There are a number of areas of healing in our modern world today, two primary ones being Medical Doctor and Psychiatrist. Think about what these two types of doctors do:
- Medical Doctor - heals the physical body
- Psychiatrist - heals the "mind"
I put "mind" in quotes because there's something missing here. Human beings have 3 distinct parts to them, not just two.
Three Parts of the Human Being
- physical body
- emotions/feelings
- mind
You could also say that humans have a spirit or soul, too. I didn't include that on my list because I know there's some debate in our society as to the existence of that; and because the healing arts don't directly affect that part of a person, they mostly treat the "tangible" parts of us, the parts that accumulate wear and tear during our lives. Besides, I don't think anybody would argue they don't have a physical body, or emotions, or a mind.
What? How are Emotions different from Mind? That's a good question.
Emotions are Different from Mind
It's easy to mistake Emotions for Mind, but these two things are truly separate. You can prove this to yourself - notice how sometimes they want two totally different things! For example, think about the last time you were in love. It was hard to concentrate on work or school, wasn't it? Your heart kept remembering the person you're so fond of. You kept imagining what they look like, what they would say, how they would say it; what romantic thing you would say in return, how they feel, their delicious perfume, etc. At the same time, you were supposed to finish your paper on Deforestation in East Timor, or some such thing. It took you 5 times longer than normal to finish it, because you kept wandering into daydream mode! Or, you kept forgetting your assignment at work, or left out an important part you normally wouldn't do, or left a vital tool behind which you never did before; that sort of thing.
How about a common theme we've seen in movies: a married man/woman attracted to someone else they aren't married to? That's a clear conflict between emotions and mind. Feelings are strong for this other person, but the mind knows it's a bad idea to do anything about it.
Look - if there can be a conflict of two opposing views, then the thing is divided, it's not a single whole item. Like, you have a viewpoint on some topic of discussion, but your friend has a different viewpoint. You and your friend are clearly different people - the proof is that you have different viewpoints! If your feelings can take an opposite, conflicting side from your thoughts (mind), then those two things are different. They're separate.
Mental People and Emotional People
Once you fully absorb this idea, something will likely hit you as it did me - I realized I have mentally-polarized people in my life, and emotionally-polarized people. I know, everybody has both - what I mean is that some people naturally react emotionally, or mentally. If you can identify which "style" of person everyone in your life is, and react to them in the same way, you'll be amazed at the results! You'll connect to people you don't normally connect to. Emotional people, and mental people. Everybody has all of the above, but, in most cases, each person prefers (and is most comfortable with) only one. When I talk to certain computer programmers at work, I focus on mental concepts; data structures, algorithms, the right way to do things - and they love it. In my personal life, most people around me need me to relate by feelings first. One trick is to listen to how they speak: if they say "I think we should ...", they may be mentally oriented. If they say "I feel we should ..." they may be emotionally oriented. It's not guaranteed, but it's often correct in my experience. Another way to tell, if they are mostly negative in everything they say, often that is a mentally oriented person. The mind, for whatever reason, tends to be separative and elitist in its behavior. Having said that, I'd like to also say: most people relate primarily with other people with emotions. If you can be an emotional person around them, you're more likely to be popular with them, understood by them.
I can understand people mistaking emotions for mind. We haven't clearly identified emotions in our society, we focus mostly on the body and the mind. In school what did you do? You exercised in P.E. ( body), and you learned lots of things (mind). You took notes (physical) to remind you of facts and formulas (mind). You went to football games (body), and took tests and exams (mind). Our society doesn't clearly define the concept of emotions, although they're all around us, and just as important as body and mind.
It's even easier to mistake emotions for mind when the two work together - you hate somebody, and your mind can think of 10 reasons why you're right to hate them. You love somebody else, and your mind comes up with 10 reasons why they're so lovable. Emotions and mind often feed into each other like this.
Emotions Around Us
Many things around us involve emotions, in both positive and negative ways. A heated argument with another person involves your emotions - that's what makes it different than a true debate. In a debate, you can participate by arguing either one side or another, without getting emotionally involved - focusing on the facts, proofs and disproofs, etc. In fact, a good debater can take up a viewpoint different from what they actually believe, and argue it fully and completely, as if they really believed it! Emotions only get in the way, in a debate. An argument is a totally different thing! An argument is primarily emotion, secondarily mind. Have you ever been in an argument where the other person proved you wrong, clearly? What happened then? Did you relax and smile and say, "oh yeah, you're right, I realize that now." No! You probably got even madder, and stuck to your belief even stronger, whether you could still argue it or not! I'm not saying arguments are bad or good. I'm just saying that's clearly an emotional response, not a mental response. Have you ever seen somebody so steamed, they couldn't argue anymore? That's such a strong emotional response, it blotted out their mind from operating properly! I'm sure they wanted to argue and prove the other person wrong, but they could not - their emotions were too strong.
