The Warning Signs The Four R's 80
1. Resistance 82
2. Resentment 83
3. Rejection 84
4. Repression 86 The Reasons You Repress Your Feelings 92 Feelings Never Die 94
Chapter 6 — Feelings Are Your Friends 104
Healing Repressed Feelings 106
Healing The Past With Therapy 109
What You Can Feel You Can Heal 110
Sharing Is Not Easy 11 I
Using Tact 112
Chapter 7 — What Makes Relationships So Crazy 114
Your Emotional Connections 116
What You Suppress Your Partner May Express 118
Why Women May Seem Overemotional 122
Why Women May Become Needy 124 How The See-Saw Effect Blows Your Feelings
Out Of Proportion 126
Mirror, Mirror On The Wall 128
The See-Saw Effect And Your Parents 130
Kids And The See-Saw Effect 131
The Multiple Tank Effect 132
Breaking The Connection 134
How To Recognize The See-Saw Effect 135
What You Can Do About The See-Saw Effect 136
Chapter 8 — The Heart Techniques 137
1. The Duplication Technique 138
How Duplication Works 139
How To Practice Duplication 141
A Sample Of Duplication 143
2. The Anger Process 152
When And How To Practice The Anger Process 157
3. The Love Letter Technique 158 The Love Letter Format 160 How To Write A Love Letter 162
What To Do When YouVe Written A Love Letter
To Your Partner 165
Rules For Reading Love Letters 166 Writing A Love Letter To Someone Other Than
Your Partner 166 What To Do When Your Partner Won't Read Your
Love Letter Or Write One 168 What To Do When You Are Finished Reading
Your Letters 169
What To Do In An Emotional Emergency 170 Hints To Make Writing Your First Few Love
Letters Easier 171
Helpful Tips For Writing Love Letters 172
Sample Love Letters 178
• Jo Anne's Love Letter To Her Boyfriend 180
• Bonnie's Letter To Her Father 181
• Children's Love Letters 182 Writing A Love Letter To Yourself 183
Chapter 9 — Love Is Not Enough 185
Chapter 10 — Asking For What You Want 192
Chapter 11 — Love Doesn't Mean Being Nice All The Time 200
Chapter 12 — Breaking Up With Love 206
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Without Love, all else will fail
Chapter 1 Love: The Central Need
As human beings, we are incredibly complex with an endless stream of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs that must be satisfied. Frustration at any of these levels can produce suffering to the whole being. There is one need so fundamental and essential that, when not met, causes everything else to fail or fall short of fulfillment. That need is the need for love — love of others and love of yourself.
The major cause of human dissatisfaction and frustration is the absence of love. This fundamental human need outweighs all others. Without love you can never feel a genuine sense of fulfillment. It is the foundation of security upon which you can build a successful life. No matter what you possess, you cannot fully enjoy it unless you are loving yourself and sharing with people you care about. No matter how much you accomplish or acquire in life, it cannot supersede your basic need for love.
In essence, what I'm saying is that your biggest problem is your inability to satisfy your need for love and that because of it, you end up creating all sorts of other problems.
That need for love begins with your need to love yourself. When you are not able to love yourself, it becomes very difficult for others to love you. Self-love is essential if you are to receive the love you want and deserve.
The need for Love outweighs all of our other pursuits.
Every person has special qualities that make them unique.
Every one of us is born with a unique and special value. There is no one who can be a better you. You have a special place in this universe and a part of growing up is discovering your own niche — finding out what you have to offer, what you are here to do, and then doing it. This discovery will bring you deep fulfillment and enliven the core of your being. The only way to accomplish this task is to stop masking who you really are and to begin accepting and loving yourself the way you are.
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You wouldn't be reading this book if you didn't love yourself. A part of you does love yourself enough to say: "I do deserve more love and I'm determined to get it. Maybe this book will help." At least you haven't given up on yourself.
Consider this line of questioning:
Q: Why do you get upset when people don't appreciate you?
A: Because you feel you deserve to be appreciated.
Q: Why do you dress in nice clothes? A: Because you want people to like you.
Q: Why do you want people to love you? A: Because you feel you deserve it.
Deep down inside, you want love, appreciation and acceptance from people because you feel you do deserve it. But you, like most people, have probably lost touch with that feeling of self-love that you had when you were a small child.
What Happens When You Love Yourself
When you love yourself in the presence of others, you are able to express your inner gifts and talents without fear or restriction. The more you love yourself, the more you are able to come out. The more you come out, the easier it is for people to appreciate the real you and not the image you project or the mask you wear. The more people appreciate and love you, the more you can love yourself. It is a cycle of increasing love and true self-expression.
I love myself more
I express myself more
People can love me more
I love myself more
etc.
When you don't love yourself and you mask your real self, the cycle works in the opposite direction of decreasing love and true self-expression.
I love my real self less
I express my real self less (I wear a mask)
People can love my real self less
I love my real self less
etc.
When you start loving yourself more, you are able to express more of your inner gifts and talents and allow others to love you more.
Loving yourself gives you the ability to love others.
The world is like a mirror showing us a reflection of who we are.
Loving yourself more gives you the ability to love and appreciate others more as well. The world becomes a different place. For each of us the world is like a big mirror, showing us a reflection of who we are. We each see the world through different-colored glasses, determined by the way we feel about ourselves.
People who hate the world hate themselves.
People who hate the world hate themselves. Much of the time, when you are disapproving of others, it is really a part of yourself that you see and dislike. Leaming to love yourself and to be yourself is the first step in leaming to accept, value and love others, and enriching your relationships.
To start your journey towards loving yourself again, let's take a look at where it all began...
Where It All Began
You were born with an infinite supply of self-love. Self-love is a quality naturally instilled in every baby. Did you ever see a baby that didn't want love and attention, and make a big fuss when it didn't get its quota? Can you even imagine a baby complaining "Give me some space, you're smothering me with love"?
As little children, we all loved and accepted ourselves. Only now, as adults, we are afraid to show it or even admit it. We have learned that it can be very risky to love ourselves in the presence of other people and that it is much safer to hide our self-love.
I've found that there are five unconscious messages we receive while growing up that can keep us from fully loving ourselves for the rest of our lives. We were conditioned not to love ourselves in five basic ways. These messages are:
1. It's not O.K. to appreciate yourself
2. It's not O.K. to desire for yourself
3. It's not O.K. to be yourself
4. It's not O.K. to make mistakes
5. It's not O.K. to express yourself
Loving yourself can be very risky.
1. It's O.K. To Appreciate Yourself
Ever since you were young, you were taught that it is not OK to love and appreciate yourself. You learned that to appreciate yourself is vanity and vanity is not good. You learned that to show how much you really love yourself is dangerous - people will criticize you.
Imagine arriving at a party and someone walks up to you and says: "Gee, you look great." If you responded by agreeing with them: "I know, I look gorgeous tonight," they would probably walk away thinking you were really strange. In our society we learn that when you love yourself openly, others might accuse you of egotism and conceit, and they will reject you.
In an attempt to get love and support, you learn to hide your self-love and may even be in the habit of putting yourself down. Gradually, you begin to believe your own propaganda and your self-love gets repressed and forgotten.
You were probably taught that other people won't like you if you like yourself too much.
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We learn very early to feel guilty about our desires.
2. It's O.K. To Desire For Yourself
While growing up, you learn very quickly that the world wasn't created for you alone and that you can't have whatever you want. You are made to feel selfish and bad for wanting more than you have. In an attempt to be good and lovable, you try to suppress your desires and as a result, you may become like a robot, acting out the desires of others in order to win their acceptance and love. You may even begin to feel guilty about your dreams and wants, feeling they are "selfish."
3. It's O.K. To Be Yourself
Children often get the message that in order to get love, they have to "earn" it or pay for it. You conclude that your worthiness is not in yourself, but in something else — your appearance, your actions, your success, or your ability to do what is expected of you. If you experienced love being turned on and off to you as a child, you probably decided that your worth and goodness depends on your ability to please other people and do what makes them happy. Your self-esteem becomes something based on how much you please others by being "good".
While growing up, you probably learned that to get love you had to pay for it.
Because you are not perfect, you will feel unworthy of such approval and you will gradually learn to mistrust love.
4. It's O.K. To Make Mistakes
Every child quickly catches on to the reality of conditional love; when we are right, we win and when we are wrong and make mistakes, we lose love.
At the other extreme is the child whose parents attempted to bestow him with unconditional love. Perhaps when you misbehaved or performed poorly or felt badly, your parents ignored the problem or mistakes, pretending everything was fine. As a result, you unconsciously sensed their disapproval or resentment but you never had an opportunity to be forgiven. In both cases, you know you are not perfect and you feel unworthy of approval when it is given.You learn to mistrust approval from others and fear their disapproval as well.
5. It's O.K. To Express Yourself
The result of your need to please your parents and peers in order to get their love is that you lose your spontaneous self-expression. You become preoccupied with becoming like other people and miss the opportunity to explore and express your own uniqueness.
When you suppress your inner potential, you live with a sense of inner frustration and failure because you have buried yoiir potential for success. One part of you wants to express itself, but another part wants love and acceptance and will sacrifice self-expression in order to get it.
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Some people are afraid to succeed and so they bury their potential.
If you cannot love yourself, then you lose your ability to truly receive love from others.
Learning To Trust Love
All of this conditioning to not be "yourself in order to get love has an unfortunate result: you lose your ability to truly receive love from others. If a part of you is hiding who you really are, not expressing yourself fully or trying to be like others, you cannot trust the love and appreciation you get from the people you are trying so hard to please. When others express their love for you, a little voice inside says: "Yeah, sure, they wouldn't say that if they really knew me." You try hard to please others, knowing all along that the "real you" isn't coming out, and this prevents you from feeling good about whatever approval you do receive.
In the following chapter, we will explore the various ways you may be hiding yourself.
Chapter 2 How Are You Hiding Yourself?
The result of your attempt to feel loved and to please others is that, like most people, you have learned and adopted various behavioral strategies designed to get the approval and love you need. These strategies become like roles you play, or personality types you act out, whether consciously or unconsciously.
This chapter contains a list of some of the more common examples of personality types you may be acting out. You might notice a part of yourself described in several or even all of them. For each category, I also suggest a few hints for breaking out of these roles and starting to express the real you that is buried inside. These hints are far from complete. Later in this book, HI offer you powerful and practical techniques for loving yourself and others more.
1. The Performer
This person was given a lot of love for performing and excelling as a child. Performance is the assumed condition for love and recognition. He is always trying to measure up to the expectations of others and many times self-imposes even higher expectations. He always feels pressured and driven to achieve and there is no time for rest. He cannot tolerate weakness or stupidity in himself or others and tends also to be very critical.
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The Performer feeh pressured to measure up. For him there is no rest; he feels driven to achieve and perform.
The Performer needs to relax more and discover that he can be loved even when he is not performing.
Secretly, the Performer feels he can never be good enough, since there is always room for more growth. This type may become very attached to people and positions, since a secret fear of rejection or abandonment motivates his behavior. He generally feels responsible for everything.
The Performer needs to relax more and discover that he can be loved even when he is not performing. Take more vacations and read romantic novels. Give yourself a break — the high blood pressure isn't worth it.
