To get the most out of therapy takes a few steps of preparation.  Since you are probably paying for your therapy or counselling sessions it would be prudent to come prepared to listen, participate, and to talk.

It’s important to understand that your therapist is not a magician or miracle worker though they are skilled individuals that have been trained to help connect with, be compassionate, be a good listener and facilitator in helping you with your problems.

Finding the right therapist for you can take some investigation as well as spending some of your money.  Though I am a therapist myself, I too have pursued therapy and though I am trained in this field I understand that after I have done my due diligence to search out the type of therapist I would like to see that I may end up not resonating with the therapist, this happens and that’s okay.  Be sure though to look at yourself especially if you have seen numerous therapists and have only stayed with them for a short period of time.  If possible before you book your first appointment try to find out what is the therapist’s style, what is the process that the therapist wants to take you through, be open-minded, investigate, and ask questions.  Remember nobody is perfect and no therapist can read your mind.  If your personalities don’t connect well then it may be best to pursue another therapist.

• Know that you need help, don’t come because you want to fix someone else.
• Take some notes, at least some mental notes, of what you want to discuss with your therapist from the onset of the session.
• If you have had other therapy/counselling sessions be sure that you have followed through and completed or practiced your given assignments.
• Be aware that getting upset with your progress may not be your therapist’s issue it could be your own anxiety issues projecting onto your therapist, therefore be ready to own your own stuff and take personal responsibility for your progress.  If you need to let your therapist know about your frustrations concerning your progress let them know kindly and clearly.
• Therapy is a journey more than a process or an assembly line of treatment.  Going faster sometimes means moving slower.  Relax knowing that this time is for you.

To have successful therapy it is important to note that not every session will be revolutionary or life changing but rather your consistent participation in the process will build a therapeutic momentum transpiring in overall healing and even exceptional healing moments.

Once you leave a session notice what happened, what you said, what the therapist said, what you learned, how you felt, what you need to discuss further and possibly even give your therapist some feedback to gain further clarification, especially if you didn’t like something that transpired during the session.

What does emotional regulation look like?

A person who is emotionally well regulated is a person who has a secure attachment or at least worked on themselves until they have developed one.  An emotionally regulated person is a person who has the ability to adapt to stressful situations and crises.  Emotionally resilient people can roll with the punches, go with the flow, they are flexible and able to problem solve and yet not become overly stressed when difficult situations arise.  Others may refer to emotionally resilient people as being able think on their feet. These types of people can adapt to adversity without lasting or developing emotional difficulties.  From the opposite point of view a person who does not have good emotional regulating skills can be said to be less resilient, they have difficulty with stress and life changes whether minor or major.  The less emotionally resilient appear to get stuck emotionally and remain in a state of perpetual emotional distress, possibly feeling like, “I can never get over this.”

To become good at anything we need to practice it properly and the more we do it the better we get at it.  Everything in us or about us strengthens whether good or bad if we continue practicing it.  Going to the gym and exercising correctly has great benefits, practicing regularly under the tutelage of a piano teacher can make a person a good piano player.  

There are numerous practices that can be implemented to help with emotional regulation.  Some of these practices can include:

• Meditation
• Heart Coherence breathing
• Gratitude
• Positive self-talk
• Mindfulness on the good things in your life
• Grounding exercises
• Social engagement with supportive healthier people

Nobody likes upsetting feelings, but that being said, if we push emotions away they stay.  When we are phobic towards our own feelings and emotions we want to push them away but that never resolves anything other than prolongs your emotional healing.  To resolve your feelings we need to embrace them in a very precise manner much like in the therapeutic technique called Fraser’s Dissociative Table Technique as well as other types of therapeutic interventions.

