Your Emotional Power

Book Review by Peter Shepherd

This book is based on the famous Emoclear techniques created by
Steve Mensing. Emoclear comes from the words "clear emotions."
The simple and powerful processes for clearing unwanted emotions
are based on mindfulness, modern exposure methods, and ageless
integration techniques made more comfortable. Modern behavioral
repatterners and visualization techniques are also included. The
methods cover every specific need and are freely posted on Steve's
Emoclear site.

So why the need for a book? Your Emotional Power both explains
the need for the approach and presents a carefully thought out action
plan, with the techniques in their ideal sequence. It also contains the
combined wisdom and experience of both Steve and the worldwide
Emoclear community. Far more than just presenting the techniques,
this book for the first time explains exactly why and how to use them,
with a tremendous amount of helpful practical advice. Here is the
Table of Contents with some notes...

! Ch. 1, Learning to Feel Your Feelings... extending from the

introduction above, Steve offers many tips on the practice of
feeling feelings, and explains the underlying principles of
healing and emotional integration.
 ! Ch. 2, Integrating Feelings, Emotions and Sensations...
includes the Emotional Integrator and the Heartbeat Integrator
processes.
! Ch. 3, The Emotional Writing Process... sometimes called
written exposure, emotional writing is a proven method of
desensitizing intense emotions so they are no onger
distressing.
! Ch. 4, The Event Reviewer... is a written exposure method
aimed specifically at traumatic events and phobias.
! Ch. 5, Creating a Preferred Future... includes the Creator and
the Goal Maker. The Creator is a super method of envisioning
what we want, utilizing Milton Erickson's Miracle Question
linked with Chant Visualization. Linking these two methods
easily and quickly creates highly believable visualizations. The
Goal Maker is a high-powered tool based on studies of what
make successful goals fly.
! Ch. 6, Changing Distorted Beliefs... teaches how to spot
distorted beliefs, test them, and change them if they prove to be
self-defeating or untrue when viewed from an emotional neutral
viewpoint.
! Ch. 7, Taking Action... learn action techniques that will help you
overcome procrastination and emotional paralysis.
! Ch. 8, Changing Self-Defeating Behavior... this is based on
research on how human beings alter behavior and keep it
altered. You learn how to use the Behavior Repatterner to
unseat the most difficult to change and habitual behavior.
! The Appendices contain tips on anxiety and depression, and
some great info about self-acceptance.

You will discover 'Your Emotional Power' by Steve Mensing provides

a treasure trove of cutting edge and highly effective methods for
mastering even your most powerful and negative emotional states
and befriending them. As one lawyer remarked... "I came to a
conclusion that was eminently reasonable, totally logical and
completely wrong - because while learning to think I almost forgot
how to feel." To know ourselves we must pay attention to our feelings
and listen to our body so we can be guided and live an authentic life.

I personally endorse this method, which closely corresponds in it's

underlying theory to my own courses and writing. Emoclear works
well in the hands of a therapist but also on one's own: an emotionally
stable person could apply these processes, without a practitioner,
and they will serve to integrate body and mind in a way that provides
a degree of clarity and integrity that is far beyond the normal. This
book provides the map and the compass.

Order from Amazon.com: Your Emotional Power

Taken from: Metamorphosis

The weekly magazine from
Tools for Transformation
 Table of Contents

5
Introduction by Gurpreet Narang vii

Chapter One: Learning to Feel Your Feelings 1

Chapter Two: Integrating Feelings, Emotions, and Sensations 21
Chapter Three: The Emotional Writing Process 37
Chapter Four: The Event Reviewer 47
Chapter Five: Creating a Preferred Future: The Creator and the
Goal Maker 65
Chapter Six: Changing Distorted Beliefs 89
Chapter Seven: Taking Action 111
Chapter Eight: Changing Self-defeating Behavior with
the Behavior Repatterner 121

