Emotional Fitness
Discovering Our Natural Healing Power
by
Janice Berger
Chapter Summaries
Part
II: Doors to Go Through
Too
often we see our feelings as locked doors, places with no exit.
But feelings are in fact doors to go through.
Honest recognition of our feelings and our defenses is the key
to opening doors into ourselves.
When we no longer have to keep our feelings disconnected, we no
longer have the need to act out what we cannot feel.
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Chapter
6
Need: Unmet Childhood Need, Unconscious Adult Pain
Need
is not a word that people use to identify what they are feeling,
and yet unmet need is the driving force behind our most troublesome,
disconnected behaviours. We eat, drink, work, gamble and buy to
excess, for example, in order to assuage our old, unmet need.
We experience inappropriate needs as adults if our childhood needs
were not met. The acting out of these unmet needs makes it difficult
to know, let alone fulfill, our genuine present needs. For example,
acting out our need for approval in the present keeps us asking
ourselves what we should do instead of what we really
need or want to do.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Hating
and denying our need and losing ourselves
• Insatiable
need
• Learning
to be indirect and dishonest about our need
• Defending
against our need
• Inappropriate
needs as adults if childhood needs were not met
• Putting
our need on our children
• Balancing
our need with those of our children
• Unmet
need: acting our "poor me"
• Blame
as a cover for need
• Early,
unmet need turned into powerful sexual need
• Feeling
through need in safety
• What
children need
• Unmet
need leads to a sense of worthlessness
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Chapter
7
Worthlessness: A Final Defense Against Unmanageable Pain
Feelings
of worthlessness are often hidden from us, although they may be
residing at the very core of our being. Many people are disconnected
from this source of their driven behaviours and do not articulate
it as the basis of their problems. Others might express worthlessness
as low self-esteem or a sense of inadequacy without really feeling
its depth or its ramifications.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• When
our needs are not met, we feel worthless
• Not
being heard makes a child feel unworthy
• Oppressed
by negative judgments
• When
children are not wanted
• Threats
of punishment
• When
our sense of worth is undermined by parental rigidity
• Worthlessness
leading to depression
• Some
manifestations of feelings of worthlessness
• Self-improvement:
changing the outward shape
• Self-loathing:
a defense against worthlessness
• Breaking
the cycle: living from a sense of worth
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Chapter
8
Shame: The Silent Killer of the Human Spirit
Shame
is a silent killer because it prevents us from revealing to the
world who we really are. When we hold onto our shame as an adult
it can be totally debilitating. Like worthlessness, shame becomes
a devastating defense because it keeps us stuck.
Our feelings become shame-bound if it was unacceptable
for us to express them.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Origins
of shame
• Shaming
without words
• When
children have to hide their feelings
• Humiliation
and ridicule
• Indifference
is a killer that generates shame
• Lack
of respect for a child's privacy breeds shame
• Being
different, feeling different
• Picking
up our parents' shame
• Becoming
aware
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Chapter
9
Guilt: A Straitjacket for Feeling
We
all experience guilt, rational and irrational. It is irrational
guilt that keeps us on an unending treadmill of self-blame.
Unresolved, irrational guilt drives unconscious and self-destructive
behaviour. We can use it as an entry point to our authentic, true
self.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Rational
guilt
• Irrational
guilt
• Sources
of guilt in our childhood
• Guilt
perpetuated in our culture
• Feeling
through irrational guilt
• Stretched
to the limit
• Guilt
as a signal
• Guilt
as a smokescreen for fear
• Guilt
as a smokescreen for anger
• Guilt
obscures the opportunity to live by our own values
• Irrational
guilt keeps us stuck
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Chapter
10
Anxiety, Fear and Panic: Dangerous if Denied
Anxious
and fearful children become adults who are anxious and fearful.
Anxious and fearful adults find the roots of these feeling in their
childhood.
It is difficult for us to understand that panic attacks are
actually our emotional system trying to correct itself by discharging
pent-up, withheld, unidentified crisis feelings.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Fear
as an appropriate signal
• Signs
of anxiety
• Sources
of anxiety, fear and panic in childhood
• Hyper-vigilance
• Anxiety,
fear and panic locked in our bodies
• Talking
ourselves out of our feelings of anxiousness
• Panic
attacks: the end result of held fear
• Common
fears
• Sex
as a vehicle to release anxiety
• The
danger of masking fear
• Fixing
the behaviour
• No
shortcuts to freedom: taking the time to feel and integrate
fear
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Chapter
11
Anger: A Release and a Prison
Anger
is a problem when we do not take responsibility for it, when we
do not express it and when we express it inappropriately. Children
who are allowed to discharge their anger completely as it arises
will automatically express their anger appropriately as adults.
