"When I got a rejection letter from a college I felt really low, and when the girl said she would go to the dance with me I felt really high. When my team lost I was bummed out and when I got promoted I was as high as a kite. When I was young I was emotional--up one minute and down the next. In other words, I was like 99% of the rest of the world. That's what parents are for--to be calm and stable when their kids are emotional. Part of growing up is to mature and gradually become more even. That's all. Thank God I was able to grow up and become mature without being labeled and drugged. " Michal Carlos Simon from his book Mike's Story"
This is Pastor Roland. Many people are concerned about negative emotions. They have them and are seeking to cope with them and solve them. So they are looking for educational resources and solution strategies.
Here are some excerpts from a recent article I wrote. It was addressed to Christians, but the principles of self control I allude to can work for anybody. You don't have to a Christian to begin learning the art of self control.
We all know that mature people are calm and collected. We admire our airplane pilots and championship athletes who remain cool under stress. Our parents told us about staying calm, not getting angry, not worrying and so on. But somewhere along the way you started reacting, and once you did, it became a progressive snowballing thing until years later, you can't stop over reacting because now your body is conditioned to react.
So what you need is some basic training. And it must be simple, not complicated, so that you can easily apply it.
That's where I can help. I explain how the over reacting and negative thoughts started. I provide a little tech support (the meditation) to help you calm down and be restored to self control. then I give you some simple principles to protect your calmer state.
First I talk about why we become upset in the first place (usually beginning in childhood) and how a proper meditation to learn how to calm down can help a person cope. I put this section first because I believe that finding the key to natural self control is the most important thing each of us can discover.
Many people are out of control, and regaining self sovereignty has so many benefits, among them a restored sense of dignity and self worth, living life on a more even keel, having more patience with others, and the restoration of hope when we discover that we really can cope with life's challenges and seek for the purpose of our life.
This post is a resource for you. It offers information and avenues for further exploration. Its purpose is to offer you some educational resources to help you in your search for answers. Obviously I do not know your individual circumstances, so I am just offering some general information.
Part One: Why We Became Negative and Emotional In the First Place and How to Regain Self Control
Dr. Peter Breggin, M.D. wrote a book entitled Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock and Biochemical Theories of the New Psychiatry.
I like his title and premise of his book. I do not believe in the biochemical theories, and I do not believe in the so called "chemical imbalance in the brain" theory.
Love, empathy and understanding are indeed what we all need. Our fellow humans, if graced with understanding and patience, may at least do no harm, give us space to recover, or perhaps lend a helping hand when we are in a tough spot. However, I believe that the ultimate love, empathy and understanding that we need to solve our issues, restore self composure and a sense of well being come from our Creator within.
Trouble is--it was someone out in the world who started us reacting in the first place. We began to feel empty and out of control. So we made the mistake of looking to the world for love and for answers.
Whether you look to people, substances, experts, helpers, or organizations--you can't find what you lost out in the world. What you lost was rapport with your Creator, and the means of being calm, reasonable, and fulfilled without becoming dependent on someone or something on the outside.
It happens that a person can begin to feel overwhelmed and out of control through some childhood trauma or having a big reaction to some incident, because of a lack of guidance about how to control emotions, or because of the accumulation of many small emotional reactions. Another contributor to feeling overwhelmed is pressure and challenge (whether the pressures are religious, sports, academic, parental, or peer group).
I have to say that the patient and kind presence of someone with understanding, especially a calm and unperturbed parent, might have prevented the emotional build up. In this regard, there is nothing like the steady hand of a father. Father stands in for God in the eyes of the child. A father who is there for us and who is full of wisdom and grace is often all we need to get through life's vicissitudes unscathed.
But for whatever reason the negative emotions began, and once they take hold there is then a struggle with the symptoms, plus resentment toward others and impatience with their own self. Resentment leads to even more anxiety, guilt, unhappiness, and run away emotions.
