Because that is what is lacking in every neurotic I treat. And the damage they do to their children is ineffable. They cannot feel it because they are still repressed and miles from their feelings. Therefore, they have no feelings to guide them. They need to refer to ideas to guide them, so in the old days they read Dr. Spock for guidance and he was largely very wrong. They never referred to their own instincts because they were buried with their feelings. It was the blind leading the blind, leading those who could not “smell” the truth. I use that word because the old smell brain over history became the feeling brain. And when we repressed our feelings, the instincts and the sensibility went with them. And then we had unfeeling souls who Shakespeare said of them, “they have no music in them”. If I drank, I would say, “I’ll drink to that”. Those poor souls have lost the essence of life, and then they go to therapists who help finish the job by directing them to their head. Mostly they go nowhere because they have no idea what is missing and the intellectual pundits have no idea either; how tragic. The doctors look to changing ideas when they should be looking for access to feelings that would solve so much. Those feelings send antennae throughout the system creating havoc and terribly wrong perceptions and beliefs. The ideas, meant to offer feelings to bolster ideas and perceptions, mount such horrific pain that drives their ideas beyond their ken; so we get nutty beliefs and delusions.
It is not ideas that are nutty; they are doing their best to combat the influx of imprinted pain. Alas their efforts fail and become “kooky.” Let us not forget evolution here; feelings mount for connection and resolution. That is their “raison d’ĂȘtre”. They need connection to be done with pain, but it is often too much and the pain stays inside to produce illness and symptoms of all kinds. Then we have specialists to start to treat the symptoms but who have no idea of their provenance.
Now imagine if we had only therapies of feeling. No more insights before feelings which defy evolution at every step. There are no words among chimps but lots of feelings. We are chimps with words and now we seek to cut off the chimp/feeling self in deference to words. A therapy of words? Where did feelings go?
Help people feel? Wouldn’t that eliminate so much dumb violence in the world. People could feel the consequence of their acts and would shudder. They would never hit/spank a helpless child, again they would sense how wrong it is. They would not beat their animals for the same reasons. They would love their wives, husbands and children because they could feel what they need. They would touch, hug and caress them and utter words of kindness and approval; words of support and encouragement. They would be THERE for them in every sense of the term.
They would ensure a drug free birth and know that gestation is crucial for the child’s development, so no drugs, alcohol or crazy diets. That there is a living being inside.
They would know that those who are addicted are in pain; the idea is not to take their drugs away but to take the REASON FOR THE DRUGS away. If, if, only they knew what the reasons are and where they lie. We do not take medicine from the diabetics. They need it; so do addicts need their medicine. And pain killers are for pain; the problem is that we have no idea that early life leaves a residue of imprinted pain for life. So they drug and we just think that is just a bad habit because we cannot see the reason for it. A therapy of feelings would seek out and find the pain so it will no longer be a mystery.
But to have a therapy of feeling we need someone who is feeling and knows its importance; not an easy solution.
We don’t have to stop killing and hunting because no feeling person could hunt and kill a mother who is safeguarding her babies. And we don’t have to imprison those who drink and drive because that kind of obsession with alcohol would be gone. Ooh. Is it that easy? It is not that hard. All we have to do is teach about feeling in school with classes, not in therapy but in feeling where students would sit for each other and help each other feel. It is not that insurmountable.
And once they get to first line where rage and anxiety live, there would a way to extirpate all that. We have treated those who kill but now could not even imagine it. And believe it or not, we treat a lot of anxiety and panic cases with success because we know where the origins lie and how to get it out of the system. And they are so relieved to get those feelings out of their bodies. That can never happen in a therapy without feeling. Again, when there is deep repression all access between levels of conscious are sealed off and feelings can no longer inform action. So there are uncontrolled rages and what happens? They are sent to “anger management”. Like feelings are a business to be managed. But to manage is a top-down affair, while the person needs a bottom up affair. He must reach deep into the brain and brainstem to get at the solid imprint that lives there. That can take months but it is essential when dealing with what lives deep down: utter hopelessness from a birth that was drugged or allowed no egress and left a residue of helplessness and hopelessness and a body temp way down into the 96’s. A sign that the body had to give up and abandon hope as the forces against the baby were overwhelming. It was never thought out; it was FELT, because no words existed back then. And that is exactly why we need a therapy of feeling if we are ever to get to the root of the matter.
What is the mystery of treating depression and anxiety? No mystery at all when we see the deep brain at work; when we actually see its effects. It is only complicated when you only stay on top… and don’t center on feelings in the therapy.
Only feelings will lead us to the generating causes. We need to treat the tooth that hurts when we find the abscess. But if we never know an abscess is there? The patient will go on suffering, and nor he or the doctor will know the answer because the suffering is repressed and out of sight. Behavior is only a sign of the underlying cause. If we are to help patients, we need to address the cause.