The originators of humanistic Western psychology - Freud, Jung, and their followers who started numerous schools of psychology, all understood that trauma resulted when painful feelings were prevented from completing their natural cycle of building and dissipating, but instead were forced into the "subconscious" by involuntary, unconscious shutting down, perhaps followed by dissociation of consciousness in severe cases. These different schools may have advocated different methods of clearing the subconscious, but they all were based on the need to go to the trapped feelings and "re-experience" them in order to release the trauma. "Re-experiencing" was understood to be the basic means to resolve the feelings. No magic bullet had been discovered that could by-pass the need to experience fully the original feelings which had not been adequately experienced when they had first occurred, and so had become trapped, resulting in what has become known as "trauma" or in modern terms, PTSD.
The more sophisticated Eastern mystical schools also acknowledged the existence of and need to release the trapped subconscious. They also recognized how these trapped feelings served on a psychic level to attract corresponding negative experiences into our lives. They referred to this as Karma. In the yoga basics that I learned when I was starting out, we were taught to use meditation as a means to clear the subconscious. When you sit in meditation, trapped, suppressed, traumatic feelings will jump up to be released. In order to be successful at this, the correct stance must be adopted, which is what the Emotional Clearing book is all about. If you don't understand these fine points of how to align your inner self when you approach negative feelings, you are likely to just spin your wheels, stewing in negativity instead of releasing it. The 5 steps are summarized on the home page of the emclear site and discussed in detail in the EC book and in my new book, DEEP CLEARING, which will be released this year.
Then, we have the New Age and modern psychology. While there are good things taught here, it's unfortunate, and even tragic, that the importance of authentic work on yourself has been minimized and distorted. It has become just change your thinking, your beliefs, reprogram yourself, see things differently (Cognitive Psychology), and you'll be fine. The existence of the subconscious has been minimized, or blithely assumed to be reprogrammable. People who have no experience with inner work are taken in by this bs, and are led down a path to obliviousness. This is all part of the undermining of authentic mystical/psychological traditions by an increasingly materialistic, left-brain, scientific culture.
The important thing to get is that the subconscious cannot be reconditioned - that's just its nature; your thoughts and beliefs are the result of trapped subconscious feeling energy - not the other way around; trying to change or reprogram thoughts and beliefs with an effort of the mind is totally misguided, impossible, and will get you nowhere except frustrated.
But maybe the most compelling advice I can offer you is just to note that I have been in private counseling practice now for over 20 years, and I have consistently seen that this approach works and does not result in "re-traumatizing." My conscience would not allow me to advocate any method of inner work in which I do not have complete confidence.
Here's an excerpt from the new DEEP CLEARING book, which describes the same process as in the EC book, restating it in terms that may be more appropriate for a contemporary audience:
you can’t hurt yourself
"You may question if it can be harmful to keep negative feelings in awareness as they are being processed. Don’t we become or attract to ourselves what we think, and so shouldn’t we be trying to get rid of negative feelings and think positively? Doesn’t accepting and focusing on them make them worse?
First, it must be understood that negative feelings represent toxic energies already trapped in the subconscious body-mind, already influencing you. They are attracting negative conditions to you right now, whether you are “thinking” about them or not. Just bringing them into conscious awareness does not increase their power. On the contrary, bringing the feelings into conscious awareness is the beginning of deflating their power and releasing them so they no longer influence you.
Second, we bring feelings into awareness within a well-defined, psychotherapeutic format, for a limited period of time, as we work on them. This is not the same as wallowing in the feeling or letting it overpower you – it is the opposite. Wallowing and being overpowered are where we normally are. When you bring full attention to the feeling, especially when you detach from and witness the feeling, you start to reverse this.
Third, humanistic psychology has always been founded on the general principle of getting in touch with feelings and thereby resolving them – not denying, turning away from or dismissing them. You now have a unique formula to successfully accomplish this complex task.
As we will discuss in more detail later, any healing method based on getting rid of the negative instead of integrating it, by trying to substitute good for bad, positive for negative, or through “expression” is an unenlightened approach, destined to fail."
Since this is an important topic, I will respond to any other comments posted here, and I encourage readers to make a contribution.
