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ACKNOWLEDGING |
For many people, simply being a communicator lets them navigate society successfully. But unhappy persons must do more than be communicators; they must consistently function as communicators within the deep-feeling communication channel. As with anything else in life, consistent function requires practice, practice, and more practice.
With respect to practicing within the deep-feeling communication channel, we have two questions:
We practice on the difficult deep emotions and we practice on them by acknowledging them. (The consoling deep emotions also occupy the deep-feeling communication channel but they require no practice.) First we'll take up the difficult deep feelings and then we'll take up acknowledging them.
The difficult deep feelings that we must practice upon number only 16 divided into two groups of eight each. The first group of eight gives people the most trouble:
This group consumes about 95 percent of the time and energy in practicing with deep emotion.
The second group of eight sometimes poses a problem:
The communicator must experience his or her deep feelings by acknowledging them. Acknowledging deep feelings is the core work needed to become functional within the deep-feeling communication channel. Let me assure you that acknowledging difficult deep feelings is quite unpleasant, especially at first.
Acknowledging means allowing, letting, making room for and permitting deep feelings to enter conscious awareness. Note that acknowledging is a passive process, a giving in, a letting go, a lack of doing, a non-doing, a surrendering.
Communicators must never direct or drive their conscious attention toward deep feeling. Instead they must let their attention drift or fall to the place where they experience deep feeling. If communicators direct or drive their attention toward deep feeling, then that feeling will elude them because the deliberate manipulation of attention cloaks deep feeling.
The most demanding task for the helper with deep feelings is getting communicators to find, in the appropriate manner, the place where they experience deep emotion. With practice, communicators more easily recall that place. That is, they find their deep emotion with less struggle. After more practice, their deep emotion finds them. That is, deep emotion enters their awareness automatically, beyond their control, much as it does with many small children. This is called the mid phase of acknowledging deep emotion. People often dislike the onset of acknowledging's mid phase because they sense that they have lost control over their deep emotion, which is exactly what has happened.
Strictly speaking, acknowledging deep feelings is a purely internal process. No external expression or representation (RE-presentation) of deep feelings in words or other media is necessary for Learning Deep Feelings to succeed. However, as a helper with deep feelings, I like to witness some verbal expression of deep feelings in order to be sure that people are truly acknowledging their deep feelings.
The most burdensome task for the helper with deep feelings is keeping communicators' attention on their difficult deep emotions until the mid phase of acknowledging sets in. Communicators will say or do almost anything to avoid the experience of their difficult deep emotions. Unfortunately, the lone rule about deep emotion still applies to them:
The only way past the feeling
is through the feeling.
Many people avoid their difficult deep feelings because they have concluded that those feelings are always the same, will never go away and are endless in number. So why should they suffer by paying attention to such feelings?
These people are wrong on all three counts. Careful investigation reveals three important facts about deep feelings:
So you will finish your difficult deep feelings if you persevere in the task of acknowledging them. And experience has shown that the job of going through the bulk of your difficult deep feelings takes several months, but never years, to complete.
Because of the three facts listed above, acknowledging difficult deep emotion in Learning Deep Feelings represents a non-repetitive, progressive and time-limited process. When communicators have learned to be free and fluid with all their deep emotions, then they have become continuously functional within the deep-feeling communication channel.
You can think of your supply of difficult deep feelings as a box full of tissues with each tissue having its own unique color. One box full is all you have and, except in rare cases, all you will ever have. Your job is to take each tissue, one by one, and experience it fully. You must take the tissues in the order that they emerge. You must never dig through the box looking for reddish tissues only. (Looking for reddish tissues is the equivalent of deliberately working on a specific deep feeling like grief.) If you stay on task, you will have finished your box full of tissues in a matter of months. If you avoid this task, your box full of tissues (and your unhappiness) can last a lifetime.
With certain intense deep feelings like emotional pain, it is possible for you to go into a trance and then completely re-live the painful event. This re-living has no therapeutic value.
