By far the most commonly experienced human emotion is anger. As irritation or annoyance anger is frequently expressed with tacit or overt approval, even social acceptance. Rage and fury, of course, are less likely to be socially acceptable. Resentment and frustration are par for the course. So anger, toxic as it is, has a place in the social setting, since it is understood and forgivable and since it represents a human failing that is considered morally acceptable, so long as it doesn't get too out of hand.

But what do we need to know about anger? How can we heal ourselves of it? Why are its negative effects so potent?

First, let's understand one basic point. Anger is most often a lid on a deeper emotion. So, for example, if you are experiencing deep grief, anger is easier to feel as a distraction. When you are overwhelmed with a conflict of emotions that is a challenge to express and which fills you with uncertainty and vulnerability, anger may be chosen as a viable surrogate emotion.

Second, although we pay lip-service to its social acceptability no one really likes anger. So it remains repressed and confused with aggression and rage, which are fundamentally different experiences.

Third, anger is toxic and bad for you, whereas the release of anger in the form of catharsis is not. This is because held-in anger is energy that has to go somewhere; it must take form, usually in the unconscious world and/or in the physical organism.

So what can we do about anger?

To understand anger as a cover-up for a deeper feeling we must become familiar with our inner world. Our emotions must not be a secret from us and we must not always keep them hidden from others. Working our way down through layers of experience at mental, physical and emotional levels as a daily exercise, we can begin to become familiar with our inner life and benefit from a growing awareness of ourselves.

To deal with the social rejection of genuine anger we must differentiate between feeling or experiencing anger and releasing or expressing anger. Then we are able to make responsible decisions about how to handle anger. Playing tennis or squash, chopping wood, running and energetic walking are all effective ways to release anger.

A couple more things to "get": One, accept anger in yourself. It is not unnatural; we are not all saints and it is nothing to be ashamed of. Concentrate on dealing with it intelligently and understanding it deeply.

Two, anger, like fear and hurt, are emotional tones and expressions and experiences of you total energy system. It is vital that you treat primary emotions like anger, fear, need and hurt with respect and honor them as part of the human experience to be healthy in mind, body and soul.

Three, cultivate gentleness and humility; be less reactive and self-obsessed. Angry behavior is like other emotional conditioned behavior: it is learnt. Breaking the habit cannot be overestimated. So, identify your triggers, become aware of what makes you angry, and then safeguard yourself against them by setting yourself the challenge to respond in a more gentle way.

Finally, psychotherapy and counseling are the specialist approaches that deal with anger patterns and the sources of angry behavior. Going into therapy or counseling, for even a short time, may teach you enough to turn your life around if anger is a problem for you.

BLOG entry #110

This article by Richard Harvey was originally published at http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/articles/  and it is part of an ongoing retrospective series of blogs. ‘Anger Basics - Understanding It, Respecting It and Releasing It Responsibly’ was first published in 2011.

Sometimes I feel like Jerry Garcia. The leader of the Grateful Dead used to question himself in an enviable way. The rock group that was the biggest selling live act of the 1980s, that made ground-breaking music for 30 years, was treated as a religion by ardent fans, and supported and offered a living to hundreds of people: band members and their families, road crew, administrative staff, tour managers, merchandising personnel, sound engineers and construction and transport et al was spearheaded by Garcia and arguably without him (and this was evidenced following his demise in 1995) was finished. Yet Garcia felt courageous enough to ask, "Is the Dead a good thing?" Some feel that he felt unable to disband the Dead organization corpus on the basis of abandoning his conscience in serving such a huge community, who depended upon him and the band for their livelihoods.

Now, cut to the analogy: I have many times questioned and re-questioned therapy and it's stated and implied goals, wondering essentially if it works and, mimicking Garcia, asked "Is therapy a good thing?" Of course I am not the only one to do so.

From Crocodile Dundee, who spoke with the voice of the common man when he remarked about someone seeking counseling "What, ain't he got no mates?" to the renowned, rebellious Jungian analyst James Hillman, who co-authored the book "We've had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the world's getting worse", psychotherapy has had its detractors in droves.

The criticisms are legion, well-known and well-stated: Can people really change? Don't therapists simply try to make their patients/clients think and feel like them? They are only after your money. What do they know anyway?

In one early study Hans Eysenck concluded that two-thirds of psychotherapy patients/clients improved or recovered by themselves, whether they had received psychotherapy or not.

