Looking at books about personal growth and self-help, you’re likely to come across quite a few about emotions. Until recent years, the focus was very much on “controlling” emotions and “feeling good” (thanks David Burns! Actually his book Feeling Good is a great resource for working with self-talk). So when I first read Miriam Greenspan’s Healing through the Dark Emotions, it felt quite radical. All emotions have helpful information?!
Her beautifully written book challenges the idea that negative emotions are to be avoided and can be harmful for your health. She differentiates between mindfully experiencing emotions and those that become “stuck.” Unfortunately, our society often equates difficult emotions with mental illness or being “out of control.” According to Greenspan, this “emotion phobia” is how emotions become unhealthy and “stuck.”
The book focuses on three “dark emotions,” fear, grief, and despair, and how to allow yourself to experience them without getting “stuck” or overwhelmed by pain. Part of shifting your experience of these emotions is taking apart what you learned about them. I think one of the most helpful aspects of the book is shifting this view of “negative” emotions and reclaiming their wisdom.
“...their purpose is not to make us miserable, drive us crazy, or shame, weaken, or defeat us, but to teach us about ourselves, others and the world, to open our hearts to compassion, to help us heal and change our lives” (Greenspan, 2003, p.12)
All of this sounds lovely, but it isn’t just words. Greenspan writes from experience and has used this perspective for her own “emotional alchemy.” She shares in the book about her first child, Aaron, who lived for only sixty-six days and never left the hospital. She kept asking “Why?” but there was no answer. She eventually began to ask “What shall I do with my sorrow?”
According to Greenspan, one form of emotional alchemy is being listened to, either by yourself or someone else. She explains, “When a person’s suffering is well listened to in psychotherapy, an alchemical progress is initiated. Something that starts out as a desperate but inarticulate anguish or a mysterious, painful sensation in the body begins to cohere as a story” (Greenspan, 2003, p. 15-16).
Greenspan uses many stories of her work as a therapist and also weaves in wisdom from various faiths and spiritual perspectives. This is an intense book. One to read slowly and to ponder, but it also contains thirty-three exercises which help translate these ideas into practical, mindful exercises with emotions. Reading this book does require an open-mind, and Greenspan’s spiritual language and references may be off-putting to some. If you connect with the idea of emotions having wisdom, then this book may be a next step in transforming how you relate to your emotions.
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