emotions and the balance within a review of the CCI approach to a healthy emotional life by Niek Sickenga and Graham Howie, April 2004 also click here
the art…. Handling emotions well is an art. Emotions are personal to us, they add a great deal of colour to life - and we can be very sensitive to them. They deserve good care. Caring for our emotions usually means expressing them freely - enjoying our happiness to the full, or feeling sadness as appropriate. Sometimes, however, emotional expression is not immediately possible - it may be socially inappropriate, for example, to get angry with your boss, or wrong to be angry with a sick child who keeps you awake all night. So the question arises: What do you do with your anger? How can you handle this strong emotion - before it gives you high blood pressure? This art, handling emotions in a healthy way, is an on-going process, just as all growth and life itself is a process. Emotional processes should not be postponed for too long, emotions should
not be frozen. The CCI approach provides skills and a supportive, non-competitive, creative environment where emotions are explored and expressed - this is the art of handling emotions. This CCI process brings together and harmonises our emotional and rational capacities. Its aim is to promote the quality of life - by raising awareness, gaining knowledge and understanding, and developing skills in appropriate management of emotions - quality of life both in our private lives and in our wider world, today. Quality of life is about personal authenticity, and about enriching relationships between people. Interviews with 2 million employees at 700 companies found that 'what determines how long employees stay… is the quality of their relationships with their immediate boss' (from The New Leaders by Daniel Goleman, p.105.)
emotions The phenomenon of emotions is hard to define. We may feel them, observe them, experience them - and yet there remains something mysterious about them. Even the experts can't agree! 'Researchers continue to argue over precisely which emotions can be considered primary - the blue, red ,and yellow of feeling from which all blends come - or even if there are such primary emotions at all' (Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, p.331.) Personally I don't want to stay arguing about definitions of emotions - I want to find a more practical understanding, a framework which integrates this mysterious experience of emotion, and that supports me to live a more full, satisfying and aware life.
part of the mystery Part of the mystery of emotions is that our experience of them is so personal, so individual. For example, you and I might be placed in an identical situation: however, I experience one sort of emotional response, while you might experience something completely different. Clearly this is related to our personal histories, our backgrounds and past experiences. Or, let's suppose that we both did have the same emotional response - but how can we be sure that what I call happiness (or sadness, or fear, etc) is the same thing as you experience in your own individual way? Or what about the intensity of feeling? Is my 100% happiness (or fear, or whatever) the same emotion as you experience when you are just 75% happy (or fearful, or whatever!) So we see that emotions are utterly personal. And sometimes the words and labels we use for them just get in the way. Accepting this reality, let's set aside attempts to describe and define emotions (at least for now.) They are too personal. They belong - whatever their intensity - solely to their owner, the person experiencing them. (Who is entitled to name them by whatever name best suits them at the time.) Only that person really knows what they are feeling. Our job is simply to acknowledge the reality of the emotion and to respect the integrity of the person, the owner. For example, it is not respectful to say, 'Oh, I know just how you feel!' Or to say, 'Your reaction is much too extreme for such a small event.' Or, 'You should be happy in this situation, not sad.' Or to interrupt the flow of someone's feelings by saying: 'Let me tell you about how I felt when the same thing happened to me.'
None of these responses respects the person who 'owns' the emotional experience! (This respect is one of the core demands of CCI.) Despite being individual and personal, emotions seem to be part of a bigger phenomenon, they contribute to the phenomenon of life itself. Holistically, there seems to be an underlying principle to all life - it seeks to go on living, it seeks to grow, it seeks to develop and to unfold itself.
a fascinating principle The physical body manifests this fascinating principle - it works to maintain the best possible internal environment for its own cells. Firstly it is continuously checking its own well-being within. And if it finds a situation that is not optimal, the body triggers systems to correct and restore the balance. It responds this way to invasion by bacteria or viruses etc, checking, correcting, restoring balance. The process is a positive contribution to the body's own well-being, to maintain the best possible conditions for its cells and for the organism as a whole. I believe emotions function in a similar way - checking, correcting, restoring balance. Each situation I enter is checked in an emotional way. This is based on my past experience - is this a safe situation to proceed in, should I be happy or should I perhaps be afraid? My emotional responses can also be part of a correcting action - my anger may defend me in a dangerous situation, my fear may spur me to escape. The balance that is restored is towards calm, to steadier happier emotions. Thus my emotions are also positive contributors to my well-being as a whole. Here is another example. Perhaps I experienced a trauma early in life that leaves an emotional wound that still affects me in my present life. There will be signs of this in my feelings and behaviours, yet the principle of well-being will already be at work - even in early unrecognised ways - making attempts to repair the emotional imbalance. As I grow in emotional awareness I can begin to co-operate with this reparative drive. By checking my feelings I learn more about myself, my past and my present. This awareness is the beginning of a correcting process as my hurting emotions are respectfully released and healed, restoring a balance within. All this seems to be consistent with the aim of the phenomenon of life itself - to live awarely, to grow, to come into our full potential as human beings.
notes 1 Joseph LeDoux, The Emotional Brain, publ. by Simon and Schuster (1996). Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, publ. by Bantam Books (1995). ISBN 0-553 84007-X. Daniel Goleman, The New Leaders, publ. by Time Warner (2002). ISBN 0 7515 3381 5. Candace B. Pert, Molecules of Emotions, publ. by Touchstone (1997). ISBN 0-684-84634-9. 2 John Heron, Catharsis in Human Development, (1998) p.34-35. www.human-inquiry.com/Otherdocs.htm#ccp 3 Elizabeth Kübler-Ross's most well-known work is On Death and Dying (1969), publ. by Simon & Schuster. 4 See John Heron, Original theory of co-counselling & the paradigm shift, (1995). Available on the CCI NL website: www.cocounselen.nl
about the authors Niek Sickenga (the Netherlands), born in 1931, is a CCI co-counseler since 1982 and a CCI trainer since 1995. He is co-ordinator of CCI World News since this internet service started in 2000.
Graham Howie (Aotearoa/New Zealand), born in 1953, is a CCI co-counsellor since 1993, recently finnished studies in psychology and neuroanatomy at the University on Auckland.
