“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.” ~ Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled)
I read an article the other day that said one in six people living in the U.S. are taking antidepressants. The use of these mood enhancing drugs has increased by 65% in the past 15 years. I suspect this trend will not change in the foreseeable future. One of my clients, just this week, told me that her daughter was started on antidepressants when she was 9 years old, has not been off of them since then
and has regressed into a psychological downturn that keeps her from being a functional person (whatever that means). Forget about being a happy child.
It makes me dizzy thinking about what is going on with the psychological market. People taking antidepressants in order to function, children that are wired because of their inappropriate diet being put on drugs for ADHD and drug after drug being peddled on television that will help you deal with your imbalanced emotions and feelings. And, I thought the snake oil salesmen were a thing of the past. Children and adults alike are carrying business cards for their psychotherapists and insurance covers these modalities but won’t cover naturopathic care. Oh, my.
You might be thinking, “Why on earth would Dr. T be writing a blog about emotions, mood enhancing drugs and personal psychotherapists?” Because, when you are a pet caretaker, and your emotions and feelings are harmful to you, they are also harmful to your pet. Like the airline flight attendant says before take off, “If the oxygen mask drops down, put it on yourself before you put it on your child.” You can’t expect your pet to be healthy if you are stressed most of the time with emotional issues.
I was watching a YouTube video the other day with a lady who is a renowned medical intuitive. This lady is so popular that she gets about $1000 an hour for a personal phone consultation. During a talk, someone in the audience said that her dog was sick and wanted to know what was causing the problem. The intuitive said that she usually doesn’t work with pets but in her experience more than 50% of the cause of a pet’s health problems are directly related to the pet caretaker’s emotional health. As a clinician who understands subtle energy and quantum physics it makes complete sense. A lady whom I was fortunate to meet and spend time with, Louise Hay, paved the way with her work with emotions and their effect on the body’s health. She went so far as to say that all chronic diseases in people are directly related to deep emotional wounds.
So, how do we start to deal with harmful emotions and what can we do to make ourselves emotionally healthy so that we don’t get serious diseases and pass on the energetic potential for the same issues to our beloved pet? You don’t have to look far for an opinion. There are probably a dozen online opportunities on your Facebook page today that will give you some guidance. But, let’s not go there. As a holistic practitioner, I make my living by digging to the source of the problem so that it goes away for good. I don’t believe in telling people that they are a victim and try to teach them how to live as a victim in society. Pretty soon, everyone will be a victim of something and we can all sit around, at our pity parties, sharing our experiences with the latest mood-enhancing drugs.
What are emotions and how do they harm us? Emotions are the end product of a though process. Nothing else. All emotions begin with a thought and the more attention we place on a thought, the more we will create an emotion. Imagine driving down the highway going from town to town. You pass hundreds of road signs giving directions, exit for this, stay in this lane and so on. At the end of the day, none of this will have been retained. However, if you are driving down the same highway and you see a bad car wreck with people lying on the side of the road, you will definitely remember that experience. The difference is all about the emotions you experienced.
If emotions are associated with thoughts, and our emotions are hurting us, then we need to get back to the source of the problem: harmful thoughts. What exactly are harmful thoughts? Pretty simple. Thoughts that contradict what is actually happening. “My husband shouldn’t have left me.” That is a harmful thought. He should have left, because he did. Someone who doesn’t know the situation (have personal thoughts about the situation) sees this as a matter of fact. This is reality. When our thoughts conflict with reality, they become harmful and when they become harmful, they create negative emotions. In time, these emotions and thoughts get stored in our subconscious, reflect in our present moment and in time we are living a life that reflects the emotional turmoil. Time to grab the drugs. NOT.
By now, I have gotten the attention of your mind and it is probably letting you know the truth of the matter, or how the cow ate the cabbage. This is where we get into trouble. Let’s go back to the thought that my husband shouldn’t have left me. Fact: husband leaves. Mind: He shouldn’t have done this. Why? Because he told me that he would never leave me. He has made it difficult for me to survive. My life will never be the same. Look at the harm he has caused the kids. And………… This is how the mind responds to the situation, by creating more thoughts and stories in order to justify your opinion (which was created originally by a bunch of erroneous thoughts in the first place).
I once had a lovely lady that worked with me. One day, shortly after she came to work, she started telling me the emotionally-driven story about how her children were suffering because of her marriage failing and her husband leaving. I felt bad for her because she was obviously suffering as well. I politely asked her when her husband had left. She answered, “Twenty years ago.” Get the drugs!!!!! I am sure that at the time there was a great amount of suffering, but the story in her mind that she carries around is what keeps the suffering alive and well in her life. And, when she sees her ex-husband, happy and having moved on with his life, it makes her crazy. Can you start to see how easy it can be to get attached to the stories (thoughts) in our heads and the harmful emotions that accompany them?
If we carry these harmful stories around and their associated bad feelings and emotions, it reflects itself in our present moment. When we look out in our world, our mind will only allow us to focus on things in alignment with those harmful thoughts and emotions. We pick out news stories that confirm our beliefs, talk to our friends about our problems, criticize people and judge them and the vicious cycle continues and continues, affecting our lives negatively and those around us who we care about so much. If you don’t believe this, remember a time when you wanted to buy a new car. Perhaps it was a red Volkswagen. Suddenly, every where you looked, you saw red Volkswagen. You never imagined how many of them were around. It is because your mind’s attention was focused on them and you saw them everywhere. Your mind ignored the other cars and focused on the red ones.
How do we begin to break this cycle? By remembering the source of the problem: our thoughts. You know, that busy chatter that goes on in your head all the time. The one that gets so annoying that you want to scream, “Shut up. I need a break.” Turning off the thoughts is the first step toward full recovery of harmful thoughts and emotions. But, how do we do this when they scream for our attention? Here is the secret formula. You cannot turn off the busy thoughts. However, you can learn to ignore them by focusing on other things and in time, those busy thoughts will begin to pass like clouds in the sky.
