Dear JRo, nothing in psychology is that absolute. But generally, the more you heal, the more EI you get and vice-versa. They go together.

There’s no difference. Feelings and emotions are two different words for the same thing. I encourage you to focus on yourself more. The process of CEN recovery is all about placing your own feelings first and your own inner needs highest in your priorities.

I’m glad, Samantha! Keep up the good work.

Kt is magnificent that Kristen is deciding to change because of possibly seeing effects on her chi!dren.
My mother is approaching her death still quite stoic rather than open with her feelings.
That she is noncommunicative of her feelings since my earliest memory, did handicap her childden, who are mostly uncommunicative as well.
Since getting bothe CEN books now a few years ago, i made efforts. This winter her illness made herless able to communicate, and her religion always a barrier between parents and offspring, seems to have taken her into that dissociated solace that prevents real love and communication.

I have wanted to help her feel the deep value of familial love, and thus, love for all that lives. This is difficult from a vast distance and her no longer answering telephone.
This is so metaphorical, inability or not desiring to answer telephone (facebook distorted her attention for a decade, with strange “friends” largely solely religious. She ceased that and i sent her a laptop 1 1/2_ years back to encourage email – writing her thoughts and emotional outreach, but she did not use it for that, or the skype i put up as another alternative for jntimacy)

So, Kristen’s courage makes me happy, even if about 3 years of speaking one way about openness, caring, and using CEN suggestions.
(i could never be accusatory, because i had always seen that her own experience of emotional neglect and her development of “it’s a hard world stoicism” and survival of a brutally emotionally absent husband, was far worse than my own emotkonal impoverishment)

My own attempts to have and give emotional openness have vastly helped me to connect with others, and with myself (i no longer berate myself for failures as if i were some child to be disciplined, and am happier even when ijured or isolated, as we all experienced this last year)

The work using the constantly growing understanding of CEN, is itself very creative, satisfying dach day, as if on some sculpture more beautiful, more malleable, than nonliving things are.
Kinder to myself at last, i am kinder to all, whether they are past memories or present other i meet.

As the song goes, “acidentally . . . i never thought that life, could be so sweet.”

For this , you have my deepest appreciation and love.

Dear Jacqueline, your body is talking to you. It’s saying, “You need people in your life!” I suggest 2 things: focus on emotionally validating yourself more and expanding your awareness of your own feelings and needs (what your mom didn’t give you). And figure out why building friendships feels so exhausting for you. Perhaps you could be giving too much power to other people instead of just being yourself and allowing them to gravitate toward you. Please do see a CEN therapist if you can use some support on this.

Like a long running movie with more negative replays vs good plays into adult hood it is hard to turn down the volume and the amazing colours of the bleak pictures especially back then as B&W TV was it and owning a colour set was the price of a good used car.

But B& W or colour TV either is hard to turn off under the powerful debilitating circumstances of these people that run their hurtful dribble endlessly and their picture and pulling the plug does not help the picture .

However we survive in all our own Individual coping mechanisms to look for our own picture not the inference of others destroying our picture because they always can turn to another channel and drive the narrative their way for self, keeping one in the darkness where chain like ownership is their gift and changing the story on the fly is their puck in your net and a key to open any door and control those in their web until we lock it or have a shut out in the arenas of our minds .

Recently a few of us thought if we each wrote our own metaphorical movie it may bring new light on the big picture of being left out and really it is about our own self survival at all costs .

What came out of this the ending is what it is, we live , we go forward and for each person individually & the discredits etc at the end of the movie were exactly the same category by
category . Many got repeat mentions for being dishonourable in their conduct .

At the end we acknowledge all those who individually stating their name who took us down and purposely left them out of the movie by naming the person, the event , the time the cause & effect etc..and if it is still there today .

Then in time it will be back to rewrite and update the power of intention and a clean moving forward script and take one hill at a time to overcome and move on .

Like they say if you are taking flack then you must be over the target of your enemy you want to completely eliminate . And they know it instinctively.

There is something cathartic in doing this by writing down their vile mean self righteousness bombastic names on one line and the terror and fear as subjects they brought into our individual means & ways of surviving allowed a certain way of finality and finally exposing and ejecting these awful people out of our lives some still living, all dead in our books as we who wrote out our own scripts can always add another name as they are just not worth filling our heads with their maliciousness, time taking away the enjoyment of life and our precious living ruined by others like a drain clogged up with their crap .

Time for the plumber’s helper to clear the mind and get these people gone and down the drain fleshed away to the settling ponds at the water works to settle and disposed appropriately to the furnaces for final incineration to ashes .

Yes , looking at the list we concluded these are the people who stole our life & living away and by acknowledging them we actually agreed we can write our own story/ movie and erase these bad butt characters out of our script and bury their parts anyway we wish to dispose of them environmentally again metaphorically. And just move on.

It may seem strange but to eliminate and extinguish these less than human widgets out of our lives the new chess board of players and pictures and moves opens brighter , with more light , more opportunities for choosing the right directions for the self not their dead ends and less agitation caused by the deadly viruses life like stating many were eliminated from this reshoot in that they were just actors who failed to meet the grade at rehearsal and did not make the cut then, now and forever .

And in closing yes we will still meet them as they never give up for retaliation but recently I just kept on walking in my part of the script to better ways to spend my time purposefully appropriately without carrying their mental, physical, distressing weights they knew they had infected me permanently now being eliminated by a vaccine called self caring & self respect and seeking more light and my compass taking me from my centre to the route I choose first .