Cogitating Again: Get Over It

I had a feeling that my explanation of why we cannot get over our past was not enough.  I think it is also due to needs that we never surmount.  Those needs become exigent, perhaps for a lifetime; they demand fulfillment, and we try through the act-outs. We approach but never figure it out and never succeed. Why?  because we only approximate.  Only through feeling can we hit the target. They tell us what has to be experienced and directs us to the need.  We can only approximate because those power-house pains are installed so early as to remain undetected; not even imagined.  This is particularly true of the Cognitive/Behaviorists who only go by what they see in external behavior.  If they do not look beyond and below behavior they will be lost.

Inexperienced need are biologic reminders of what we lack to become human.  That is why act-outs never resolved anything.  Biology does not permit us to come close; it demands exactitude.  There are no shortcuts.  No easy ways.  If we are dying of thirst, drinking 2 teaspoons of water does not solve thirst. The water we consume informs us of our need, in the same way that drinking alcohol tells  us of the extent of our pain/need.  Yes, we can urge patients to cut down consumption and imagine they have conquered need, but need is basic and is not something to be conquered, nor is anger something to be managed. Feelings must be felt in all their intensity.  If we do not cry as a child because parents have made it verboten, then there remains that many tears to shed. I know because my nose ran all of the time in childhood; until, I felt that the runny nose was those unexpressed tears transformed into allergies.  I could not stop until I felt the pain and sadness underlying the allergies. It took a while so that I have no allergies to anything.  I seemed to become allergic to myself.  Feelings became alien forces that I could not conquer. They were  a force that had to find an outlet.  They did, and fluid poured out of me in large quantities.  It turns out that it had to be the correct fluid attached to specific memories that resolved the problem. Crying as a therapeutic exercise cannot do it.  Memory is what is buried and must be retrieved.  Because it is the harbinger of feelings.