2. The Critic
The Critic is preoccupied with finding, pointing out and talking about the faults of others. He rejoices in criticizing and belittling those around him. He may hate part of himself, projecting that quality onto others and then becoming extremely critical and judgmental of them. Whenever he is afraid of being judged, he is quick to retaliate with a string of judgements, often sarcastic in nature. For him, the best defense is a strong and critical offense.
The Critic is obsessed with changing or even punishing others in a subconscious attempt to change himself. He is able to soothe his own feeUngs of inadequacy by proving the shortcomings of others.
If you have these traits, try to begin seeing yourself in all those that you judge and criticize. Imagine yourself in their footsteps — look for a way in which you are like them. Then forgive yourself and forgive them for not being perfect. Just as you are good at finding reasons to separate, try finding reasons to feel connected to others.
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What the Critic hates about himself, he will find and criticize in others.
3. The Boaster
This person compensates for low self-esteem by always exaggerating the truth and bragging. While growing up, he learned that to get attention he had to dramatize and enlarge the truth. The Boaster doesn't plan to lie — it happens automatically. Even if the real truth is worthy of attention, he must enlarge it.
The Boaster has learned to get attention by dramatizing and exaggerating the truth.
Deep inside, the Boaster feels he is not good enough to warrant love and attention. He feels the truth is never enough for him to achieve the recognition he needs in his own eyes and in the eyes of others, so he stretches the truth.
The Boaster can never trust the love of others, for deep inside he knows he is lying. The closer people get, the more secretive and defensive he becomes. And the more he boasts, the less he trusts the attention and appreciation he gets.
The Boaster must practice being accurate in what he says and learn that others will still love him.
The Boaster needs to practice being very accurate in what he says. He should find someone who truly does care for him and share with that person all the lies and pretenses he can remember and see that he can be loved for who he really is. The Boaster must learn to trust again, both himself and others. He needs consistent and honest feedback. To be easy on him is not doing him any service.
Whenever something bad happens to a Victim, you can be sure their story gets a lot of mileage.
4. The Victim
This person was generally hurt very deeply at a young age and got a lot of sympathy. The Victim feels unworthy of love and support unless it is preceded by a great mishap or tragedy, or at least the telling of some past tragedy. Whenever something bad happens to the Victim, you can bet that story gets a lot of mileage. If you are getting a lot of love, attention and sympathy by telling your Victim stories, watch out — you are reinforcing a pattern of getting love through experiencing and communicating about pain and suffering. So if your stories get old and you want some love, presto! You will create a new dramatic tragedy. You might even use getting sick as a way of getting more love.
The Victim usually feels powerless in life and tries to control people by making them feel guilty. He refuses to take responsibility for his life, so, quite subconsciously, others get sucked into trying to please the Victim and make him happy. The Victim must learn to develop his own personal power through taking responsibility for his life. He must resolve his stored-up, repressed anger and practice forgiving others.
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The Nice Person is always doing what he '^should'' be doing and has lost touch with what he really wants.
5. The Nice Person
This person is always good-tempered, cheerful and very agreeable. He makes a great friend and generally has a lot of friends and acquaintances. The Nice Person learned early in life that compliance brings a reward, a smile or an embrace. He submits to every rule and regulation with mechanical precision. He is always doing what he "should" be doing, intent on pleasing others, saying "yes" to everyone. The Nice Person never gets angry, but learns to accept and adapt to every situation. He never rocks the boat.
On the surface, the Nice Person is happy and content to be a part of the group, but inside he is empty and alone. He is very afraid of being himself, for to do what he wants means risking disapproval. So, he has lost touch with what he really wants and who he really is. He has done everything right and according to the rules, but secretly feels controlled and cheated, lifeless and bored.
The Nice Person is trapped — he can never really open up because others would find out he is really not so nice. By being nice, he has successfully repressed his own special uniqueness and has become a non-person.
The Nice Person needs to practice saying "no" and meaning it. He needs to learn to express his anger. He must risk showing the not-so-nice person inside and see that not only will others still love him but that they may even feel closer to him because now he is more real.
The Nice Person needs to practice saying "no, " and meaning it.
The Self-righteous Person can never admit that he is wrong, for to confess his faults could mean the loss of love.
6. The Self-righteous Person
This person has learned that if he is wrong, people will not love him and will consider him bad. In order to get love, he attempts to be right at all costs. He can never admit that he is wrong, for to confess his faults and failures would mean the loss of love and would be very painful to him. The Self-righteous Person often tries to make others wrong in
order to be right himself. He has a rational excuse for everything he does. He could even become a great teacher. But don't try to have an argument with the Self- righteous Person because it will sound more like he is lecturing you on why you are wrong and he is right.
The Self- righteous Person needs to start practice saying: "I'm sorry," whenever he makes a mistake, even when he has a great excuse. Rationalization and justification are favorite ways of avoiding feelings, especially the feeling of guilt. This person needs to learn that others will love him, even if he is wrong or makes a mistake.
The Self-righteous Person should practice saying: *Tm sorry," whenever he makes a mistake.
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The Angry Person feels ripped off by life and is constantly trying to get even.
7. The Angry Person
This person walks around with a chip on his shoulder. For him, anger is a protection; it is a roar to scare away adversity. The Angry Person feels an inner inadequacy and is always trying to protect himself. To compensate for that feeling of inadequacy, he refuses to be adequately satisfied by the outer world. Nothing can please him. He projects his own inadequacy everywhere, hence feeling frustrated and bitter towards the world.
The Angry Person feels ripped off by life and is constantly trying to get even. He gets angry at the drop of a hat and remembers every injustice he has ever experienced. He delights in the shortcomings and failings of others and thus becomes overly competitive.
The Angry Person is stuck in feelings of anger and blame as a cover-up for his own feelings of inadequacy and hurt. He must learn that he still deserves love even if he is inadequate in certain areas. Each day he should practice the Love Letter technique (taught later in this book) and forgiveness. Through loving and forgiving others, he will learn to truly love and forgive himself.
8. The Fake
This person has played so many roles that he doesn't know who he is anymore. Behind every mask is another. He is always acting according to how others will receive him. The Fake will not risk controversy. He is an expert at impressing others in order to be liked. He plays the roles he thinks others want him to play and in the process becomes a hypocrite and a fraud.
The Fake probably never felt appreciated for being himself while growing up, so he decided that in order to get love, he had to be someone else, whomever others wanted him to be. Unfortunately, he can never trust anyone's love or appreciation, because deep inside he knows he is a fake and that others don't know who he really is.
The Fake has played so many roles that often he loses sight of who he really is; behind every mask is another.
The Believer has become so dependent on others for truth that he loses touch with reality.
9. The Believer
This person has become so dependent on others for truth that he doesn't believe his own feelings. He learned growing up that to receive love, he merely has to agree and believe what others tell him. If you have a common belief, then the Believer is your friend, and if you contradict his belief, you are his enemy. The Believer loves to give away his own power and responsibility to others who can solve his problems for him. He expects you to love him because he agrees with you. If you disappoint the Believer's unrealistic expectations, he will withdraw his love and support.
The Believer has never gotten over the fact that his parents were not perfect. He always has high hopes, but is inevitably let down by others, and will continue to be until he starts to believe in himself.
The Believer must learn to take responsibility for his own life and forgive all the people who have let him down. He should question all he believes, and relate it to his own personal experience. The Believer needs to learn to trust his own feelings, instincts and choices and look to himself as the source of power and wisdom in his life.
The Believer needs to question all that he believes and relate it to his own personal experience.
The Shy Person's basic reaction to people is fear. He has little confidence that he will be loved,
10. The Shy Person
This person's basic reaction to other people is fear. He fears their criticism, he fears their evaluation of him as a failure and he fears their inevitable rejection in the end. The Shy Person has little confidence that he is lovable to others. He has been taught that people will only accept him under certain conditions and if those conditions aren't present, he fears rejection. He may be an incredible musician or performer on stage, but offstage he becomes shy and insecure.
The Shy Person must learn to take risks. He should practice visualizing a risk and then act it out, gradually building up more confidence in himself and dispelling his fear of others. He needs to come out more and learn to trust himself and others again.
The Shy Person should visualize a risk and then act it out and gradually build up more confidence.
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The Show-off believes that what he owns will make up for what he fails to be himself
11. The Show-off
The Show-off beheves what he does or possesses will make up for what he fails to be himself. He seeks to compensate for his own lack of self-esteem by owning big things, hoping this will attract the attention and recognition he desperately needs. To the Show-off, money is the symbol of love, and without it, he fears he will lose love. He cannot ask for love, but tries to buy it. He is unable to share his feelings directly, but does so by giving or withholding presents and material possessions.
Unfortunately, the Show-off never feels worthy of the love he does receive, because he iaiows he is being loved for his achievements and possessions and not for being himself. He often feels used and unappreciated.
The Show-off needs to practice sharing his feelings and allowing others to see who he is inside. He needs to work on his inner self-image and relax his outer image. Then he will learn that he can be loved for who he is and not for what he has or what he does.
The Show-off needs to practice sharing his feelings and allowing others to see who he is inside.
12. The Loner
This person is always proving that he doesn't need others. At some point while growing up, he didn't get the love and recognition he wanted, so he decided he didn't need it. The Loner has learned to become self-sufficient. Inside, he is an incredibly sensitive and caring spirit who has been hurt too many times. He has learned to "care less", to be detached from his feelings, for to feel them would be too painful.
The Loner feels guilty for needing so much love and thus he denies his needs. "I can do it alone," he proudly proclaims. "I don't need you." Because he doesn't express his needs clearly, he is continually disappointed and hurt in relationships. He will also resent feeling obligated to satisfy his partner's needs, just as he resents having his own needs. To the Loner, needs are a sign of weakness.
At some point, the Loner could not get the recognition and love he wanted and so decided he didn't need it.
The Loner needs to share his needs and wants. He must reveal to others his secret expectations and disappointments.
The easiest choice for the Loner is to just avoid relationships and live alone. The more he feels his needs, the more he will separate and retreat, thus pushing out the very love he needs so desperately.
The Loner must learn to share his needs and to show his hurt and tears. He should reveal to others all of his secret expectations and disappointments. Whenever he starts to sulk and retreat, he should find someone he cares about and share his feelings. The Loner needs to learn that need is not a dirty word and to find people in life who can fulfill his needs for love and appreciation.
The Sacrificer has learned that to love means to sacrifice or to give up for another.
13. The Sacrificer
This person learned that to love means to sacrifice or to give up for another. Probably while growing up, the Sacrificer's parents never let him forget how much they sacrificed and how they expected the same from him. For him, loving is a tiresome matter because to show his love, he must always do what he prefers not to do, or give up what he wants to keep.
The Sacrificer can never be what he wants to be, for that would be too selfish. For him, selfless giving is not giving with no strings attached, but it is a giving up or self-denial with a definite expectation of receiving the same in return. The Sacrificer expects the recipient of his love to return his gift of love through an equally painful sacrifice. "I suffered for you, so you suffer for me." For him, suffering is a virtue and is symbolic of true love.
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The Sacrificer must learn to lighten up the heavy load he has placed on love and relationships. He needs to heal built-up repressed anger and resentment towards his parents and others and to forgive them for laying a "heavy guilt trip" on him. The Sacrificer needs to learn to give love freely without expecting equal sacrifice in return, and at the same time, he must remember not to give up his own needs and desires all the time.
