Emotional Energy Summoned For Self Preservation. Question 1 Which is worse too much anger, or too little? Question 2 – Which is the more effective way to stop a pot from boiling over – to lift off the lid or screw it on tighter, or take the pot off the stove? Question 3 – Is anger in itself bad, good or merely neutral energy? Question 4 – Why does the proud heart manifest more from anger than the humble?

Depression, the ‘common cold’ of Western mental illness, is also known as melancholia and unipolar affective (mood) disorder. It includes a variety of flat emotional conditions, but is usually characterised by profound and terrible feelings of powerlessness, emptiness, deadness, fear, lethargy, greyness a carelessness about everything an absence of en theos for life.  Left to become more severe, such emotional pain is engendered that suicide may be seen as the only way to ‘cope’ with its unceasing pain. Everything is an effort; one delays going to bed, then awakens early, or hides in sleep, and there is a loss of interest or energy for anyone or anything. The weather is permanently bleak, and one runs on willpower, if at all. While medication and electroconvulsive therapy will often bring temporary relief in cases where eating has stopped and life is at risk, it is usually not with the organics that the cause lies, nor therefore the solution.

Gaining the courage to call your attitude a ‘leftover’. The default mood may be thought of as the mind’s favourite recipe when it doesn’t know what other mood to make. (It is your ‘screensaver’ mood). This habitulised feeling is a long out of date mood, feeling or emotion that the brain has learnt to readily produce over many years, whether or not it is still appropriate to the situation. For example, some people have learnt in childhood to feel a sense of despair or hopelessness, and now as adults, repeatedly slip into a ‘what’s the use’ mood – no matter what their circumstances or how much cause for hope there really is.

Breaking free from an addiction is all about increasing one’s motivation, and learning how to overcome a deep and abiding ambivalence (doublemindedness). It’s about repersuasion of the deep ‘idiot-mind’ to the point of becoming completely and utterly convinced that life is better without, than with, and almost everybody is in need of some ‘repersuasion’ somewhere in their lives. (Client centered, nondirective counselling has little to offer the addict, who is already trapped within their ‘inner wisdom’.)

A woman’s responsiveness to a man can be a liability, as well as an asset to her femininity. Consequently, her level of libido often reflects what her husband thinks of her and how he treats her, (or else what a man once did to her in earlier years -see notes on ‘Echoes’). However, her frigidity is never simply ‘her’ problem, it heals much faster when it becomes ‘our’ problem. Is she indulging her husband’s adolescent attitudes / demands through learned or ‘Christian’ passivity / submission? ………..

The Only Way to Maintain Love & Mutual Respect. A relationship can never become better than the balance of power that it is born out of, so the ingredients of such a balance of power must be teased out, before negotiation skills can be factored in. Good agreement skills will always produce a balance of power, rather than a ‘bully-victim’ type relationship or a constant power struggle. The way to a win-win agreement often involves balancing expectations, compromise and patience.

There is hardly a day that goes past where I don’t hear someone saying that they can’t cope or they can’t be bothered or that it is all too hard. Not just about parenting but in other areas of life.

If you believe the ‘lie’ that it is all too hard then you are probably going to ‘feel’ consistently overwhelmed and not stop to look at the evidence that you are probably coping far better than you believe. Maybe you are believing your feelings too much. As Jordan Peterson says, “Life it tough, it can be brutal – but you are tougher!” That is resilience.