Appendix One: Tips on Anxiety and Depression 133

Appendix Two: Self-Acceptance 141
 Introduction

5
From time to time we all experience unpleasant emotions and go
through stressful periods of emotional upheaval. These emotional up-
heavals are an inevitable part of living. What is challenging for many
of us is that we mistakenly look upon our emotions as if they are our
worst enemies. We avoid and resist them, wishing them to go away as
quickly as possible. The self-produced emotional alienation is at the
root of intense, enduring, highly uncomfortable, and attention hold-
ing emotions. Many of us seek distractions to avoid our stuck emo-
tions and strive mightily to repress them. Over time the emotional
stress keeps weighing heavily on our autonomic nervous systems and
eventually robs us of the joy of living. The emotional pain may feel
unbearable. Its mounting stress and tension forces emotional avoiders
to seek numbness and distance by resorting to addictions, workahol-
ism, psychosomatic pains, and other compulsive and other self-de-
feating measures. For our treadmill of emotional avoidance we pay a
heavy emotional and physical price.
What are well researched ways of better coping with and master-
ing our emotions? How can we effectively handle our emotions and
befriend them instead of practicing emotional alienation? The book
you just began reading provides a treasure trove of cutting edge and
highly effective methods for mastering even your most powerful and
viii Your Emotional Power

negative emotion states and befriending them. This book is based on

the famous Emoclear techniques created by Steve Mensing.
This book’s techniques go to the source of our emotional well-
being: our body’s natural way of integrating and desensitizing the
most stuck and painful emotions. Emoclear methods enlist our natu-
ral neurological and physiological talents for emotional integration
and desensitization. The book also draws on our indwelling abilities
to make these exposure based methods more comfortable and to slice
quickly through emotional resistance.
Your Emotional Power will show us that all emotions are power-
ful allies and friends capable of informing us about what is happening
in our lives at any given moment. Often these emotional communica-
tions can tell us what alterations we need to make. Yet alas, sometimes
we don’t listen to their valuable messages or we distort those messages
and misinterpret them due to common thought distortions. The tech-
niques in this book will help us access our deeper intuition and clearer
thoughts so we can follow our best paths.
I’m excited to be publishing this book and you’ll soon know why
I believe Your Emotional Power is destined to be a self-help classic.
This book is rich with valuable learnings. In the first chapter we will
learn the art and science of feeling our feelings and fully accepting
them. Even the most highly charged and unpleasant emotions melt in
strength and give up their information in the face of full feeling and
acceptance.
In the second chapter we will learn the simple, yet powerful
techniques: The Emotional Integrator and the Heartbeat Integrator
which draw on our natural abilities to integrate and to desensitize the
most difficult of emotions. Both of these exposure based techniques
have undergone years of feedback and refining. At the end of the
processing, with both state of the art integrators, the emotion will no
longer be intense, enduring, uncomfortable, and attention grabbing.
The emotion is accepted and feels okay.
In the third and fourth chapters we will meet two extremely po-
tent and revealing written exposure techniques: The Emotional Writ-
ing Process and The Event Reviewer. Expressive writing is a powerful
way to undo traumatic experiences and improve our emotional well-
being. This style of written exposure is backed by research and is well
known for its power to untie the Gordian Knot of traumatic events
and life’s hard spots. Research has shown that expressive writing can
even improve our health and immunity. Dr. James W. Pennebaker,
professor of Psychology at University of Texas at Austin and an early
 Introduction ix

