2) Cut to the Chase - Examine the "worst-case scenario" in going forward and determine how that outcome would make you feel
3) Weather the Storm - Imagine that outcome as a reality, and then connect with the entire range of emotions that arise.
4) Repeat As Necessary - Apply the same course of action if and when you get stuck again in pursuit of your goal, regarding the same emotions from before or any new ones that may arise.
Let's see this in action. A client of mine always wanted to write but never got around to it. His flinch occurred every time he walked past his waiting computer. His worst-case scenario was writing something that his most loved and respected friends thought was pure drek. He realized this would make him feel like an abject failure.
Together, we imagined that he wrote a whole novel, was super excited about it, and gave it to his friends who were promptly horrified. They hated the book vehemently and ridiculed him for writing it.
His emotional response to this imaginary situation was a daunting wave of shame. I guided him to stay on the wave through many challenges and distractions, and after a few minutes it abated.
"Well," he told me, "that really wasn't so bad. I kind of feel like, "Oh, well, at least I tried. That's better than never writing anything."
This process revealed to my client that the one thing holding him back had been his resistance to shame. Repeated a few more times, it released his resistance almost completely. Now, with nothing holding him back, he writes at least thirty minutes a day.
Q: You maintain that emotional resistance is also a health hazard. In what way?
RC: Our emotions want and need to be felt. The harder and longer we keep them locked within, the more they struggle to get out. One result of this battle is stress, which is proven to be a leading cause of serious illness. Another result is the depletion of our life energy, which quickly turns into depression.
Q: You also tout emotional connection as an effective way to end addictions and compulsions. Can you describe how that works?
RC: All addictions and compulsions, as I mentioned earlier, are really about resisting emotions. Once we connect with those emotions, addictions and compulsions lose both their purpose and power.
If you're unwilling to feel disappointment, for instance, you might flop on the couch every week, eat popcorn, watch American Idol and snicker at all the contestants. But once you become willing to experience disappointment, both old and new, you might actually sign up for the Open Mike Night at your local pub.
Or if you're unwilling to feel distrust, you might check your spouse's email over and over. You might even be convinced that you're doing this precisely because you distrust. But once you become willing to feel your distrust directly, your need for hyper vigilance would cease. Instead, you could then choose to talk openly with your spouse about the feeling. Or, if your spouse truly is untrustworthy, you might finally be able to move onto a more healthy relationship.
Q: In Chapter Two, you say that men need emotional connection even more than women. But most men don't like anything remotely "touchy feely." So how do you get around that?
RC: Men in our society have been conditioned to believe that connecting to emotions is a sign of weakness. Yet this is a losing strategy, because wherever emotions are disparaged or denied, they run the show even more forcefully from behind the scenes.
Consider the world of corporate management. A manager who won't allow himself to feel stupid will often feign expertise and make deals that are indeed stupid. A manager who's resistant to boredom will often gloss over lengthy reports and remain ignorant of critical information.
Learning to spot such emotional resistance in others provides a unique competitive edge. Learning to spot and release it within oneself is even more powerful. Plus, one's own emotional connection requires no outward expression and therefore no one else needs to know about it. Men love that!
Q: You draw a big distinction between emotional connection and having an emotional orientation. What's the difference?
RC: Many people talk, write, and even obsess about their emotions without ever actually feeling them. On the surface these people seem emotion-friendly, but in truth they're as resistant as the greatest stoic.
Consider two friends who go over every detail of a recent slight they recently endured. Instead of surfing whatever anger and hurt is present, and resolving the annoyance in just a couple of minutes, they prolong it with lengthy conversation about the emotions. All the while, the emotions themselves are left unattended, unfelt, and festering.
It's also worth pointing out that many counselors and therapists enable such behavior. They might consistently ask variations of the famous question, "And how does that make you feel?" without ever providing the time, space, and instruction necessary for the clients to actually connect with those emotions.
Such therapists aren't trained to feel emotions directly themselves, and therefore can't offer the skill to their clients. Ask potential therapists to describe exactly what if means to feel emotions directly. The quality of their answer will be a great indicator of your future therapeutic success.
Q: Your suggestion to "Feel first, think later" seems like the exact opposite of what parents, bosses, and the world as a whole expect of us. How can we possibly function well if we're always stopping to pay attention to our emotions?
RC: To be specific, my advice is not to act out or somehow become victims to our emotions at any point. Let's use anger as an example. Acting out anger might mean yelling, which is rarely helpful. Becoming a victim to anger might mean fixating upon it, and stoking it, rather than just surfing it out of your system quickly.
What I'm suggesting is simply to recognize and connect with your emotions before addressing any important issue. Here's the reason: When you try to think your way out of a problem before feeling the emotions already arisen within you in regard to that problem, your thoughts can't be trusted.
You might, for example, resist the feeling of hatred for another person because you've been taught that it's wrong. But feelings are never right or wrong; they just are. So the first whiff of hate might kick up a thought like, "I shouldn't feel that way about him. He doesn't know any better."
Such a statement may be true, and even seem helpful, but coming prior to emotional connection it would really be a sophisticated attempt to shield you from the hate. If you left it at that and moved on, an unsurfed wave of hatred would remain to wreak havoc in your core.
Remember: feelings that arise in your body stay in your body unless and until you're willing to feel them.
Q: Doesn't your idea of feeling all emotions, even negative ones like jealously and resentment, contrast with the message of The Secret? Wasn't that idea to stay focused on the positive?
RC: The perspective put forth in "The Secret" and similar books is that we must uplift "negative" emotions into more positive states or else we'll attract more negativity. What I'm saying is that all emotions are valid and need to be felt, in order to receive their message and allow them to depart. The only way to shift from a negative emotional state to a more expansive one is to feel your way through it. No type of will power or self-talk will ever take the place of simple, straightforward feeling.
That said, focusing on the positive is a great practice, as long as doesn't mask simultaneous resistance or turn into a sanctioned way of maintaining it.
Q: What's the link between your approach and Freud's "repetition compulsion?"
RC: Freud theorized that as adults we recreate traumatic experiences from childhood as a way of mastering them once and for all. He wasn't so specific on how that mastery takes place, however, and most of us can attest that simply repeating traumatic experiences without ever learning from them doesn't get us anywhere.
My work with clients has shown me over and over that emotional connection is not just a fast and efficient way to master (or heal) previous trauma. In reality, it's the only way.
Q: How does emotional resistance pertain to our current economic crisis?