Examples of Physical, Emotional, Mental
For any given experience you can think of, there's usually a Physical component, an Emotional component, and a Mental component. Thinking about this in your own life can help you realize the distinction.
Example scenario: a person cuts in front of you in line at the grocery store.
Physical body says: they bumped my cart a little bit, it's at an angle; that's OK, I can correct it with a little pressure from my arms, there, I got it lined up again - very quickly, too.
Emotional body says: Rargh! who are they to do that to me! I was next, they took my spot! That's just wrong!! Did they not see me here? I feel small now. Did they intentionally want to hurt my feelings? Because they did; maybe it was on purpose! They're mean!
Mental body says: you can't get away with that! If I let this go, they'll just do it again and again! I'm not a pushover, and now I have to do something to prove it - to myself, and to them. I'm going to be late getting home by an extra 5 minutes, now. I was already in line for 5 minutes, that's 10 minutes waiting in line, plus they have a lot of items, that's another couple minutes. They probably brought their checkbook too. They better not talk to the cashier very much, and slow me down.
Then, interactions between body, emotions, and mind can happen. For example:
Mind - let me look at their face, see if recognize them.
Emotions - yeah, I want to see if I can tell their motives.
Body - (snaps eyes up and over to focus on their face)
Mind - they look dangerous, I better not say anything! Look at those lines in their face, I think they're a bad person, I think everybody who looks like that is a bad person.
Emotions - that's what a bad person looks like? OK I'll remember that. All people looking like that are bad & dangerous. Avoid talking to people who look kind of like that. Don't trust people looking like that. The orange vest and raggedy jeans they're wearing is part of bad and dangerous. The faint smell of cigarettes on their breath is bad and dangerous. Got it.
Mind - I just want to get out of here, but I'm stuck waiting in line. This always happens to me.
Who Treats Emotions
So if Doctors treat the body and Psychologist's treat the mind, then who treats emotions & feelings? Well, in a way, Psychologists do, to a limited degree. They often deal with the realm of "how that made you feel". However, in my opinion, they haven't learned the science very well yet. I say that because Psychologists are not able to heal emotional issues very fast. If someone has emotional issues, often it takes decades to get over them, going the Psychologist route. (And in the mean time the patient is accumulating a whole bunch more, just from the trials and tribulations of their life!)
In the past, visiting a psych was all you could do. For $100-200 per hour. Now there's alternatives such as TAT and EFT, two amazing emotional processes that can help a person get over many kinds of debilitating stresses and hangups in just a few days or weeks. The best part is, you can learn how to do it yourself! For free! Although, for serious issues, it's extremely useful to go to an experienced practitioner for guidance.
Identifying Emotional Issues
Society still doesn't have a good way of identifying all emotional issues. We don't understand that some things which look physical, are actually emotional in origin, such as food allergies. Most food allergies are emotional issues, not physical - even though the reaction appears 100% physical. I know this from personal experience, let me tell you. I was allergic to more foods that not, as a child. I had really bad asthma back then, and wound up in the hospital for multi-day stays a dozen times a year, at least, for most of my child-hood. (It must have been pretty tough on my parents, now that I think about it.)
One of my biggest food allergies was Wheat - I could not eat any kind of bread or pastry, nor even flour tortillas (but not corn tortillas - those are 100% corn which I could eat). Even cornbread is about half-wheat, so I was allergic to it. If offered a slice of apple pie, I'd eat just the filling, leaving the crust. Most other pies and cakes were totally out, for me - eating one piece would cause me about 18 hours of painful wheezing and loss of sleep, and exhaustion. At a fast-food restaurant I would order a hamburger, then eat the meat and vegetables, throwing away the two buns - yeah, it was like an involuntary protein diet! I was continuously underweight until about age 30.