According to some ego state theories a person who is not DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), used to be known as MPD or Multiple Personality Disorder, has one ‘Adult’ self and usually has a number of ‘Emotional Parts’ known in short as an EP(s).  The EPs are those aspects of ourselves that have been fragmented (due to trauma) and are causing us ongoing emotional issues where we may have an altered state, confusion, self-sabotaging issues, self-harm issues, depression, anxieties, panic attacks, etc.  These parts of ourselves need support but our Adult self may have a wall up because it has a phobic response to those EPs and the result is upsetting even distressing feelings over and beyond what the current circumstance warrants.  This is where the work must begin to help resolve these ongoing feelings that you don’t like.  There is no quick fix, but the good news we can be fixed with a good knowledgeable therapist that can help you work through these feelings and even your past traumatic events.

When someone experiences trauma it can mean having difficulty in forming and maintaining healthy relationships with others.  It is common that a person who has experienced trauma can experience any or all of these:

• Difficulty going to sleep at night
• Difficulty staying asleep at night, often waking up one or more times throughout the night
• Re-experiencing terrifying memories
• Flashbacks
• Nightmares or night terrors
• Emotional numbness
• Emotionally disconnected from others
• Difficulty trusting people
• Difficulty in recovering or normalizing after an upsetting event
• Obsessive thinking
• A racing mind

Trauma can be more broadly understood as an adverse life event

Adverse life experiences or events can include both violations and voids.

Violations are those events that significantly impacted your life where someone or something inflicted or imposed something upon you.  This can be whether you only witnessed it or it directly happened to you.

Voids are those things that should have happened to you, things that you should have had but didn’t.  Adverse life events or experiences that involves voids in one’s life can include (things you should have had growing up):

• Healthy nurturing touch
• Food
• Shelter
• Clothing
• Parents that loved and cared for you and significantly met your physical, social, emotional and intellectual needs.
• Where there has been lack there has been an adverse life experience that has altered your life whether knowingly or not.

Developmental Issues

Both Developmental and Trauma issues are considered adverse life experiences.  Often people can understand traumatic events more than developmental trauma.  Developmental issues or trauma involve the type of attachment you developed from your primary care givers.  Since this issue takes a little more knowledge to understand it is often not recognized by us because we have normalized it.

Attachment styles developed in childhood

These attachment styles are a result of parental emotional connection, lack thereof, and frightening or unpredictable behaviour.  Attachment theory, according to Bowlby and Ainsworth, tells us that the first 18 months of a child’s life is critical to the quality of attachments made with the primary caregiver.  The quality of attachment or lack of it starts with instinctual behaviours such as clinging and crying, and also how the parent reacts to their child (Kennedy & Kennedy, 2004).  Dr. Daniel Siegel has been doing some valuable research in this area with respect to child and adult attachment.  Below are some noted attachment styles developed in childhood and then the following list shows the personality style manifested in adulthood.

• Secure Attachment 
• Avoidant Attachment 
• Ambivalent/Anxious Attachment 
• Disorganized Attachment

In adulthood attachment can be understood as:

• Secure Personality
• Dismissive Personality
• Preoccupied Personality
• Fearful-Avoidant Personality

In another article I will further explore these styles but for now I wanted to simply make mention of these to give some further curiosity and clarity as to what can help make up developmental trauma (issues).

When someone comes in to see me for therapy I like to explain adverse life events in this manner, there are two sides – the developmental side and the trauma side.  The developmental side I already briefly explained above.  The trauma side of adverse life experiences can include events that have happened to you that were major, as in a capital ’T’ trauma, and as smaller types of trauma, as in a small ’t’ trauma.  Plus, we need to consider, was the trauma a single incident, repeated, or was it pervasive in occurrence?  All of these considerations are important because when you understand what happened to you and how it impacted you then you can begin your journey to healing.  Without recognizing what impacted you, and how it impacted you, it is nearly impossible to resolve your issues.

For example, a capital ’T’ trauma could include:  sexual abuse, natural disaster, violence, murder, and the like.  Where a small ’t’ trauma could include bullying, pain during a medical or dental procedure, verbal abuse.  Sometimes we see things that have happened to us as ‘not that big of a deal’.  When anything is pervasive or repeated more than once it is considered a capital ’T’ trauma.  

