When people are subject to inchoate feelings that push them around, it's more important to know the emotions accurately. Naming the feeling helps make it intelligible. It robs the emotion of some of its power and gives a person space from it. For those kinds of people, putting the words on the feelings is extremely important. But for many other people who are like lodged in their heads, who are basically completely identified with their thinking, those people often are disconnected from their bodies.
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Mark Epstein is a psychiatrist in private practice in NYC and the author of many books about the intersection of Buddhism and psychotherapy. He's currently the clinical assistant professor in the postdoctoral program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at New York University. His most recent book, Advice Not Given; A Guide to Getting Over Yourself is what he talks about in this episode. His wisdom is so incredibly practical, applicable, and helpful. Ideas like whether or not naming your feelings would be a helpful strategy for you and how to work with clinging in its many forms - even the clinging to inner peace - abound in this discussion. Take a listen and enrich your inner life.
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In This Interview, Mark Epstein and I Discuss...
- The Wolf Parable
- His book, Advice Not Given; A Guide to Getting Over Yourself
- The duality that we all struggle with
- Freud and the Buddha's nearly identical conclusion
- What it means to take personal responsibility for our selfish concerns
- The clinging to that which gives us a sense of control over life
- The clinging to that which nurtures our ego
- The eightfold path of the Buddha
- The conversation with his terminally ill father that inspired this book
- Right View - being realistic about one's self and the nature of things
- How change and death is happening all of the time, moment to moment
- Trying not to try as it relates to meditation
- "Take the backward step" in meditation
- FInding balance in "right effort"
- Exploring the feelings that we are otherwise afraid of through psychotherapy
- The link between being with uncomfortable feelings and empathy to others
- How anything that's happening in the body or mind can be the object of meditation
- How useful it is to name a feeling
- Making a feeling "intelligible" by naming it
- How useful it can be to find where feelings show up in the body
- When your mind is not aware of what's making you act this way (in addiction, compulsive behaviors etc) it's important to put the words on the feelings
- Whether or not all emotions show up in the body
- How clinging takes many forms - even the desire for inner peace
- "Don't chase her, let her find you."
- That our lives are made dull by our efforts to over control things
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