PsychotherapyHELP

WHY DEEP FEELING THERAPY?

by Paul J. Hannig, Ph.D. MFCC

It is the purpose of human beings to open up to the full universe and that can be accomplished through deep feelings. The full, deep feeling primal experience is the vehicle to full and infinite consciousness. One is only limited by their own limited, repressed thinking and feeling capacity. When the thinking, feeling part of a person is shut down or closed off by the trauma of civilizing and socializing process, infinity is lost and body ego boundaries are constructed.

When these ego boundaries are traumatized or over-socialized, a person experiences hurt and pain. When that pain is great, it gets shut down and repressed. The deep feeling capacity dies and is replaced by denial creating defenses such as complaining, whining, blaming and projection. The real human being inside starts to die through the construction and shutting down of his feeling capacity. He no longer is capable of feeling all that there is to feel ... an infinite universe of feeling. He shuts off his capacity to receive knowledge, wisdom and information from his internal, uninhibited infinite universe.

In short, he becomes sick, ill, psychologically, emotionally, socially and intellectually impaired. In the past, we called this neurotic. I'm sure in certain quarters this term still is used. In a politically correct era, we use terms such as "dysfunctional, disordered", etc. The terms "psychotic, schizophrenic" still remains in our nomenclature, while "manic depression" is being replaced by "Bi-Polar". The point is that due to early emotional shut downs we lose our capacity to cry, scream, weep and express. But we also lose our capacity to get in touch with, connect, and gain access to our infinite universe of feeling consciousness.

All of our modern therapies are limited in scope, depth, and breadth. Our founding fathers in the healing arts have made great contributions, but they were limited by their own conceptions about where these feelings could eventually take them. They did not know how far their discoveries could eventually reach. For example, Arthur Janov rediscovered and expanded upon Freud's early use of the emotional cathartic, abreactive method. Reich, Lowen and other body workers brought the body, plus the psyche, into the realm of opening up the barriers to infinite awareness. These discoveries occurred within the confines of psychiatry, psychology, and mental health. Such pioneers had stumbled onto methods that could cure real human problems that were labeled copiously in diagnostic manuals and thousands of volumes of journals, articles and books.

I became very aware that a deep feeling method could take me to realms of consciousness that I never originally could dream of. I was not interested in curing my neurosis. I was interested in my feelings. I wanted my buried feelings back. I also wanted a method that could cure and alleviate a lot of the human suffering that I had encountered as a therapist and human being.

Early on, I began to experience feelings that were not registered in the literature of the time. My pain with my parents and my childhood and my birth soon gave way to much more profound and enlightening experiences beyond my own limited life boundaries. I started to go deeper, higher and farther out than the limited feelings of my childhood and present life. I found that my feelings could solve just about every current problem that I have ever had. I began to trust my feelings completely and totally. They never failed me and took me to places that could be termed transcendent, transpersonal and mystical. I now know that feelings have no boundaries and that only a limited, frightened mind could hinder and inhibit one from feeling the infinity of feelings.

Therapy without feelings is finite. Feelings are infinite and go way beyond what we, in our limited thinking, consider to be therapeutic. Feelings are far beyond thinking and tap into and expose oneself to an infinite universe. It is my job as a therapist to take the emotional shades off of a person and expose them to an internal and external infinite universe. This is a universe without boundaries, or limits and where anything is possible.

I suspect that this infinite awareness has always been with me, but it has taken years to peel away the layers of defenses and consciousness in order to arrive at a boundless conclusion. Thousands and thousands of feeling expressions and catharsis have slowly, systematically and carefully, exposed me to what was there all along, buried in life's problems. So when I hear a client in a non-feeling state, complaining and whining about someone or something I know that s/he has a long way to go before the awareness of infinite happiness and joy  in an infinite universe is apparent. The body contains, limits, and houses our hurts and defenses. But our feeling consciousness can take us back and forward in time, down in mood spaces, or up in bliss states.

Our feelings are the vehicles that propel us out of the limitations of our flesh and ego. Feelings are the fuel, the energetic propulsion apparatus that shoots and blows us out of where we are and takes us to where we can and need to be. From a depressed down state to an ecstatic up state is accomplished by one big emotional, cathartic, primal blow out. Feelings are the fuel, the ammunition and the propellant that takes you from one place to another. Stand or lie in one place, and your screams will take you to another. Such is the power of the deep feeling experience.

The term neurosis really means "limiting, holding in, holding back, remaining static, stuck, immovable, blocked, immotional". Deep Feeling Therapy shows you that there are infinite possibilities. So hang on for the ride of your life. If you can't take the excitement, then feeling therapy may not be for you...