That is why patience and understanding both with yourself and others is needed. I have a free meditation which has helped a lot of people become centered and helped them refind their calm center of dignity.
We cannot give ourselves patience or understanding, but we can discover them within when we cease our struggle and, as the old expression goes, "let go and let God." The problem is that most of us don't know how to become centered. We are just too emotional, too lost in thinking and struggling.
The meditation is just a little tech support. God says in the Bible "Be still and know that I am God." The little meditation exercise assists a person in being still. That's all. God does the rest.
Once a person learns how to get centered and calm down, s/he is more receptive to reason and intuitive insight. The person can then calmly see, grasp, and most importantly apply the kind of sound advice you get from wise people or good teachers, for example. The assistance of my meditation may be very well be helpful in restoring a person to a more even keel and calmness. Then s/he can successfully move forward with the Christian walk.
The meditation is complementary to what you are doing now. I am not seeking to replace your present faith practices or your relationship with your health provider, pastor or spiritual caregiver.
The stillness meditation is simply a tool to get centered and calm down. Then it will be easier to be a Christian and to apply to your life the beautiful Christian principles that you hear and read. It helps you to be a better Christian. When you are calmer and less upset, you will not be lost in worries. You will be able to focus better on the instruction of your good pastor or the Scripture.
This brings us to the subject of drugs.
Psychiatrist and expert in psychopharmacology, Dr. Peter Breggin, wrote a book entitled Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medication. He points out that in some cases the side effects of various psychotropic drugs include such things as restlessness, anxiety, mania, depression, hearing voices, thoughts of hurting self or others, and increased suicidality (that's why the FDA has required the drug manufacturers to put Black Box Warnings about increased suicidality on some meds, especially for children and adolescents).
As discussed in Dr. Breggin's book Medication Madness - the Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Suicide, Violence and Crime, if a person is experiencing negative thoughts and feelings as side effects, and does not realize that the drug may be contributing to them, that person sometimes starts to blame himself or herself for what they are thinking or feeling.
This self doubt and self blame lead to more negativity. This unfortunate situation is solveable when the person is educated about the fact that it's not them it's the side effect.
Parents may wish to read Dr. Breggins's book and educate themselves about this issue. Dr. Breggin devotes a whole chapter to effects associated with stimulant drugs given to treat children. This book is available at many free public libraries.
While under the spellbinding influence of emotion or drug, people think, say or do things that they never would otherwise. For example, under the influence of anger, a person might say something hurtful they later are sorry for.
Without realizing that marijuana has caused their driving skills to deteriorate, a person might make a mistake while driving.
Dr. Hendrickson describes in her book about a lady who recounted that after taking meds she began hearing voices telling her that she was ugly and everyone hated her. I recently heard of people who take a med to help them sleep who get up and cook or drive their car in the middle of the night and don't even remember it the next day.
Maybe you can also see that emotions, such as anger, are like drugs. Perhaps the worst "drug" of all is the emotion of resentment. The very Christian virtues of patience, love, and forgiveness are hard to apply when emotions are running high, especially resentment. Since emotions, especially resentment, interfere with the calm application of principles such as those taught by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, it makes sense to first calm down.
Incidentally, I have devoted twenty years of study to resentment and the importance of letting it go. In fact, I have discovered the secret to forgiveness. Many people know they are supposed to forgive but find it hard and don't know how (the secret lies in dropping resentment). I have covered this topic extensively in my books and articles. See free self help resources.
I have already mentioned drugs. The problem with taking drugs to calm down is that taking drugs causes guilt. We ought not to need a drug to calm us down, a drink of alcohol to give us courage, or a comedian to make us happy.
Calmness, spontaneity, happiness, courage and a blythe care-free spirit are the natural state of the human being (such as you see in little children). These come forth from within, and are there for us when we look to our Creator instead of to external supports.
Your downfall began with something or someone on the outside that you reacted to with anger or resentment, instead of remaining patient by responding only to inner principle. As Christians we know we are supposed to be patient and not take umbrage.
