The Mickel Therapy Clinic, Auckland, Mickel Therapy - contact Kim or book a session
In this article we would like to clear up some common misunderstandings when it comes emotions, how they arise and what changes them. Unfortunately our culture has taught us that emotions arise as a result of our unruly thinking processes. The latter are what Mickel Therapy calls secondary emotions specifically when related to a person's experience of illness. So for example if I have had symptoms of CFS/M.E or Fibromyalgia for several years then it is only human that this experience will create negative thoughts and subsequent secondary emotions. Presumable this has led to the medical world confusing CFS etc with a depressive state. However Mickel Therapy believes this to be a secondary effect and not a cause of the symptoms.
During our work with clients Mickel Therapy teaches them how to translate physical symptoms into primary emotions which arise before thought and therefore cannot be influenced by cognitive change or positive thinking. Indeed most of our clients remain extremely positive people despite enduring great suffering. As we coach our clients in this translation of symptoms into primary emotions they often say things like "but I don't want to feel frustrated with my partner/sister/mother etc..." or "but I like gardening - how can it be boring?" This is where an understanding of primary emotions is very important. Since they are not created by how a person thinks then they cannot be responsible for what primary e-motions arise within them in any given situation. This goes against most mainstream cultural beliefs around emotions and is the main reason why we get ill in the first place - due to the effect of suppressed primary emotions and the role these play in dist urbing the function of structures in our mid-brain, especially the hypothalamus.
So then where does responsibility lie? Since we cannot control or alter the primary emotions that rise moment to moment in our life then our only respons-ibility is in how we act upon them. Indeed, primary emotions could be viewed simply as calls to action. This is what Mickel Therapy teaches clients to do - respond honestly and constructively. In so doing a client can release themselves from the chronic build up of primary emotions and the effect they have on the hypothalamus and other mid-brain structures.
Lamentably culture vies against change especially when it challenges ideas that have been ingrained for generations such as "children should be seen but not heard" and "stop crying" or the best of all "don't be sad"! These statements show a worrying misunderstanding about emotions and from Mickel Therapy's perspective are exactly the reason we are all at risk of CFS, ME, Fibromyalgia, Irritable Bowel Disease, Anxiety, Depression and many more conditions.
One of our main goals in Mickel Therapy is to introduce a new understanding of emotions and respons-ibility for them to children at an early age. If this were part of the educational curriculum then we are confident that much disease could be avoided.
The first step in this is for everyone to accept the fact that we are not responsible for our emotions - only for how we respond to them...