Chapter 1 – Emotional Liberation & Principles of Self-Therapy

You have been hurt; we all have. Painful experiences took away pieces of you: parts of your original innocence, bits of confidence, chunks of peace, years of joy. You can recover all of it, and more. You will learn from the pain and become stronger; you are built to do so. Self-healing is everyone’s birthright; let’s get good at it!

We’re all recovering from something. It might be what your father did to you decades ago, what your mother didn’t do, or that joke your friend made about you yesterday; you still feel hurt and angry today. Imagine that whenever you “feel bad”, you could quickly know why you feel that way, what you need to feel better, and do it to quickly feel better. You could navigate life by solving problems, recovering quickly, and spending more time being happy. I am here to tell you that that WE ALL HAVE THE BUILT-IN ABILITY TO HEAL!  Whatever level of unhappiness and inner struggle you have been living with, you can raise the quality of your own mental/ emotional health. If you want that, it takes time and training, as does any talent or skillset from making money to playing tennis. I invite you to spend some time “working out” in the gym of your own private inner world of thoughts and feelings. Try on these ideas and try out these techniques of self-healing. If they work for you, as they have for many others, teach them to your kids, students, patients, and clients. Emotional Liberation is available to everyone willing to do the work.

Five Principles of Emotional Liberation

Here are five fundamental features of this therapeutic approach to psychological healing.

1- We All Have Patterns. (Chapter 2)

These are learned emotional reactions to certain stimuli – our triggers – in which we lose conscious control and react in ways that work against our best interests. You will define yours in chapter 2 and begin to upgrade them with responses that make things better rather than worse.

2- We Have All Suffered Trauma. (Chapter 3)

To varying degrees of intensity, everyone has been hit by life events. These are the source of our patterns. Compassionate understanding of our traumas and transforming them into positive change-makers is the work of chapter 3.

3- We Are Built for Recovery. (Chapter 4)

Through the existential hardship of life we evolved an inborn system of psychological self-healing. (?Hard knocks create blocks but also stimulate growth. Just as life events have a full mind/body/emotion impact, we must bring all our faculties into the healing process; recovery is experiential.?) Self-Therapy, using what you know about and can do for yourself, is the future of therapy. Discovering and utilizing it is our goal. In chapter 4 we will pick up the tools that assist self-awareness, which is the basis of self-therapy.

4- Emotions Are Keys to Recovery. (Chapter 5)

Emotions have been misunderstood and misused, but are essential to our natural healing abilities. You have a psychological immune system that uses feelings to detect and protect you from invasions of well-being. Chapter 5 will reintroduce you to your emotions as medicine to begin a new working relationship with them. 

5- Emotions Are a Complete Therapeutic System (Chapters 6-13)

Once we begin to be more comfortable with troubling emotions in general, we find that each one has very a specific purpose. Just as various antibodies are pathogen specific, Anger, for example, is sent out to neutralize specific types of harm in your life. Emotions’ completely systematic behavior gives a most effective ability to diagnose and treat their cause. Chapters 6 – 12 are hands-on guide to decoding and skillfully using this innate system for yourself and others.

A Sample of the System

Here is a recent example of one woman’s discovery of her self-healing abilities.

Alice sat with me for a session, curious how my Emotional Liberation program might add to her work as a psychologist to better help people. When I asked how I might help her she didn't have any particular issues to talk about. Moreover, she added that she didn't usually have much emotion and made it clear that she certainly did not want to feel or deal with any in this session. 

After a bit of discussion, I invited her to close her eyes, breathe slowly and pay attention to her body and how she felt. When she was calm and secure, I began to ask her questions about what she was feeling. Before long she shared a big problem with her mother that had been troubling her since she was a child. She cried. I invited her to stay present with me and her breath while allowing herself to feel the uncomfortable feelings of sadness without trying to stop them. Slowly she calmed and became quiet as I asked her what the sadness showed her. She spoke clearly and confidently about what was upsetting her and what she needed to know and to do to resolve her problem. I simply wrote down her exact words.Twenty minutes had passed since she closed her eyes.

As she opened her eyes she looked at me and said, "That was amazing. How did you do that?" I told her that I simply know how emotions work and had helped her to work with them. Her willingness to feel while remaining steady and clear led her to see and understand the situation and know the way out of the trouble. She was now quite certain what she needed to do and felt so much better, encouraged and hopeful. Her assignment now was to return home and act on the realizations that had become apparent to her.

