In part I, (read below from Tuesday), David Viscott draws on a lifetime of counseling experience in his conclusions about "telling the truth." More from his book…
"I realized that the name given a painful feeling depended on when the pain occurred.
Pain in the future was called anxiety.
Pain in the present was called hurt, and was experienced as sadness or disappointment.
Pain in the past was called anger.
When a person held in his anger, it turned on him and was experienced as guilt. Depression was the depletion of energy from holding anger inside."
When I analyzed the forces that kept these feelings hidden, I discovered that the same defenses that blocked feelings also blocked people from knowing or telling the truth…
"When a feeling was not expressed, it created a condition of tension. Emotional stress was simply the pressure of an unexpressed feeling. I called the condition of withholding feelings "Emotional Debt." Simply put, you owe the expression of a hidden feeling.
When you are in Emotional Debt, you suffer because you are afraid to tell the truth about your feelings. After a while, your defenses become more rigid and it is increasingly difficult to recall the truth. Your withheld feelings distort your life and consume your energy… The more honest a person was, the more resilient he became, and the easier it was for him to endure stress."
Two points became clear:
1. Emotional illness was a storage disease. (Emotions wrongly held inside.)
2. The secret of mental health was to tell the person who hurt you that they hurt you, when they hurt you.
Though Dr. Viscott is not speaking from a Christian perspective, it sure sounds like "The truth shall set you free" to me!
What do you think? Are you "emotionally debt-free?" Save Jesus, I doubt there is a human being alive who is completely debt free. But we can grow... how can we become more honest in relationships? Maybe starting with, how can we grow to be more honest with ourselves about what exists in our relationships?
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