Depression, anxiety, and feelings of isolation are epidemic. One minute we are driven
by boredom into a restless search for "the action" but in the next minute, when we
find it, the stress triggers a headache or a rash.
Feelings are not the problem, though. They may be uncomfortable – even
painful – but they are never pathological. The problem is all the things we do to
protect ourselves from painful feelings. We exhaust ourselves running around so the
sadness won't catch us or we try to dissolve our sense of powerlessness in alcohol or
pills. We frantically search for the right car or dress that will distract us from never
having felt fully loved or cared for.
Boredom and restlessness are not feelings at all but the smudge left behind
when painful feelings are erased: push anger away and what's left is the empty
sensation that nothing's happening – or that nobody is there. As for the stress that
causes, triggers, or heightens medical problems: this too is not a matter of simple
aggravation, sadness, or frustration but the anger, sadness, or frustration you're
trying desperately not to feel.
You know the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy: they can be neither
created nor destroyed, only shifted from form to form. Emotion – a kind of psychic
energy – obeys the same law. Shut anger or sadness or frustration out the door and it
comes in through the window or, often enough, through the body. Your heart
"attacks." Your asthma "gasps." Your eczema "weeps."
By the Law of Conservation of Emotional Energy, you cannot erase the fact that
a key person in your life didn't love you (or only loved who they thought you were; or
the reflection of themselves they saw in your eyes; or a "you" that agreed not to love
someone else).
All you can do is con yourself: keep on struggling to do what it seemed would get
them to love you; or attempt to rewrite history: find a person or dilemma just like the
one that hurt you way back when and convince yourself that this time the story will
have a happy ending. When it doesn't, try again. And again. And again.
Try as you might to come up with new plays that will win the game, the season
is long over and nothing is going to change the score. Switch jobs. Move to California.
Retire. Get married. Get divorced. Get a horse. You still won't be recloned as your
ideal self. Your past is nonnegotiable.
My advice: Give up. There is no place to go and there's nothing to do that will
change things on that level. Pessimistic? Think of it as liberating. Now you can just do
things because you enjoy them or because they catch your fancy. Now you can be nice
to someone just to be nice to someone – not to get rid of the ache that lies buried
inaccessibly like the phantom pain in a limb that was amputated long ago.
Give up the fight; accept and feel the feelings. Get off the merry-go-round that is
taking you nowhere. One day – through psychotherapy, perhaps, or through a
particularly sobering personal experience – it gets through that the universe will not
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be declared a misdeal, so you begin to play the hand you've been dealt. The painful
slowness of life speeds up or its frantic, exhausting pace slows down. You become
more present and more playful. Relationships go more smoothly. Work is more
rewarding. Externally, your life is identical – but incredibly much richer.
When you start to make sense of the past, you stop repeating it; when you stop
pretending your wounds aren't there, they start to heal. When you stop repeating
battles that have been history for decades, then you're left with … what? Real life; no
more, no less. Maybe it's not the four-scoop, three-topping whipped cream special
with the cherry on top, but there will be some magically tasty moments.
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Acknowledgments
First Edition, 1986
Most of what I'll be sharing with you comes from a timeless pool of wisdom. These
methods for promoting health and growth have been developed independently by
different traditions. Each has its own labels and notions of who deserves the credit:
from the gods to the human fond of that approach.
My debt to the pool is enormous. I will treat it largely as public domain.
Specific credit is due to some key teachers, supervisors, and advisers who
helped me first put a toe in the waters: Drs. Fred Frankel, Robert Misch, Theodore
Nadelson, Norman Neiberg, Murray Cohen, and Louis Chase directly; and Sigmund
Freud, Ram Dass, Sheldon Kopp, and Milton Erickson secondhand, top the list.
Three key people opened the doors to my work with skin problems. Dr. Fred
Frankel, the acting chief of psychiatry at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, provided a
thoughtful entree into the world of hypnosis. Dr. Kenneth Arndt, Chief of the
Dermatology Department, and Carla Burton, R.N., also at Beth Israel Hospital, offered
their support with continuing encouragement. The collaboration of these three
provided a fine example of the kind of interdepartmental innovation that has made
the Beth Israel Hospital an international center for both research and outstanding
patient care.
The late Selma Freiberg helped in so many ways, including providing a model
for turning research into a lively and utterly practical tool for human betterment.
Of course, the real experts are the people with the problems. Their creativity
and "test flying" of the techniques were the ultimate sources of knowledge. The
members of the Boston HELP group deserve credit.
Richard Liebmann-Smith, author and editor, was not the first to say, ''You ought
to write a book about this," but he followed my, ''Who me?" reply with incisive advice
and guidance. He introduced me to Gloria Stern, who became my literary agent and
staunch supporter. Her matchmaking brought my coauthor, Carl Sherman, and me
together and then brought the two of us to Maria Guarnaschelli, a senior editor at
William Morrow and Company. Maria made it all happen from there.
Kathryn Nesbit of the Reference Department of the Countway Medical Library of
the Harvard Medical School did the computer bibliographies and Dottie Moon the
remainder of the library research. Karen Lemieux prepared the manuscript with
amazing precision under pressure.
My colleague Dr. Richard Pomerance was a constant source of support and
intriguing suggestions. Psychology Today's Virginia Adams and Christopher Cory
shaped and published my first article. The warm response it produced was a major
boost to this project.
Finally, my wife, Dr. Rosely Traube, and sons, Zachary and Matthew, provided a
bedrock of love and encouragement.
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I spend much of my professional life convincing people that they can live their
dreams. The right people helping and an enormous amount of work are all it takes.
My deepest thanks to all those who helped me take my own advice.
Revised and Expanded Edition, 1992
I gratefully acknowledge Health Press for extending the life of this book. While the
basic theory of the material presented in the revised edition remains constant, this
new edition allowed me to clarify my thoughts in areas that were previously cloudy
and to bring to the reader my findings, both in clinical work and in research.
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