You can avoid this useless re-living by keeping eye contact with another person whenever you experience a deep feeling. Most people have to learn this sort of eye contact as a new skill, specifically, feeling intense pain, probably sobbing and still looking at the eyes of someone else--all three at the same time.
Our culture has taught us to look away from others when we feel something deeply. We must abandon this teaching in order to avoid trance and possibly psychosis. Furthermore, maintaining contact while experiencing a deep feeling gets you through that feeling much more quickly, perhaps ten times more quickly, than looking away. So eye contact reduces your suffering.
When you look at your helper with deep feelings, look at him or her straight on rather than out of the corner of your eye. Looking out of the corner of your eye represents a cagey, controlling or coy attitude, any of which may cover up your deep feelings.
Also avoid looking up when you're acknowledging deep emotions. Looking up makes your brain generate alpha waves, which put it in a resting state. With alpha waves going, you lapse into a mild trance that effectively covers up your deep emotions.
By eye contact or by some other method, your helper with deep feelings will keep in touch with you while you go through your difficult deep feelings. Whenever you experience an intense deep feeling, please help your specialist to stay in contact with you. By the way, if you re-live a traumatic event but keep a minimal connection to the here-and-now, you will have experienced the most intense and powerful deep-feeling intervention, abreaction. In my experience, abreaction is rare.
Some people have concluded that, if they acknowledge their difficult deep feelings, then they will die, disappear, disintegrate or explode. Their conclusion is exactly correct for the time it was reached. At that time in childhood, most likely during infancy, these people were so upset that they had to push deep feelings out of awareness in order to keep from dying.
But that was then and this is now. Now these people are grown. They are older and infinitely stronger. So the experience of deep feelings will be difficult but never lethal.
Concern about going crazy resembles the concern about dying discussed immediately above. Some people have concluded that, if they acknowledge their difficult deep feelings, then they will stop coping, lose control or go crazy. Their conclusion is exactly correct for the time it was reached. At that time in childhood, most likely during infancy, these people were so upset that they had to push deep feelings out of awareness in order to avoid going crazy, that is, becoming psychotic.
But that was then and this is now. Now these people are grown. They are older and infinitely stronger. It is very unlikely that they will become psychotic. In addition, people who worry about becoming psychotic need to know three facts:
At the beginning of Learning Deep Feelings, deep feelings are usually pure and simple. Naming them is easy: hurt or fear or embarrassment. Later in therapy, deep feelings become more complex like embarrassed hurt or sad loneliness or fearful horror. Near the end of Learning Deep Feelings, deep feelings combine freely with one another to form a richly textured tapestry of emotion. It is hard to put such complex emotions into words. As noted above, for deep-feeling acknowledgment to succeed, a person has no obligation to identify or name the deep feelings that he or she is acknowledging.
A few people worry that some deep feeling has slipped by their attention and has escaped their acknowledgment. Such worry is unfounded. A group-therapy rule applies here: If it's important, it'll come up again. And again, and again, and again, until people are compelled to acknowledge the deep feeling.
Some persons complain that a deep feeling they're acknowledging seems like it will never end. This "endless" quality of a deep feeling is a good sign. It means that the deep feeling is being acknowledged completely.
Of course, deep feelings always come to an end because they are wave-like in nature. That is, people always get an "intermission" between the peaks of deep feeling. The waves of deep feeling resemble the waves of pain in gastrointestinal distress or uterine contraction. (Histologically, the gut and the womb both contain smooth muscle.)
As soon as some persons start to acknowledge a deep feeling, they begin time travel. That is, they go back to the past in order to figure out who caused this feeling, what did those people do, where did they do it, when did they do it, how did they do it and why did they do it. This leap into history is a cloaking ritual directed against acknowledging a deep feeling completely.
Some of these time travelers have succumbed to Hollywood's vision of psychotherapy. Like Tom in The Prince of Tides, if they could just recall that one, big, horrific event that warped their lives, then they would get well and live happily ever after. This is good drama but bad counseling. Most people never had "one, big, horrific event"; they did have thousands of little, horrific events that warped their lives.