Stories of self-realization and inner guidance like this come out of nearly every therapy session I give. These results don’t depend on my skills as a therapist; I assist the client in discovering the answers that are within them. How? First, by assisting their self-awareness with simple mindfulness practices, then using their increased clarity to work with their feelings. You have a Psychological Immune System that uses emotions to detect disturbances to your peace. Within the emotions are the necessary resources to handle life’s challenges. 

Now is the time to stop looking outside yourself for salvation and begin looking to yourself for wisdom and help, to know yourself and get what you need to be safe and happy.  Reclaim the inner guidance that your caregivers failed to encourage – or worse – beat out of you due to their own pain This book will give you information and tools to heal old wounds, learn and grow from trauma, and change old trauma-created reactive patterns. We can recover our natural ability to recover.Here is an outline of the process.

A Model for Self-Therapy

Think of the process this way. When you go to a doctor for treatment, she begins by identifying your symptoms: your problem and pain. She uses her knowledge of how the body works to locate the source, what is not working, and what caused your good health to go awry. She then prescribes a treatment, designed to help the body return to health. You will follow these same steps to your own emotional health: self-examination leading to understanding the cause, and applying known remedies to correct what is ailing you.

Examination – Do I Know What Is Happening?

Each life is given the ability to take care of itself. Who could know you better than yourself. We are born with self-awareness but quickly become focused on the five senses, directed outward to get what we need. Beyond meeting basic physical needs, keeping yourself happy requires knowing yourself very well. The equipment you have to do so includes:

The ability to tune in to bodily sensations - somatic experiencing

The ability to observe your own thoughts – meta-cognition

The ability to feel your feelings – emotional sensitivity

The accurate instincts of your reptilian brain – automatic reactions

The powerfully motivating emotions of your mammalian brain – it is hardwired

The understanding and rational choice from your analytical brain – powerful but not always under our control

And the agency or will to be in charge and coordinate these often-conflicted parts of the self.

The many techniques of meditation are all designed to develop self-awareness. They range rom ancient yogic practices to recent techniques developed through brain scanning research. I will use the term and simple techniques popularly known as “mindfulness”. The goal is to develop the ability to focus one’s attention at will and as needed, rather than having the mind busy, scattered, and unable to perceive clearly, to be “present” to what is here and now.

Using your self-awareness faculties, start by examining the “symptoms”. In the next chapter, you will identify the frequent uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, dysfunctional behaviors, and unwanted situations in your life. They show up again and again so you can see them, get sick of and want to change them. The repetition of your patterns can make them invisible; you learn to live with them – perhaps miserably. But by focusing your attention on them and identifying the many elements of these automatic reactions the mystery of why you act counter to your interests begins to become clear. And from that, comes the ability to choose and to change.

As awareness of yourself and your situations increases, you begin to gain control over misery-making subconscious behaviors and make conscious decisions that promote your wellbeing. Identifying your patterns and triggers is the first step. Whether you already know yours or they take some time to recognize, it will be of great value to go through the self-analysis process in chapter 2.

Diagnosis – Do I Understanding the Problem?

Mental distress and emotional turmoil are symptoms we feel, but they do not of themselves solve a problem any more than does the pain of an infected tooth. An understanding of cause and treatment is needed, and is made easier with some system of how things work. A psychiatrist looks at your symptoms, then goes to the DSM (Footnote; The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disordersis an authoritative volume that defines and classifies mental disorders in order to improve diagnoses, treatment, and research, developed over many years by experts in all aspects of mental health.)for an established understanding to give the condition a name and recommended treatment. Emotions are symptoms present in every problem. Knowing that they are the treatment, their purpose, and how they achieve it to solve the problem is a “DSM”, a highly evolved natural system of psychological self-healing. Chapters 5 through 12 invite you to discover it for yourself.

Treatment – What is Needed?

What makes humans tick is not a great mystery, but life is complicated by changing circumstances, random events, and our individual and ever-present desires. Here again, self-awareness is the way to know what you need to get through this block and on to something better. You always know what to do and can reawaken that ability. You have been doing self-therapy all your life. You may not remember the early desperate needs to be warm and fed as a newborn, but your on-going adjustment to life on Earth was not easy and it’s been challenging even in the best of cases. Many of us had the worst of situations to deal with. Through it all, have been adapting and evolving to meet these situations in attempts – sometimes successful and other times not – to at least survive and at best to be happy. It has been a slow learning process throughout history.