explorer of emotionally expressive writing, said: “When people are given

the opportunity to write about emotional upheavals, they often experience im-
proved health. They go to the doctor less. They have changes in immune func-
tion. If they are first-year college students, their grades tend to go up. People
will tell us months afterward that it’s been a very beneficial experience for
them.”
Later in the book we will learn action techniques that will help
us overcome procrastination and emotional paralysis. We will discov-
er the Creator, a super method of envisioning what we want, utilizing
Milton Erickson’s Miracle Question linked with Chant Visualization.
Linking these two superb methods easily and quickly creates highly
believable visualizations. The Goal Maker is a high-powered tool
based on studies of what make successful goals fly.
This practical book also delivers methods for overcoming dis-
torted and self-defeating thinking.
I first met Steve some years ago, through his website Emoclear.
com when I was finishing college. As an avid reader and student of
self-help I devoured countless books and recordings on the subject. I
remember wanting to get rid of what I viewed at the time as unwanted
feelings. Steve very patiently taught me the very idea of unwanted
feelings creates resistance and makes for intense and enduring emo-
tions. He showed me how to feel feelings and stay with them without
trying to get rid of them. He had me viewing them as buddies, willing
and able to inform me about myself, others, and the world around
me. It took some time to come around to this view, but Steve stuck
by me and intuitively and uncannily knew what was going on inside
me every step of the way. Today my feelings are welcome friends! I
learned through Emoclear to embrace, accept, and even appreciate
my friends no matter how rough they were at first.
Working with these fantastic processes changed my relationship
with my feelings forever. Now I embrace and welcome them. I know
this first Emoclear book will do the same for you.
Thomas Carlyle once remarked that “The best effect of any book
is that it excites the reader to self-activity”. I trust Your Emotional
Power will lead to your productive activity and highly rewarding
emotional growth. Let me know your story of emotional growth and
transformation though these methods. I’d love to hear from you!
Gurpreet Narang,
Publisher,
Hobblet Books
gpnarang@gmail.com
 Chapter One

Learning to Feel Your Feelings

5
Are feelings and emotions important? Need we look any further
than the shipwrecks of many persons’ lives? Who hasn’t heard of
anxiety, depression, addiction, stress, broken relationships, and failed
aspirations?
Avoiding feelings, being unable to feel feelings and express feel-
ings, and having no way to make them less intense, painful, or at-
tention grabbing can create major havoc in our lives. At the heart
of anxiety, depression, problematic anger, mind-body illnesses, ad-
dictions, severe stress, broken relationships, and failed aspirations is
often our inability to feel, accept, express, and decipher our feelings.
Next to having food, air, and shelter, feelings are a necessity for sur-
vival, health, and well-being. Frequently many of us are inexperi-
enced in the area of feelings and emotions. This is the reason why
Your Emotional Power is now in your hands.

Why emotions & feelings are valuable

Let’s examine why emotions and feelings are valuable. What exactly
do our emotions do?
2 Your Emotional Power

v Biological messengers. Emotions carry very important in-

tuitive messages about: (1) What’s going on inside us. (2) The
world around us. (3) What we believe at that moment in time.
(4) What we better do. (5) Whether there may be physical dan-
ger. (6) Whether we’re feeling ill. (7) Whether we’re feeling up,
down, aroused, off balance, jovial, like laughing, or like arguing
with someone about the importance of emotions. Failure to pay
attention to these simple intuitive messages can create havoc in
someone’s life. It can put them in danger, turn their personal
and family relationships upside down, put them out of touch
with themselves, lead to intense and enduring emotions, and
stress related disorders. Without getting our messages we’ll be at
a loss about when to adjust our behavior. A human being would
be very ineffective without being privy to these messages.
v Organize and alert us to take action. The instant some emo-
tions turn on, our body is alerted for action. Anxiety and fear
trigger adrenaline, fearful thoughts, set the stage for us to fight
like a tiger or flee. Security and safety are the focus. Anger raises
our heart rate and makes us alert and primed for aggression
v Conduits to deeper intuition and our unconscious process-
es. Emotions, besides being our biological information service,
are stepping stones into intuition and our creative and uncon-
scious processes. Getting an overall felt sense of a feeling can
open a telephone line into our bio-computer and its neural net-
works. Deeper level intuition is a very important computational
and wisdom system. The quality of our lives depends on this
open telephone line.
v Stimulate bodily communication and gestures. Human be-
ings communicate with more than words. We communicate
with gestures, body language, facial expressions, and vocal into-
nation. Anyone who’s seen a mime or a silent film actor knows
what I’m talking about. Emotion helps create and shape these el-
ements. The use of bodily communications and gestures makes
us more effective speakers. We touch the emotions of others this
way. When we speak from the heart our bodies come alive. We
know the effects of seeing tears in another’s eyes. A voice thun-
dering across a massed throng. A dictator pounding his chest
and his eyes focused dramatically skyward while he speaks of
blood and fatherland.
v Emotional intelligence. The idea of emotional intelligence
is becoming more widely known. The quality of our lives and
 Learning to Feel Your Feelings 3

