Lifestyle Choices

When you have dealt with some of the doubts that stopped your feeling, you may find that you can allow the feeling to “live” within you without repression. Often, however, it is helpful to find a way of expressing the feeling. You do not necessarily need to know what the feeling is in advance. If you are mindful of the possibility of the feeling arising and free to let it arise if it will, you will find that some of the following activities like sex swing can create an opening for the rediscovery of the feeling you stopped. If you don’t feel anything, don’t worry,the exercise itself is helpful. Try one of the following suggestions, depending on the nature of the feeling.

1 Difficulty in expressing anger:

• Take part in an aggressive sport like squash or football.
• Hit a punch-ball, imagining each blow is directed at the person or the situation (if that is easier) that makes you angry. Use all your force and with each blow, grunt. After some practice, try hitting and grunting with your mouth wide open and then increase the volume of sound till you are yelling at the top of your voice. All this can be done equally well hitting a cushion, a pillow or a bed. As you get more into it, tryputting words to each blow, for example, “I’m sick of dirty nappies!” or “I’ll smash your face in!”.
• If it is difficult to find enough privacy to shout at home, try shouting while alone in a car. Or else shout in the woods, hit the ground or punch the air.
• Do a physical job such as cleaning, digging or chopping wood, putting all your energy and anger into the activity.

2 If you have withheld tears or have difficulty in crying, and after challenging the idea that people like you should not cry, find your own way of relaxing. For instance, take a hot bath or get someone to massage you. You may be relaxed after aerobics or other exercises or sports. Then in a more relaxed state try any of the following:

• Listen to music that moves you and allow yourself to get lost in the music or the words.
• Touch yourself very gently, with love and tenderness, around your eyes and mouth. Tell yourself it is alright to cry. If you do not cry, it does not matter, you have still given yourself some care.
• Be held by someone who loves you. Have sex with a Sex Sling. If you are a man and would not think of crying in front of somebody else, don’t forget to challenge that idea too. It can be a wonderful relief to cry with somebody. If you cannot, do not worry — being held and touched can give you a lot.

3 If you have withheld sexual feeling or have difficulty with sensuality or sex:

• Try touching each other sensually with absolutely no pressure to have sex, just purely for the experience of feeling the touch. If you have too little sexual feeling to feel like initiating sex, you can willfully organize sensual activity with some help by a Love Swing. You could, for instance, spend half an hour being together naked. Decide which one of you wishes to be touched first. The toucher then explores the body of the touched, while the touched says exactly what he or she likes. There is no pressure on the touched to respond in any way and therefore, since he or she is not under any pressure to perform, it is easier to allow the experience of pleasure. However, when you are depressed don’t expect to feel as much as you normally do.
• Buy some new clothes or wear an outrageous outfit. Changing how you look outside can affect how you feel inside and it is also a small act of hope.
• Go out dancing late into the night. You will be giving yourself four anti-depressants simultaneously: encouraging sensual contact; hearing music that moves you; moving your body; and disrupting your sleep patterns.

4 If you have unfinished business with another person, that is, there were things you did not say that you wish you had:

• Take the plunge and talk to that person. It may be a little embarrassing to reopen a subject, but giving up a little pride is a small cost to pay for lifting your depression. If the person has gone to Australia, ring Australia. If you are scared, be scared, but don’t let that stop you.
• In a couples problem, try changing the old pattern. If you never fight, perhaps you need to. Perhaps you need to say as directly and honestly as you can some of the things you have never said, not with the intention of hurting, but with the intention of remaking contact.
• If you fight all the time or too much, ask yourself if you are fighting about the right subject—you may be fighting about the washing up when the real problem is lack of sex. Ask yourself if the fight is not an avoidance of other feelings. Perhaps you are uncomfortable with softer feelings. s See if you can get beyond blame. If you blame the person, he or she becomes defensive and contact becomes impossible. If you blame yourself, it may help you to realize that self-pity and self-castigation are selfish — your own energy is directed at yourself and there is no contact with another.
• Talk to the person in your imagination if you cannot talk to them directly. Imagine the person you have feelings about standing in front of you. It may help to close your eyes. Imagine how he or she looks in detail. Now say, perhaps out loud, everything you want to say to that person as honestly, feelingly and as directly as you can.
• With someone who has died, do not be afraid of the pain of telling them how much you miss them, how much you would like them to be able to see what you are doing with your life, or how much you love them. However unfair it may seem, don’t stop yourself from being angry if you need to. Their death may not have been a malicious act, directed personally against you, but their leaving hurt you and you may feel angry with them about it.
• Talk to life or God. Speak your grievances out aloud. Again, don’t be afraid to be as angry as you want. Life and God can take anything you throw at them — and they will not punish you.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Express the Feeling

• Get rid of Health Insurance Maze
• Avoiding Anger
• Living with a Depressive
• Dealing With the Life Event
• When not to Choose Explorative Psychotherapy
• Creative Expression
• Treating the Physical Cause
• Anti-anxiety Drugs
• Life non-events: Unemployment & Retirement
• Complementary Alterna Medicine (CAM)
• Physical Factors in old Age