Certainly the history of psychotherapy is wrought with suspicious examples of so-called cures. From the acclaimed "treatment success" of Anna O by Sigmund Freud, about which Jung declared that it was "nothing of the sort" (she was institutionalized following arguably being misdiagnosed in analysis) to the modern day account of Paris and Donovan's verbal and emotional power abuse at the hands of an abusive therapist (see Richard Zwolinski's book Therapy Revolution), reasons to doubt or at least be wary of therapy would seem to make sense.

So back to Jerry Garcia's question concerning the Dead. To paraphrase: "Is therapy a good thing?"

As a therapist I am naturally biased. But I am also by nature curious and integrous. I really don't want to waste my time in a pursuit that doesn't have a positive affect, which I cannot pursue in good conscience, which is fundamentally flawed in its approach and effectiveness.

Sometimes therapy doesn't work - or doesn't appear to work. But this is a difficult matter, difficult to measure and to follow-up and assess. I recall a guy in a personal growth group with whom I had an incident in which we 'fell out' resulting in his leaving the group. A failure? Some months later he wrote to express his gratitude to me. In the intervening time he had realized that he had transferred (originally a psychoanalytical term meaning to redirect feelings to another person) his father complex onto me. The incident in the workshop had opened up all kinds of useful inner material, which he had addressed in individual psychotherapy and transcended, resulting in a profound healing for him. So was this a failure which turned into a success?

But at other times it really doesn't work and mistakes are made. I recall a client who ironically became the focus of my supervision sessions. My supervisor, an analyst with a wealth of therapeutic experience, encouraged me to pick one of my clients and focus on him each week. The idea was that receiving intense supervision on a single therapy client this would have an effect on my overall practice.

The result however was that I, as a young, ambitious and aspiring therapist, became over-focused on this client. I started to care too much about him as the supervision deepened my involvement in his life. One day he appeared in my consulting room looking ghastly and I asked him what had happened. He explained that he was trying out a new pharmaceutical, as yet not entirely safe or tested, for an allergy he suffered from. I was outraged, not so much at him, as at the medical authorities that would allow such a practice. The medication was clearly doing him no good at all. I told him, to my lasting regret, to discontinue the medication. He stormed out of the room. I had walked straight into the transference of his parents who always told him what he should do and denied his right and ability to choose in matters concerning his own life. Following a vituperative final session, he left and I never saw him again.

We have no way of knowing of course whether or not this client subsequently had some insight or clarity, like the previous one who transferred his father onto me, and so benefited in the long run from my over-caring. Likewise we have no way of knowing whether or not the client who had benefited subsequently took a negative turn in the long run to his detriment.

And what of the grateful client? Perhaps people who have been in therapy keep quiet about it today when the stigma of seeking help has reinstated itself in direct contrast to the Seventies self-proclaimed and shared glory in personal and collective consciousness raising. But my walls have been covered and overlaid with cards containing elated proclamations of gratitude over the years. Today emails tend to replace the cards of course. But recently when I was putting my website together and my web designer was grappling with the weight of testimonials, we made the joint executive decision to minimize and use a select few so as not to appear too "full of ourselves". And this in spite of the fact that by and large most clients who have therapeutic success in all likelihood don't write or email their therapists.

My point is not to show how great a therapist am I, rather that therapy does work and when it does it may not necessarily be shouted from the roof tops by the beneficiary, or grateful client.

Having said this, we must be painfully aware that not all therapists are any good. It is beyond the scope of this article to go into what we should or can do about that when short-term, inadequate trainings produce therapists and healers of many descriptions and the general public is wholly ill-equipped to distinguish between them and a multiple-qualified, effective and gifted practitioner. Neither is the new requirement of a university degree as a requirement for psychotherapy training liable to inspire greater confidence in the user of therapy services. Most therapists are aware that untrained therapists may be wholly capable and often of higher quality than trained ones; such is the nature of the work that compassion, wisdom and intuition, which are arguably essential, are probably impossible to teach.

My conviction has lain in my ongoing objections and criticisms of the field of psychotherapy. I have maintained a surgical approach to unhelpful, murky theory, approaches and methodologies that I felt were suspect. Luckily I have spread myself so thickly around the area of therapeutic endeavor that as the years rolled on I have, through writing (no better way to expose unclear thinking) and therapy practice with individuals, couples, groups and communities, formulated my direct experience into an understanding that comprise a philosophy and psychology of how therapy works and I have summarized these as the three stages of awakening.

BLOG entry #109

As I sit down to prepare another article, it occurs to me what a powerful practice writing is for personal growth. For nearly 35 years I have been involved in something, which used to be called 'the new therapies' or the Human Potential Movement, sometimes humanistic psychology.

