Emotions

About Emotions

Emotional Health is based on our ability to adopt the right attitude for the circumstances we find ourselves in. I do not believe in "feel your anger", "feel your pain"......you know how to do that! It's what we DON'T know how to do that hurts. One in five people experience depression and the statistics are rising. It is not caused soley by a "deficit" within an individual. Modern life is demanding ! Individualism has cost us the spirit of community. We might feel lonely, that we don't belong. Expectations of "instant" gratification, (Fast-foods, instant communication for example). It is becoming hard to delay gratification, a necessary skill when we need to study or attain long term goals. To maintain our pace of life we often need quick information. Tolerating ambiguity has become more difficult, and we often conclude, incorrectly, and we despair.

We cannot always change external forces, but there is much we can do to change our response to them. Our emotional responses are largely "programmed" in the subconscious, early in life. There may never be agreement about exactly what the subconscious mind is. Let us say it is the "unknown" part of the mind, to which we have little access. It stores all the learnings that allow us to function automatically. Like reading these words without having to remember the alphabet! It is the "intuitive", creative, inner-self, constantly storing new skills which enable us to play music, dance, drive a car. It also stores the patterns of responses to life events. These responses become established over the years, even those that are outdated and unhelpful to us as we grow older. Emotional patterns which once protected our integrity and well-being may not be helpful in later life. Because they are out of our awareness, they can become disruptive and sabotage our conscious efforts to fulfill our potential. They have a powerful influence on our feeling responses, behaviour and happiness.