Emotional Fitness
Discovering Our Natural Healing Power
by
Janice Berger
Chapter Summaries
Part
I: Keys for Emotional Well-Being
We
readily accept and appreciate that our bodies
have a natural healing power to deal with
physical injuries and disease; less understood
is our natural ability to heal from the suffering
of emotional distress.
We all have this capacity to heal. Just as we can assist our bodies
to heal physically with good nutrition, proper rest and exercise,
we can also assist our natural emotional healing power by understanding
how it works and facilitating its functioning.
We can all learn to access our natural emotional healing power
in order to live more healthy lives.
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Chapter
1
Our Natural Emotional Healing Power Revealed
Imagine
feeling good about yourself and feeling in charge of your life,
saving energy by being open, direct and honest in your communication
and seeking others who are able to be this way too, feeling free
inside and exercising choice in making decisions, facing conflict
openly and standing up for yourself. Imagine allowing and accepting
all of your feelings and coming to know and like who you are.
We all possess this capacity. It is available to us at any age.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• What
is our natural emotional healing power?
• Each
life is like a tapestry
• Trusting
in our natural emotional healing power
• Feelings
as signals
• Can
I always trust my feelings?
• Our
natural emotional healing power is revealed in our over and
underreactions
• Raw
wounds
• Becoming
aware
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Chapter
2
Access Denied: Our Power Subverted
When
our natural emotional healing power is subverted we do not complete
feelings surrounding trauma and they stay buried within us. They
become a reservoir of unfelt pain. Feelings are not buried dead;
they are buried alive. They come up when we least expect them.
They confuse and confound us. We control them in many different,
destructive ways.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Losing
our real selves
• Original
wholeness undermined
• Fearing
feelings
• Consciousness
• Splitting
off, becoming unconscious and disconnected
• Fear
of losing control
• Defenses:
keeping ourselves from feeling
• Crucial
defenses when we are young
• When
we cannot feel, we act out
• The
turning point
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Chapter
3
The Nature of Responsibility and Blame: A Necessary Understanding
Taking
responsibility for our feelings is the major key for emotional
fitness in our lives. When we take this responsibility we gain
a deep emotional understanding of ourselves. We then have the possibility
of having solid, caring and responsive relationships. When we do
not take responsibility for our feelings, problems arise.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Responsibility
• Taking
care of ourselves is an important responsibility
• Accountability
is not the same as blame
• Blaming
• Blaming
ourselves
• Blaming
others
• Manipulating
• Avoiding
responsibility for our actions
• Responsibility
to ourselves comes first
• Commitment
to feel is taking responsibility
• Learning
to change
• Letting
go
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Chapter
4
A Leap Of Faith: Learning to Use Our Natural Emotional Healing
Power
It
requires a leap of faith to learn to use our natural emotional
healing power, since everything our conditioning teaches us flies
in the face of accepting and using this process. We have all been
powerfully conditioned to deny and diminish our feelings.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• The
route to ourselves is through our feelings
• Healing
begins when we can identify our feelings
• No "should" to
feelings
• Feeling
through and connecting
• From
the present to the past
• Self-acceptance
and self-esteem
• Better
the devil we know
• Fear
of feeling deeply
• Going
to the deeper levels
• Insight
and cognitive knowing are not enough
• Opening
up and getting clear
• Risk
to heal
• What
feeling is stopping me?
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Chapter
5
Turning the Key: Supportive Activities That Help Us Engage Our
Natural Emotional Healing Power
There
are many activities that can help us learn to listen to ourselves,
to open to our experience and to process our feelings. These activities
are useful because they help us slip by our normal censors to access
feelings that we are keeping hidden from ourselves.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Journal
writing
• Collages,
clay modelling, painting, crayoning
• Developing
a time line
• Writing
an autobiography
• Writing
letters that we do not send
• Finding
like-minded people to be with
• Finding
support through reading
• Using
our dreams
• Photographs
and memorabilia
• Former
homes
• Art,
drama and music
• Our
body
• Meditation
• Prayer
• Language
• Noticing
our defensive reactions
• Feeling
like a child
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