Now, what draws these epithets together is personal development through awareness practices that lead to a direct experience of life. One essential idea was, and still is, that meaning is secondary to real experience. We might say that we crave meaning in life and that's surely true. 

But deeper than that, we long for genuine experience, abandoned and unhampered by inhibition and reserve. The trouble with meaning is that it is mental or intellectual, whereas experience potentially engages the whole person - physically, emotionally, energetically, spiritually as well as mentally. So, it's not enough merely to think ourselves alive, even if it does have meaning.

Good writing should be vital and exciting. It must draw on great resources of truth sourced from the inner world and preferably from the inner depths of the writer.

Over the years I have found myself increasingly recommending writing as a therapeutic tool. As a practice that is demonstrative, expressive, relatively concrete in a milieu of mystical, sometimes ephemeral methodologies - which sometimes carry the danger of delusion - it is a refreshingly down to earth practice. Anyone can do it - and it's not a matter of how well you do it; we are not back at school, not being marked out of 10, not even having to use good grammar (though that's not a bad idea by any means - I'll come to that in a minute); it is more a matter of how real it feels, as a genuine experience.

I encourage my clients (you might think 'patients', but that's not what I call them) to make some notes following a therapeutic hour. These notes do not have to be exhaustive; all the subjects and details of the session do not have to be recalled and recorded. What's essential is that the important themes are there and the life statements (unconscious guiding dictums of our life) are written down, along with significant insights, progress on themes that are being explored over time and fresh material that arises during the session.

This writing should be done in a notebook kept especially for inner work. It should include dreams, insights and thoughts we have throughout the day, poems and drawings, random remarks, memories, insights gained from meditation or contemplation, as well as session notes. 

As we sit down to write we can notice many things, which make writing an important exercise for personal growth in itself. All the accrued nervousness, pressure to perform, expectations and stress are present in the act of writing. This is true. Notice it the next time you sit down to write. If you are aware and if you are willing to see it, all the memories of the very first time you set pen or pencil to paper are present. You can use this insight to bear you back (or down, down) into repressed memories of early childhood, the school years when you were learning about the world surrounded by other children all doing the same, with teachers who may have been inept and ineffective or talented and inspiring. The veil over memory peels back and you can revisit the past and learn something new, all from simply writing.

One of the things that makes writing vital in inner work is recording in written form what inevitably retreats from memory and is finally lost altogether if we don't. A peculiarity of the inner journey is that at those moments when we feel like giving up, through despair, disappointment, frustration et al, one of the overriding justifications or excuses is that we have nothing whatsoever to show for it. This is true in one sense, since therapy is, and should be, a process of loss. It is only through loss that we can gain our true center which is eclipsed through inner possessions in the form of opinions, fixedness, judgments, calcified partisan memories and its transference into the future as we face it as echoes of the past. All of this is the antithesis of personal liberation.

When we look back at the notes we have made, it becomes very difficult to hold on to despair based on the idea that we have achieved absolutely nothing in inner work. The pages attest to our resolve to work through our personal material and give us reference points for our inner development. 

Now, to the sticky subject of good grammar. While we need to give ourselves permission to write any old how in our therapy journal, there comes a point when we realize that how we write directly reflects how we think. Thinking is an interesting topic, because most of us have taken it for granted. Only those of us who have studied philosophy, or to a lesser extent psychology, will have thought about the process of thinking. Yet thinking ranks highly in the endeavor of psycho-spiritual development.

This is because the higher mental capacity is closer to the spiritual realms than the gross forms of physicality and even emotionality. It is from the mind that we derive our perception of ideal forms, like absolute truth which cannot be experienced in the relative world of time and space.

Developing our awareness of how we think is a powerful way to discover that the world is perceived through illusory veils. These veils originate in the mind. Literally, how we think of the world is the world we experience and perceive. 

What has this got to do with grammar, you might well ask? When we pay attention to spelling and grammar (though not in the school sense of... well, see above) we begin to see that how we write - not just content but the way - reveals a lot about who we are. As we refine our ability to write clearly, relevantly and sensibly (in all senses) the process reflects back on our thinking. It becomes harder for us to indulge in muddled thinking, when we have learnt to write clearly.

One final point then: writing is fun. In spite of all our preconceptions, our early life biases, writing is fun, but not only that; it is empowering. To fashion, create, fantasize, take risks, write the truth (or write lies), interpret and symbolize the world of imagination, fantasy, visions; to occupy and explore the fragile and by no means exact borderline between fiction and non-fiction; to express our deepest longings, sadness and passion; to give form to the inner world and offer all this to the outside world (if and when we choose) is a gift, not only to others, but to ourselves.