The Sacrificer needs to lighten up the heavy load he has placed on love and relationships.
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How Successful Are You At Hiding Yourself?
Let's see how well you score. Give yourself points on a scale from 1 to 5 for each of the personality types - a T means you play that role rarely, a '3' means often, and a '5' means you fit the description perfectly. To familiarize yourself with these types even further, imagine your family and friends and see how they score. The more you can see these personality types in others, the better you can see them and change them in yourself.
Well, how did you do? How did your family do?
Remember: Until you are aware of what you are doing, you have no choice but to continue doing it.
Practice the instructions for each of the personality types along with the HEART techniques taught later in this book (Chapter 8), and you will be well on your way to loving vourself more.
Having explored some of the reasons we don't fully love ourselves, let's now look at some of the reasons why our relationships don't fully manifest the love that they deserve. In Chapter 3, we will take a look at what happens in our relationships.
Chapter 3 What Happens In Relationships
It's easy to fall in love. But it's a lot harder to stay in love. We all want love to last. We all want to live happily ever after. No one decides to get married and says to their partner: "Hey, honey, I've been thinking. Let's get married and have a wonderful two or three years together. Then, let's get tired of each other and get divorced — what do you say?" or "Darling, let's live together and have a great sex life for five years, then let's start fighting, feel resentful, have some extramarital affairs and then split up." No one falls in love and plans to fall out of love. But it happens, and when it happens, it hurts.
No one falls in love and plans to fall out of love. But it happens, and when it does, it hurts.
What Is The Norm?
Approximately one out of every two marriages in the United States ends in divorce. Out of the couples who do remain married, it's certain that a good number are no longer in love or happy together, despite the fact that they aren't officially divorced.
These statistics are not encouraging. Their real message to you is that if you plan to get married, you have a fifty-fifty chance of getting a divorce. (If you are reading this and are already married or just in a relationship with someone, the same unpleasant forecast applies to you.) You don't have to be a gambler to see that these are pretty terrible odds. You probably wouldn't invest your money in a business deal if you were told you had a fifty percent chance of losing it. Yet, like most people, you continue to get involved in relationships without thinking much about how to avoid joining the ranks of the fifty percent that don't make it.
There's no way to definately insure that any relationship will last, but you can at least learn to preserve the love that you had.
Let's take a closer look at the fifty percent of relationships that "succeed." Stop right now and ask yourself this question: "How many couples do I know whom I admire, whose relationship seems like one I would like to have for myself?" If you are like most people, you will have a hard time coming up with many examples of "good relationships." Between forty and seventy percent of married couples aren't satisfied with their partners and have had outside affairs. One recent survey showed that the greater the household income, the more affairs the couples had. It's obvious from these statistics that money is not the solution to marital happiness. The American Dream of a house, two cars and a happy family has ended in divorce all too many times.
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When you're not satisfied with your present partner, you may begin to fantasize about others.
Some people keep up the appearance of a loving relationship when really the love has died.
Many people who stick it out in relationships aren't even able to look at their problems and admit to themselves and their partner that they aren't satisfied. They pretend to be happy when they are really feeling resentful, sad or numb. They must pretend because it would hurt too much to look at the truth. They are afraid to look at their problems because they don't have a solution. So they keep up the appearance of a relationship while all the time they are dying inside. Sometimes the loneliest place in the world is lying next to someone who doesn't love you anymore or someone you have stopped loving. How many times have you felt surprised when you heard friends of yours were getting a divorce or splitting up? On the surface everything looked great, but the love was dead.
What Are The Options?
Most people don't know how to solve their problems with love and relationships, and end up approaching those problems in one of several ways.
The first option, of course, is to just ignore the problems and hope that they will go away. Another method is to justify the problem and tell yourself that there is no such thing as the "perfect" relationship, and to expect more is immature and unrealistic. You can also try blaming it all on your partner. You may even leave that partner and find another, only to find yourself facing the same problems all over again. Some people go from partner to partner, trying to avoid conflict and problems. And others decide that it is less scary to stay stuck in a relationship than to risk leaving it, and they just give up. If you are one of these people who has just given up, I hope that reading this book will give you the courage to look at your problems and begin solving them, rather than accepting a life devoid of love.
One of the ways we deal with our problems is to blame them on other people.
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Contrary to popular belief, relationships do not have to be doomed to mediocrity and boredom.
Have you ever felt: "I love my partner, but I'm no longer in love *?' Unfortunately, the typical response to this complaint by family, friends and even many psychologists is: "Don't be immature. Face the facts — romantic love can't last. It's a tradeoff; you sacrifice passion for security." Contrary to popular belief, love and romance can last. Relationships do not have to be doomed to mediocrity and boredom. That flame of love and excitement that you shared in the beginning can remain burning and can even burn brighter.
Think back to a time when you saw a couple really enjoying each other's presence, looking very much in love. You probably assumed that they had just met or that they were having an affair. This negative conditioning about love lasting is very deeply ingrained in us from an early age.
Some people are outraged when they see two people in love.
Who Taught You How To Love?
You may not enjoy reading this next line, but you learned how to love and have relationships by watching your parents when you grew
up. Most of this "education" occurred before the age of six, and you may be very unconscious of its influence on you. If you saw your parents lying to one another, you learned to lie. If you saw them hiding their true feelings, you learned to hide yours. If you saw them punish each other, you learned to punish and withhold your love. Long before you had your first real intimate relationship, you were thoroughly trained and conditioned, and unfortunately most of that conditioning taught you more about how not to love and communicate than about how to love and effectively communicate your feelings.
Would you like to have a relationship just like your parent's relationship?
Long before you had your first intimate relationship, you were thoroughly trained and conditioned.
In order to start making love work, admit to yourself that you need to learn more about it.
Relearning Love
If you want a relationship that is better than the one your parents had, if you want love to work for you, you have to work at it. Start by admitting to yourself that you need to learn how to make love work and that from looking around at everyone you know, you are not alone. Let go of your pride and feel the need you have deep inside for more intimacy, appreciation and love. The easiest way to learn is to pretend that you don't know anything about love. Try adopting beginner's awareness as you take this next step.
Enriching your relationships is an art and a science, just like building a bridge, making a meal, or playing an instrument. It takes skill and practice and daily application of those skills. Like all arts and sciences, enriching your relationship will seem like a mystery, like something impossible to comprehend until you have worked with it long enough to master it. Then it will be second nature.
Enriching your relationship can be learned. Already in my seminars I have taught thousands of people to do so. Read on w ith an open mind and a willingness to practice mastering love .
Enriching Relationships
Everyone is always trying to enrich their relationships either consciously or unconsciously. No matter how much someone may act like they don't care, you can bet that underneath their defensive armor is a gentle spirit that wants to love and be loved. Behind every motive and action is the desire to be loved and appreciated and a longing to share ourselves with others.
Behind every scary front is a gentle spirit that wants to love and be loved.
People are frustrated trying to make relationships work because they have not learned a successful method.
If everyone is trying to be more loving and kind to one another, why are so many marriages breaking up and families being torn apart? Why are there so many lonely people in the world? Why do people continue to hurt one another?
Talking about love and having good intentions are just not enough. After many years of counseling couples who had problems in their relationship, I came to realize that in most cases there was really nothing wrong with the people who came to me for counseling. However, there was something wrong with the methods they were using in trying to enrich their relationships. Most people start out attempting to work on
their relationships and end up frustrated and hopeless. In many cases, because they have not learned effective communication skills, the more they try to 'fix' their relationship, the worse it gets. As a result, the problems get ignored and accumulate over time. People unnecesarily accept the state of their relationships because they have no workable solution; they have no choice but to accept or try again with somebody new.
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The more you try to change who you are in order to please others, the less you are able to love who you really are.
As a result of unsatisfactory relationships, many people today are obsessed with changing themselves, hoping that when they change, their life will improve. Creating more love in your life has nothing to do with changing who you are or with trying to change others. As a matter of fact, that just gets in the way. The more you try to modify your behavior in order to act like you think you "should" act, the less you will be yourself and the harder it will be for you and others to love you.
There is nothing wrong with change except when it prevents you from being who you really are. As long as change is motivated by self-hatred, it can never create more love. You may become more powerful; you may get a better job; you may even make new friends. But you're not going to love yourself more. You may succeed at convincing others that you are more worthy of their love, but deep down inside you will never feel truly loved and accepted for just being you.
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As long as self-improvement is motivated by self-hate, it can never create more love.
Many times you may tell the truth but leave out the important parts. Telling the complete truth is more than being honest.
Chapter 4
The Essential Key:
Telling The Complete Truth
After eleven years of developing elaborate schemes for editing and modifying behavior with varying degrees of success, I discovered the essential key for learning to love yourself and enrich your relationships.
You must be able to share and express the complete truth about yourself and your feelings.
Telling the complete truth is different from being honest or not lying. Many times you tell the truth but leave out the important parts. Or, if you don't like the truth, you create a new truth.
Do you ever smile when you are really angry?
Have you ever acted mean and angry when deep inside you were really afraid?
Do you ever laugh and make light of something when you feel very sad and rejected?
Have you ever blamed another when you were the one feeling guilty?
This is what I mean by not telling the complete truth.
Most people are masters oj disguising what they really feel
Communicating the complete truth about your feelings is essential. It is the first step in resolving emotional tension and enriching your relationships with others. Before you can communicate the truth about what you feel, you have to know what you are feeling in the first place.
As human beings, we are experts at hiding the truth about what we are feeling. We become masters of disguising what we really feel inside, and therefore we end up hiding and suppressing who we really are. You may become so good at hiding the truth from yourself that you even start to believe your own lies. Gradually you may lose touch with what you really feel, and even if you want to tell the truth about what is going on inside, you can't.
Your ability to feel love is directly proportional to your ability to tell the complete truth. The more truth you have in your life, the more love you will experience. Honest relationships with direct and effective communication are a source of increasing love and self-esteem. Many times we seek out relationships in order to protect ourselves from the truth. We have a sign up saying: "If you don't tell me the truth, then I won't tell you the truth." These relationships can be easy and comfortable but do no service to increasing your self-love and self-worth.
Your ability to feel love is directly proportional to your ability to tell the complete truth.
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The Iceberg Effect
The first step in telling the complete truth in your life is knowing what it is. Most of us are unaware of the complete truth; this phenomenon is called the Iceberg Effect. If you came upon an iceberg floating in the Arctic Ocean, you would only see one-tenth of it — nine-tenths of the ice block remains submerged beneath the surface. Your emotions are similar to that iceberg. Most of the time, just a fraction of how you really feel shows to others and even to your conscious mind, while the majority of your emotions lie hidden deep inside of you. Thus, it becomes difficult to communicate the complete truth about your feelings because they remain a mystery even to you.
Living In Your Heart And Not In Your Head
Repressing your feelings is actually a safety mechanism you've developed over the years. Unable to cope with and express the truth about your emotions, you learn to hide those feelings deep inside and hope that they just go away. Through years of rejecting and-suppressing your feelings, you start to acquire the unfortunate and unhealthy habit of automatically repressing any unsafe, unacceptable or confusing emotions. You learn only to express those feelings that won't disturb or threaten your life or others, thereby insuring safety and acceptance. You become a stranger to your own feelings. You begin to figure out in your head what to feel, rather than simply and spontaneously feeling from your heart. .^ ^ n * i i / ^
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As a result of repression, you stop feeling and start figuring out how you should feel.
