One of the working assumptions that we operate under at Group Works is that babies are born expecting that the world they're born into will be a harmonious and loving place and that the humans around them will cherish them, value them, and respect them as the only way to treat another human being.
Sadly, this is often not the situation we find when we arrive here. We humans are launched rather into a world cluttered with ignorance, problems, and stress which tends to distort the faces, voices
and actions of the people who care for us. Most of us come into the world experiencing varying degrees of neglect or abuse at the hands of people whose behavior is often unconscious, unthinking
or uncaring.
The Natural
Healing Process
The irony of the difficulties we face as we enter this world is that nature has equipped each of us beautifully to heal from all that may befall us. As human beings, we uniquely possess the capacity to heal ourselves using our ability to laugh, cry, sweat, shake and tantrum. This capacity has been described as "the crowning glory of the magnificence and complexity of human beings." There is really no mystery or secret about our healing mechanisms, but they have been largely misunderstood, and therefore either suppressed or overlooked.
The ability to express one's self emotionally has been both a blessing and a curse for humans. The
blessing is that if allowed to fully feel express what we feel, we can heal ourselves from whatever hurt arises in our lives. The curse is that the (often well-meaning) adults in our lives, have unwittingly
confused this natural healing process with the wound itself, and therefore suppress or stop the expressions of emotions, believing, fallaciously, that if they can stop the child from crying, they stop
them from hurting. This is the great misunderstanding. By the time the child is crying, the hurt has already occurred. The crying is the attempt to heal the hurt.
Adults often try to stop children from crying because of the belief that it does no good, that it is
indulgent or unnecessary. Some think crying leads to weakness, especially in boys. Because of these beliefs, adults will soothe, cajole, medicate, or intimidate children to stop. Adults stop children
from crying with messages like, "Don't be a baby,' or, "Come on, it's nothing to cry about." They say to the child in a belittling tone of voice, "Oh, you're getting tired, aren't you?" or humiliate them by
imitating the crying. If other efforts to get the child to stop crying don't work, adults can resort to threats and violence as in, 'I'll really give you something to cry about!" Adults tend to find it difficult
to hear children cry, because it reminds them of their own childhood pain and unshed tears.
Children know intuitively that they need to cry when they're upset. Young children in particular
will try over and over again to heal their hurts, and will try to get someone, usually an adult, to pay attention to them while they do it. Unfortunately, as children get older, and their attempts to have
their feelings are consistently ignored or interfered with, they gradually give up trying.
The confusion and misunderstanding about the value of releasing feelings is critical to
understanding the problems of parenting in our society. Group Works' parent support groups offer parents a way that they can be with their children when they are upset, crying or having a tantrum
that is loving, supportive and healing.
Emotional
Release for Adults
It is becoming better known that accessing and expressing feelings is an important function for human beings, though it is less well-known or accepted that the actual physical release of
emotion--crying or sobbing, trembling and sweating, laughing, or expressing anger appropriately--can actually have the affect of:
- increasing intelligence by increasing one's ability to think more clearly and
- decreasing the power of past experiences on one's responses.
The process of emotional release has been shown to increase one's ability to think clearly by helping to clarify what our emotions are asking us to look at, what they are telling us about how we
are relating to our life situations. Emotional release can help reveal on more than simply an intellectual level, how the all wounds we have all experienced effect our lives, and how today, in certain
situations, when those old wounds get triggered, we find ourselves reacting in ways that are sometimes irrational or not in our best interest.
Systematic and conscious use of the tool of emotional release allows human beings to become more flexible and less reactive in dealing with their lives moment to moment. Many people feel
discomfort and even fear at the thought of seeking systematic emotional release as a way to achieve better mental and physical functioning. They have developed strong controls over their emotions and
find it difficult to let go.
People resist emotional release for many reasons, some of which make perfect sense. Yet such
release is a natural, physiological means for undoing the tensions of distressful experiences. When this release is facilitated by the attention of a supportive listener or therapist, mental acuity is
heightened and recovery is accelerated.
The key to taking advantage of this natural therapeutic tool is to be able to choose your
moments of emotional release so that they work to your benefit. Having a tantrum at rush hour on the freeway is not to your benefit. Bursting into tears as you step up to address an audience is not
to your benefit. Laughing uncontrollably in court as you contest a parking violation will not be to your benefit. But there are appropriate times and places for letting out the feelings related to such
situations that will enable you to think and act more clearly and appropriately in the moment.
Experience has shown that when people are able to have a deep and prolonged experience of emotional release, they not only feel relaxed and satisfied, but somehow transformed by the
experience. They are able to look at life more positively feel more loving toward others. Suddenly solutions to problems emerge that earlier seemed unsolvable. There is a reawakened desire to be
creative and to challenge themselves more. Emotional release can awaken a desire to remove all barriers between themselves and other people and rekindle an interest to join with other human
beings in a spirit of community and cooperation.
Group
Works