BLOG entry #108

This article by Richard Harvey was originally published at http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/articles/  and it is part of an ongoing retrospective series of blogs. ‘Psychotherapy and Counseling: The Healing Power of Writing’ was first published in 2011.

Why do people go to a therapist or counselor? Here are the four levels of therapy and counseling that will benefit or add to your life fruitfully and in some cases in ways that you could only guess at.

The first level is symptomatic or problem-based counseling. If you have a specific issue, like experiencing disturbing nightmares, recurring eczema or skin complaints, irritation, negativity or relationship issues, counseling -- usually short-term -- can be of great benefit. The aim is obvious and clear: to deal with the presenting issue, not dig too deeply and find a solution, a way through, a way to overcome the problem. Usually anything from 6 to 10 sessions should be enough and with an effective practitioner the job should be done.

Second is therapy that digs a little deeper than the first level of purely symptomatic counseling. So looking for the underlying causes of presenting problems is almost certainly involved. For example, a man in midlife suffering a crisis of confidence finds that his relationship with his domineering father is the underlying cause of his present-day concerns, which affect his functioning adversely in the work place. Or, in another example, a woman in her late-thirties who finds that she is attracted to younger men rediscovers her unlived adolescence which she forfeited for early security, marriage and motherhood when she left home at 19 to marry a man who was materially secure. But while he offered her financial and material security he was unable to meet her emotionally and intimately in the relationship. In both these examples a deeper cause or association is the key to resolving the issue.

Third is what has become known as classic psychotherapy, depth psychotherapy or major psychotherapy (so many names!). In this approach to inner work the client (or patient if it is analysis) enters into a long-term commitment with a competent practitioner whose training and ability enables him to guide competently through the inner terrain to the very source of the client's psyche. Deep existential issues may arise such as: Who am I? What if my purpose? How did I come to be? And for the spiritual or religiously inclined, the source of being, or an experience of the numinous dimension of life.

Finally, the fourth level of psychotherapy and counseling is transpersonal or psycho-spiritual. This may include the previous three levels, particularly depth psychotherapy, but it goes beyond personality, character and associated issues into the spiritual, transcendent and divine realms of human experience and reality. Arguably the cutting-edge of inward discovery this approach is considered by many people (including myself) to be vital today since it is directly related to ecology, political strife and injustice, bigotry, religious intolerance and ignorance. Not only is it the intention of psycho-spiritual therapy to awaken the client-seeker individually, but it is also to awaken collective humanity.

BLOG entry #107

People seek therapy for a variety of reasons: relationship issues, general unhappiness, depression, compulsion and obsession, fear or panic, inner conflicts, the crisis of meaninglessness or purposelessness, emotional difficulties associated with illness or aging, guidance through the stages of life and developing maturity, spiritual journeying, among many others.

What is the one single principle of personal therapy which works, which we should always bear in mind and which applies universally to bring about psychological healing and inner freedom?

Three questions dominate and underlay personal therapy. To know and practice these three focuses of enquiry deepens and accelerates personal growth and development.

The three questions are, first, What am I holding on to? Second, what do I get out of holding on to it? Third, how can I let go of it?

The first question is: What am I holding on to? We are stuck and this means we are adhering to some inner condition, some security or illusion of safety. Often it is in the form of an unconscious reaction to some emotional, physical or psychological injury. Sometimes it is associated with our early conditioning and we can locate the source of it in childhood or infancy. Awareness practice and familiarity with our inner world leads us to discover exactly what it is we are holding onto, how we are holding on to it and why.

The second question is: What do I get out of holding on to it? Our inner integrity prohibits us doing something for no reason and for no gain. However negative the gain, we are holding on to and remaining loyal to a pattern of behavior for a reason. You must find out what that reason is to bring about release. Do not be fooled: sometimes the gain is particularly negative, because inside us is a strong saboteur.

The third question is: How can I let go of it? This can only be attempted after the first two questions have been answered and the choice can then be made to let go. This is not easy, it may be that you have to behave differently, transform your image of yourself, live, breathe, dress, work or relate differently in your life. Whatever it is, it will appear out of your intuitive heart and point you in the direction of your personal freedom.

Whether you are pursuing the inner journey with a therapist, a counselor, a guide, a group of seekers or by yourself, implement these questions into your practice. Ask yourself these three questions through the changing insights you have into you inner world, as you unearth new patterns, and watch your inner emptiness grow and with it a new freedom.

BLOG entry #106