With a few people, as soon as they start to acknowledge a difficult deep feeling, they go off into the future. They want to know what this feeling will mean, how long it will continue, what feeling is next, how long their treatment will last or what they'll be like after treatment is done.
Leaping into your history or into your future is a cloaking ritual against the deep feeling you're acknowledging. Stay in the present; it's all you have. The past is gone; the future has yet to arrive. As Ram Dass said,
In the movie Papillon a fellow prisoner asks Dustin Hoffman's character, Dega, "Then you won't blame him [Papillon], huh?" Dega replies, "Blame is for God and small children." So with blame, let's mind Dega and leave it to God and small children. Obviously, both blaming others and blaming yourself are cloaking rituals against your deep feelings.
Many people blame some other person for "causing" their difficult deep feelings. Not so. If you are past mid-adolescence, then the most that another person can do to you is uncover the difficult deep feelings from your childhood and early adolescence. In effect the blamed person is doing you a favor by reminding you of these long-cloaked deep feelings and helping you to become aware of them--all at no charge. So be thankful; the person you blame is helping you find your deep feelings for free.
After going through intense deep feelings, you will feel exhausted. This is perfectly normal after a good session of acknowledging deep feelings. Here's what I think occurs: Acknowledging deep feelings allows your brain to reorganize itself in the direction of greater harmony and joy. It is this reorganization that consumes your energy.
After a long and intense session of deep feelings, you may sense that the world is real but you are unreal, merely an actor. Or you may sense that you are real but the world is unreal, merely a movie set. Or you may sense that you are floating or watching yourself from a distance or that there is a pane of glass between you and the rest of the world. Any one of these sensations signals dissociation. If you become dissociated, relax and do something comfortable and familiar. Or take a nap. Your dissociation means nothing special and will pass soon enough. But if you fight against or worry about your dissociation, it could get worse.
As you go through your deep feelings, you may experience a rhythmic shaking of the big muscles in your neck, shoulders, back, buttocks and thighs. This shaking is always a great gift. It will bring a large measure of harmony and growth into your life.
Large-muscle shaking may feel like a seizure but there is no alteration of consciousness. You can suppress this shaking fairly easily but then you lose the great value of this gift. The shaking probably accompanies the emergence of a deep-seated terror.
Note that big-muscle shaking differs from the trembling hands and jiggling feet seen in many persons. This small-muscle body movement indicates anxiety only. And anxiety is a surface feeling.
You may find yourself disquieted because some difficult deep feeling has gripped you and you have no idea what that feeling is. In my experience, only two deep feelings act this way: horror and terror. Look at your imagery. Monsters and torture imply horror. Crumbling of your world and chaos imply terror. Horror is the more common of the two. For some reason, horror and terror frequently elude cognitive recognition.
Bodily symptoms like aching, burning, dizziness, itching, nausea, pain, palpitations or weakness often signal that a difficult deep feeling is present. With bodily symptoms, you should first visit your general practitioner. If you are physically all right or if your physical condition is under good control, then you can explore your bodily symptoms emotionally.
We'll use pain as an example. Here's what you do: Let your full attention go to the pain. Stop thinking about your pain. Feel it fully. Never mind what's causing it or how to treat it or when it'll be over. Just feel your pain.
Given this sort of attention, your pain will change or move. Pay complete attention to this new pain. It will shift again. Using your full attention, follow your pain around until it becomes a difficult deep feeling that you can acknowledge.
Crying is a natural release that often accompanies the acknowledgment of certain deep feelings. Refusing to cry is a cloaking ritual against deep feelings, especially the painful ones. Consequently, saying you'll acknowledge your deep feelings but you refuse to cry is like saying you'll exercise but you refuse to sweat. In either case, you'll get little done.
Some people state, "I can't cry." A clinical rule clarifies this statement. The rule is this: When people say "I can't," they mean "I won't!"
