Feeling heard

It is really important to me to feel heard and to hear others. I think it is one of the most important factors in any relationship, including the relationship we have with ourself, we often don't hear what we're feeling. I came across this really lovely article by Carl Rogers that I really related to and wanted to share it here. Excerpted from www.listeningway.com

Experiences in Communicationby Carl Rogers
In my own two-way communication with others there have been experiences that have made me feel pleased and warm and good and satisfied. There have been other experiences that to some extent at the time, and even more so afterward, have made me feel dissatisfied and displeased and more distant and less contented with myself. I would like to convey some of these things. Another way of putting this is that some of my experiences in communicating with others have made me feel expanded, larger, enriched, and have accelerated my own growth. Very often in these experiences I feel that the other person has had similar reactions and that he too has been enriched, that his development and his functioning have moved forward. Then there have been other occasions in which the growth or development of each of us has been diminished or stopped or even reversed. I am sure it will be clear in what I have to say that I would prefer my experiences in communication to have a growth-promoting effect, both on me and on the other, and that I should like to avoid those communication experiences in which both I and the other person feel diminished.
The first simple feeling I want to share with you is my enjoyment when I can really hear someone. I think perhaps this has been a long-standing characteristic of mine. I can remember this in my early grammar school days. A child would ask the teacher a question and the teacher would give a perfectly good answer to a completely different question. A feeling of pain and distress would always strike me. My reaction was, "But you didn't hear him!" I felt a sort of childish despair at the lack of communication which was (and is) so common.

I believe I know why it is satisfying to me to hear someone. When I can really hear someone, it puts me in touch with him; it enriches my life. It is through hearing people that I have learned all that I know about individuals, about personality, about interpersonal relationships.

There is another peculiar satisfaction in really hearing someone: It is like listening to the music of the spheres, because beyond the immediate message of the person, no matter what that might be, there is the universal. Hidden in all of the personal communications which I really hear there seem to be orderly psychological laws, aspects of the same order we find in the universe as a whole. So there is both the satisfaction of hearing this person and also the satisfaction of feeling one's self in touch with what is universally true. Read on

Using EFT with dreams

I have found what's most important if you want to use EFT with your dreams, is to work with how you feel when you dream. We can spend a lot of time interpreting dreams and everyone's interpretation will be different, but a feeling is a feeling and can be recognised for what it is. You'll probably find the same patterns will show up in your dreams that you're finding in your life, the details will be more fantastic, but how you feel will most likely be the same.

The Wisdom of The Dream ~ Carl Jung

Using EFT for chronic issues

One of the emotions that can often accompany chronic issues is a feeling of frustration, a feeling that nothing you have done so far has worked. You might even feel helpless. It is important when you're tapping to talk about how you feel and how the pain feels, you will find it will shift, or move around your body, more easily. Most importantly, chronic pain is a signpost to something deeper, look for the messages and metaphors in what it is trying to communicate to you. Tapping diagram and procedure

Even though I have this chronic ... it is there, maybe for a reason

Even though I don't know what that reason is or the pain would have gone away by now, I accept my not knowing

Even though it's hard to accept not knowing, I really wish I knew what was causing this chronic ... I accept my frustration (helplessness/any other emotions)

Top of the head: This ...
Eyebrow: It feels ...
Side of the eye: And that feels ...
Under the eye: And that feels ...
Under the nose: I can accept how I feel about that
Under the chin: I wish I knew how to make it go away
Collar bone: Because it's still here
Under the arm: And that makes me feel ...

Top of the head: I've tried everything
Eyebrow: Absolutely everything
Side of the eye: And that feels ...
Under the eye: And it hasn't worked
Under the nose: And that makes me feel ...
Under the chin: I can't stand this chronic ...
Collar bone: I haven't tried accepting it
Under the arm: Because I can't

Top of the head: It might stay forever
Eyebrow: If I allow it to stay
Side of the eye: And that feels ...
Under the eye: So I have to do my best
Under the nose: To make it go away
Under the chin: I accept how I feel about that
Collar bone: It's ok to feel at the end of my tether
Under the arm: It's ok to feel ...

Top of the head: I choose to accept how I feel about all of it
Eyebrow: Even though it is hard
Side of the eye: To feel some of those feelings
Under the eye: And that feels ...
Under the nose: I'm tired
Under the chin: So tired
Collar bone: And that makes me feel ...
Under the arm: I accept how I feel about that

The Precarious Present

This is an excellent article by Robert Scaer excerpted from Psychotherapy Networker.

The Precarious Present

Why is it So Hard to Stay in the Moment?

By Robert Scaer

"I just can't seem to stop my mind," Linda told me. "I try to relax, but after a few moments, my brain starts to buzz again with a jumble of thoughts and feelings. I can't seem to turn them off." As she spoke to me during our second visit, she was visibly distressed. She had the pinched face and hunched shoulders of someone who felt at once threatened and helpless.

"Lots of times, it's the same old thing, just the same old negative thoughts and worries and blaming myself," Linda went on. "Sometimes I try to head them off by going out for a run, but they come back later. When they really get ahold of me, I get kind of shaky, dizzy, and sick to my stomach. If they go on long enough, I actually get a stiff neck, and eventually a headache."

A client's negative, intrusive thoughts are a therapist's stock and trade. Ditto the accompanying roster of bodily complaints, from stomach pains and neck tightness to headaches and back problems. In my 20 years as medical director of a multidisciplinary chronic-pain program, I've found these body-mind intrusions to be a sort of generic marker for significant emotional disorders, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and adjustment disorder.

But if Linda's distress seems familiar, it isn't just because we see this kind of client so frequently in our offices. It's also because her complaint rings true for "healthy" people like ourselves. All of us ruminate, bringing up the cud of old memories and unresolved problems, in the process experiencing a sinking feeling in the stomach or perhaps a tightening in the throat. As we well know, these experiences usually arise unbidden and often at inopportune times, such as when we're reading a book, eating a meal, or even, God forbid, making love! And when we're interrupted in this way, we basically lose it: we forget why we went into the bedroom, we lose track of our place in the book, and, if the intrusion is upsetting enough, we may even lose the wherewithal to continue with what's going on right now. We've experienced that most insidious of insults to our mind--the corruption of the present moment by emotion-linked memory. Read on

New year's resolutions

When push comes to shove, we usually only do what we want to do. If you want to lose weight and find yourself reaching for a chocolate bar, or many chocolate bars, what you want in that moment becomes more important than what you want in the long term. What you probably want in that moment is comfort and to feel good. Whatever makes you feel good you will reach for, we all want to feel good, none of us want to feel empty, lonely, or sad. Instead of sitting with painful emotions and feeling them because it often doesn't feel good, we'll sedate them with food, alcohol, drugs, TV, computers, you name it ....

Remind yourself that what you really, really, really want is to feel good, and maybe the 5 seconds it takes for you to remember this will be enough to make a different choice.