our ability to meet our goals depends very much on our being
able to read and understand our and other folks’ emotions. We
need to know how to communicate, manage, and harness our
emotions.
v Motivation. Emotions arouse us to action. Love moves us to
form a bond with another. Empathy will draw us to listen to and
come to bat for someone else. Powerful emotions can carry us
past formidable obstacles.
v Provide a sense of meaning. Without emotions and feelings
there can be no meaning. Meaning and importance can only
exist if we feel them.
v Combines with reason to provide balance in our decision
making process. We require both emotion and reason to oper-
ate well if we are to make sound decisions. Emotion lets us know
how we feel about something while reason provides a set of logi-
cal evaluations and tests.
v Sets boundaries with others. Our emotions alert us when we
feel disturbed by another’s behavior. When we trust our emo-
tional responses and intuition and can assert ourselves, we can
tell someone we don’t like what they’re doing. Having emotional
boundaries protects us.
v Helps record emotional memories. Various kinds of memory
systems exist in our brain. One kind of memory records events
and facts while another kind of memory records emotional ex-
periences. The emotionally based one is often unconscious. We
may feel a certain way in a given circumstance and may recall
having felt in a similar way previously, yet we may not readily
recall events where this emotion showed up in the past unless
we probe.
v Forms a part of our guidance system. Consider all the previ-
ous mentioned values and you will notice, that put together, they
all form part of our human guidance system.
v Helps with survival. Emotions warn of us of danger and set off
bodily responses that put us on alert. They also affect our health
which in turn effects our survival.
v Stimulates our hormonal systems, heart rate, blood flow,
our parasympathetic response (Relaxation), and widens
our visual field. Our emotions physiologically turn on and off
various biological systems throughout our body. These affect
our health and survival.
4 Your Emotional Power

v Builds bridges between people. Without our emotions there

can be no emotional bonds or connections between people.
Parents couldn’t emotionally bond with their children. Couples
couldn’t emotionally bond without emotions. Without emotions
there would be no empathy.
v Makes our beliefs believable. Without our feelings and
emotions supporting our beliefs, our beliefs would not feel
believable.

Learning to feel our feelings

In learning to feel our feelings we will be bringing our awareness to
our feelings and noting what happens in our inner world. The major
challenge facing folks in knowing their feelings is that we simply don’t
put time aside to experience our inner natures. We may have other
responsibilities, work, families, education, relationships, and hobbies.
Many of us are externally oriented rather than inner-directed. We
miss our interior life because of this and feelings get brushed aside.
We often don’t become aware of our feelings until the emergency
calls us and we start to become conscious of feeling overwhelmed or
stressed. Feelings were long ignored and out of awareness. Being un-
aware of our feelings went on too long. It’s usually during crisis when
we become aware of our emotions and feelings. Addictions. Anxiety.
Depression. Stress related disorders. These painful areas may be our
first introductions to our inner world of feelings.
Our feelings, emotions, and beliefs require our priority if we
wish to live meaningful, stimulating, and enjoyable lives.
What stands in the way of feeling feelings? Avoidance. Not put-
ting time aside to be with them. Our attention drifts elsewhere. Not
putting feelings on our priority list. Impatience. Denial. Sometimes
even believing we’re selfish for paying any attention to our inner life.
For folks with strong negative self-views, looking inside may ask
for courage and patience. It isn’t easy being with intense and painful
feelings. What this book and its methods provide are approaches for
emotional exploration and growth that can be accomplished with a
minimum of pain and overwhelm.
How important are feelings and beliefs in your life? What prior-
ity do you assign them? If you’ve ever had a major emotional crisis
you likely give feelings and beliefs high priority.
 Learning to Feel Your Feelings 5

