As valuable as our ability to think and reason may be, it is my belief that the quality of our lives is far more determined by our emotional experience. How you truly feel about yourself, how you really feel in your primary relationship and family and how you actually feel in your workplace are critical factors determining your overall health and well-being. So too are feelings or unfinished business from your past. Having access to and being able to identify your real feelings is therefore a critical component of the kind of therapy I do and an integral aspect of personal healing.

Many of my clients think they know what they’re feeling. But that’s thinking or knowing, not feeling. Certainly they know what they should be feeling. That however is what the collective voices of their “tribe” - be it the family, professional, cultural or religious tribes they belong to - are telling them should be the case. What if that is not the case at all? Others, in their attempt to get ahead, are living their lives at such break-neck speed and in such a daze that they haven’t

experienced an honest-to-goodness feeling in years. By means of the use of addictive substances and activities, still others make damn sure they anaesthetize themselves from all feeling.

Feeling what you’re feeling when you’re feeling it is the cornerstone of the inner work I do with people. If and when you can do that, there is a movement and a flow to your experience. You travel down one “inner river” to the next and the next, in a conscious and complete way, knowing and validating your authentic self, digesting your emotional experiences and turning them into nutrients for your soul. When, in contrast, real and powerful feelings are not known to you or felt - that is when you cannot feel what your feeling when you’re feeling it - the system of guiding internal rivers not only stops flowing over time but changes states, turning into ice. Being stuck in ice allows for no navigation at all.

What forms do ice or frozen feelings take in the inner world? They turn into unwanted self-defeating and repetitive behavior patterns

of all kinds - like being attracted to people who are not available or leaving the ones who are. Or being unable to pull off the kind of closeness you seek with your mate. They can become lifestyle patterns like working all the time or collapsing in a heap, being alone too much or not at all. They can get lodged in the body and become unwanted yet persisting physical conditions, like eating or sleeping disorders, and are the breeding grounds for serious and even life threatening illnesses. They can become the invisible self-sabotaging tactics and obstructions which get in the way of the realization of your most deeply held goals, ambitions and dreams.

Feelings need to live, to flow, to be processed. To psychologically complete them, they require a beginning, a middle and an end so that new, more constructive and life enhancing feelings can emerge. This is the most powerful path I know to healing and knowing thyself.