All adverse life experiences, added up, can create in our lives numerous problems.  The long and complicated list of such problems are too numerous to list.  The good news is that through good therapy you can resolve these issues and heal your soul.

Yes, you can heal.  Therapy is a journey even though we would like it to be purely a destination.  Patience in the process is critical.  You didn’t develop your issues over night.  Often they are the result of years of unresolved issues.

There are a number of therapies that need to be considered for this process of healing your trauma(s) and developmental and attachment issues.  Some of the following therapies or processes have helped many people recover:

• EMDR
• BRAIN HEALTH THERAPY
• EMOTIONAL FREEDOM TECHNIQUES
• HOMEOPATHY
• HEART COHERENCE
• PYSCHOSOMATIC ENERGETICS
• FRASER’S DISSOCIATIVE TABLE TECHNIQUE

Changing how you feel is important because that is how you are energized, motivated, and the quality of life you live in.  Start taking some good healthy steps today.  Book your appointment today and get started on your healing journey!

Your social circle determines your quality of emotional health

I had a client tell me, “I don’t understand why I keep picking the wrong person?”  I asked them where they were going to find a potential mate and they told me it was at a bar.  My reply was, “If you want to catch salmon you have to go to particular places of fishing where they live and move.  If you keep catching carp that is because you keep going back to that kind of habitat where carp live and breed.”  Social circles are important, if you want to be inspired, challenged to change then upgrade your social circle.  

Your choice of teachers determines your quality of feelings 

Who teaches us is important because we learn only to the level of our teacher.  In the Bible Jesus said, “The student is not above their teacher.”  We need teacher, mentors, mothers/fathers to help us become the best we can be including how to better emotionally regulate.  Who do you look up to the most?  If it’s yourself than that is a big part of your problem.  All too many people believe that once they grow up they have arrived.  Where did we learn that from?  We learned that from our family and our friends.  One of the most stunting things we can do is for us to qualify ourselves as the mentor of our own lives.  I hard one person say they learned all their stuff from the internet and watching documentaries, that might be okay to some degree but I have seen too many people who have become mislead or confused by this method of self-mentorship.  Being fearful and ignorant leads us to the place where we become our own coach, mentor, and teacher, by doing so we will forever be learning but never really changing in an objective way.

I heard a well known financial teacher once say, “I surround myself with people that are smarter than I am so that I can succeed.”  I have also heard it said, “I am not my own accountant because I will lie to myself.”  Having a quality mentor or mental health professional and life coach will keep us honest about ourselves whether or not we can see it or like it.  Feelings change when we change.

• EMDR
• EMOTIONAL FREEDOM TECHNIQUES
• HOMEOPATHY
• LIFE COACHING
• PYSCHOSOMATIC ENERGETICS
• FRASER’S DISSOCIATIVE TABLE TECHNIQUE
• PSYCHODYNAMIC THERAPY

Changing how you feel is important because that is how you are energized, motivated, and the quality of life you live in.  Start taking some good healthy steps today.  Book your appointment today and get started on your healing journey!

There are those times in life where we try to change but we are unsuccessful in doing so.  Why can I not change how I feel on my own?  The answer oversimplified is because we need other people to help us.  

Learned Feelings From Childhood

We learned our emotions from our mother on a physiological level from our mothers in utero.  Through the umbilical cord the child learns emotions through the nervous system and hormonal system.  What the mother thinks and feels and experiences is transmitted to the infant through the nervous system and through the blood flow that carries hormones from mother to the child through the attachment of the umbilical cord.  This is how we all first learned to experience emotions, through our physical connection with our mother.

Learned emotions from mom

We also learned emotions and feelings from how our mother looked at us and spoke to us.  Did our mother look into our eyes and gaze at us with emotional connection of love and adoration or was our mother distant in her mind, what she watching television, or in today’s world on the cell phone or computer instead of making that eye connection to help create a secure emotional bonding.  Through this quality of experience we begin to either feel emotionally safe or emotionally unsafe. 

