" 

Depression, anxiety, and feelings of isolation are epidemic. One minute we are driven 

by boredom into a restless search for "the action" but in the next minute, when we 

find it, the stress triggers a headache or a rash. 

Feelings are not the problem, though. They may be uncomfortable – even 

painful – but they are never pathological. The problem is all the things we do to 

protect ourselves from painful feelings. We exhaust ourselves running around so the 

sadness won't catch us or we try to dissolve our sense of powerlessness in alcohol or 

pills. We frantically search for the right car or dress that will distract us from never 

having felt fully loved or cared for. 

Boredom and restlessness are not feelings at all but the smudge left behind 

when painful feelings are erased: push anger away and what's left is the empty 

sensation that nothing's happening – or that nobody is there. As for the stress that 

causes, triggers, or heightens medical problems: this too is not a matter of simple 

aggravation, sadness, or frustration but the anger, sadness, or frustration you're 

trying desperately not to feel. 

You know the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy: they can be neither 

created nor destroyed, only shifted from form to form. Emotion – a kind of psychic 

energy – obeys the same law. Shut anger or sadness or frustration out the door and it comes in through the window or, often enough, through the body. Your heart "attacks." Your asthma "gasps." Your eczema "weeps." 

By the Law of Conservation of Emotional Energy, you cannot erase the fact that 

a key person in your life didn't love you (or only loved who they thought you were; or the reflection of themselves they saw in your eyes; or a "you" that agreed not to love someone else).

All you can do is con yourself: keep on struggling to do what it seemed would get
them to love you; or attempt to rewrite history: find a person or dilemma just like the
one that hurt you way back when and convince yourself that this time the story will
have a happy ending. When it doesn't, try again. And again. And again.
Try as you might to come up with new plays that will win the game, the season
is long over and nothing is going to change the score. Switch jobs. Move to California.
Retire. Get married. Get divorced. Get a horse. You still won't be recloned as your
ideal self. Your past is nonnegotiable.



My advice: Give up. There is no place to go and there's nothing to do that will
change things on that level. Pessimistic? Think of it as liberating. Now you can just do
things because you enjoy them or because they catch your fancy. Now you can be nice
to someone just to be nice to someone – not to get  rid of the ache that lies buried
inaccessibly like the phantom pain in a limb that was amputated long ago.
Give up the fight; accept and feel the feelings. Get off the merry-go-round that is
taking you nowhere. One day – through psychotherapy, perhaps, or through a
particularly sobering personal experience – it gets through that the universe will not



be declared a misdeal, so you begin to play the hand you've been dealt. The painful
slowness of life speeds up or its frantic, exhausting pace slows down. You become
more present and more playful. Relationships go more smoothly. Work is more
rewarding. Externally, your life is identical – but incredibly much richer.
When you start to make sense of the past, you stop repeating it; when you stop 
pretending your wounds aren't there, they start to  heal. When you stop repeating
battles that have been history for decades, then you're left with … what? Real life; no
more, no less. Maybe it's not the four-scoop, three-topping whipped cream special
with the cherry on top, but there will be some magically tasty moments

.




Skin Deep: A Mind Body Program for Healthy Skin by Dr. Ted A. Grossbart

Read more: http://www.free-ebooks.net/ebook/Skin-Deep-A-Mind-Body-Program-for-Healthy-Skin/pdf/view#ixzz2AJ9qqSjT