeping or in prison, within every noncommunicator.

FULL OVERVIEW

Learning Deep Feelings is based on five theories:

• First, every feeling, of any sort, is a clear sign that a war is going on inside a person. In other words, one part of a person is fighting against another part of the same person. Other names for this inner war are chaos, conflict, confusion, disease, disorder, illness, misery, opposition, sickness, stress, turmoil and upset. Unhappiness and a noisy mind and a troubled heart are all signs of this inner war.

• Second, there are two very different sorts of feelings--surface and deep. Examples of surface feelings are anger, anxiety, guilt and pride. Surface feelings are listed in Appendix 3. Examples of deep feelings are horror, loneliness, pain and joy. Deep feelings come in two sorts: difficult and consoling. The difficult deep feelings are listed in Appendix 1. The experience of consoling deep emotions is simple. The consoling deep feelings are listed in Appendix 2.

  Because there are two very different sorts of feelings, giving attention to feelings has two very different outcomes. Giving attention to surface feelings keeps the inner war going strong. On the other hand, giving attention to deep feelings puts an end to the inner war and makes quiet and peace inside the person. In turn, this quiet and peace let the person become healthy or well, that is, whole--and most important--happy.

• Third, a special channel of communication exists between human beings. It is named the deep-feeling communication channel. This channel is biological in nature because a similar, but not identical, channel exists between dogs and another channel exists between domestic cats and still another exists between horses.

  This special channel of communication involves deep emotion and deep emotion only. The deep-feeling communication channel is very basic to our human nature and very old in our evolutionary history. It uses primitive parts of our brain like the limbic system and the cerebellum. And it acts without using eye contact, words, symbols, facial expressions, gestures, signs or physical touching of any sort. Yet this communication channel carries information which is surprisingly subtle, intricate and beautiful.

• Fourth, with respect to the deep-feeling communication channel, there are two sorts of human beings:

  • communicators; that is, persons who are fully able to make use of the deep-feeling communication channel
  • noncommunicators; that is, persons who are completely unable to make use of the deep-feeling communication channel

  The two groups are mutually exclusive; no one can be a member of both. In other words, there are no "semi-communicators"; that is, there are no persons who are partly able to use the deep-feeling communication channel. Furthermore, communicators never become noncommunicators. But noncommunicators can change into communicators. If they do, the change is permanent; that is, they never change back into noncommunicators.

  Please note that the words "communicator" and "noncommunicator" are technical terms which refer to deep emotion and deep emotion only. Obviously, noncommunicators often show great skill with communication channels other than the deep-feeling communication channel.

  Depending on their neurochemistry and their family's culture, newborns' status as communicators or noncommunicators is fixed during the first six weeks of extrauterine life. For convenience, newborns who become communicators during these first six weeks are called native communicators. In the American culture, about one person in ten is a native communicator; the rest are noncommunicators. And virtually all noncommunicators keep their noncommunicative status for life unless they undergo the special operation called deep-feeling contact. Noncommunicators who become communicators some time after the sixth week of extrauterine life are termed naturalized communicators.

  Communicators, both native and naturalized, navigate society better than noncommunicators do. The reason that communicators get on better in society is that they are older than noncommunicators with respect to deep feelings. Developmentally, the deep feelings of a noncommunicator are those of a young boy or girl who is two years old or younger, often much younger.

  Here's how a dear friend of mine described what it's like to be a noncommunicator:

  Being a noncommunicator is like going through life always clutching a small child to your chest in order to protect that child from emotional battering by the outside world. The child is easy to upset and hard to calm. But this child is at the heart of you and you must shelter him or her with all your power.

  In other words, noncommunicators are persons who have grown up in every way except one: their deep emotions look and act like the deep emotions of a child who is less than two years old. That is, noncommunicators have the deep emotions of an infant. And infantile deep emotions are inconsolable, ineffable, intense, mysterious, primitive, unpredictable and volatile. (The word infantile means "characteristic of children who cannot speak" and corresponds to the stage of human development bounded by birth and two years of age.)

  So a noncommunicator looks and acts grown up until his or her deep feelings get stirred up. Then the noncommunicator must adopt extraordinary, child-like measures to contain and soothe his or her powerful and poorly formed deep feelings.

  Take careful note that there is nothing wrong with the deep feelings of a noncommunicator. The development of his or her deep feelings simply came to a stop at some point between birth and the time he or she got to be two years old.

  Let's go back to that young child that the noncommunicator was clutching to his or her chest so that the child was protected from the onslaught of deep feelings connected with other people. After undergoing deep-feeling contact (discussed next), that vulnerable inner boy or girl grows into a powerful man or woman. Then the former noncommunicator becomes that man or woman. Nothing is lost but the old personality is absorbed and transformed into an emotionally whole adult. (Some of the women who go through this transformation manifest an ageless beauty. They can tell you that they're 25 or 55 or some age in between and you must believe them because their appearance never reveals their age.)

• Fifth, there is a special operation, named deep-feeling contact, which makes noncommunicators into communicators. On the other hand, there is no operation which makes communicators into noncommunicators.

  I describe how to do deep-feeling contact elsewhere in this presentation. At this point it's important to note that for an adult noncommunicator to change into a communicator for the rest of his or her life, deep-feeling contact with some adult communicator has to take place only once. So deep-feeling contact is a one-time operation which produces permanent results. In addition, deep-feeling contact happens in a moment, so quickly in fact, that untrained eyes often miss the event. (Incidentally, this fleeting, one-time operation of deep-feeling contact constitutes the only element of this presentation which lies beyond the realm of standard, behavior-modification science.)

  A few words about terminology. Deep-feeling contact is called "contact" because that's how it feels to the person doing the operation. However, between adults, there is NEVER any body-to-body touching during deep-feeling contact. In fact, bodily touching would be counterproductive because it generally disrupts deep-feeling contact.

Using the Special Channel of Communication

Just because communicators can use the deep-feeling communication channel doesn't mean that they do, in fact, use it. As a rule, people in our society hardly ever use this special channel. Communicators seldom use it openly because it makes them uncomfortable. Noncommunicators never use it for two reasons:

• They can't.
• They usually have no idea that it exists.

So why bother with a communication channel that nearly no one uses? Those of us who regularly use the deep-feeling communication channel know that it helps us to perceive the complex, delicate and hidden nature of the events that happen in life. The two behaviors of Learning Deep Feelings come together in this statement:

Deep-feeling contact opens
the deep-feeling communication channel
and acknowledging deep feelings keeps it working.

The Dangers of Deep-Feeling Contact

Deep-feeling contact is not harmless. It enhances a person's deep feelings so that they become broader, deeper and stronger. Newly contacted persons may try to avoid their enhanced deep feelings by withdrawing from social interaction or by escalating the noise in their minds and the trouble in their hearts. So withdrawal and escalation are the risks of deep-feeling contact.

Of course, we can minimize the risks of deep-feeling contact. With cooperative persons, we make them practice acknowledging their deep emotions before those emotions are broadened, deepened and strengthened by deep-feeling contact. Of course, uncooperative persons won't practice. They can still be contacted by way of deep feelings but we must assess and anticipate the deleterious consequences of doing so, first by having a behavior-modification program up and running and second by providing for hospitalization, medication and restraint if the need, including the prolonged need, for such interventions arises.

Deep-feeling contact carries some risk but also carries great range: it can be applied to shockingly difficult persons who have the noisiest minds and the most troubled hearts. Furthermore, it can be applied at any age and where nothing else has worked.

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