It's not what you feel that does the damage, it's what you feel about what you feel.

If I feel sad or angry, it may be entirely appropriate, but if I give myself a hard time for those feelings, then I both perpetuate and magnify the issue.

Grief is a difficult emotion for many of us to handle. In the West we are often reluctant to express our emotions and, unlike many other cultures, we do not have ritual grieving processes. I was in Saudi Arabia when the father of a Saudi acquaintance of mine died. There was a very swift cremation followed by a 3 day ritual grieving which particularly struck me because it was the first time I had experienced the sound of many women ululating. Ululation, for those who have never experienced it, is a continuous high-pitched squeal while moving your tongue from side to side. It is eerie and uncomfortable, but it certainly releases your feelings. For an uptight westerner like me, the open expression of grief was a little embarrassing, but I soon recognised its worth. In many cultures, neighbours understand that grieving requires energy and very often call with gifts of food, usually hot and hearty. How civilised.

I had a client once who came to me with a persistent and painful shoulder. She was a very spiritual lady and had used many and various holistic practices to heal her shoulder. She told me that her mother had died the previous year, but it was OK because her mother was a very religious person, that she was ready to go and that it was a blessed release from suffering.

She had the wrong end of the stick about grief. The person who has died has gone on to the next thing, whatever you believe that to be. It is the hole in the survivor's life that causes the pain. The commonest symptoms of grief are withdrawal, wanting to stay at home, crying and getting angry. These three things are so natural and logical. The world has changed for the survivor and he may feel threatened by that. Staying at home, in your safe space, gives you a chance to regroup. Crying purges the feelings of sadness. My professor at college told me never to miss the opportunity of a good laugh or a good cry. Anger is the process by which we register that something is wrong.  All these feelings are appropriate and if we allow them to be OK, we can move through them in the appropriate order. 

The real difficulty lies in the judgments we put on our emotions. For example, "Big boys don't cry". I was horrified when I read the headlines about Gazza, the footballer, when he cried after losing a football match. If he cried it meant that the loss was important to him. I would want top sportsmen, playing for their country, to care deeply!

Some women find that in business, if they stand firm on a subject, and vociferously defend their position, their male colleagues may label them as 'angry women' and dismiss their views. While the same behaviour in a man is considered strong and determined and is much admired.

Some cultures think that anger is a bad thing and that we should be meek and mild. Jesus is sometimes referred to as meek and mild, but we must remember that he was so angry he threw the moneylenders out of the temple.

The Mahatma, Ghandi, never advocated violence, but he stuck resolutely to his truth despite all kinds of punishments and threats. His anger changed the history of India.

At its best anger is the energy to stop that which is abusive, or the energy to make what we want to happen. It is determination and insistence. It is standing up for yourself.

I think the secret may be to get curious. If we feel something strongly, before we make it wrong, we could ask ourselves why. Clarity and space may move the feeling along, leave us with ideas of how to remedy the situation, or to accept what we can't change.

Frankie x

What is Prosperity and how do we know when we have it?

I have a pattern around money and prosperity. (who doesn't?)

I have lived in constant fear that there will not be enough, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

I have always had enough. If there is a bit of extra money, I have several projects waiting for it and I spend it so that I am close to there not being enough again. I even use the 'I can't afford it' excuse for anything I don't want to do. When I really want to do something, somehow the money presents itself.

But are money and prosperity the same? Certainly not. The very financially wealthy do not seem to have a better life than those who are not. A spoilt child in the UK may feel seriously aggrieved if he cannot have the latest iPhone or designer trainers, while children who have very little have a lot of fun playing in the polluted water of the Ganges.

Then there is the question of greed. When does a person have enough? Do the rich folk who stash their wealth off shore to save some tax, ever feel that they have enough and are happy to contribute more to the general tax coffers because they have more? Of course, some do, but some don’t.

There are those who admire the accumulation of financial wealth and those who are cynical about how that financial wealth was achieved. If you are cynical about rich people, how can you become one?

We have many expressions extolling the virtues of poverty: ‘She was poor but she was honest’, ‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’, ‘To give is better than to receive’, etc. 

A native Amerindian woman in the Amazonian forest, where a friend was traveling, asked him ‘Why does the white man take more than he needs from the forest’.

In my old age the drive to have a bigger and better house, a bigger and better car, or a flashier and more glamorous holiday are replaced by a desire to have peace and serenity and the most exciting journey is to go inward and explore who I am.

I have enough, I have always had enough, it has taken me to my seventies to realise and appreciate it.

Frankie x

Can joy, fear, anger, sadness and contentment live together?

Can the human heart legitimately hold many and various strong emotions?

How can we reconcile the horrors of what is happening in Syria with having fun at Christmas? 

Can we enjoy our Christmas lunch when 3000 people in the UK are sleeping rough?

How can we accept the sometimes painful and difficult deaths of parents and delight in the arrival of a friend's new grandson?

The outrageous outpourings from the president of the USA cause one kind of emotional response in me, while the excellent work being done by many American citizens, in the fields of conservation, environmental protection, medical research, social inclusion and welfare cause another.

Kahlil Gibran, in his book The Prophet has a section on joy and sorrow in which he said 'when one of these is at your board, the other is asleep on your bed'.

In their book Joy, Bishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama discuss just this question.

Diamonds are just lumps of carbon and look like chips of rough glass until they are polished with facets at many angles. Can we accept that all facets of our emotions, polished and clean, make us the amazingly complex and interesting people that we are? 

I am reminded of the scathing comment made by Dorothy Parker, the poet and critic about a Katharine Hepburn performance: " She runs the full gamut of her emotions from A to B.”

I would like my friends to be able to express all their emotions from A to Z.

I don't want my friends to be jolly all the time. I like jolly, but too much of it gets on my nerves. I want my friends to seethe about injustice and to fight it. I don't want people who can't cry and express their sadness. Problems only come when we can't move through these emotions appropriately.

I have worked with many clients who suffer from depression. There are many reasons for depression: repressed anger, repressed sadness, repressed grief, sometimes even repressed joy. If we could all accept in ourselves, and others, that all out emotions are valid, it is only our behaviour which requires work.

Maybe we need to learn (as always) from children. They will play very happily until someone offends them in some way. They get hurt or upset, then there is howling, rage and tears. They may run to Mummy who comforts them, but after a moment they rush back into the fray as if nothing happened. Children move through their emotions in a very natural way, and without shame or judgement. If we could only hold on to this truth of childhood: all our emotions are valid and we can move through them with grace and ease.

It was said in joke that a friend of mine could only be happy when all the world was fed, sheltered and had civil rights; he is much less joyless now! The inequalities in the world will be with us forever. We must do what we can to help and having done that, we must get on with making the best of our own lives and spreading peace and joy in the world.

Frankie x