Get Packing

Today, challenge and change are too swift and constant. We can no longer afford to repeat the unconscious patterns we inherit, to suffer many broken relationships in order to learn how to connect. We are experiencing an evolutionary pressure to learn from every pain how to avoid pain, from every fall how to rise, from every wound how we can heal ourselves. Go beyond reading this book to advance your self-empowered journey of healing, growth, and change. Here are a few things to take along on your trip.

Safety First. Self-therapy is self-regulated; you are in control. Go only as deep, fast or far as you feel you can handle.  Just as mountain climbing is made safer with ropes, your self-healing process has internal safety mechanisms. Balance the courage to explore and risk discomfort with feeling secure as you build trust in the process and in yourself. 

Heaven Within

No challenge shall confront you that you cannot meet. From birth, by necessity we look to others to take care of us. As we mature, the belief and habit of dependence can leave our self-reliance underused, trying to control others to get what we need. It works well enough to keep using the strategy at the cost of personal and then wonder why unwanted things are “happening to me”. Better to take responsibility for your life, not wait for someone to save you – that’s your job – and you were born for it.

Experience is Your Teacher

Taking control of your life and figuring out how to make it work takes work. You’ve gathered lots of lessons on what doesn’t work, no? Your current assignments are facing you right now in the form of whatever is not working and bothering you – your pain and dysfunction.  Mastering life requires determination, patience and regular practice to sit down and work things out with the ugly and scary apparitions within and without. Self-realization has a transformational power that all the wise books and good advice can only initiate.

Add Guidance and Support

While growing from “needing help” to “self-help”, we still need resources. Mountain climbers have a team back at base camp. It is best to have a friend, group, or teacher who understands and supports your efforts, someone to share your experiences with and get perspective, someone who has walked their path. You may want to be working fully with a professional along with this book and other techniques. Maps help, and the road described in this one has been victoriously traveled by many before you.

Accept and Allow. 

Troubling feelings are uncomfortable, but they will not hurt you. With practice you will be comfortable with the discomfort, then it can serve you. Mental/ emotional pain can work for you when you work with it. You will learn by experiment and experience to trust your inner world and find light on the other side of that darkness.

Emotions are here to help you; let them! The same feelings that come when you are hurt are trying to protect and heal. Your primitive fight, flight, and freeze reactions that worked for our jungle ancestors need you to guide them to serve modern needs. Your brain’s “executive” decision-making function can blend instinctual urge with sophisticated calculation to alchemically produce wisdom, answers, and elevated action.

This book offers the theory and practice to heal yourself from all types of psychological wounds. Healthcare givers are invited to use these tools to help others do the same.

Imagine every human using their ability to detect and correct their upsets. We’d still have conflicts as neighbors and nations, but we’d have the tools to know what we are fighting about and begin addressing and solving our internal issues first, and the real problems with each other. 

Trends In Emotional Health

In the last century, the knowledge of physical health discovered by science and “alternative” modalities greatly advanced the average person’s access to longevity and fitness. We are healthier but not happier. Psychological is said to be epidemic

(Footnote:Roger T. Mulder, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Johns Hopkins University Press, Volume 51, Number 2, Spring 2008, pp. 238-250)

 and stress is becoming the primary source of physical illness and death.

(Footnote: Metabolism Journal, Madhu Kalia, Volume 51, Issue 6, Part B, June 2002, Pages 49-53). This makes mental/ emotional health our next challenge. This century will bring a quantum leap in the awareness and tools to manage our inner worlds of thought and feeling to achieve advanced levels of well-being and happiness.

This is being driven by another phenomenon; the pace life is accelerating so we are being forced – or invited– to learn more quickly. For that we need greater awareness and sensitivity to really see what is happening, not just here and now but below the surface of things and before they happen so we can prepare rather than get hit. Like it or not, you and everyone around you is becoming more sensitive; you feel more and more strongly. That causes stress and overwhelm, mania and depression and their reactions of rage, conflict, and self-harm.

A third big change underway is the democratization of power. Everyone can now access cutting edge information and technology that was once controlled by the few in power. Psychology, like physical health, has been a mystery and healing was the work of only the experts. Many people find effective help outside the mainstream channels of medicine; you may be one of them. As brain and behavior become better understood, we are able to effectively work with ourselves to manage mind, mood, and the behaviors that determine our quality of life. To need help with mental health is no longer a stigma; our troubles are more openly discussed and dealt with. When did you first hear the terms trauma, triggers, activation or recovery? As these terms and concepts come into our vocabulary, they mark advancing awareness and skills we are all developing. 