Attending to your feelings

Generally we notice feelings in relationship to events. When we recall
events we often get an emotional reaction. The stronger the emotion,
the higher the probability that our feelings are being resisted and kept
from awareness.
Let’s look at some of the basic kinds of feelings:

v Physical sensations such a pain and numbness.

v Emotions like anger, anxiety, joy, depression, sadness, guilt, and
shame.

Close cousins of emotions:

v Compulsive activities where we feel compelled or driven to do

repetitive, often frivolous and time wasting actions to distract
ourselves from anxiety, fear, and overwhelm.
v Desires or wants.
v Moods.

It probably isn’t all that important we have scientific sounding

names for our feelings. Anxiety and depression can just as well be
called feelings or even hurt. What is important is we fully feel our feel-
ings with no intention of getting rid of them or keeping them. When
we do this in an attentive and accepting way we get their emotional
insights and emotions become less intense, more comfortable, and
far less attention grabbing. An emotion that’s become less intense,
less enduring, less attention grabbing, and more comfortable we call
“integrated”. When we avoid or suppress feelings, we miss emotional
information, become stressed, lose awareness, and can develop stress-
related health and emotional problems.
After we process or integrate feelings we soon discover more feel-
ings are there. As we explore our inner world, we realize our feelings
are more based on our views of events than the events themselves.
Thoughts and feelings come hand in hand. Emotions are stimu-
lated by beliefs. Beliefs are influenced by feelings. When feelings are
integrated or desensitized they lose their intensity, enduringness, dis-
comfort, and attention grabbing abilities. Our stress and tension levels
reduce and our moods often brighten. Physical sensations may be
pain, hunger, fatigue, sensations of alertness.
6 Your Emotional Power

Emotions are filtered and stimulated by beliefs. Because we be-

lieve someone should not have thrown trash in our yard and are slobs,
we become angry due to their going against our rules. Examples of
emotions are: anxiety, depression, anger, joy, rage, sadness, guilt,
shame, and embarrassment.
Compulsions are repetitive actions that occur when we are over-
whelmed and anxious. Compulsions keep our awareness from un-
felt anxiety and overwhelm. Compulsions defend us, but in doing so
they create problems like addiction and workaholism. Compulsions
start with an impulse to do something we’re compelled or driven to
do. They feel choice less even though we can choose to do some-
thing else. Impulses are related to unconscious motivations. We feel
the sudden prompting to do something or say something. Moods are
vague overall feelings. They can be negative and distressing or they
can be positive and uplifting. Even neutral moods exist. Moods can
be witnessed in a sense of dissatisfaction, loneliness, and insecurity.
Feelings ask for our attention. If we spend sometime each day
feeling them we can enhance our lives. Unintegrated feelings can cre-
ate emotional overload, tension, and stress. We also get out of contact
with ourselves when we don’t feel our feelings. When we integrate
feelings and emotions we have more energy, feel more alive, have
access to our intuition and internal guidance system, and think about
life in a clearer and less distorted fashion.
A major area in emotional well-being is learning to feel our feel-
ings, accept them, and experience them grow less intense and intru-
sive. In learning to use Emoclear emotional techniques we learn to
fully feel our feelings and allow them to be there with no intention of
getting rid of them or keeping them. This approach puts us in full con-
tact with ourselves and allows us to naturally integrate or desensitize
our feelings. This integration leads to more clearly seeing ourselves,
others, and the world without the distortion created by intense and
enduring emotions. Feeling and integrating are keys to aliveness and
emotional well-being. Feeling and integrating our feelings stands at
the middle way between avoiding our feelings and over-identifying
with our feelings. Feeling and integrating is basically a non-interfering
approach to our feelings. This approach does not judge or evaluate our
emotions and feelings. We experience our feelings with acceptance.
In noting that feeling and integrating resides between avoiding
and over-identification, we recognize that avoiding is when a feeling
emerges and we attempt to ignore it, deny it, medicate it away, repress
it, tense up, distract ourselves, intellectualize it away, or get lost in
 Learning to Feel Your Feelings 7

