How to separate Yourself from yourself
http://www.therapist-psychologist.com/psychology_article/articles/64/1/How-to-separate-Yourself-from-yourself/Page1.html
Jeff Guenther, MS
I am currently a professional therapist in Portland Oregon. I serve individuals, couples and families based on a sliding scale. I am skilled at using cognitive, psychodynamic and metaphysical theories in my practice. By Jeff Guenther, MS
Published on March 14, 2008
This article is about how to feel better when you are feeling overwhelmed with negative or sad thoughts. Reading and understanding this article is a good way to figure out how to feel better now and continue feeling better in the future. If you are feeling any intense negative emotion, such as anger, depression, jealousy, grief etc., this process of creating space between You and you may help.
If you are struggling with an intense emotion, or a not so intense emotion, you may want to try and create some space between You and you. I capitalize the first "You" because when you can create some internal space you are actually becoming aware of your higher self, or your source or your God self or whatever you would like to call it.
Let's say you have just been dumped. You were in a relationship for a year and your partner has broken up with you for a reason you don't think is valid. You love this person and want to be with this person and it just doesn't make sense to you why he/she left you. A typical reaction is to become depressed, angry, resentful, frustrated, enraged, grief stricken, etc. You can spend some time feeling these negative emotions and spending days, weeks or months is quite typical and in some cases healthy to stay in this depressed state. But eventually you have to make a choice to feel better. Feeling better always comes down to choice. You don't have to feel a certain way if you don't want to feel it.
So let's say you have been unfairly broken up with and some typical thoughts running through your head are, "I can't go on with out him/her," "I'll never love again," "I can't imagine ever feeling better." These thoughts are normal but when they keep repeating themselves and they are the only thoughts you are identifying with on a daily basis it makes daily life pretty difficult to get through. If you can take a mental step back and take a look at these thoughts as an observer and not identify with them than your healing can begin and you can start feeling better pretty quickly.
Picture in your mind that you are watching these thoughts like you would watch a news ticker at the bottom of a 24 hour news channel. You would typically watch the ticker with a sense of disconnectedness and anything floating by on the screen would not trigger much emotion from you. You can apply this same feeling to your thoughts. Look at your thoughts from a distance or a different perspective, identify with the Observer in you and simply see the thoughts passing by. Try not to make harsh judgments about the thoughts because you are then just letting those negative thoughts in through the back door. Try identifying and becoming aware of that part of you that is watching everything unfold. That part of you is always calm and relaxed and content. If you wish, you could comment on the negative, sad or angry thoughts that pass through your mind but the comments should be Observer comments such as, "that's interesting," or "it makes sense that I would feel this way."
With practice you become better at distancing Yourself from yourself and life becomes a lot more manageable.
About the Author:
Jeff Guenther, M.S. is a professional therapist in Portland, Oregon and counsels individuals, couples and families. Visit his website at http://www.JeffGuenther.com or email him at JeffGuentherMS@gmail.com.
Let's say you have just been dumped. You were in a relationship for a year and your partner has broken up with you for a reason you don't think is valid. You love this person and want to be with this person and it just doesn't make sense to you why he/she left you. A typical reaction is to become depressed, angry, resentful, frustrated, enraged, grief stricken, etc. You can spend some time feeling these negative emotions and spending days, weeks or months is quite typical and in some cases healthy to stay in this depressed state. But eventually you have to make a choice to feel better. Feeling better always comes down to choice. You don't have to feel a certain way if you don't want to feel it.
So let's say you have been unfairly broken up with and some typical thoughts running through your head are, "I can't go on with out him/her," "I'll never love again," "I can't imagine ever feeling better." These thoughts are normal but when they keep repeating themselves and they are the only thoughts you are identifying with on a daily basis it makes daily life pretty difficult to get through. If you can take a mental step back and take a look at these thoughts as an observer and not identify with them than your healing can begin and you can start feeling better pretty quickly.
Picture in your mind that you are watching these thoughts like you would watch a news ticker at the bottom of a 24 hour news channel. You would typically watch the ticker with a sense of disconnectedness and anything floating by on the screen would not trigger much emotion from you. You can apply this same feeling to your thoughts. Look at your thoughts from a distance or a different perspective, identify with the Observer in you and simply see the thoughts passing by. Try not to make harsh judgments about the thoughts because you are then just letting those negative thoughts in through the back door. Try identifying and becoming aware of that part of you that is watching everything unfold. That part of you is always calm and relaxed and content. If you wish, you could comment on the negative, sad or angry thoughts that pass through your mind but the comments should be Observer comments such as, "that's interesting," or "it makes sense that I would feel this way."
With practice you become better at distancing Yourself from yourself and life becomes a lot more manageable.
About the Author:
Jeff Guenther, M.S. is a professional therapist in Portland, Oregon and counsels individuals, couples and families. Visit his website at http://www.JeffGuenther.com or email him at JeffGuentherMS@gmail.com.