Learned emotions from your home environment

We learn emotions from our home dynamics how people spoke to each other and acted towards each other.  Was the home environment physically affectionate and loving?  Was the home environment full of conflict and possibly violent?  Was our home ambivalent and emotionally detached and indifferent?  We can have a mixture of these types of environments also.  The environment we grew up in is how we learned to feel and how we learned to emotionally regulate and attach to other people around us.

Emotional connection, emotional upheavals, emotional issues all stem from childhood because of the emotional skills our parents handed down to us through their emotions intelligence.  Blaming is not the answer anymore than denial is but recognizing and understanding where things came from and then pursuing healthy emotional changes takes courage and commitment.  With therapies like EMDR, Homeopathy and others we can overcome our insufficiencies and weakness and gain the emotional balance we need.  Call today! 

>> EMDR Therapy

>> Homeopathy 

At New Hope Counselling Centre we can help you to obtain a better tomorrow.  Call us today!

Serving Burlington, Hamilton, Oakville, Milton, Mississauga, St. Catharines and surrounding areas.

Changing your feelings are a very real possibility but it does take three things to change your feelings, 1. Educating yourself about feelings, cognition, adverse life experiences, and obtaining tools you need to move forward.  2. Change in your habits.  3.  Professional counselling, coaching, and just some honest to goodness therapy.

1. Become informed

Educating yourself to better understand yourself is primary because not knowing why you feel the way you feel and what to do about it can be a frightening thing.  Knowledge is powerful because it can help disarm the fear of the unknown and help you to do something about what you are feeling.  You can educate yourself through reading some good materials that you can get from the library, online, bookstores, courses, or even through a professional therapist.

2. Form new habits

To feel better we have to change our habits.  It is quite obvious that we have physical habits like brushing your teeth, eating habits, even bad habits like negative talk.  Habits are formed from observation, inundation, and self-discipline.  In order for new habits to form we need to first be in the know as mentioned above, educate yourself.  New habits can only be formed when we can recognize that the habits we now have are harmful and detracting from our life.  From there we need someone other than ourselves to show us how and what we should stop doing and start doing.  For example almost anyone can swing a golf club, but if you don’t have proper form than you will never become a good golfer.  Practicing the wrong thing even though you might think it is the right thing still produces frustration.  A professional coach will demonstrate and instruct the right way of golfing but will also observe how you stand, your physical posture, position of hands and feet, the way you swing, and so much more.  So it is in real life we all need someone who can observe us in a critical way that is helpful.  Yes, critical.  There is so much today on “No Judgement”, that we have lost context of that meaning.  Judgement can be both good and bad.  Bad judgement is when a person is put down or damned to a place of impossibility where insults reside, but good judgement is where compassion and truth can preside which corrects a person’s habits and behaviours so that the person can excel in life and in this case our feelings.

Habits are both external and internal, actually all external habits are a result of internal habits of thoughts and feelings.  Some things we can outright stop while other things we need to start doing a new thing in order to stop doing an old things.  For example try and count from 1 to 100 in your mind while verbally out loud say the alphabet, the result will be that you will stop counting because you have verbally engaged in saying something different than what you are thinking.  Yes you change what you are feeling by changing your focus, your imaginations, thoughts, and what you are saying.  Often this takes help from others as well as some self-disciplines put into place.

