 There was a time in my practice when I had the words, " Feeling is healing" printed on some ball point pens. They were the only piece of personal advertising I ever did. The pens were not inscribed with my name or address but simply handed to clients as a reminder of one of my philosophies about the healing process. Bless their cotton socks, they must given them away as reference to friends for I found the pens worked for me as yellow pages do for others. ( was certainly cheaper :) An article has been requested on the rationale for my statement. It has been my experience working with abuse survivors from many origins that one of the things they find so confusing and difficult to accomplish, is to seperate what are their OWN feelings from what they THINK are their feelings. Those of us who grew up with no one to act as a sounding board, and no one to confirm that what we felt and how we saw things wasn't totally off the wall, were left to the mercy of outside interpretation of our feelings. In an abusive situation for a young child, so impressionable and innocently trusting of adults, it is not hard to deny and negate any feelings they express. What adult would not know better than the child? Example 1: Child: " I don't want to do that, Mommy. I don't like it, it tastes nasty." Mother: "Yes, you do, dear, you know you do,. Now drink it up and make Mommy happy". This kind of denial of a child's feelings and thinking begins very early in life. It progresses from minor incidents of food preferences to perceptions of much deeper emotion in more complex situations. . Example 2: Child, crying after a spanking: " I hurt. I hate daddy." Mother: "What do you mean, you hate Daddy ? Daddy loves you" Child, " He doesn't. He doesn't. He's mean" Mommy: "You know Daddy loves you. You aren't really mad at him, I know you love daddy" This causes confusion about true feelings towards another. Do I love Daddy, or do I hate him? Mommy says I love him and she must be right but he hurt me and I don't like him a bit. Too young to figure out where the feelings belong and what they really are. So many of us were told what to feel and how to feel and to deny our true feelings. It is probably one of the most confusing and scary things to sort out in the therapeutic work. Namely, exactly WHAT is US and what is someone ELSE'S perception or interpretation of how we feel ? For me, the worst and most devastating damage regarding feelings is the effect of the conditioning so prevalent in Cult/Occult environments and Government/Military Mind Control mileux. Implanted through drugs, electro shock and post hypnotic suggestion the child is made to feel and think EXACTLY what he/she is ordered to. This is the hardest kind of conditioning to undo. It is implanted through torture, mind fragmentation and repeated infliction and deliberate induction of PAIN. What compounds and results in such complex traumatization is that rather than the child connecting TO feelings there is a complete Dissociation FROM feelings - to the point where pain is numbed, emotions are paralyzed to deadness ,and the only feelings allowed are fear and terror with the all pervading anxiety that precedes them. We cannot change or alter the intrinsic essence of a particualr feeling when it floods us, but it is, in my mind, in being able to FEEL our TRUE feeling about something, be it person, event or situation, that we can seperate ourselves from whatever anyone might try to TELL us we feel. How does one OWN a feeling that truly IS ours? How does one overcome the paralyzing terror at the thought of connnecting feeling with a trauma ? A trauma that was so horrific the young child's mind cut off conscious memory both of the experience and the emotions associated with it? The "No tell" order of Mind Control perpetrators requires that the feelings of a little child put through such horrrors be wiped from memory and stopped from surfacing. It is the purpose of those who experiment on little children that what they endure will never come to light. If they begin to FEEL memory will open, recalling what happened and healing will start to take place. The No Tell order also prevents exposing identities of those who have committted such crimes. Feelings MUST be erased. In Example 1. the feelings can become much more serious than normal parenting around feeding habits and power struggles over food preferences. They can create serious distortions, and, in Mind Control, be the basis for compliance where to make a perpetrator happy there has to be complete denial of natural tendencies and suppressing of all personal feeling. ( see Article: "I am BAD". www.goessoftlyishere.com) Example 2. holds even darker connotations in the light of excruciating pain where the torturer tells the child, ( replace "daddy" for torturer), he loves the little one, in fact, is the ONLY one who does, the child will go a step further in believing that acceptance of even greater pain is PROOF of his/her love for "daddy". ( A note here: Those committing criminal acts on children are not confined to the male species. Mothers, aunts, cousins, grandmothers are on many children's list of abusers. In medical/psychological research experiments in controlled settings, perpetrators can also be, and are, women). To stay with above example, the more severe the pain that is endured, the more the child shows how much "daddy" is loved. I heard from a little girl part/alter who wrote of her "daddies" whom she loves - " daddies" who inflicted abominable and reprehensible atrocities on her - yet she feels nothing but love for them. When the host comes to the place of connecting TO her feelings one can appreciate then, a little of how huge the task will be. What is love - what would HER love feel like or what are the feelings that have been TOLD her is love? The question often asked me, " Am I capable of loving anyone? I don't know what it is". To be able to FEEL and OWN a Feeling is Healing So feeling is healing - but to reach the feelings means : - To recognize what feelings are ones OWN vs what feelings are the ones we have been TOLD are ours. - To FEEL an emotion that fits a word - anger, love, comfort,remorse, trust, doubt, sureness, confidence, shame, guilt, grief- the list is endless. - To allow the body to release its memories from physical holding to emotional feeling . - To distinguish between shame and guilt, anger and rage, safe and unsafe, truth and lie, good and evil, black and white - again, the list goes on. - To be able to OWN but also DISOWN some feelings. Delta (assassin) programming, trains a child to kill completely unemotionally. One might wonder how such complete and total LACK of feeling could be reversed? For me, it is the undoing of the distortions that unravels the mental conditioning to block Feeling from consciousness. It is also the releasing of body-stored experiences to heart felt subjectivness. I am among those who believe that all memories are stored in the body as well as the mind