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Recovering buried emotions is essential for feeling motivated and purposeful.
What Are You Really Feeling?
Locating buried emotions is absolutely essential to your growth because to the extent that you suppress and bury your feelings, you will lose contact with who you are and what you really want.
In my years of researching human emotions, I have discovered a universal map of feelings to help you understand the maze of your emotions. When you are upset or unable to emotionally cope with a given situation, you are subconsciously experiencing various levels of feelings at the same time.
The levels are:
1. Anger, Blame and Resentment
2. Hurt, Sadness and Disappointment
3. Fear and Insecurity
4. Guilt, Remorse and Regret
5. Love, Understanding, Forgiveness and Desire
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The complete truth has many different levels. It is perfectly normal to have many conflicting emotions at the same time.
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The complete truth about how you are feeling has many levels. Normally you are only aware of one emotion at a time, but the rest are all there as well. If all of these levels can be fully experienced and expressed, the emotional upsets can be easily resolved. Each emotion must be fully experienced and expressed for the successful completion of the process — if not, the feelings around any upset will never be fully resolved and will most likely be repressed inside of you, creating more emotional baggage for you to carry around from relationship to relationship.
By fully expressing all of the negative emotions, you can spontaneously experience your love and understanding again.
Most communication problems stem from only communicating part of the truth, and not expressing the complete truth. Often when people tell the truth, they leave out many of the feelings they are having and focus on one of the above levels, excluding the others. Underneath all negative emotions are positive emotions — underneath all anger and hurt is a feeling of love and a willingness to connect and be close. The
people who make you the most angry are the people you care about the most. When something someone does interferes with your ability to love that person, the first four levels of emotion will be activated. The problem arises when you communicate the anger or hurt and neglect to express the complete truth about the love underneath.
Underneath all negative emotions is love and the desire for connection. The only way to uncover that love is to experience and express all those other emotions piled up on top. Failure to feel and express all our feelings prevents us from tapping into the vast emotional resources of love and confidence within our hearts.
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When you don't fully express all the levels of your feelings, you may get stuck on one level.
Getting Stuck
Have you ever felt stuck in being angry even when you didn't want to be angry anymore?
Have you ever felt stuck in feeling sad, hurt or depressed, and nothing seemed to get rid of that gloomy feeling?
Have you ever felt frozen with fear and no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't snap out of it?
These are a few examples of what happens when you don't accept and express all of the feelings inside of you. Your inability to recognize and express the full range of feeling will cause you to stay stuck at one level of emotion and prevent you from fully feeling your positive emotions.
Men have difficulty showing vulnerable feelings because they were not given support to cry or feel hurt.
While growing up, we are all taught in various direct or indirect ways NOT to express all of the feelings inside. Little boys are taught: "Big boys don't cry — be strong." The message is that they don't have permission to show their vulnerable feelings. They are given permission to be aggressive, because that's supposedly masculine. In many cases they are taught that they can show their anger but that it isn't safe for them to show hurt or fear, for other boys might make fun of them or beat them up.
You may become stuck feeling angry or frustrated if you are unable to feel and express your more vulnerable feelings.
As a result, when an adult male has a strong emotional reaction, he may tend to get stuck on the level of anger and blame since it isn't safe for him to express the other more vulnerable levels. Often men will stay stuck in their angry feelings until they get even or until they repress the feelings entirely and shut down, becoming unreachable. I have worked with innumerable men who, when given permission to express their hurt, fear and guilt, experienced a tremendous emotional and physical release, letting go of the anger and feeling the love again. All family violence is the result of unresolved anger.
Unfortunately, if a man feels threatened, the last thing he feels safe doing is admitting that he is vulnerable and feels hurt or fear. So he will probably just pretend he doesn't care, which causes him to stay stuck in feeling angry or frustrated. Staying angry is one of the more popular ways of resisting our hurt and sadness. The angriest people I know are the ones who have the most hurt inside. The louder they scream and yell, the longer and harder they would cry if only they'd give themselves a chance. If you get angry more than you would like to, you need to learn to cry again.
By expressing the hurt and guilt that hide behind your anger, you can easily release the anger and allow love to flow again.
Women tend to get stuck in their vulnerable feelings because they were not given permission to express their angry feelings.
For most women, the situation is reversed. Little girls are generally taught never to express anger and hostility. It's not nice to get angry or scream — Daddy won't like it, and neither will other men.
Many women are taught that they can display vulnerability. They can cry all they want to, and are even programmed to feel afraid. So as an adult, when a woman has something painful happen to her, she will tend to cry and feel afraid but probably will not overtly express her anger. Crying or criticism becomes a cover-up for anger and rage. And because that rage can't come up and the woman is stuck in her sadness, she may eventually become hysterical. I've worked with countless women who felt stuck in grief and hurt. After teaching them how to express anger, I've watched them miraculously recover and feel alive, loving and less critical.
The Art of Depression in 3 easy steps.
9 Pon-f get Angry.
3) T ry to forget it
If you are not able to fully express your anger (in a non-destructive way, of course) you may be walking around afraid, hopeless or depressed most of the time. Depression is not intense sadness — it is suppressed anger that has been redirected at yourself. Depressed people usually feel tired and lifeless because they are using up their vital energy to keep that anger and rage from coming out. If you are very depressed, you need to work on healing your old relationships, first by expressing your anger for others, then your anger at yourself, working your way back through all the other emotional levels until you arrive at the love and forgiveness.
When you repress your negative emotions, you also repress your ability to love.
Chapter 5
What Happens When You Don't Tell The
Truth
Not telling the truth in a relationship is like not watering a plant — you end up killing something that once was alive and growing. The inevitable result of holding back the truth from someone you care for is that you end up holding back the love as well. After some time in a relationship where the truth is not expressed, you will look back and wonder: "What happened to that juicy feeling? Where did the magic go?" The answer is that the love and magic are buried under piles of uncommunicated emotions. You simply cannot repress your negative feelings (anger, fear, hurt, guilt) and expect the positive emotions to remain lively. When you numb yourself to your undesirable emotions, you are numbing your ability to feel positive emotions as well.
The long-term effects of not telling the truth to yourself or others and of pushing down your feelings is that you lose your ability to feel positive emotions like joy, excitement and passion. The dictionary defines passion as "an intense feeling." Every time you suppress a feeling you don't want to deal with, you are systematically destroying your ability to feel, and step by step you are killing the passion in all of your relationships.
Repression gradually numbs both your negative and positive feelings.
The four R's are the vital signs to watch for if you want to keep love alive!
The Warning Signs - The "Four R's"
IVe discovered that there are four warning signs in every relationship that signal when the emotional connection is weakening and you are proceeding rapidly towards the loss of love in that relationship. I call these the "four R's. "The four R's are the inevitable consequences of not telling the complete truth.
If you want to avoid the loss of love and feeling in a relationship and if you want to keep the passion alive, be on the lookout for the four R's. When you notice any one of the four R's, it's time to start telling the complete truth about your feelings. The four R's are:
1. Resistance
2. Resentment
3. Rejection
4. Repression
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1. Resistance
In any normal human relationship there will be certain levels of resistance between two people. Resistance occurs when you notice yourself starting to resist something another person is saying, doing, or feeling. You start criticizing them in your mind, and you may notice yourself pulling away a little bit. Example: I'm at a party with my partner and she starts to tell the same story she always tells at parties, a story I've heard many times before. This time I notice myself feeling Resistance to her, a feeling inside like: "Oh no, there she goes with that story again."Or, your husband reminds you to pay a bill, and you notice yourself turning off to him somewhat, just for a moment.
The way most people handle Resistance is to ignore it and pretend it's not there. You may have thoughts like: "Oh, it's no big deal," or "Don't be so critical; after all, no one's perfect," or "Just forget it. Why rock the boat?"
If you dont tell the truth about your resistance and resolve it with your partner, those little resistances build up and turn into the second R, Resentment.
2. Resentment
Resentment is a much more active level of resistance. It is intense dislike and blame of the other person for what they are doing. The other person really starts to annoy you. You may find yourself getting angry over small things, blowing them out of proportion. If I hear my partner tell that story enough times without communicating my resistance, the day will come when I no longer simply resist hearing that story, I will really resent it. I may feel: "Oh I hate when she tells that story, she is making such a fool of herself."
Resentment is usually accompanied by an internal experience of anger and tension. You are separating from your partner emotionally. Anger, frustration, annoyance, sharpness and hate are all symptoms of stage two. Resentment.
If you don't tell the truth about your resentment and resolve it with your partner, it builds up and turns into the third R, Rejection.
Anger, frustration, hate, revenge, annoyance, sharpness and blame are all the symptoms of unexpressed resentment.
3. Rejection
Rejection occurs when so much resistance and resentment has built up that it becomes impossible for you to stay emotionally connected to the other person, and you pull away. You are turned off emotionally and sexually. You may just say: "I don't want to discuss this any more." You may leave the room, you might storm out of the house, or you might just shut down and refuse to acknowledge the other person or pay attention to them. The signs of Rejection are: not wanting to be with your partner; always polarizing with whatever point of view they take; fantasizing about other people or having affairs. Rejection is the natural consequence of carrying around stored-up resentment. You cannot be near or relate to your partner without feeling all of your accumulated tension and resentment, so you just push them away in order to get some relief.
During this third stage, your sex life will deteriorate tremendously if it hasn't already. You may find yourself feeling you still love your partner, but you are no longer attracted to them, you are no longer "in love." You may feel repelled or disgusted at the thought of sex, or simply feel you just have no interest in sex anymore.
If you believe in divorce, you will probably decide to split up in this third stage. If you end a relationship while it is in the Rejection stage, the breakup will be painful and bitter.
If you don't tell the truth about your feelings of Rejection and resolve them with your partner, your Rejection builds up and turns into the next level of separation, Repression.
Unexpressed resentment inevitably turns into rejection ; you stop wanting to be with your partner.
4. Repression
Repression is the most dangerous of the four R's. It occurs when you are so tired of resisting, resenting and rejecting that you successfully repress all of your negative emotions to "keep the peace," for the sake of the family, or to look good to the world. In this fourth stage, you feel: "It's just not worth fighting over anymore; let's forget the whole thing; I'm too tired to deal with this."
Repression is a state of emotional numbness. You numb yourself to your feelings in order to be comfortable. The numbness spills over into the rest of your life. You lose your enthusiasm and aliveness. Life may become predictable and boring — it isn't painful, but it isn't joyful either. You may feel physically tired much of the time.
The tricky thing about Repression is that from the outside looking in, a couple in this stage may appear to be happy. They probably are nice and polite to each other and rarely fight, and you may think they have a great relationship, until one day you hear that they are getting a divorce.
Even more dangerous is the couple that is so repressed that they think they don't have any problems. They have given up their youthful, romantic dreams, and have accepted the status quo. They have learned what to expect and what not to expect. They have convinced themselves that they are happy. This couple is in trouble because until they admit that they would like improvement in the relationship, the relationship will stay where it is. •
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Some people are so good at repressing that it happens automatically in a split second and they are totally unaware.
