At times, clients have indicated that they feel rankled by a festering emotion that is a persistent irritation or clinging resentment that has embittered their life. They want to be free of the gall that needles them daily as it captures their mind. Such strong lingering emotions such as sorrow, hate, fear, anger can sour people over time with bitterness. They experience too much frustration, sadness, badness, naughtiness, anger, regret, loss, and sorrow and finally are hoping to find validation of their experience or a just reward of approval.

Sometimes experiencing a particular emotional state repeatedly seems to produce a rancid emotion. The word rancid is from the Latin rancidus ‘stinking.’ As an example, just think of butter that is rancid. It is old and stale. If you happen to get a taste on your tongue it leaves a stinking taste in your nose and mouth. It sure does not have the clean, clear, and freshly made delicious butter quality. Rancid emotions are unpleasant and rank as they are decomposing in a person. Because of these emotions sometimes a person will make a "stink."

Feeling Is Where It All Starts

The word emotion is from the Latin exmovere, ex (out) movere (move) to move out, stir up. Powerful emotions are a more genuine personal experience than thought and thinking. When an event happens to you it can trigger strong emotions and feelings that are the engine of your perceptions which can create your thoughts. Then you can share your strong emotions as your words and language describe them. Then you can make a decision that drives an action or response.

A therapeutic resolution can be discovered by working with your emotional states, as you describe and explain what has triggered your emotions. The event that happened to you now can begin to produce self-understanding and integrated into your therapy. Your emotional issues are heard by a witness who can validate your experience. This is about developing self-understanding as you are listened to by another person. Often the person's own instinctual nature and nurturing self-care helps one to find relief as the person seeks to understand their own emotional state. Therapy is often a food that feeds one and can be associated with taking in self-soothing comfort and love. Then one starts to feel better, which gives the person the approval and validation that they need. This might be approving in a mature way of oneself through self-acceptance. There is the need to take care of one’s own feelings now as they struggle with their encounters with the things that emotionally capture them in their mind.



"To awaken to the living dream within one’s life and remain awake involves repeated struggle yet also presents something truly worth fighting for. Each individual soul has its share of genius and a core of imagination that can transcend the collective anxiety and the chaos in the world."
─ Michael Meade