Artwork credit to: AlfredParedesBlocked Feelings
Anger is an emotion and as such it is felt. Knowledge is is to do with knowing and as such it is something we think about. People who have been emotionally traumatised block feeling and try to intellectualise their feelings. This is perfectly understandable as a survival mechanism used by the subconscious to protect the individual from being hurt further.
You can recognise if you have blocked your feelings by the way you describe how you feel. If you talk about how you feel the way a reporter might describe a scene he is witnessing it means that you have separated or dissociated yourself from your own feelings. If whenever you are asked to describe your feelings you go off on tangents and feel compelled to talk about what you have learned about them from books or other sources and even sometimes refusing to acknowledge that you feel anything then you are not allowing yourself to feel.
By blocking our expression of our feelings we are creating emotional pressure within. When this pressure builds up it has to find release and if we are not allowing its emotional expression then it may find a physical expression. The physical expression of these repressed emotions are then often expressed as the symptoms of physical illness. Continuing to block our expression of our feelings simply leads to an intensification of the symptoms associated with the particular illness.
Hypno-Psychotherapy to Unblock Feelings
Hypno-Psychotherapy provides people with the opportunity to express their pent up emotions and feelings in a completely confidential and safe environment. Not everyone who avails of therapy actually cooperates initially with it. The subconscious forces that caused them to suppress their feelings in the first place are so great that they cannot help themselves from resisting the help they are receiving. Their first line of defence is almost always control. They try to control therapy by thinking about and analysing everything that is done and said in therapy. Though they are urged to let go and trust the process that will ultimately rid them of their debilitating physical symptoms it can sometimes take a number of sessions before they are able to go with the flow.
Resistance to Change
‘Resistance’ occurs when, without the consent, agreement and support of the client therapy comes to a grinding halt and is reduced to a conversation about how the client feels he/she is not making any progress. The therapist also needs to be mindful that ‘resistance’ is a valuable tool in therapy in that it is an accurate gauge as to how close the client is coming to uncovering a repression. So rather than viewing resistance as an inconvenience or obstacle to therapy it can be seen as a light leading the way to the emotional root cause of the client’s condition. When ‘resistance’ is accepted and dealt with like any other issue that emerges in therapy headway is always made and the buried emotions uncovered.
How to Avoid Ego-Centred Therapy
The ego of either the therapist and/or client can hamper the progress of therapy in that it makes agreement difficult to keep. However, when agreement between client and therapist is protected by the Higher Consciousness of both then it is easier to ensure that therapy does not become ego centred. There are a number of ways to achieve this and probably one of the most powerful ways is the Triangle Exercise by Phyllis Krystal. In this exercise the Triangle is used as a symbol by both therapist and client to have the ego of each relinquish control of the session and the purpose of the session be handed over to the Higher Consciousness of each. In her book Cutting the Ties that Bind Phyllis Krystal describes this exercise and many more all of which have proved invaluable in our private practice Setanta Hypnotherapy Clinic here in Peel, Isle of Man.
Setanta Hypnotherapy Clinic
For more information on this topic or any other with regard to the work Xavier and Mary Nathan do as Hypno-Psychotherapists in the Isle of Man please visit Setanta Clinic Website.