If we carry unresolved anger from our past it awaits an opportunity
to exit. It does so as an overreaction; it may be a little
or a big BOOOM as we find the nearest place to dump it. Road rage
is one modern example of this. The degree of anger is proportional
to the underlying, hidden pain.
When we understand that our over and underreactions are signals
from our natural emotional healing power we can use them to resolve
our unfinished anger from the past. When we do this our anger in
the present automatically becomes more appropriate.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Cultural
taboos and our fear of anger and conflict
• The
damage of disowned anger
• Signals
of our anger
• What
does owning our anger mean?
• Feeling
anger to its source: taking responsibility
• The
difference between venting and feeling anger
• How
anger masks other emotions
• Hiding
in collective anger
• Warning:
protecting our children as we feel through our anger
• Tools
that help us open to ourselves
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Chapter
12
Powerlessness: A Trap for Victim and Abuser
The
more powerless we were as children, the more likely we will be
a victim or an abuser as an adult. We either set ourselves
up to feel the familiar powerlessness as a victim, or we keep the
feelings of powerlessness at bay by abusing through power and control.
Power over others and "controlling" behaviour is not the same as
having personal power and being in charge of our lives.
There are only two ways to become personally powerful as an adult:
to have experienced appropriate power, control and responsibility
as a child or to feel through our powerlessness to its source in
order to integrate it consciously.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• The
difference between personal power and power-over
• Childhood
powerlessness
• Abuse
engenders powerlessness
• Abusive
behaviour in adulthood keeps us powerless
• Taking
responsibility for being a victim or an abuser
• Victims
• Abusers
• Allowing
more and feeling more
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Chapter
13
Hurt, Regret and Grief: A Key to Healing
Hurt,
regret and grief are healthy and necessary responses to difficulties
and pain in our lives. They are enormously undervalued, unacknowledged
vehicles for moving toward emotional health. Feeling these feelings
to their fullest is an example of our natural emotional healing
power at work. When we do not allow ourselves to feel these feelings
through, when we shove them away, they reside in us as a heaviness
that can pull us down into depression.
We limit our experience of joy if we are holding hurt, regret and
grief. When we are able to grieve deeply and heal our wounds from
our past we reclaim our authentic, true selves.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Grieving
heals our hurt
• Defending
against hurt: feeling depressed
• Defending
against depression
• Defending
against hurt: overreacting and acting out
• Noticing
and becoming conscious that we are hurting
• Staying
stuck in regrets or moving on and grieving them
• Grieving
as we go
• No
place to feel
• Fear
of getting stuck in grief
• Reclaiming
ourselves
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Chapter
14
Loneliness: A Self-fulfilling Prophecy
Many
of us believe there is nothing we can do about our loneliness.
In fact, we can feel our way to the past through our loneliness
instead of assuming that the strength of the feeling is all in
the present.
There is a danger when we do not understand that loneliness can
be felt deeply and that it does have its roots in our past. The
danger is that we may arrange our present to keep ourselves lonely.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Loneliness
is culturally acceptable; being alone is not
• The
nature of loneliness
• The
underestimation of children's loneliness
• Setting
ourselves up to reenact our childhood loneliness in the present
• Getting
clear using our natural emotional healing power
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Chapter
15
Numbness, Deadness and Flatness: Formidable Defenses
Numbness,
deadness and flatness are enormous defenses that we wrap around
ourselves in order to survive. We shut down to protect ourselves
from feelings that are too overwhelming to be felt at the time.
The strength of this defense, as with any defense, is directly
related to the severity of the underlying trauma. People experiencing
numbness, deadness and flatness often underreact to the impact
of real situations in their present life. This undermines healthy,
vigorous relationships.
Subtitles in this chapter are:
• Robbed
of our spirit
• Defending
against assault
• Resignation:
the precursor to numbness, deadness and flatness
• Noticing
when we feel numb
• Underreacting
followed by overreacting
• Shutting
down: a devastating gender design
• Our
unconscious need to break through the numbness
• Feeling
through numbness, deadness and flatness
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