which is why when certain flashbacks occur, or memories surface, the body responds by releasing its contribution into phsyical evidence. For example, two people have recently related to me how hives appeared on different parts of their body with their attending itch and angry welts. They disapeared on working through the memories or flashbacks. Benadryl or other antihistamines had no effect on the hives which evidenced their connection to trauma and not allergy. This is a variable Psychiatrists need to keep in mind when prescribing medication for hives in DID patients. So often the embodiment of memories in the body is overlooked and medicating for hives a useless intervention.One could include other physical symptoms psychological in origin yet mistakenly treated with medication or even surgery where skillful therapy addressing the cause could resolve the condition. Where innate feelings/goodness can be tapped, and I firmly believe no human is born 100% emotionless or evil, and to reach beyond the broken, fragmented mind to the wounded heart it is possible to trigger memories and connect the two, perhaps through the body's release of them. With the mind one can sift distortions and see through lies, and with the heart/body dyad one can recognize feelings as they are connected not just with the traumatic event but with the very SELF of the survivor. Tears that flow when connections are made, belong to one whose grief cannot be measured and belong to all that has been frozen in time and stored in body cells. Without Feelings we would stay totally in our head ( check article on Balance at www.goessoftlyishere.com) and rob ourselves of whole perspectives. One aspect of putting feelings where they belong does not pertain to placing valid anger, hurt or grief on others but discovering the places where they belong to US . For example; the matter of distinguishing between conflicting emotions such as Shame and Guilt speaks to DISOWNING them. Shame affects how we see ourselves for what we feel ARE. Guilt affects how we see ourselves in terms of what we've DONE. Where abuse is sustained through skewed and false thinking implanted in a child of tender years, it requires DISOWNING the deadly influence of both Shame and Guilt if healing is to take place. This Disownment is the true meaning of my other adage, "Put the feelings where they BELONG " Shame. We feel ashamed because of who we perceive we ARE - the kind of person we perceive ourselves to be - and for those brought up with daily evaluations from parents and abusers of, " You are bad", "You are no good" You will never make anything of your life", "I wish you'd never been born", " Why can't you ever do anything RIGHT?" , "Don't even try saying anything, or people will know you're crazy". A daily diet of judgement after judgement describing ones unworthiness, criticism after criticism eroding a small child's every defense against questioning its right to be and the osmotic drawing of the weaker solution of innocence into the implacable quagmire of Evil, Mind Control, Distortion and Lies - results in the youngster taking ownership of all the accusatory statements. He/she, will clothe him/herself with the defined character traits, internalizing and FULLY believing, without a shadow of doubt " I AM bad". Guilt. Children used and trained in Cults of different persuasions, and children used in Government and Military Mind Control experiments have been forced to commit unspeakable things about which they carry Guilt as though THEY were RESPONSIBLE ! ( see Forgiveness at: www.goessoftlyishere.com) Guilt weighs black and tormenting in the heart and is experienced as a never relieved burden of PAIN . The belief, "I cannot bear what I have DONE - I don't want to think about it, look at it, and most of all, believe it. The same Guilt afflicts children and adults who have been sexually violated, lived in a domestic violent environment and who have, in turn, molested and/or beaten others. Perhaps it might help some to realize that the first chapters of their stories were written at an age when they were too young to hold the pen so others wrote for them. Even though as a child they were forced to do despicable acts by men and women without conscious,mercy or scruples, and during their programming these same abusers became introjects in the psyche of the child, as adults it is good when they can realize that THEY now hold the pen that writes present chapters, and THEY will write the future ones. The Chinese have a proverb that says something like, " The palest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory" Sadly, what has been written in the young child's memory through brainwashing and mind control retains its power often long after memories return. Terror of being overwhelmed by what they might read and OWNING it as being theirs, so often paralyzes the survivor from picking up the pen and rewriting the script. Shame is perhaps the heavier burden, but piggy backed on top of Guilt, the two, like a bifurcated malignancy, spread tentacles into all areas of a survivor's living. Hidden Shame keeps a person distancing anyone from ever getting close. "Who would ever want to be with someone like me?. I can't ever let them find out how REALLY bad I am". It also prevents the person from allowing themselves to become attached to anyone and risk later being rejected. Old fear conditioning feeds the malignancy, but like a cancer, it requires treatment whose goal is to remove as much as possible and to prevent a reoccurrence. Sometimes it is possible to remove the growth, and sometimes some is left and the cancer goes into remission but can show up again later. It is not a quick fix, and DISOWNING Shame and Guilt, putting them where they belong can take a LONG time. There will be remissions and exacerbations interchanging, but dismantling the distortion and lies is the most potent Malignant-Feeling chemotherapy available. Not without side effects and not without cost as it is with cancer treatment, but it IS possible to have very favorable results. I am a survivor of two types of cancer as well as an abuse survivor so I know the treatment quite well and can attest to positive HOPE for all. Feeling Is HEALING. Put the feelings where they BELONG. Is it easy ? NO! Is it Possible ? YES ! Is it worth the cost to know ones OWN feelings, recognize them and FEEL them for what they TRULY are? YES ! A thousand times, YES! If we are seeking Healing we will experience Feeling - where there is no Feeling there is no Life. Goessoftly Retired Therapist www.goesoftlyishere.com (Permission for reprints is required).     | Normalizing and Demystifying DID | DID and Littles.(Child/Young Alters) | ISOLATION | Mono's Disbelief | Distortion: Good and Evil | ASPECTS OF BODY CHANGES | Relationships | Across The Board | Across The Board | FORGIVENESS | I am BAD | Headaches | LYING AND DECEPTION | LOST and LOSS | EYES | Controversy. 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