3. Professional counselling

Professional and qualified assistance and help is important to our wellbeing.  As mentioned earlier to be a better golfer you need a coach who can help you to achieve that.  Why do we have someone else cut and style our hair?  Usually it is because they can see better how to cut and treat our hair.  Why do we hire professional services such as mechanics, plumbers, electricians, physical trainers, dieticians, physicians, s, etc.?  We do so because each person has been divinely gifted and professional trained and educated to perform their “art” to better our lives in some manner.  Why would we not get the help we need for our emotional and mental wellbeing?  After all isn’t the proverb true that says, “As a person thinks in their heart so is he/she?”  Our quality of life come first and foremost from within what we experience externally in adulthood is often the result of core beliefs and a challenging EQ (Emotional Quotient).  A mental health therapist, , psychiatrist, psychotherapist, counsellor, and Social Worker are qualified to aid people in this area of mental and emotional health.

At New Hope Counselling Centre we can help you to form new habits, overcome old ones, and change your overall mood.  We can help.  Call us today!

Serving Burlington, Hamilton, Oakville, Milton, Mississauga, St. Catharines and surrounding areas.

Why Am I Emotionally Unstable or Unavailable?

Our emotional stability has a lot to do with emotional resilience which is a combination of nurture versus nature, but nature in early development of the child both in utero and after birth plays a major role as the perception of its environment is taken on by the nature of the child or genes if you will.  This study and theory is known as epigenetics.  

In neo-natal state, new born, the child begins learning at a rapid rate through its environmental stimulus, its surroundings.  The child learns how their mother and father respond to their environmental stimulus whether safe or unsafe.  Studies of this nature have been observed by a growing number of scientists and those in the medical field some of them include Dr. Bruce Lipton, Dr. Daniel Siegel, Dr. Pat Ogden, Dr. Nigel Plummer, and significantly Dr. Stephen Porges, and some others.  

Brain wave states of learning and consciousness

Brain waves are measured by using EEG readings also known as electroencephalography.  There are four main waves to be observed:  Delta, Theta, Alpha, and Beta.

Ages of development corresponding to brain waves found in the developing brain are as follows:

Birth – 2 years of age is when Delta waves are observed which are 0.5-4 Hz.  In this stage of development their level of consciousness is more like an sleep like state when dreams occur.  That is why some people report that their memories of this stage in life is questionable and often wonder if they imagined it or if it really happened.  Memory is there and needs to be understood when it comes to life events and how it might have impacted you into adulthood.

2 – 6 years of age is when Theta waves are seen and become dominant which are 4-8 Hz and their level of consciousness is much like a half asleep to half awake adult state.  In the Theta brainwave state children are very imaginative and can live out make believe scenarios, where creativity, insights and daydreaming are the norm.

6-8 years of age is when Alpha brainwaves become observable and functional which is a frequency of 8-13 Hz.  In this state is when we experience physical and mental relaxation.  For a child though they are not quite aware of things as yet especially of time, such as yesterday, today and tomorrow or when you tell them to wait a minute they think it is never.  

8-12 years of age is when Beta brainwaves become observable and functional which is a frequency of 13-32 Hz.  When the brain matures to this level then the child will begin to become consciously alert, and will engage in active thinking.  For example that is when they can begin to engage in active and meaningful conversation, begin to make decisions, problem solving, focusing on a task and able to begin learning a new concept.  This is the beginning of conscious and analytical thinking.

The brain matures somewhere around the age of 25 but has a number of changes throughout our life.  What we do in adulthood determines whether or not we can attain to peace, hope, satisfaction, and contentment. 

What may have had an imperfect childhood does not mean that you are doomed there is hope for you.  The beauty of the brain is that it can be changed but it does take a number of therapeutic interventions to make this happen.

Changing our behaviour 

In childhood our behaviour is programmed through what Dr. Bruce Lipton calls “a simple stimulus-response mechanism.”  We learn from outward perceptions, parental behaviours, parental emotional states, parental attachment styles, which includes even complex social interactions.  All of these things contribute to the programming of a child’s subconscious behaviour which causes them to conform to the beliefs of their community or social world, specifically their “family life”.

Why am I so emotionally unstable?

