Emotional Storm. 5 Steps To Healing

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Are you familiar with this situation: a son or daughter disobeyed, nailed, acted as, in principle, and it is natural for children to act - is irresponsible and, possibly, dangerous. In response, you reacted SO emotionally that you surprised not only the child, but also yourself.

After that, when they caught their breath, they began to figure out what had come over you….

And you begin to feel guilt, shame, helplessness …

And what to do with all this is not very clear. You can completely blame the child and tell yourself that he brought it, you can go and apologize. Only now it is very problematic NOT TO DO this anymore …

So what can be done?

I propose a technique that seems to me to be very simple in form, very adequate, very working. This is the 5-step method of Muriel Schiffman, a gestalt therapist, a student of A. Maslow and F. Perls.

Schiffman calls this method the method of self-therapy, although he emphasizes that this method helps sufficiently for people who do not suffer from serious mental problems.

I think that everyone can use it, it is just that self-therapy will not be enough for someone to solve their problems. We also need to work with a specialist - a psychologist, a psychotherapist.

What is the essence of the method? As I said, we are talking about an unconscious "substrate" that explodes or suppresses us in absolutely not stressful, it would seem, situations. When we react excessively and inadequately to the situation, when there is a lot of anger, resentment, tears, mental pain out of nowhere.

What is this "substrate"?

These are our unprocessed childhood traumas that have been forgotten by us, but continue to actively influence us and our lives on the sly, preventing us from realizing and catching the "agent" of our past at the crime scene.

The meaning of the technique is to catch the enemy and prevent inadequacy and excessiveness. And, in the end, identify the habitual behavior pattern and stop using it.

So the method.

Step 1. Recognize inappropriate response

The first step is to recognize the inadequate reaction, to realize that it was excessive, did not correspond to the situation, that there are many bodily symptoms in the experience - headache, stomach ache, difficulty breathing, heart pounding. Physical symptoms here act as markers of hidden feelings, those feelings that you are afraid to feel and even just admit to having them.

Step 2. Feel the external emotion

Sometimes it can be hard to admit to yourself that the act of a small child has caused such anger in you, but this must be done. Understand and name this feeling, even if you convince yourself that nothing happened.

If you can't remember the feeling that you experienced, then you need to warm it up by finding the appropriate ears for this. Ask someone who is not critical or advising to just listen to you. When you start talking about the case, emotions will rise on their own. Sometimes, instead of a feeling, a headache or other bodily symptom may be remembered … Then you need to investigate it a little, think about what is behind it. When I got a headache, what happened before, how did I feel then, what happened then?

Step 3. What else did I feel? What other feeling did I experience directly in front of the outer feeling?

Not an external emotion, but one that lasted for a few moments, and therefore could slip away from your attention; the one that was drowned out as soon as the external emotion prevailed. Concentrate well, and you will be able to remember it, just as you recall later what you saw out of the corner of your eye, at that moment barely realizing that you saw it. For example, just before the development of an external emotion, anger, you might feel sudden fear.

Step 4. What does this remind me of?

What comes to your mind when you think about the situation and your reactions to it? When else did you react in a similar way? What thoughts, pictures, maybe sounds, come to mind? When else did something similar happen to you?

If you can't break through, try to look at the situation with different eyes - through the eyes of another person, concrete or just abstract. Consider how your actions in this situation are making an impression on others. How would they rate them?

At this stage, you do not need to therapy yourself, you just need to find the hidden emotion. And if you find it, then among others it will be distinguished by strong physiological reactions - rapid breathing, heartbeat. If this is actually the hidden emotion that you were looking for, then it will be at least equal to the external emotion with which you started, and even far exceed it in strength.

Step 5. Determine the pattern

This is not about a basic personality pattern or something equally global. Just try to understand what happened in this case. Now that you have felt the hidden emotion, you will probably recall other times when, before the temptation of a forbidden feeling, you (without realizing it) hid it with the help of the same external emotion. We can say with a fair amount of confidence that this will happen again. It is unlikely that you will "heal" from a hidden feeling simply because you experienced it once.

But this already gives you some freedom or hope for relief from tormenting, but repetitive situations. These repetitive situations and your reactions to them torment not only you, but also your loved ones, at the same time, no matter how violent your reactions in these situations are, they do not change your relationship and your life for the better. Simply because they are not about today and not about tomorrow. They are about yesterday.

This is baggage that pulls your hands off and is of no use. You need to get rid of it.