Every emotion is a part of our existence and they all have a function. Negative emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety and sadness are natural, human and motivating emotions. No emotion arises out of the blue; if there is an emotion, positive or negative, it is trying to tell us what we need. Ignoring the emotion or not allowing it does not eliminate that emotion. For example, let's say you are with a friend who is feeling very sad and crying. What are you doing at that time? Are you trying to distract him, make him feel better, and stop crying by keeping him busy with other things? Are you trying to get him out of his sad mood without trying to understand what he is feeling or accompanying his negative emotion? So, do you do the same things when you feel sad, angry, or anxious? Can you stay with negative emotions or do you want them to pass immediately? Are you not allowed to have negative emotions? Pain, anger, disappointment, jealousy, sadness or anxiety; It will pass if it is experienced without denying it, without insisting that it will pass, without trying to get rid of it immediately, without ignoring it. If you deny and do not allow your own negative emotions, it becomes difficult to accompany the negative emotions and pain of others.
Feeling negative emotions; If it will cause the child to be judged, punished and rejected according to the value judgments of the society, the child suppresses these feelings and does not allow them to come out. For example; He believes that his anger can be destructive, and thinks that if he reveals his anger, he will not be understood and will be judged, so he suppresses his anger. In her book "The Body Never Lies", Alice Miller talks about the effect of denying emotions on the body. Miller focuses on the conflict between our true feelings and what we need to feel to comply with moral rules. While bad emotions are ignored in order to comply with accepted value judgments, unfelt good emotions are forced to be felt. However; Real emotions cannot be felt by force. Miller states that accepting a morality and value system that says parents should be loved under all circumstances—despite abuse—means giving up real feelings. Bad feelings to be loved� The person who denies himself becomes free only when he accepts all his feelings, and when he stops demanding love in this way and stops submitting to value judgments, love arises spontaneously. “People who were loved in their childhood will love their mothers and fathers in return; there is no need for an order telling them to love their mothers and fathers. Obedience to an order can never create love.” (Miller, 2015).
In the "Telling and Hiding" section of the book, the effect of denial of negative emotions on the body is explained accompanied by the biographies of many authors. For example; A short passage from a letter Marcel Proust wrote to his mother demonstrates the relationship between internalized morality and asthma. “I would rather have the attacks and make you happy than make you unhappy and not have these attacks.”
Miller defines the function of psychotherapists as "enlightened witnesses" who can accompany negative emotions, act as companions for our inner child, understand the language of the body, and take into account the emotions and needs that parents once ignored. Psychotherapy may be used for many different reasons - eating disorders, alcohol-substance addictions, physical complaints, depression, anxiety, etc. - but the roots of most of them are the suppression of emotions, inability to express them and unmet needs. During the psychotherapy process, the client is allowed to discover his own story and express his feelings freely. The Andreas phenomenon included in Miller's book; He got in touch with the child inside him, felt the pain of the child who hoped that one day everything would change, and began to lose weight as he felt it. He no longer needs the food and alcohol that numb his emotions because he has begun to meet his need for freedom in more appropriate ways - by becoming independent from his parents.
Adulthood is reached by being able to feel repressed emotions, not denying what is real, consciously accepting what the body remembers, and ending the toxic attachment to the parent who internalized it in childhood (Miller, 2015).
“We must give up our expectation that one day our parents will give us what they deprived us of as children.” (Miller, 2015).& nbsp;
Purpose in psychotherapy; It is not about forgiving parents or taking revenge on them, but about accepting them as they are. Only then do we become free, learn to respect ourselves, and our body feels understood and protected.
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