The question “Why am I so emotionally unstable?”  is a loaded question as it can have many reasons some of which can include:

• in utero emotional upsets of the mother
• mother’s use of drugs or substances before and during pregnancy
• lack of emotional attunement to the child 
• lack of healthy parental response to a child’s distress
• traumatic events such as war, rape, drugs, terrorism, parental conflicts, yelling, swearing, physical violence, emotional drama, hysteria, parental PTSD, poverty, loss of loved ones, loss of security such as homelessness, and much more.

You can have emotional resiliency and stability through therapies like EMDR.  James Miklos is a Certified EMDR Therapist and can help you to move forward.  Contact us today and book your appointment to help you to move forward.  

We can feel emotionally sensitive because we have been disappointed, harmed and or neglected in life especially in childhood as childhood is very impactful as it influences the rest of our earthly life.  When we have not felt emotionally safe in childhood then we will have difficulty feeling safe in adult hood. If we feel needy in adulthood it could be because our basic needs in childhood were not met.

Emotional resiliency 

Emotional resilience starts in utero where the internal environment for the child specifically through blood and nerves through the umbilical cord are transmitted from the mother to the child.  When a mother is feeling calm, safe, and loved the child will also feel the same, when the mother is feeling distressed, unloved, or in danger then the child will experience that as well.  Yes, the child is learning emotions from their mother on a physical level but much deeper than that the child’s gene’s are being programmed to better live in the outer world environment when they are born.  This happens whether or not the mother’s emotional responses are accurate to the environment or not.

Further to that emotional resilience comes when we in childhood were emotionally tended to when we were in distress.  If our parents were quick to meet our emotional needs in childhood where they were able to emotionally rescue us and soothe us then in adulthood we would be less emotionally sensitive or we would be less emotional as some put it.

Emotions are meant to be flexible where we can bounce back.  Better to be flexible than broken.  Some times that is easier said than done.  Emotional resilience is essential for good living.  To attain to greater emotional resilience we have to have help.  Self-helps can help but often is not enough. Before we blame others for our hurts and lack of happiness let us go on a journey that will bring strength, resilience, and happiness.  Yes it takes work but you are worth it !  Check out the various therapies that James Miklos uses to help people:

EMDR

EFT

Life Coaching

At New Hope Counselling Centre your happiness and emotional wellbeing is our goal.   Call us today!

Serving Burlington, Hamilton, Oakville, Milton, Mississauga, St. Catharines and surrounding areas.

For us to better function better in our life, marriage, and work we need to be able to identify emotions.

Life Enhancing Emotions 

We can now observe the opposites to these emotions:  

• Guilt and shame is opposite to Pride
• Self-pity to Gratitude
• Disgust to Happiness
• Fear to Curiosity
• Anger to Compassion
• Sadness and grief to Loved

Pride

There are a few definitions for pride but in this case we are understanding it in the context of self-respect where good feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, admiration and delight that arises out of ones accomplishments, abilities, qualities, and possessions that one has.  We get energy and thrive when we experience the good that comes from us, our talents and achievements.  When we feel proud we want to keep doing it and keep doing better and if we need to problem solve we can better tackle it.  This also gives us self-confidence.  Pride gives us confidence where we want to shine and be seen where guilt and shame compels us to feel less than where we want to withdraw and hide and possibly lie.

Gratitude

When we experience something good that is around us, given to us, or done for us we experience and feel appreciation.  The pleasure of contentment of benefits received.  Gratitude is something that we feel when we recognize good that has come to us and is expressed through words of appreciation and thanks.  We could also described it as when we are pleased.  When people are stuck in self-pity or a victim mentality all too often they cannot experience gratitude.  New studies have shown that gratitude is liberating and therapeutic in nature as are all Life Enhancing Emotions or Positive Emotions.  Self-pity is about self and the internal expense of ones self where you are the focus where gratitude is about others and the things around us, it is external and where the focus is on the good of creation, others, and what we have.