daydreams. Over-identification is when we are caught up in our feel-

ings. Here we are so immersed in a feeling we can’t see the separation
between ourselves and the feeling. We feel like we’ve become the
feeling.
Allowing ourselves to feel feelings brings relief and greatly less-
ens symptoms, habits, compulsions, stuckness, panic, depression,
anxiety, and moodiness. Feeling and integrating feelings operates on
the observation that when feelings are resisted or negatively judged
they intensify and persist. Yet when feelings are fully experienced and
accepted they integrate and lose their emotional intensity and atten-
tion grabbing power. This is our nature. Resistance and over identi-
fication create challenges in our lives. We don’t receive our feelings
important information. Emotions hang on and on holding our atten-
tion and making our tension and stress grow.

Anita learns to feel her feelings

Anita came to Emoclear Forums on the recommendation of her physi-
cian who believed her Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) may be caused
in large part by her being out of contact with her feelings. Anita, who
worked as a bank auditor and often took part time second jobs, knew
she wasn’t the most feelings-oriented person. She sensed there might
be something to the connection between her feelings and IBS.
When Anita first arrived at the Emoclear Forums and started to
learn to feel her feelings she felt dissociated and numbly remote from
them. Getting in contact with feelings was a battle at the outset. She
spent much of her first days just noticing what a feeling was and how
quickly it disappeared from awareness. She was committed to learn-
ing how to feel.
Sometimes she struggled with even finding a feeling and became
frustrated with her inability to locate one. In the forums she learned
that frustration counted as a feeling. She soon discovered that blank-
ness, numbness, a feeling of no feeling also counted as feelings. Grad-
ually her confidence grew in being able to feel even if it was only for
short periods the first week.
In her second week she learned how to relax into a feeling so
it sustained longer in her awareness. She added left nasal dominance
breathing where she gently pinched her right nostril shut. This style
of breath made it easier for Anita to feel. She noticed her frustra-
tion dissolving as the second week passed by. She was staying lon-
ger in her feelings and learning how to intensify them with attention.
8 Your Emotional Power

Every time her attention drifted into thoughts and reveries, she whis-
pered “thought” and returned her attention to the feeling. Her atten-
tion stayed longer and longer now and she took some pride in this
accomplishment.
After three weeks passed she became more conscious of emo-
tional insights arriving from her feelings contact. She was thrilled with
her increasing progress. These were large steps for someone who con-
sidered herself dissociated and in her head. She felt increasingly con-
nected to her feelings now. They were no longer those strangers “over
there”. She felt them.
As Anita assimilated more of the Emoclear approach to feeling
feelings she experienced her first integrations. Some tension, through
steady attention, became less intense, enduring, uncomfortable, and
attention grabbing. She was beaming from her first integration efforts
and shared her new integration experiences with her boyfriend. At
work she was starting to feel less stressed out and fatigued. She fully
felt her feelings and allowed them to be there without intending to
get rid of them or keep them. She breathed into them and observed
them. She felt the tension diminishing in strength as she accepted it.
It no longer pulled at her attention. Another step was reached in her
learning to feel feelings. She integrated her first sensations.
As the weeks sped by Anita mastered her ability to find emotions
and integrate them. This feelings work helped her get in contact with
suppressed feelings and conflicts. Her Irritable Bowel Syndrome be-
gan to clear up. Other symptoms like acid reflux also vanished. Anita
was glad she listened to her physician’s ideas about feeling feelings.