The four R's not only describe the stages of loss of love in a relationship over a long period of time, but also the mechanics of repressing feelings. Every time you repress an emotion, you go through these four stages. By repressing your emotions enough times, your relationship moves through the different stages. Each time you have an argument, you go through the four R's. You can go through the four R's in a matter of days, hours, minutes or even seconds.
Some people are such experts at repressing their feelings that they move automatically from Resistance right down to Repression in a few moments without even realizing what they are doing. Remember, the four R's apply to all of your relationships — not just with a lover, but with your parents, your children, your boss, your friends, and even yourself.
The truth can release the abundance of love within your heart.
Every time you express the complete truth about your feeUngs and get back to the love inside, you are increasing your ability to love. Every time you suppress the complete truth and automatically repress your feelings, your ability to love decreases. From this new perspective, you can see what went wrong in the past. By learning and practicing the techniques in this book for expressing the complete truth, you can quickly recover your ability to feel and to love. If you are stuck in any of the four R's, you will be able to move right back into feeling "in love."
Sometimes when you tell the complete truth, it may not look like progress because as you heal repressed feelings, you may move backwards through the stages from Repression, to Rejection, to Resentment, up to Resistance. But w hen you're finished — you are free to feel clear and loving again. This principle is dramatically demonstrated in the treatment of autistic children. If you express love to a repressed
autistic child by holding him, he will move sequentially back through the four R's. First he will not respond and then he will reject your love and try to run away. If you hold on, the child will become extremely resentful and struggle against you. Eventually, he will simply resist a little and then accept your embrace with enthusiastic appreciation. As you begin to love your partner more, they may at first not care and they may reject your loving attempts. You may then evoke their scorn or resentment. But if you persist, they will eventually respond with great love and appreciation.
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By expressing the complete truth, you can climb back through the four R's and feel alive and loving again.
The Reasons You Repress Your Feelings
Any feeling that threatens your ability to love or to be loved is a sure target for Repression. If you judge your emotions to be incompatible with your self-image, you will end up repressing them. You may also repress certain feelings which were never expressed by your parents while you were growing up. For instance, a child from a non-demonstrative family may have a tendency to repress emotions of tenderness and affection. A child who grew up in a family that never expressed anger may repress his feelings of anger.
The emotions you permit in your conscious awareness are the feelings you feel are "safe" to express. Your value judgements play a major part in repression — you will tend to label certain emotions "good" or "bad", "right" or "wrong," depending on your background and experience. For instance, you may feel it is "good" to feel grateful but "bad" to feel angry or jealous.
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Any feeling that threatens our ability to be loved or to give love is a target for repression.
By burying your emotions, gradually you become numb to life and love.
Feelings Never Die
Most people try to "control" their feelings and the way they do this is usually to move through the four R's and resist, resent, reject and repress. Repressing your feelings does not eliminate them. Feelings never die. They refuse to be silenced. When you finally "forget"about a negative or unpleasant emotion, you may feel victorious, but the battle has just begun. It takes a tremendous amount of emotional and physical energy to hold down your feelings. Living becomes a struggle to stay in control.
Repressing your feelings will influence your personality, whether you like it or not, by secretly motivating much of your behavior. Repressing feelings may affect you undesirably in three basic ways:
1. You may numb your ability to feel positive emotions.
2. You may overreact to people or circumstances in the present.
3. Your body may express the tension from holding on to repressed emotions through physical symptoms and disease.
1. Becoming numb
Repressing your feelings gradually numbs your ability to feel. Your heart becomes cold and the well of love inside goes dry. Your childlike enthusiasm for living, loving and learning diminishes. Your creativity is
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Suppressed feelings build up until you either explode irrationally or you repress them by becoming numb to your feelings.
significantly reduced. You become a passionless witness to the process of living. The only answer is to take the chance to feel, and through working with all your feelings, to come alive again.
2. Are you overreacting?
Repressed feelings that you carry around may be responsible for you reacting inappropriately to people or circumstances in your life. Storing up unexpressed emotions can make you irrational, irritable, prone to temper tantrums or fits of depression at the drop of a hat. They can cause your attitudes to shift dramatically. Unresolved emotions from your past may confuse your emotions in present time. If I carry around a lot of suppressed guilt, I may become afraid of receiving punishment from all authority figures — policemen, bosses, the IRS — even if I'm not doing anything wrong or illegal. If I carry around a lot of repressed fear, I may unconsciously avoid meeting people or consciously tell myself I don't like them.
As adults, we are constantly living out repressed feelings from childhood. If you have a lot of repressed anger towards your domineering mother, for instance, you may interpret any suggestions or helpful advice from women as their attempt to control you. Unless you are aware of the process that is taking place, you will probably repress
your feelings all over again and the cycle will continue.
Most people are unconscious of this phenomenon and may think it does not apply to them. But think of all the times you have felt afraid or nervous when there was no apparent reason or the times you became irritable when there was no real cause, or the discomfort you feel in certain situations that are comfortable to others. For example: going up to a stranger and talking to them may be comfortable and easy for one person and hard for another. Or speaking in front of a group may be easy for one person and hard for another.
Repressed feelings cause us to react inappropriately to people and circumstances.
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Repressed emotions can make you irritable, irrational, and prone to temper tantrums.
Unfortunately, in an attempt to further repress uncomfortable emotions, millions of people abuse their bodies with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, overeating and overworking. These are popular and generally accepted means by which you can temporarily suppress unpleasant emotions. You are not only damaging your body by subjecting it to these experiences, you are damaging your ability to function as a feeling, emotionally healthy person as well.
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Repressed fears may motivate us to avoid meeting people that could love us.
More and more doctors today are realizing the importance emotions play on our physical health. Crying has been discovered to be an important physical discharge of harmful chemicals and simultaneously releases the emotional tension which is vital to prevent dis-ease in the body. For children as well as adults, crying in the right measure should be encouraged.
3. Are you beating up your body?
Your mind and body are intimately connected. Each is there to serve the other. If you choose to repress an uncomfortable emotion, your body may try to "help" resolve the tension you've created by releasing that tension for you through various physical symptoms.
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Repressed feelings may become expressed through physical symptoms.
One of the more popular ways of avoiding feelings is overeating.
Physical symptoms are often related to the emotional dis-ease you are feeling:
Muscular tension — "He's a pain in the neck."
Headache — "1 don't want to think about it anymore."
Viruses and colds — "I've decided to act cold to her."
Arthritis — "I was scared stiff or "I guess I'm just set in my
ways."
High Blood Pressure — "He really blew his top" or "I'm under
so much pressure."
Respiratory — "I feel like this job is suffocating me."
Constipation — "I can't seem to let go of the past."
Heart Disease — "She broke my heart."
Fever — "Boy, he has a hot temper."
Recent psychological and medical research has revealed that certain personality types are more prone to cancer and heart disease than others. In one survey, the majority of cancer patients questioned
admitted that they hadn't expressed strong emotions such as crying or angry outbursts with any consistency for years at a time, and they prided themselves on their abiUty to control their feelings. More and more, physicians are realizing the value of emotional release and expression in total physical well-being. Although a great deal of physical distress has its origin in repressed emotional distress, once it reaches the physical level, the body, mind and spirit muslall be healed together.
Crying in the right measure should be encouraged.
Love initiates the release of repressed feelings.
Chapter 6 Feelings Are Your Friends
The ability to feel emotion is a gift we all share as human beings. Often, however, you may not like what you are feeling. Every emotion has a purpose and that emotion will remain with you until that purpose
is realized and Understood. Your feelings are like messengers from your subconscious to your conscious mind. Until you receive the message, the messenger will stand patiently at your door.
What are the messages your feelings bring to you?
Anger arises to tell you that what is happening to you is undesirable.
Hurt or Sadness arises to tell you that you have lost <3r are missing something you want or need.
Fear arises to warn you of the possibility of failure, loss or pain.
Guilt arises to remind you that in some way you are responsible for causing an undesirable result or circumstance.
The way to understand your emotions and what they are telling you about your life is to express them. You cannot understand what remains unexpressed.
Have you ever noticed that just by talking about a problem with a friend, you realize the solution? Through expressing the complete truth about all of your feelings, you can eventually realize the loving intention underneath all of your negative emotions.
Your feelings are like messengers. Until you receive their message they wait at your door.
Healing Repressed Feelings
An intimate relationship is the ideal setting for healing repressed feelings. When you find someone you feel safe with and loved by, all your repressed feelings begin to surface in an attempt to be healed. Through honest and loving personal relationships, you can not only learn to master the everyday tension which arises between you and another person, but you can use the relationship as an opportunity to heal old hurts, thus enabling you to become a more powerfully loving and lovable person.
Healing your feelings is an ongoing process. Whenever you get to a new level of love and closeness in your relationships, a new level of deeply repressed feelings will surface in order to be healed. The degree of intimacy determines the intensity of release. Without an understanding of the four R's and the five different levels of emotions, you might think you are going crazy; the more you love your partner, the more tension may seem to arise between you. But with dedication and commitment to growth, you will soon learn how much easier it is to tell the complete truth about your feelings and resolve the tension, rather than hiding the truth from yourself and those you love.
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When you are living alone in your own separate world, it is very easy to continue repressing your feelings. This is why some people avoid relationships. It would take them too much effort and energy to continue repressing their feelings around another person. These people can only stand relationships for a certain amount of time and then they leave, either physically or emotionally, by shutting down their feelings altogether. You know you are resisting dealing with some repressed feelings when you leave your partner and feel relief.
It's very easy to hide from your feelings when you live in your head and avoid relationships.
This is why so many people cry for space in relationships. They walk around with all of these repressed emotions, and are pretty successful at holding them down until they come home at the end of the day and see each other. As soon as they start to open up, all of the unexpressed feelings of the day begin to surface. Rather than deal with them, it is simpler to just stay shut down. The last thing I may want to think about after work is what a hard day I had, but if I don't let those feelings out in the presenceof my wifeand release all the anger, hurt and fear, I will end up repressing them, and repress a part of my love for her as well.
This is not to undermine the need to be alone at times. We all need time alone and time away from any relationship to stay in touch with who we are. The need for autonomy is equally important as the need to share but should not be used as an excuse to deny one's feelings.
It is very difficult to repress your feelings all day and then come home and be loving!
Bringing up past repressed feelings is useless without also learning to resolve the emotional problems of the present.
Healing The Past With Therapy
Many people choose to work on healing their repressed emotions through counseling or therapy. A lot of therapies attempt to deal only with old repressed traumas, and neglect teaching a person how to resolve the emotional problems of the present. You cannot resolve past traumas without also learning to resolve your emotions in present time. If you decide to work with a therapist, make sure he or she can guide you through all the levels of emotion down to the love. It also helps if your therapist isn't suppressing his emotions either, and can share and express his own feelings freely.
Telling the truth doesn't mean you should go around dumping your negative feelings.
What You Feel You Can Heal
By fully feeling your emotions and expressing the complete truth about them, you will be able to heal the unresolved emotional tension and be free to love more fully. Feeling your emotions and expressing them is the means to releasing them. However, this doesn't mean you should go out and 'dump'all your negativity on your loved ones. Going out and indiscriminately sharing all your feelings could ruin your relationships and create even more trauma for you to deal with.
