Freeing Ourselves from Negative Feelings (copyright 2005)

The most frequently asked question I am asked by my clients is, “How does this process work, and how can it free me from negative thoughts and feelings?"

We have to gain insight into the way we feel and how we perceive reality. The following principles must be accepted emotionally and worked through:

1) We recognize that we won’t change how we feel about ourselves and others by focusing on external conditions. We might be able to produce a temporary high or escape from negative feelings by running away, changing locations, acquiring a new lover, making more money, and so on. But a permanent feeling of well-being is dependent on an “internal adjustment” in our emotional reactions.

2) Rather than repress our negative perceptions and emotions, or express them inappropriately, we must discover the origins of our propensity to interpret the actions and behaviors of others as somehow against us. We start by creating an inventory of childhood feelings and reactions toward our parents and siblings.

3) Next we establish an inventory of our current feelings about our relationships, career, and self. Then we compare these feelings to those we experienced in childhood with our parents and siblings. We look in particular for emotional patterns that repeat themselves throughout our lives. Insight occurs when we see how we carry over any unpleasant childhood perceptions or misperceptions into our present circumstances. We are compelled to repeat what is unresolved in our psyche, no matter how repressed those memories are or how painful the repetition is.

4) Negative emotions are eliminated when we see and understand how we transfer hurtful feelings experienced in the past onto our present lives. For instance, a person who as a child felt overlooked and undervalued will unconsciously look for opportunities to experience those old feelings in his adult life. This person sees others getting more attention or validation than he does, and he is hurt and feels devalued. But this person is unconsciously willing and even eager to interpret the actions of others as against him so that he can feel the old unresolved negative emotion. Again, whatever is unresolved in us is determined to be experienced over and over. Usually we can’t change the behavior of others; we can only change our willingness to use that behavior to feel unloved and unimportant, or to feel other unresolved emotions such a deprivation, control, helplessness, rejection, and criticism.

5) We see that we interpret our life and relationships through the child part of our psyche. Children are naturally self-centered. They believe they have the power to cause others to feel a certain way. They feel that everyone’s eyes are focused on them. They see the world as “for them” or “against them,” and are focused on what they believe they are entitled to. We can be very slow to relinquish this self-centered perspective when we grow up.

Insight and understanding create an improvement in how we feel about ourself, others, and our life. When we see objectively, we free ourselves to make clearer, centered decisions about what to do. Old ways of suffering and negative reproaches wither away, leaving in their place new feelings of confidence, contentment, and serenity.