Many persons allege, "If I start crying, I'll cry forever." This never happens. The deep feelings that generate tears always come in waves. So a person always gets "intermissions" between the waves of deep feeling.
If you cry continuously for more than two minutes, you may be experiencing tears of rage. Because rage is a form of anger and a surface feeling, you have to look for the deep feeling that is underneath the rage.
Except for tears of rage, crying is a natural release of inner tension. Never, never distract or interrupt someone who is crying. If you want to help people who are crying, have them maintain eye contact with you. If they have trouble crying and looking at your eyes at the same time, tell them it's a new skill that they need to learn.
You can skip eye contact with crying children. Simply hold crying children for one minute past the time you think they're finished crying. Children will spontaneously break away from you when they're through crying.
To distract or interrupt a person from crying, many people say things like,
Parents sometimes stop their child from crying by saying,
Once again, crying is a natural release; never, never interfere with it, even in yourself.
It's all right to share your deep feelings with your children provided that, each time you do it, you tell them either,
With very small children who are unable to understand the source of your feelings, simply hold them while you go through your deep feelings.
The procedure above is necessary because children under the age of 21 (yes, 21) believe that they cause the feelings that their parents experience. It's impossible to change this belief but you can suspend it for a short time while you share your feelings.
If you fail to suspend this belief, then your children will feel guilty for causing your feelings. Because guilt is a surface feeling, it cloaks their deep feelings. On the other hand, if you prevent this guilt, then your children will be free to experience their deep feelings with you. They will also get parental permission to acknowledge their deep feelings so it's unlikely that they'll ever need psychological help.
So go ahead and blush, cry, laugh, sob and tremble with your children. Each time, tell them that your deep feeling has no connection with them. Then they will blush, cry, laugh, sob and tremble with you. By the way, their deep feelings have no connection with you.
Avoid sharing your surface emotions with a child. Because they always cloak a deep emotion, the communication of surface emotions constitutes subterfuge rather than authenticity.
Even when no verbal communication exists between you and your child, you can still have deep-feeling communication with that child. Keep three guidelines in mind:
Comfort is premature when it occurs before deep-feeling communication happpens. Avoiding premature comfort applies to both you and the child. Premature comfort for either party cloaks deep emotion and so stops deep-feeling communication. In addition, remember that, throughout the various treatments for autism and other childhood problems, persistence generates good outcomes.
The best external evidence of deep-feeling communication is
peaceful and sustained mutual gaze.
Remember that deep-feeling communication requires no eye contact, words, symbols, facial expressions, gestures, signs or physical touching of any sort. Eye contact, words, symbols, facial expressions, gestures, signs and physical touching may augment deep-feeling communication but they never constitute it.
You should know that deep feelings are contagious. That is, people who see you acknowledging a deep feeling are forced to experience the deep feeling that is uppermost in them. Their uppermost deep feeling may be different from yours. For example, your pain may bring out their sadness.
This contagion of deep feelings is the driving force behind group-work aimed at deep feelings: One member's deep feeling draws out the deep feelings of every other member. Because your deep feeling brings up the deep feelings of everyone present, other people who want to avoid their deep feelings will try to distract you from the deep feeling you are acknowledging. So in groups, the helper with deep feelings has to protect the person acknowledging a deep feeling from others who want to stop that feeling because they are unwilling to acknowledge their own deep feelings.
Because the contagion of deep emotions is such a powerful force in group-work which explores deep emotion, a helper with deep feelings uses such groups for work with nonverbal persons. The minimum group membership is the nonverbal person and one of his or her caretakers. Any other appropriate and interested party may join a group session provided that each and every additional participant is a communicator.
The reason for excluding noncommunicators from deep-feeling exploration groups is simple: with that much deep emotion flowing between the group members, it is impossible to control it. Consequently, noncommunicators could get emotionally contacted by accident, probably without their knowledge that deep-feeling contact took place and radically changed their personalities. That sort of "accident" constitutes sloppy practice by helpers with deep feelings.
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