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Sharing Feelings Is Not Easy
In the beginning, telling the complete truth might be difficult and even painful, especially when it would be so much easier to just take a nap or forget all about it. But in the long run, it is your only hope. Telling the complete truth means admitting doubt when you would rather pretend certainty, talking about your feelings when you would rather pout, asking for what you want when you'd rather pretend everything's fine, admitting you made a mistake when you would rather blame someone else, and sharing your hurt and sadness when you'd rather stop caring.
Many times it's easier to tell a "little white lie'' but in the long run telling the truth is your only hope.
Using Tact
There is an art to telling the truth which you will develop after lots of practice. It is called TACT.
Telling the Absolute Complete Truth
Whenever you use TACT, your ability to experience love will increase. By using TACT, you can express your feelings so they can be healed rather than become intensified. The expression of emotion with TACT will leave you feeling more loving, clear and alive.
In the following chapters you will learn to express the complete truth without making your relationships crazy.
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Chapter 7 What Makes Relationships So Crazy?
The information in this chapter contains one of the most important discoveries I have made about relationships and has already changed the lives of thousands of people we've taught. In the previous chapters, weVe seen how your own repressed feelings will affect your behavior. But there is one amazing phenomenon that we've overlooked. It's a phenomenon that I've observed in every family and every intimate relationship. It occurs in varying degrees according to how intimate you have become with another person.
I call this law of behavior the See-Saw Effect.
The See-Saw Effect explains why the more calm and detached a husband becomes, the more hysterical and panicky his wife gets. It explains why nice, even-tempered people may tend to attract partners who appear to have violent tempers. It explains why a strong, stable woman might start a relationship with a man and suddenly find herself feeling insecure and needy.
In short, the See-Saw Effect offers an understanding of the mechanics of human interaction that explains what makes relationships so crazy.
The See-Saw Effect explains why the more calm and detached a husband becomes, the more upset his wife becomes.
Your Emotional Connection
To begin, imagine two containers of liquid, like tanks standing upright, as in the illustration. Well connect the two tanks with a pipe or tube, so that if we wish, we can transfer liquid from one tank to another. In our analogy, those tanks represent two people in a relationship: Fred and Wilma, for instance. The liquid in the tanks represents our emotions. And the connecting tube represents that sensitivity to one another they feel as husband and wife.
You develop that connection with another person under certain circumstances — when you are family members, when you live together, when you are close business partners and, most importantly, when you have sex with someone. That emotional connection allows you to share in what the other person is feeling. It's responsible for your knowing your partner is angry at you, even if he or she denies it and for a child knowing his Mommy is mad, even though she tells him nothing is wrong.
The more connected you are to another person, the more you are able to share and experience their feelings.
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What You Suppress Your Partner Will Express
Now, let's look at how the energy flows between these two containers. Something happens to Wilma and she begins to experience the emotion of anger. Imagine anger as a liquid emotion beginning to rise up in her tank. But when Wilma was growing up, she was taught that nice girls don't get angry — men don't like angry women. Wilma can feel her hurt and sadness, but doesn't have permission to feel her anger. So, without even realizing it, Wilma automatically begins to push down her anger, to Repress it. A little voice inside of her says: "calm down, Wilma, there's nothing to get angry about."
As Wilma pushes and pushes her anger down, a ver>' strange thing happens — it goes over to the other side of the tank. All of a sudden, Fred starts to get irritable and angry. The more upset and angry he becomes, the more Wilma tries to calm him down. She tries to repress his angry feelings just as she has tried to repress hers. This continues until Fred just explodes. And Wilma will say to herself: "I just can't understand why he loses control like that. I guess men have hot tempers."
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When Wilma pushes down her anger, Fred feels it and becomes angry. What you suppress, your partner may express.
When we push down afeeiingyit comes up in our partner. This is what we call the See-Saw Effect.
The principle of the See-Saw Effect is:
What you suppress, your partner may express.
And of course, the reverse:
What your partner suppresses, you may express.
This principle really is the physics of relationships, explaining how your emotions affect your partner's and how your partner's emotions affect yours. In the case we just saw, Wilma was suppressing her anger and Fred began expressing it.
Here's how the See-Saw Effect works with another level of emotion — fear and insecurity. Fred starts to become afraid. Maybe he is working on a new book and is afraid it won't turn out the way he wants.
Trying to remain cool and collected by suppressing his own fears, Fred is unknowingly fueling the fires of Wilma's fear.
Maybe he is expanding his business and is afraid of the financial risks. But Fred was taught while growing up that as a man he should be strong and confident. Men don't get afraid — they just forge ahead. And they certainly don't ever show anyone they are afraid. So, what does Fred do with that emotion of fear? That's right, he suppresses it, unconsciously pushing it down in his tank.
The more Fred pushes down his fear, the more it goes over onto Wilma's side. All of a sudden, Wilma starts to feel insecure, fearful and panicky. She will probably start to express her fears and as Fred hears her express her fear, he will resist her even more and say: "Honey, there's nothing to worry about. Calm down." As Fred gets more and more detached and unfeeling, Wilma will feel her fears intensify until she becomes quite panicky and almost hysterical with worry. Fred suppresses his fears and Wilma expresses them.
This becomes a vicious circle, because the more afraid and nervous Wilma becomes, the more Fred tries to remain cool, calm and collected by suppressing his own fears. Fred is unknowingly fueling the fire of Wilma's hysteria by trying to remain in control.
Why Women May Seem Overemotional
I've seen this pattern happen over and over again with women who can't understand why they become so insecure and hysterical around the men they love and men who can't understand why otherwise logical and strong women seem to fall apart around them. The answer is the See-Saw Effect. The men are following their conditioning to not show feelings of fear and the women end up expressing all the men's suppressed fearful emotion. The extreme case of this is the controlling, even-tempered husband, never expressing any emotion that could be taken for weakness or self-doubt, driving the wife into overemotionalism and hysteria, then making the woman feel inferior and mentally ill by constantly pointing out how emotional she is becoming. Many women literally end up in mental institutions when this happens to them over a long period of time. And of course, there are cases of the reverse: women controlling themselves and the men exploding with feelings.
Even-tempered men can easily drive women into hysteria.
Why Women May Become "Needy"
Let's take one more example of the See-Saw Effect: the emotion of "need". Fred and Wilma fall in love and as they become closer, Fred starts to feel his need for Wilma. But that feeling frightens him, because if he needs her, he could lose her. So Fred pushes down his feelings of need, telling himself he doesn't want to get too close or committed. What happens to his need when he pushes it down? Right — it goes over to Wilma's side of the tank, adding to her own feelings of need and blowing them out of proportion. Wilma starts to feel what is commonly called "needy". She becomes very afraid of losing Fred and she feels desperate to get a commitment from him; she feels weak in his presence.
The more Fred suppresses his needs, the more needy Wilma feels. When Fred sees her feeling needy, he will naturally resist her. The more he resists his own needs being mirrored back to him, the stronger they will get in Wilma.
This phenomenon is very common in intimate relationships. Some men go from one woman to another, wondering why they all become so needy around them. What they don't realize is that each woman is reflecting the man's own needs back to him, needs he is afraid to look at and feel.
Some people go from one partner to another, wondering why they all become so ''needy" and insecure.
How The See-Saw Effect Blows Your Feelings Out Of Proportion
Does all this mean that every time you feel angry, it isn't really your anger — it's your husband's? Or, if you walk into work and yell at your secretary, it is really she who is angry? Not at all. Don't use this information to prove that you are right and someone else is wrong.
Let's look at the See-Saw Effect a little more closely. Wilma and Fred go to a restaurant and wait a half an hour to be served. Let's say they each feel a little annoyed and angry — 10% angry, for instance. But Fred's conditioning tells him it is not OK to be angry, especially about small things, so he pushes it down. The See-Saw Effect takes over, and now Wilma is feeling 20% angry and annoyed. Fred notices her feeling angry and tries to calm her down. The more he pushes down his feelings, the more her feelings will intensify. She was angr>' also — it's not all Fred's anger she is expressing, but now her anger and annoyance in the restaurant will be way out of proportion.
By being nice and suppressing your annoyance, your partner's annoyance will intensify.
Mirror, Mirror On The Wall
You may be starting to understand why you sometimes feel crazy in relationships. Have you ever noticed that you try to do everything to calm your partner down and he or she just gets more and more upset? That's because your partner is probably expressing an emotion that you are suppressing. People close to you will act like mirrors, reflecting back to you a perfect image of yourself, including the parts of yourself you would rather not look at or deal with. So, if you are suppressing your fears, your partner may continue to pester you with her fears and worries, as if to hold a mirror up to you and say: "Hey, take a look at some of the feelings you are pushing down."
So, something else important to realize is:
You will resist in your partner what you suppress in yourself.
If Fred is suppressing his anger, not wanting to deal with it, and it goes over into Wilma's tank, she will start to get angry. When he sees her anger, what is his natural reaction? He will try and suppress her anger also. Fred will resist seeing in Wilma what he is pushing down in himself. Trying to change your partner's emotions or talk them out of feeling a feeling is a sure sign that they are mirroring to you an emotion you don't want to feel in yourself.
If you are resisting your partner's emotions, it's probably because you are resisting those same emotions within yourself.
You will resist in your partner what you suppress in yourself.
When one parent suppresses negative emotions, the other may uncontrollably express those emotions.
The See-Saw Effect And Your Parents
Think back to your childhood. Did you have one parent who was the "good guy", the nice parent, the one w ho seemed to be the victim of the other, and one parent who was the "bad guy", the one who got angry, yelled, did the disciplining? Now that you understand the See-Saw Effect, think again — perhaps your nice parent was suppressing so much anger and resentment that the other parent had to constantly express it in order to try and dissolve some of the tension. When one parent pushes down negative emotions in himself or herself, the other parent will inevitably express those emotions.
Kids And The See-Saw Effect
The See-Saw Effect occurs quite dramatically in families with children. We can redefine the principle and say:
What you suppress, your children may express.
Many parents think they should hide their feelings from their children in order to protect or shelter them. I feel this couldn't be farther from the truth. Your children will pick up your feelings anyway, whether you choose to express them consciously or not, and the kids will only feel confused by the mixed messages and may even start feeling that they are responsible for making you unhappy.
What you suppress, your children may express.
If a parent is suppressing anger and hostility towards his spouse, for instance, the children will express it and act it out through angry, rebellious behavior and temper tantrums. If a parent is suppressing his sadness and hurt, the children will cry more. If a parent is pushing down his feelings of fear and insecurity, the children may whine and become more fearful.
This is why it's essential to work together as a family solving the family problems. There's no such thing as one person having a problem that is theirs alone when that person lives with others.
The Multiple Tank Effect
Let's take a look at what happens when there are more than just two people in a relationship. Fred is married to Wilma. What Fred doesn't know is that Wilma is having an affair with Barney. So now, we have three tanks connected. Barney is also married to Betty. So there are four tanks, four sets of emotions involved.
One day, Betty feels sad because she feels Barney pulling away, but she suppresses her feelings since she wants to be a good wife. What she suppresses, Barney starts to feel, but he is a man ( a cave man to boot!) so he suppresses his feelings too. What he suppresses, Wilma starts to feel. She adds her own suppressed sadness, pushes all of it down and it passes on to Fred. One morning, Fred wakes up feeling very sad and depressed, and he doesn't even know Betty, who started it all in the first place.
Multiple relationships can get extremely complicated. It's hard enough to balance the emotional energies between two people, let alone three or four. This is one of the problems with open relationships and affairs — they confuse the emotional balance between partners.
