-IBIS-1.5.0-
rx
principles (Mind/Body)
emotional tone scale
psychospiritual approaches
definition
RISING AND FALLING ON THE EMOTIONAL TONE SCALE:
It is now well accepted that suppressed emotion can be an intimate component of virtually any human illness. Many "get in touch with the feelings" therapies have come forward in recent years. Every such therapy could be practiced more successfully if a greater understanding were available both of the suppression of emotions and of emotions themselves. This essay is intended as a contribution toward both areas of understanding. Please handle this description as if it were a model or a map. Each assertion is made as a statement of "Truth," and is to be recognized as "true" within the context of the map.
Emotional release can be either curative or palliative. When a patient undergoes a therapeutic re-experience of his or her past emotional postures, curative responses (as opposed to palliative) take place only as a person moves up the Emotional Tone Scale. This scale not only relates various emotions to each other, but also demonstrates that full health is achieved only when all emotions have been unearthed and dealt with; i.e., the patient has come to terms with an original precipitating event.
This is a scale of what might be termed the "primary" emotions. The correlation here is to primary colors (which are few and specific) within a field of possible colors (which is wide and varied), and most importantly, are indispensable components of all other colors.
This primary scale starting at the bottom:
(1) Literal Unconsciousness (minimum awareness and experience): a state where one is totally at the mercy or effect of the environment and is unable to be aware of that effect.
and then gradually increasing in depth and breadth:
(2) Apathy: one is totally at the mercy of and defeated by whatever elements exist within the environment; aware of that defeat, yet unable to care. Nothing I can do. Thats the breaks. I cant. Who cares? I dont know.
(3) Grief: person is conscious enough to care, even care deeply, but still already defeated. Ive lost it. Isnt it a shame. Never again. If only. Its a crying shame.
(4) Fear: one is still at the effect of the apparently nonexistent mercy of the environment; not yet defeated, but threatened with defeat. Im scared. You cant trust anyone. What if? Nothings sacred anymore. Watch out!
(5) Anger: person is no longer fully at the effect of the environment, yet only able to attempt a retributive effect upon the environment in turn. Ill show you. I hate it. Get out of the way! Ill kill you.
(6) Pain: which results from a total awareness of both an absolutely irrefutable event in the environment and also an absolute personal resistance to the fact of that event.
until one reaches:
(7) Enthusiasm: otherwise known as ecstasy and love (maximum awareness and experience), this emotion results from a total awareness of what exists within the environment, along with a totally embracing acceptance of that environment as it is and all events taking place within it.
It may be an illuminating exercise to trace the Emotional Tone Scale progression from the top down as well:
(7) Enthusiasm: the basic, healthy state of the unfettered human mind. The word is derived from En-thous-iasmos which essentially means God-filled. Few adults are truly enthusiastic for extended periods of time. However, most of us can identify with a relative level of enthusiasm by experiencing pleasure with our surroundings and being actively at war with nothing and no one at the moment.
Movement down the scale starts when an event which we cannot bear takes place :
(6) Pain: something we refuse to accept and endure. As a dramatic example, assume the event is the loss of a beloved spouse. The fact of loss is a part of the universe. It has taken place at a specific moment within the endless continuity of time, at a specific place within the infinite measurement of space. Our unwillingness to let something be is in opposition to the existence of an element of all space and all time. When a collision of Individual Will and Universal Will takes place, Universe wins. This is the essence of pain. Pain in itself is so major an event that it can partially obscure awareness of the EVENT itself.
To obscure awareness of the pain, we move our attention outward to any perceptible Cause of the pain:
(5) Anger: the intense quality of the experience is unleashed at the cause (real or imagined), then centered in our attention, followed by an urge to attack. This urge, consummated or not, is itself a powerful event and can partially cover up awareness of the pain. In Western cultures, well-brought-up children are subject to inhibitory programming to curb the expression of angry and aggressive feelings. Generally this programming takes place between the ages of 18 and 30 months, a period known as the "terrible twos."
(4) Fear: When anger is inhibited, the focus of attention shifts forward in time to what may happen. At this point we have moved to fear.
(3) Grief: If we are unable to endure our fear and what we face losing, the focus of attention shifts to the past and we are confronted by all that we have lost. This is grief.
(2) Apathy: If we are unable to bear the experience of our own grief, we defocus our attention. Without object to our attention, we have ceased to care. This is called apathy.
(1) Unconsciousness: If an unfocused attention cannot save us from our experience, we drink alcohol, shoot heroin, become compulsive, or otherwise disable our faculty from being able to consciously attend to the world at large. This is called unconsciousness. It is from this abyss that lost emotions must be therapeutically unburied. Health will not be regained until the refused event is unearthed and embraced.
(Chavez)
see also:
body reveals: the spirit
bodymind psychobiology
healing belief systems
holographic consciousness
human energy centers: overview
laws of cure
process paradigm
footnotes