[lit-ideas] Re: Tune in and turn off
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 1 May 2006 09:18:12 -0400
> [Original Message]
> From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 5/1/2006 1:47:50 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Tune in and turn off
>
>
>
> --- Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >
> > For Omar, talking about feelings is like talking
> > about hunger. Does talking about hunger water down
> > hunger?
>
> *No, but I don't think that emotions and bodily
> sensations are the same thing, though they can be
> lumped together as 'feelings.'
>
I agree, they're not the same thing. The term feeling is so broad it might
as well be used to distinguish someone dead from someone alive. A stomach
ache is a feeling, a sensation, but it's not an emotion. However,
emotional/feeling states can cause gastric upset (ulcers are often caused
by Helicobacter pylori bacteria; they need antibiotics). Likewise
headaches, back pain, panic attacks. It's called somatizing, as in
psychosomatic. It's real pain, (including real death from heart attack),
but the source of the pain originates in the mind. Hunger originates in
not enough calories, or in the body's messed up metabolism from improper
nutrition. But it can also be a way of stuffing one's self with love in
the form of food and creating a shield of fat around one?s self, or in the
case of bulimia, feeling unworthy of love (in the form of food) and
throwing it back up again, or with anorexia a way of controlling one's life
(which is to say, one?s parents), etc.
> There is a school of thought that says one
> > can control one's feelings by addressing the
> > underlying unconscious thought process. But
> > emotions are beyond logic or reason.
>
> *As such, yes, but it is possible to rationalize them
> by talking about them constantly. That is the idea of
> psychotherapy. My point is that there is a danger of
> losing the emotion by constantly analyzing it,
> discussing it, expressing it verbally etc.
>
Psychotherapy almost never talks about emotions. Psychotherapy (PT)
searches for the connection between present day behavior patterns and
childhood experience and conditioning. It offers a safe supportive
environment where people can be accepted for who they are and be
re-parented by the psychotherapist. Out of the safety and support the ice
holding back emotions begins to melt and the emotions begin to flow. The
problem is basically two fold. The biggest one is denial. People go into
PT wanting to change their spouse, their coworker, whoever. The person
never has the problem, and their parents are never at fault. And two, many
psychotherapists stink. They have their own issues and will
countertransfer back to the client. But talking about emotions is staying
in the head. We can do it on this list because that's all we can do. The
point in therapy isn't to talk about emotions, it's to create an
environment where it's safe to feel (since that's why emotions were shut
down in the first place), and process emotions and be done with them, along
with learning why we do what we do and why we feel what we feel.
Psychodrama is an especially good way to do that, again depending on the
therapist and the client's level of awareness. But talking about emotions
for its own sake doesn't happen. There's no reason for it. It?s
pointless.
> O.K.
>
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