Feelings are a crucial part of the inner life. When one is psychologically disturbed or traumatized, feelings become vulnerable. A person may lose touch of the reality of his feelings. He can be alienated from his feelings.
Yet these feelings don't go away. They continue to appear or surface. Most commonly, damaged emotions take the form of emptiness, low self-esteem, shame, anger, confusion, and numbness. The unprocessed feelings are masked in other disguises, since the psychologically ill have difficulty seeing and addressing directly their feelings.
In therapy and recovery, a person learns experientially what these and other distorted feelings are. He learns to recognize them, to heal them, and to use them in everyday life. Working through this issue of damaged emotions is an integral part of recovery and healing.
Only when one can realize his true self and connect his feelings to a Higher Power can he begin to be whole again and feel fulfilled.
Dr. Angelo Subida is a clinical psychotherapist, author, and speaker. He is author of books "Inner Healing," "Secrets Of Your Self," "Chess and Life," among others, blogs, and articles. He has appeared frequently as an expert on psychotherapy/life recovery issues on national television, radio broadcasts, print media, and webcasts, including GMA 7, TV 5, ABS CBN 2, Q-11, 700 Club, Radyo Veritas, Inquirer Radio, Smart Parenting Magazine, Business Mirror, among others, and has served as resident therapist/counselor for parents and kid-artists in the highly popular ABS-CBN 2 Voice Kids TV singing reality show. Dr. Subida is an eclectic, multidisciplinary therapist and originator of his own revolutionary high-tech, high-touch counseling plus model. His areas of specialization include parent-child therapy, clinical infidelity treatment, relationship/marital counseling, separation/divorce therapy, anger management, depression, addictions, psychotherapy-spirituality integration, and innovative chess therapy. For more of Dr. Subida, you can find him at www.drsubida.com.