My parents tried everything to heal these allergies when I was a kid. Allergy shots every week for many years did absolutely nothing for me. Allopathic and homeopathic treatments of every kind; special breathing exercises to strengthen my lungs; no luck. It wasn't until I was 30 years old that I was able to cure this allergy on my own. The cure? Accepting all people in the world as my friends, brothers, equals. Being OK with mixing in society, going to parties, not hiding out living alone. Talking to strangers. Not hating the mass of humanity, with all its limitations - instead seeing the beauty in all people, and truly accepting them in my heart. At least I think that's what did it - I was taking Ballroom Dance lessons at the time, and this was a natural attitude-extension of that, and I was cured. Don't be separate from humanity, even when your mind can think of a dozen reasons why people as a whole are "stupid". Of course everybody is stupid at one time or another, including you and me. It's human nature. Don't dwell and judge on that quality. Instead, understand everybody wants to be better and do better. Be optimimistic about humanity. Imagine future greatness for every single person you can see, when you go to the grocery store. Each and every one of them has a heart, no matter what their current look or attitude is. Truly except that for yourself, and you won't be allergic to wheat anymore, in my opinion. Now, that's not to say that everyone who hates people in general is going to have an allergy to wheat - for some reason it doesn't always work that way around.
The other big food allergy I got over (which no doctor could heal me of) was my Beans allergy. I cured that at age 42, by myself. I used TAT (Tapas Acupuncture Technique) to get over it. It took 2 days to fix it - I had been suffering with it for 40 years.
I'm not sure if you understand how bad my beans allergy was. The smell and thought of beans repulsed me. Eating just a few beans would cause my lips to swell up almost immediately, my throat to "close" (get itchy, and make it hard to swallow); my skin would start breaking out in hives (big welts) all over my body. The lips and throat thing would go away in a couple hours; the hives would stay for a couple of days. It also damaged my overall digestive energy; it cost more energy to digest a meal like that than I gained by eating it. I would often say "I'm never eating again!" after an experience like that. For 40 years.
I figured out later that I had a deep-seated painful experience related to eating beans when I was a small child. I was forced to eat them when I didn't want to by my parents, and I cried and cried. I remember it now; I didn't remember it for a long time. Following the TAT process helped me remember it, and when I treated that memory with the TAT process I could feel a shift in my energy field of my body - it's hard to explain, kind of like how you can feel a shivver down your spine, but this was a pleasant and less-intrusive feeling. Kind of like a glowing feeling that I didn't have before.
What other kind of "uncurable illness" do we have in our society today, which looks like a physical or mental illness, but which is actually emotional? What if those are easy to cure with emotional healing, such as with TAT or EFT? The inventor of EFT, Gary Craig, says "try it on everything" - which I also believe. It may not work. But more times than not, it does. For any science in its infancy, you have to "test the edges" and see where it takes you.
Observations
Many things in our society harms us emotionally, and as such, can have devastating effects physically and mentally. Wars, violence against fellow human beings, is a big problem. Dwelling on those things (via the news, computer games, etc.) can cause all kinds of "seemingly unrelated issues". My advice: don't do it. Don't get caught up in the bullshit fed to you by boatloads from the news. You don't need to know about the person murdered in a small town 3000 miles away from your home. It's unnecessary, it just harms you, lessens your happiness a little bit. Hearing it diminishes your belief in humanity, your willingness to see other people as your equals, as your friends. It's completely unbalanced. Try to find a way to have a balanced view.
Summary
So: a painful childhood experience, whether remembered or not, can implant a wrong belief in your emotional system, causing bodily rejection of something that's harmless as if it was dangerous. Your system is just trying to look out for you as best it can! Once you're an adult and over the specific issue, it's time to let it go. But how do we do that? How do we even identify it, how do we clean it once it's identified? Do we have the tools? How are we supposed to learn this stuff? The science behind EFT and TAT is still in its infancy. It really works, whether we understand how or not. But who is teaching this stuff in our schools? It's time everybody learned how to heal themselves of many "uncurable issues" like I did, and get help for the bigger things haunting them to this day.
I can still hear my doctor telling my mom when I was 10 years old, "his asthma may go away when he reaches puberty," which turned out to be untrue. I had to take medicine for my asthma twice a day every day since age 2, until age 33 - when I used EFT to get "more over it". Now I don't take any medicine at all. However, once in a while it flares up still, especially if I have a cold or flu; I still have an old inhaler which I use when that happens - maybe once or twice a year or so. EFT has given me a great release from the daily pain of asthma, not to mention the monthly cost of buying the medicines for it. So I guess the "free PDF file" I downloaded from emofree.com once upon a time has saved me a good amount of money and pain over the past few years.
I feel there is a giant cloud surrounding our world, filled with ugly thoughts and feelings. It's time to stop feeding that cloud, and to clean and disperse it. Do what you can - start cleaning yourself first. Don't accept thoughts and feelings into your system that harm you! Just stop it, and see what benefits you earn after just a few weeks. And go to www.tat.net and www.emofree.com for details on TAT and EFT and heal something in yourself that no practitioner in your life can, today.
I really believe you can do it.