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When the emotional connection is broken, a relationship loses its liveliness and excitement.
Breaking The Connection
What happens when both people in a relationship suppress their feelings, when both sides of the tank are being pushed down? All the pressure goes into that connecting pipe, and it eventually bursts. This is what occurs in many relationships. Neither party tells the complete truth about their feelings; they push down their emotions, drift apart, and eventually break their emotional connection entirely. They have successfully repressed all feelings for one another.
This is what causes you to feel you have fallen out of love with someone, that you have lost your attraction — it's just that the connection is broken. Two people can live comfortably together, if they choose to, once they have broken the connection, because the source of tension will be gone. They will no longer be victims of the See-Saw Effect. But they have lost the love, the passion and the aliveness in the relationship. And more importantly, they have lost the opportunity to grow and learn from the mirror of their partner.
It is possible to mend those broken emotional pipes, but it takes a lot of work and diligent practice of the techniques in the next section of this book.
How To Recognize The See-Saw Effect
If you notice your partner, parent, child, etc. expressing some emotions — anger, fear, sadness, need — and you begin to feel annoyed, irritated or resistant to them, they are probably expressing some of what you are suppressing inside. Because you resist your emotions, you will resist your partner's similar emotions.
If you are resisting your partner's emotions, it's probably because you are resisting those same emotions within yourself.
On the other hand, if your partner expresses a feeling and you don't feel annoyed or irritated and can easily confort them, you are probably not suppressing any emotions, and they are simply expressing their own feelings.
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You can't avoid the See-Saw Effect but you can use it to grow and create more love in your life.
What You Can Do About The See-Saw
Effect
You can't get rid of the See-Saw Effect — it is a dynamic of human interaction which is a part of any relationship. You can prevent yourself and others from unnecessary anguish and hurt by doing the follow ing:
1. Start taking responsibility for your emotions — express them instead of suppressing them.
2. When someone close to you is expressing an emotion and you notice yourself resisting them, stop and ask yourself: Are they expressing something I am not willing to experience or look at in myself?
3. When you notice your feelings and your intimate partner's feelings are intensifying by the minute, don't go any further until you practice some of the techniques in the next chapter.
Chapter 8 The Heart Techniques
The techniques in the following section of this book have assisted thousands of people in learning to dissolve their emotional tensions and resolve the inevitable conflicts of relationships. If if weren't for these techniques, thousands of couples I have worked with wouldn't be loving and cooperating — not because they don't love each other, but because the tensions and conflicts of being in an intimate relationship or of ending an intimate relationship would be too much to handle. Understanding why you are fighting (the See Saw Effect and the Four R's) is great, but it is not enough. Knowing what to do about it and how to resolve the tension and come back to loving is what will really enrich your relationships and keep them working.
I suggest you practice everything described in this chapter on a daily basis. You may ask, "Why do I need to use these techniques if I don't feel I have big problems?" The answer is that by using these techniques, the little, every day tensions won't build up and develop into major problems. The moment you notice tension or resistence building in your relationships, or any lessening of feeling fully connected, these techniques and skills can be used in order to prevent the emotional separation from expanding and coming between you and your loved ones. Taking care of your relationships consistently will keep them healthy, and support you in staying in touch with your inner positive feelings — love, confidence and happiness.
TTie moment you feel slight resistance to the other person, this is the time to put the problem aside and practice one of the following Heart Techniques:
1. The Duplication Technique
2. The Anger Process
3. The Love Letter Technique
The Duplication Technique
The first technique to begin practicing in your relationships is called "Duplication." This technique is based on the principle that:
Duplication dissolves tension and creates connection.
Duplication is not really foreign to you. It is one of the basic ways you learned many skills while growing up. Remember learning to ride a bike? If your father had given you instructions, or shown you a a book about bike riding, you probably would have been too scared to learn. Instead, he got on the bike and showed you how to ride. Part of your learning process was duplicating him, doing just what he did. You learned how to speak through duplicating your parents. Your mother said, "Say 'mama,'" and eventually you duplicated her voice and said "mama". In response to your attempt, you felt closer to her and felt more of her love and acceptance of you.
Whenever another person duplicates how you are feeling, you will feel relieved. This one principle is probably responsible for the success of all soap operas and horror films. If you are feeling sad and depressed and you watch someone on TV feeling sad and depressed, you will actually experience feeling better. They duplicate your sadness, and that helps dissolve the emotional tension. Horror films are popular because you watch other people being scared out of their minds, and in a sense, they are duplicating your own fears of pain, death and the unknown.
How Duplication Works
You can use the Duplication Technique in relationships to dissolve the emotional tension between yourself and a partner/ child/ parent/ friend, etc. Simply, when you notice the tension building up between you, you each take turns duplicating how the other person is feeling. Just having someone outside of yourself express your own feelings, creates a release and allows you to go to deeper levels of acceptance and clarity.
Here's how Duplication works:
Fred and Wilma are discussing a new project. They are building a new art gallery in Los Angeles, and have hired a contractor who is giving them a lot of trouble and is behind schedule. Both Fred and Wilma are worried about the project not being completed on time.
Fred, however, is suppressing some of his anxiety and fear, taking the role of the strong male, and Wilma is expressing her own worries and feeling his as well. It's the See Saw Effect. But, none of this matters, because...
// 5 a waste of time to try and figure out who started an argument or who is suppressing and who is expressing. All that is important is to dissolve the emotional tension and reconnect through duplication.
Here is Fred and Wilma's conversation, leading into an argument: Wilma: Honey, I just talked to the contractor, and he said he still doesn't have the carpeting in. Not only that, he doesn't even know where the lights are. Fred: What do you mean, he doesn't know where the lights are? Wilma: They haven't even arrived. They are on some truck somewhere, and it's been two weeks since they left the factory. I am really starting to get worried. Fred: Look, don't worry about it, O.K.? Wilma: Well, I am worried. What if the lights don't come in time? What if we have our open house and it looks awful? Fred: Stop panicking! It will all work out. Worrying won't do anything (getting annoyed). Wilma: Maybe we just went in over our heads. Maybe we can't take all this new responsibility — it's so much work. Why can't you see how I feel? Fred: I'm taking care of everything. It's been my project all along, so just trust me and shut up. Wilma: I do trust you, but... Fred: You don't trust me. You just keep nagging about the stupid lights. Let's forget it. Wilma: I can't forget it and stop shouting at me. Fred: You know what your problem is? You can't trust me. You are just messed up. (Fred has blown a fuse himself) Fred and Wilma are now off and running with a full blown fight. If they continue to argue, they will both blow up, or repress the whole issue and create deep resentment between them. The solution is for them to stop verbally fighting, and practice the Duplication Technique to dissolve the emotional tension.
The Duplication Technique allows you to feel and to release your resistence. In the beginning, it may be uncomfortable to duplicate your
partner and you may not want to practice Duplication, since it is their feelings that you are resisting.
By going ahead and practicing Duplication, you will burn through your resistence and, as a result, feel closer to your partner and also assist them in feeling better.
So, remember, the more you resist doing the technique, the more you need to practice it and the better you will feel afterwards.
How to Practice Duplication
Part A. Giving Lines
1. Whenever you notice you are beginning to resist your partner (child, roommate, etc.), you ask the other person for permission to practice Duplication.
2. One person goes first. If it is you, for instance, you ask your partner to express his or her feelings to you one line at a time, and you repeat back to them exactly what they say. Act as if you are the other person. Don't imitate or make fun of what they say, just play their role.
3. The person giving the lines should try and express the complete truth about how they are feeling as discussed in previous chapters (starting with anger and moving through hurt, fear, guilt and love). In many cases though, it is enough to express a few of your emotions and then some positive feelings.
4. As you listen to your partner's lines and repeat them back, you will start getting a clear idea of just how they must feel, and you will be able to add your own lines which appropriately express how they are feeling. At this point your partner will begin to feel relieved, and see that you actually do understand how they are feeling.
Part B: Owning Your Partner's Feelings
1 . When your partner finishes, then you duplicate their feelings and viewpoint without being given lines. You don't have to agree with their point of view to understand it or to feel what they are feeling. Imagine that you have become them and temporarily "own" their feelings and thoughts. Express back to them all their feelings, get into it and you will find yourself supporting them and even adding new complaints. Sometimes you may still need a little prompting.
This is O.K. but your intention in Step B is to duplicate without "lines." 2. In the beginning, you will probably feel a resistance to repeating the lines back to your partner. Just continue, and as you connect more with your partners feelings through duplicating them out loud, the tension will dissove, and it will feel easier and easier to say what they are feeling.
Note: If after 3 or 4 minutes it doesn't become easier to repeat your partner's feelings, to mirror them back, and you start feeling very upset and angry, your conflict has developed beyond the point of surface tension, and duplication will not work. In this case, you need to use the Love Letter technique described later in this chapter.
Part C. Switching
When one person is finished duplicating their partner's feelings, the couple should switch, and the one who repeated the lines now gets a turn to give lines expressing his feelings to the other person for them to repeat back.
A Sample of Duplication
Part A: Giving Lines
Wilma gives Fred lines expressing how she feels, and he duplicates each one back to her, without any wise cracks, comments, explanations, or defense statements. Fred will probably feel like making comments but must not, otherwise the technique doesn't work. H« will have his turn later.
Note: Wilma may have a lot of emotion in her voice when she gives Fred her lines, but he may repeat them back without much feeling, especially at first. That's fine — as he continues to repeat back how she is feeling, as if he is Wilma, he will begin to get in touch with his own feelings and will become more animated.
Here's an example: Wilma: I am just fed up with that contractor.
Fred: (Duplicating her lines) I am just fed up with that contractor. Wilma: What a jerk! Now he says he even lost our lighting system. Fred: What a jerk! Now he says he even lost our lighting system. Wilma: What if they never arrive? What if our open house comes and we have no lights? Fred: What if they never arrive? What if our open house comes and we have no lights? Wilma: I am really worried. Maybe we got in over our heads. Fred: I am really worried. Maybe we got in over our heads. Wilma: And I feel really hurt that you don't understand how worried I am. Fred: And I feel really hurt that you don't understand how worried I am. Wilma: You always act so cool and calm and let me worry about things. You make me feel foolish. Fred: You always act so cool and calm and let me worry about things. You make me feel foolish. Wilma: Well, I am scared that we will just fail. Fred: Well, I am scared that we will just fail. I am scared that the place will look awful. (Fred is starting to add some of his own lines now, as he sees how Wilma feels and is starting to get in touch with his own feelings). Wilma: Yeah, me too, I'm scared the place will look awful. Now I'd like you to duplicate me without lines.
Part B: Owning Your Partner's Feelings
When Wilma asks Fred to duplicate without hnes, she may already be feeling much better or maybe not; it doesn't matter — Part B will take care of that. However, Fred may start getting upset but before he has his turn to express his feelings he must "own" and duplicate Wilma's feelings for a least a minute or two. Here's an example of Fred acting as if he is Wilma:
Fred: "I'm so worried about the gallery being ready on time. What if we don't get the lights installed before the opening? It would be a disaster. I hate that irresponsible contractor. And I hate you for acting so cool and detached like nothing is wrong. I resent you looking at me like I'm over-emotional. You look like Robot-man. You make me feel foolish. It hurts my feelings when you act so indifferent to my feelings. I want you to care about my feelings. I want you to comfort me and express your feelings too. I love you so much; you are so wonderful."