Tips on feeling our feelings

Here are some tips on the practice of feeling feelings.

v You need not give your feelings traditional names like anxiety
or happy or depression or anger. In some of our feelings ex-
ercises we call them “Those sensations”. This labeling can re-
duce some of our aversion to feeling and can give us an outside
perspective.
v Welcome and experience appreciation toward your feelings.
When you begin to tune into a feeling and really allow yourself
to feel feelings, say hi to your feeling. This greeting both acknowl-
edges your feeling and lessens resistance to it. Recognizing what
good service your feelings perform will also limit resistance.
 Learning to Feel Your Feelings 9

Your feelings always perform the valuable task of giving you

feedback about yourself, others, and the world around you. Feel-
ings let you know how you feel about something and what to
do. Feelings also perform many other valuable services as well.
At the beginning of this chapter I describe some of the many
important functions emotions do for us.
v Dialogue with feelings by asking your feelings what valuable
and good things they do. By giving heartfelt gratitude or thanks
to your feelings, you further remove aversion to your feelings.
In short greet your feelings, see what good things they do, and
sincerely thank them for their services. Done with sincerity these
three gestures will greatly reduce aversion to your feelings.
v If you have hostile or fearful judgments toward your feelings,
write the judgments out. This can bring them out into awareness
where these judgments will fade in power.
v Always allow your feelings to be there with no intention of get-
ting rid of them or keeping them.
v A semi-relaxed body can open us to our feelings. This semi-re-
laxation can be brought about by left nasal dominance breath-
ing, by relaxing our tongue, and filling our mouth with warm
saliva, so our tongue is covered. These maneuvers make for less
resistance to feelings.
v Feelings can often be easier to access when our breathing comes
through our left nasal passage. In left nasal dominance breath-
ing we breathe moderately and deeply through our left nostril
only. Our right nostril is gently pinched shut. Exhale is free and
relaxed. About 12 inhalations and exhalations work fine.
v Experience feelings in different ways:
(1) Intensify them or exaggerate them. (2) Tune into them and
allow them to migrate to other areas of your body. Then allow
them to return. (3) Notice the opposite feelings of the feelings
you’re having. Shift back and forth between these opposites sev-
eral times. What do you notice?
v Observe how talking about your feelings is not the same as fully
feeling them. Talking about feelings abstracts them. Feel a feel-
ing, and then talk about it. What do you notice about the differ-
ence between feeling a feeling and talking about a feeling?
v Notice the size and shape of a feeling. Notice its outline. No-
tice its location. Notice its surrounding space. What did you
experience?
10 Your Emotional Power

v Are there feelings beneath your feelings? Pay full attention to

your feeling. Ask if there is a feeling beneath that feeling. Wait
and see if something appears. After the feeling appears wait for
an overall sense of the feeling to emerge and fully feel it.
v Allow yourself to fully feel your feelings. If some seem over-
whelming and intense, that’s okay. The longer you feel them
with no intention of getting rid of them or keeping them, the less
intense they will be. You can also get an outside perspective on
them by simply labeling them “those sensations”.
v Even in the most intense and overwhelming panic symptoms
and painful trauma flashbacks, it’s not the feeling that over-
whelms us; it’s our intense aversion or resistance to these feelings
that get us to flee. It’s our intolerance to feeling that fires us up.
These are the beliefs like: “I can’t stand it”, “it’s too much”, “it’s
overwhelming”. These evaluations are the bedrock of aversion.
By standing our frustration intolerance and feeling it, the frustra-
tion intolerance dies down. Fear never chases us away—its part-
ner frustration intolerance does. Folks take off from something
fearful because they feel overwhelmed and believe they “can’t
stand” their fear. Practice frequently with aversion beliefs like: “I
can’t stand it” and “it’s overwhelming me” etc. These beliefs lose
their trance like spell over us when we stand and stay in these
overwhelming situations.
v Dissociation or a seeming lack of feeling, sometimes to the point
you feel outside your body, is a strong reaction to feeling over-
whelmed. Focus on your dissociation and allow your feelings
to return to your body where you can feel them again. If you
are working with dissociation, have someone trusted nearby or
better yet work with a therapist grounded in feeling and integra-
tion processes. Also placing your palm on your heartbeat area
can assist with bringing feelings back into your body and feeling
them. Relaxing can help ease up some dissociation too.
v Lack of feeling, numbness, blankness, dead feeling, and feeling
frustrated about not being able to feel, or even no feelings are
all feelings. Allow yourself to fully feel them with no intention of
getting rid of them or keeping them.
v If you experience compulsions, addictions, and obsessive
thoughts, then locate the feelings being blocked by compulsions,
addictions, and obsessive thoughts. When the feelings of over-
whelm that run compulsions and addictions are fully experienced
 Learning to Feel Your Feelings 11