Go Ahead, Help Yourself

You are part of these trends leading humanity out of the psychological dark ages. We are all recovering from something and need to manage the effects of it. And who can possibly know better than you what is wrong and what to do about it? Because we each have all the information about our needs and unique solutions inside, who is in a better position to help you? “Self-help” will no longer be seen as inferior to the techniques and opinions of professionals; every individual has the privilege and power to help themselves. Knowledge of and for the self shall come from the self. The job of therapists, counselors and healers will increasingly be to teach us how to use our self-healing system. 

Emotional Liberation – A Journey and a Destination

Emotional Liberation is not freedom from emotions. They are as important and essential as your heartbeat. Emotional Liberation is freedom from negative, reactive behavior patterns. You cannot rid yourself of feelings, nor would you want to, for they are the carriers of love and peace as well. Being emotionally liberated is to live fully withyour feelings, working intelligently to let them serve you, to enjoy the highs and gracefully move through the low points in life. When emotionally liberated you keep your cool when others are losing theirs. When emotionally agile you can properly feel strong emotions without being stuck in them as they help you deal with the situations that provoke them. When emotionally skillful you understand what others are feeling and can help them rather than react. 

Emotions, as a path to that freedom, are surely a double-edged sword. They can either bind us to a painful past or be the impetus grow past it. Anger can make us lose control or give us the power to take control. Instead of permanent residents in our bodies and remnants of our history, emotions have the power to heal us from the traumas that muddy our past, haunt the present and cloud the future.  The word trauma describes both an adverse experience as well as the ongoing psychological conditions we live in as a result. Similarly, emotional liberation is first a process of mindfully using emotions for recovery from everyday upsets and past harms. Emotional liberation is also a state of being and way of living free to feel life fully and move smoothly through pleasure and pain.

You can learn to work with your emotions to recover from traumatic events and their ensuing reactive behaviors so that, eventually, nothing can disturb your inner peace. It is to act from this stable center of your being rather than reacting to situations – to be free of traumas and triggers. Emotional Liberation is to safely feel emotions as they naturally arise and to utilize them to move through all challenges and reach peace.

The core of Emotional Liberation work is to develop this simple ability: 

Whenever you feel bad, you

1.    Know what you are feeling,

2.    Know why you are feeling it,

3.    Know what you need to feel better

4.    Act on this knowledge until you feel better

I encourage you to set a goal to achieve this level of self-understanding and self-management. Then you can help your children, parents, patients and clients to do the same. Help me hold a vision that with this skillset, you and all of humanity can live in peace.

Imagine with me this capability as a normal human capacity. Doesn’t it seem obvious that we would all possess the self-awareness and self-control to take care of ourselves this well? Isn’t it rather primitive, sad, and even tragic that this ability goes mostly unused in the present civilization we consider advanced?

Now imagine every person using their ability to self-soothe after every wound, to take care of their needs and live with contentment. Imagine decision-makers, power-holders, and leaders who control and affect laws and others’ lives with this level of emotional processing. Imagine you and your closest loved ones moving quickly and satisfyingly through the issues that arise. In this vision I see a healthy world; it is well within your individual power and reach. 

Summary of Principles

1- We All Have Patterns

2- We Have All Suffered Trauma

3- We Are Built for Recovery

4- Emotions Are Keys to Recovery

5- Emotions Are a Complete Therapeutic System

6) Emotional Liberation is both the process of utilizing emotions for psychological self-healing and experience of freedom from trauma’s negative effects.

Now, to begin the work. We start by looking at everyday upsets.

• Update #3 - The Emotional Liberation book is finished! March 21, 2020

  Greetings,

  I hope you are well. Our world is changed from when you bought my book and emotional health is more vital then ever. I …

  ---

• Update #2 - Emotional Liberation Update Sept. 11, 2019

  Hey Folks,

  It's been nearly a year since you graciously pre-ordered by book. Thanks for your patience. My travel schedule left me less time to …

  ---

• Update #1 - I am grateful for your support Oct. 8, 2018

  Greetings to all of you who pre-ordered Emotional Liberation. You helped me exceed my goals and further validate the importance I feel for the self-healing …

  ---