But you did take umbrage.
Your love was tested and found wanting. Now, you are undoubtedly still resenting the fact that you failed, still trying to make good, and still struggling with the cascade of symptoms that are the sequelae of your initial reaction long ago.
Now you must pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and admit that you failed. Don't be too hard on yourself (it's just another way the ego tries to rise above the situation and save its pride). We have all sinned and fallen short, as Paul said.
But here is my point. If it was reacting to the outside that started your descent in the first place, then more of the same is not the answer. You cannot solve your issue by more reacting to the outside. The answer is not on the outside--whether responding to a drug, substance, promises, support, words, or music.
The answer is responding to Truth within and finding an inner rapport, so that when the next external appeal comes along, this time you can remain unmoved.
True self control is from within--not painful suppression and repression, but a natural effortless control. Peace of mind, virtue and joy are awaiting us when we look within instead of looking to the outside. We need to be restored to our calm center of dignity where we might commune with insight and patience coming from God.
When we are back in touch with our God-given intuition, we then live and move and have our being from an inner source of intuitive guidance. And from there we get our energy to move. Being moved by a love of principle, we move forward without guilt or anxiety. Being on the same page as our Creator, we have no more unrecognized conflict with Him.
By being patient with others instead of resentful, we are rewarded with God's love from within. No longer needing the motivation of emotions to get the energy to move, we calm down and we begin to affect the world instead of the world affecting us.
No longer needing external pressures and challenges to stimulate us, we look within to apply delicate principles. And because the wellspring of our life is now from our Creator, there is no more anxiety or guilt. Only a peace of mind and a quiet joy in living our life. We learn that we don't need drugs, emotions, resentment, excitement or other externally based stimulations to be reasonable happy most of the time.
We need more than symptom removal. And we need more than knowledge about our issues. How many people do you know who seem to know everything about their operation, their diagnosis, or their meds. They are very knowledgeable, but they lack understanding that would give them insight and patience with themselves and others.
We cannot find this precious understanding in books, on the internet, from a preacher, from a drug, a counselor, or in a classroom. The best anyone can do for you is speak in such a way as to awaken you to see for yourself, so that you might see solutions instead of problems and so that you might stand back and stop interfering with natural spiritual restorative processes.
Understanding is a gift from God to the person who sincerely wants to know the truth and is willing to set aside raw knowledge and the judgments of pride in order to know God instead of playing God. It comes from within as a wordless knowing to the humble soul.
We need to find the state of mind where we can access God's understanding from within. This state of mind is called objectivity.
As long as you remain lost in thoughts, emotions, and study, you cannot find God's Presence and realize His point of view. You remain subjective.
Everything that I am trying to do on my radio program and in my books and blogs is awaken you to see that you are currently too lost in thinking and emotions. .
If you can learn to take a step back, and look at your issues objectively, you will inherit objectivity and the power to observe them without over-reacting to what you see. You will realize patience--first with yourself, then with others. You will realize that you have been too lost in struggling with your own issues, trying to save yourself, and then dealing with symptoms. You will also inherit understanding about yourself and others.
Therefore, may I suggest that you check out our meditation. It is free to listen to and download. There are also some reading resources, also free, to help you get started.
This is Pastor Roland. Many people are concerned about negative emotions. They have them and are seeking to cope with them and solve them. So they are looking for educational resources and solution strategies.
Here are some excerpts from a recent article I wrote. It was addressed to Christians, but the principles of self control I allude to can work for anybody. You don't have to a Christian to begin learning the art of self control.
We all know that mature people are calm and collected. We admire our airplane pilots and championship athletes who remain cool under stress. Our parents told us about staying calm, not getting angry, not worrying and so on. But somewhere along the way you started reacting, and once you did, it became a progressive snowballing thing until years later, you can't stop over reacting because now your body is conditioned to react.
So what you need is some basic training. And it must be simple, not complicated, so that you can easily apply it.Read the whole article