Happiness

Happiness comes from experiences that are pleasurable and have brought us contentment, joy, it is a state of well-being and contentment.  There are various levels of happiness that can range from contentment to ecstasy and euphoria.  When we enjoy something the experience regenerates us and refreshes us and promotes well being.  As in all emotions there are healthy and unhealthy sources and expressions of them.  Happiness draws that person, object or experience closer to ones self where disgust strongly rejects the such.

Curiosity

The emotion of curiosity is a complex one, but simply put it is the desire to learn and to know.  This emotion arises when we have a sense of safety and a hunger to grow as a person, this is more a felt sense.  Science has shown us that our brain makes new cells whenever we have a stimulating environment to think, feel, learn, hear, see, taste, touch, smell, and do something.  Unlike lust curiosity’s desire is to learn.  Curiosity is when we want to figure things out where we are inquisitive.  Curiosity moves forward where fear withdraws.

Compassion

Being compassionate or loving is a feeling we have towards others which helps us to grow and helps others to grow.  Compassion also helps us to feel satisfied and calm.  Compassion is a feeling and expression that touches our environment and others around us.  Compassion or loving is an emotional expression of great care, fondness, devotion, adoration, affection, warmth tenderness, mercy, understanding and concern.  Just like holding in or pushing away anger or sadness is not healthy for us neither is holding in compassion or feelings of love.  Love isn’t love until you give it away as the saying goes.  We feel it a greater more rewarding way when we allow ourselves to feel and express compassion and love.  Unlike anger that fights compassion helps and aids.  

Loved

When we feel loved we feel important and special which is meaningful to us because we feel nurtured and nourished in our sense of self.  When we feel loved we then begin to attach to another person.  We feel cherished where we feel held in deep affection.  When we feel loved we feel attracted and attractive to those who are loving and caring for us.  We feel connected to other people.  Healthy touch is a loving touch that is nourishing to our mind and body.  It is found that Oxytocin is secreted when we are touched in a loving way.  Loving touch is calming.  Loving words and and looks cause us to feel important and loved and loveable we are.  When we feel loved we grow stronger in our sense of self, securer in a relationship, where we can thrive where in contrast when we experience sadness and grief we feel weaker, less secure, more unstable, an emptiness and as though something has died or is dying in us.

Positive emotions or life enhancing emotions are a gift from above and when we are able to experience them more we are healthier, live longer, have better relationships, and become more resilient in life.  We need to work on these things and we can do that through therapies such as:

>> EMDR Therapy

>> Emotional Freedom Techniques Therapy

>> Psychosomatic Energetics 

>> Fraser’s Dissociative Table Technique 

At New Hope Counselling Centre we have the compassion, the hope and importantly the therapeutic approach that can help you to improve your happiness, marriage, healthy living, bringing you hope for a better tomorrow.  Call us today!

Serving Burlington, Hamilton, Oakville, Milton, Mississauga, St. Catharines and surrounding areas.

Robert Plutchik theory. 22 October 2017. Wiki Media Commons.

Basic emotions

There are numerous theories as to how many basic emotions we have such as: theory by Paul Ekman, The James-Lange Theory of Emotion, The Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion, Schachter-Singer Theory, Richard Lazarus’ Cognitive Appraisal Theory, and others.

Basic emotions are the building blocks of more complex experience of emotions.  It is very difficult to define definitively the ‘gospel truth’ of emotions but we can identify them in a manner that can help us to better understand what it is that we are feeling and also what healthy emotions can possibly look like.

We can look at emotions in opposites, much like an antonym in vocabulary, or as in a colour wheel, or even in temperature such as hot and cold.  We often refer to these opposites as positive and negative emotions.  A friend and colleague of mine, Katie O’Shea renamed these as Connective and Life Enhancing Emotions and Protective and Life Preserving Emotions.  