At this point, Wilma will feel much better because her feelings are being shared by Fred. Fred will feel at least less resistant because he has at least accepted, heard and felt Wilma's feelings. Duplicating Wilma's feelings will have probably stirred up some feelings in Fred and he will now need Wilma to duplicate him. (However, this is not always the case; both Wilma and Fred may already be feeling resolved and they won't need to switch).
Part C: Switching
This step is optional. If Fred feels any roughness or tension, then he will need to have Wilma duplicate him. They then begin the process all over again doing both Part A and Part B. Here's an example of Fred and Wilma switching;
Part A
Fred: I hate you for always panicking. Wilma: I hate you for always panicking.
Fred: I already knew the lights were late. Wilma: I already knew the lights were late.
Fred: I hate when you don't trust me. Wilma: I hate when you don't trust me.
Fred: When you panic, it makes me feel really upset. Why do you have to panic? Wilma: When you panic, it makes me feel really upset. Why do you have to panic?
Fred: I feel attacked by you. Wilma: I feel attacked by you.
Fred: I feel you don't believe in me. Wilma: I feel you don't believe in me.
Fred: It hurts me to see you so upset. Wilma: It hurts me to see you so upset.
Fred: I want you to trust me. Wilma: I want you to trust me.
Fred: I want you to believe in me. Wilma: I want you to believe in me.
Fred: I want you to think I am great. Wilma: I want you to think I am great.
Fred: I want you to feel happy and safe. Wilma: I want you to feel happy and safe.
Fred: It upsets me when you get upset. Wilma: It upsets me when you get upset.
Fred: I love you so much. I think you are wonderful. I can also understand your feelings. I'm a little nervous too. Wilma: I love you so much. I think you are wonderful. I can also understand your feelings. I'm a little nervous too.
Here's an example of Wilma as she owns Fred's feelings and gives them back without "lines." Wilma pretends that she is Fred and expresses his feelings. Part B
Wilma: Why do you have to panic about everything? You're never happy. You always worry. Don't you trust me? Just relax, will you; everything will turn out OK. I hate it when 1 work hard and you don't believe in me. It really hurts. It makes me sad when you don't trust me. Sometimes you are such a nag. I want you to love and support me and not criticize me. I want you to love me, I deserve it. I'm wonderful and you're wonderful too! One of the greatest values of the Duplication Technique is that it offers you an opportunity to verbally express your feelings without the other person constantly making comments and resisting what you are saying. If I start out expressing my feelings to my partner, she will naturally feel compelled to interrupt me and disagree and this interferes with my process of working through those five levels of emotions.
Here is another example of Duplication:
The Incident:
One day Fred calls up Wilma's mother to ask a question and forgets who he is calling for a moment, so that when Wilma's mother answers the phone, he doesn't remember her name. They talk for a few minutes and then he gets off the phone. Wilma notices herself feeling really annoyed with Fred. Here is how their fight would normally unfold: Wilma: Fred, I thought you were really rude to my mother.
Fred: Rude? I wasn't rude. Wilma: You were rude; you forgot her name. How could you forget my mother's name? She must have felt awful. Fred: Don't make such a big deal about it. I can't always remember everyone's name. Wilma: My mother is not "everyone". Sometimes I think you don't have any brains. Fred: Look, I didn't want to call her in the first place; it was your idea. I'm never calling her again. Wilma: Don't threaten me. Stop acting like a baby. Fred: You are so critical. You make me sick..,
STOP!!!!
Without Duplication, this discussion will quickly escalate into name calling, door slamming and separation. If you read back over the dialogue, you will see that in Wilma's second sentence, she is starting to get in touch with her hurt feelings for her mother, but Fred interrupts the natural process and expresses his anger, thus stimulating more anger in Wilma. Fred and Wilma will stay stuck in anger until they get too tired to fight anymore or just suppress the whole thing. Watch how Duplication helps:
Wilma: I am really irritated at you about that phone call. I want you to duplicate me. Fred: OK. Wilma: What are you, some kind of dumbbell, forgetting my mother's name? Fred: What are you, some kind of dumbbell, forgetting my mother's name? Wilma: How could you be so rude to my mother? Fred: How could you be so rude to my mother? Wilma: I feel so hurt for her; she must feel awful. Fred: I feel so hurt for her; she must feel awful. Wilma: Yeah, her son-in-law calls and doesn't even know her name. Fred: (Starting to connect with Wilma's feelings) Yeah, her son-in-law calls and acts like a jerk, doesn't even remember her name. Wilma: My mother loves you so much and she must feel awful and rejected. Fred: My mother loves you so much and she must feel awful and rejected. Wilma: I want you to love my mother; I want you to care about my family. Fred: I want you to love my mother; I want you to care about my family and show that you care about me too. Wilma: That's right, I want you to love me more too.
At this point, both Wilma and Fred see that what was really upsetting her was not that she thought that she had a stupid husband, but that she felt hurt that he didn't care about her family. Fred can now understand her feelings and remedy the situation. And naturally, as Fred duplicates Wilma saying he is stupid for forgetting her mother's name, he is expressing his own feelings that perhaps his pride wouldn't
allow him to express before. What could have turned into a big argument becomes an opportunity to feel closer with one another. Fred then completes the process by doing Part B (duplicating without lines).
Here's an example of Fred owning Wilma's feelings:
Fred: What kind of an idiot are you anyway? Don't you have any brains? You make me sick. You are so self-centered. How could you forget my mother's name. That really hurts. I bet it really hurt her too. How would you feel? Sometimes you are so insensitive. I hate your petty excuses. I wish you would care more about people and not get so spaced out. I feel sad that you forgot my mother's name. She must have felt awful. I want you to love my mother and my family. I want you to really care. I want you to show how much you really care. I love you so much and I forgive you... but don't do it again.
In this example Fred has actually expressed more anger at himself than Wilma did. This will not only make Fred feel better but allow Wilma to more fully forgive and love him again.
What To Do When You Don't Know What You Are Feeling
If you are experiencing tension between you and your partner and want to express your feelings with Duplication but aren't sure what those feelings are, try using "lead-in phrases." One good lead-in phrase is: "Right now I am feeling ..." and just fill in the blank without editing what comes up. By repeating this over and over and simply completing the sentence, you will move through your block and your feelings will begin to flow again.
Example: I am feeling irritated with my partner and I want to practice the Duplication Technique but I am not sure how to express what I am feeling to him. Instead of just saying: "I don't know how I feel," which is sure to frustrate him, I say:
Right now I am feeling. .. stuck.
Right now I am feeling. .. frustrated.
Right now I am feeling. .. like I just want to hide.
Right now I am feeling. .. like you don't care.
Right now I am feeling. .. hurt that you didn't like the speech I wrote.
Sometimes you act like you take me for granted. It makes me feel awful." etc.
As I went through the exercise, I began to get in touch with my real feelings. If I get stuck again, I will repeat the lead-in phrase and practice "sentence completion" until the feelings start flowing freely again. When you use this technique to get unstuck, make sure your partner duplicates each line you say.
How To Use Duplication With Family, Friends, And In Business
The Duplication Technique works well in any kind of relationship — parent/child, brother/sister, employer/employee, between friends or roommates. If you are single, for instance, and you are feeling irritated at someone in your life who is not around to practice these techniques with, you just ask a friend to practice Duplication with you.
Example: Wilma is really furious at her boss. He kept her late at work again last night and the next day he doesn't even thank her. She comes home from work and stomps around the apartment, feeling miserable. Wilma has two choices: she can hold onto that tension and anger or she can ask a roommate or friend to practice Duplication.
Wilma will pretend she is talking to her boss, and one line at a time will express all of her feelings while her friend duplicates back each line.
Wilma Friend Wilma Friend Wilma Friend Wilma
Mr. Simpson, you are a total jerk. Mr. Simpson, you are a total jerk.
You have no respect for me at all and I am fed up with it. You have no respect for me at all and I am fed up with it. I feel awful when you treat me like a piece of furniture. I feel awful when you treat me like a piece of furniture. I guess I am really hurt that you don't show more interest in me and appreciate me more, etc.
Wilma accomplishes several things by practicing Duplication. First, she releases some of the physical and emotional tension by expressing her feelings rather than keeping them suppressed inside. Second, by expressing her feelings in this way, she was able to work down through to what was really bothering her — that she wasn't feeling appreciated — rather than staying stuck in feelings of anger and
blame. And third, Wilma avoided building up her stockpile of anger and resentment and then dumping it inappropriately on some innocent bystander.
More Examples
You can even use the Duplication Technique with someone who doesn't know you are practicing it at the time. A very well known TV Director named Bill attended one of my HEART seminars and learned all of the techniques in this chapter. A few days later, he was on the set and became very angry with a crew member. Without thinking, he yelled at the crew member in front of the whole cast, humiliating the man and creating a tremendous amount of tension on the set. The next day when Bill came into work, the crew member was furious at him and the entire cast was irritable and nervous.
Bill decided to try out the Duplication Technique. He called the crew member over and in private began duplicating his feelings. "You know," Bill said, "when I yelled at you yesterday in front of everyone, I bet you probably felt like saying to me: "How dare you yell at me in front of the whole cast. Don't you have any sense of respect for my position here? Who are you anyway to make a scene Mr. Big Shot Director." The crew member looked astonished that Bill was expressing all of his resentment and began to smile. Bill continued: "And you know, if I were you, I'd probably feel really hurt that the director didn't seem to care about my feelings and I would be afraid our relationship was ruined forever." The crew member nodded enthusiastically and answered: "Yes, that's exactly how I felt.""Well, I'm sorry," Bill apologized, "I just wasn't thinking. I really understand how bad it made you feel." "I believe you really do understand," the crew member answered and the two shook hands.
When Bill told us that story, he said that after he practiced Duplication with the crew member, the change on the set was remarkable — people were laughing, the cast got along beautifully and they finished their work early that day. No one even knew what Bill had done, but they could all feel the release of tension. If Bill had just said: "I'm sorry," and the crew member would have answered: "that's OK," things would have been fine but only on the surface. By practicing Duplication, Bill allowed the emotional release to come from a deeper level and showed
the crew member that his feelings were really understood.
Sally used Duplication with her six year old son, Brian. Brian was supposed to go to a friend's house for the weekend, but something came up and Sally couldn't drive him there. Brian stormed around the house and started fighting with his little sister. Sally decided to practice Duplication on Brian. So she decided to duplicate how she thought he must feel. "You know, Brian, if I were you I would be thinking: 'Boy, Mom is just so mean. I hate her. She is the worst mom in the world. She promises to do something with me, and she goes back on it. This is the worst weekend of my life. I never have any fun." As Sally expressed what she thought her son was feeling inside, Brian started to cry and began to release and experience his own emotion. His mother expressed all of his suppressed feelings and he felt a relief.
Duplication is not simply a fancy technique for understanding the other person's point of view, but is an opportunity to resolve stored up emotional tension, to tell the complete truth and to connect yourself with another person on a deep emotional level. We all need to feel that someone else really understands how we are feeling. Duplication fulfills this natural human need and allows you to resolve the inner emotional tension and release undesirable emotions like frustration, anxiety and depression.