Protective Emotions

Shame and Guilt

Shame and guilt though similar are different but can fit into the same category.  This emotion brings to our attention when we have or others have done something harmful.  This emotion can work for us even before we have done something we should not have done, it can show us ahead of time that by doing a certain behaviour we can bring harm to someone either emotionally or physically.  Often this emotion is referred to as a part of our conscience.  This emotion brings to our attention behavioural changes we need to make.  When we are skewed in our emotions that is when we need help.  Guilt and shame when felt too much we feel as though we were bad versus our behaviour was bad.  Some of what we feel with this emotion includes morals which sits in spirituality or religious beliefs.

Self-Pity

When we didn’t do anything wrong but something harmful has happened to us we need to feel sorry for ourselves.  As the saying goes, lick your own wounds, we may need to do so in order to pay attention to how we have been hurt and what we need to pay attention to so that we can tend to ourselves and receive the healing, rest and emotional nourishment that we need.  Where self-pity is unhealthy is when a person gets stuck in this feeling and continues to play the victim.  Don’t pay attention to those who may say, “Don’t feel sorry for yourself”, as this may prolong your wound.  Paying healthy attention to a physical wound is important so physical infection does not settle in so it is with emotional wounds.  If you push emotions away they will stay and not heal.  Pay attention to those emotions and care for yourself giving yourself what is healthy and needful.

Disgust

Understanding disgust is when we are repulsed where we react to eliminating something from us that is toxic, poisonous or dangerous.  Disgust can be experienced when we taste something that is experienced as repulsive and we spit it out and withdraw from that thing.  We can experience this when someone does something that is morally depraved or what we call “sick” or a food that is rotten, or a puss that might be oozing out.  Disgust is experienced when we quickly feel the need to remove ourselves from that experience or behaviour.  We need to pay attention to this feeling as it tells us when we need to remove ourselves from that situation or people otherwise we will become like them in some manner.

Fear

Fear lets us know when we are in danger.  Not all fear is a correct assessment of the situation but healthy fear we can see in the example when a person is standing on the edge of a building 10 stories up and they know that to take a step off of the building that they will fall and die.  Healthy fear also understands that jumping in front of a moving train will kill them.  Unhealthy fear is when we experience some form of this emotion when there is no danger present.  Fear gives us the energy to respond to a danger that is present whether emotional or physical, usually this response is a flight response.

Anger

Anger gives us the energy to fight when faced with a danger whether emotional or physical.  Again, this emotional response may not be correct due to incorrect perceptions of the brain.  On the scale of 0-10 when we experience a 5 or more we reject the person rather than the deed and when it is under a 5 we reject the deed rather than the person.  Anger has different intensities from annoyance to wrathful hatred.  Anger can be expressed through bodily expressions, facial, tone of voice, volume of voice as well as words chosen to be expressed.  Anger has been referred to as a secondary emotion because it is an emotions that fights to regain power, for example I am angry because I was afraid, much like a fearful dog cornered becomes vicious.  

Sadness and Grief

Sadness and grief show us that we have lost something or someone that is valuable to us.  The more important that person or thing was to us the more intense the sadness.  Healthy sadness and grief come when we embrace the feelings versus try and push them away.  We need to reflect on the wound of loss once embraced we should be able experience gratitude because we are noticing the good that we once had either in a relationship or a thing such as a job.  Sadness can also show us that we need to love and appreciate the relationships we make and have as well as respecting things that we have.  Complicated grief arises when childhood attachments and connections were not of good quality.  

Negative emotions or feelings can be helpful when we need to protect our life from danger but when they are working at the wrong time then our life can become troublesome.  When we ask, “Why am I feeling this way?”  “Can I ever feel different?”  “Is there any hope of me feeling better?”  The answer is yes.  There is no magic wand or special pill but there are clinical and therapeutic ways that can help us regain our life.  Check out some of the therapies below that can help you.

>> EMDR Therapy

>> Homeopathy 

At New Hope Counselling Centre we can help you to improve your emotional state, marriage, healthy living, bringing you hope for a better tomorrow.  Call us today!

Serving Burlington, Hamilton, Oakville, Milton, Mississauga, St. Catharines and surrounding areas.