and accepted, our compulsions and addictions lose their power

and fade out.
v Keep up your breathing. Halted breathing makes feelings stick.
v If thoughts intrude—that’s okay. Simply say: “Thought” and
bring your attention gently back to your feeling.
v Notice those feelings when you want or need something. Notice
those feelings you attempt to push away or avoid.
v Placing your palm on your heartbeat region can assist in feeling.
This is the seat of intuition. The heartbeat area is a 40,000 neu-
ron “second” brain.
v After you have a good handle on fully feeling feelings, you can
also focus on physical sensations, pain, and ill feelings.
v When integration of feelings comes about, changes in belief and
emotion take place. Muscle tension vanishes. The emotion is no
longer intense. It’s doesn’t keep pulling your attention.
v Feelings may give way to other feelings or even bring back mem-
ories. Pay full attention. The majority of feelings tend to cluster
in the torso, yet they can be found in every part of the body.
v As you get more tuned into feeling a feeling you will notice the
separation between yourself and the feeling. This separation is
subtle. This feeling is not quite you. Pay attention to this separa-
tion and feel it.
v Feelings have starts, middles, and ends. Feelings arise and pass
away.
v We may have intuitive dialogues with our feelings.
a. You can employ your feelings to know what you want. You
can ask your feelings directly: “Feeling old buddy—what do
you want?” Don’t hurry an answer, just wait patiently.
b. Feelings can provide answers in felt senses, pictures, sounds.
Other questions might be: What brings you here? What
good things are you doing for me?
c. Overwhelming emotions always have something important
to tell us. Ask what they want. You might even ask them how
they might help to make you whole and complete. What can
I learn from you that might bring serenity or even power?
Remember feelings are not facts and truths—they can be mis-
leading. Distorted thinking could be creating them.
d. Ask your heartbeat area what might be holding you back
or blocking you. And what might you do? You are going
straight to the heart of intuition by asking your heartbeat
area about your feelings.
12 Your Emotional Power

e. Feelings provide an opportunity to listen non judgmentally

and really hear what our feelings have to say. Treat a feeling
like a buddy.
f. Ask your feelings if they require distance. If they answer
back yes, then permit them distance. Experience them now
as “Those feelings over there” “That feeling” “My feelings
beside me” This slight distancing alters our relationship with
them and allows us to access them easily and feel less swept
up by them.
g. Feel a sensation, and then ask what it is. Feelings and sen-
sations can provide useful information. However if your
answers come back with “I think” or “I believe” they are not
coming from an intuitive place.
h. Ask your feeling to let you know what it would be like to
experience wholeness, serenity, power, or love again.
i. Avoid questioning feelings with “why” questions. Why ques-
tions will take you quickly out of the feeling mode and into
thinking.
v If you’re feeling doubtful about your feelings, then return to
them and experience them.
v Notice any sense of impatience or pushing. Relax and pay full
attention with a sense of allowing.
v Many times when you become experienced with feeling feel-
ings, you will experience spontaneous integrations or times
when your feelings suddenly lose their intensity, discomfort, and
ability to grip your attention for long periods.
v Sometimes we may experience two or more feelings at the same
time. Feel both at once or naturally let yourself gravitate to the
one tugging your attention.
v Keep slightly warm during integration sessions. This helps
feeling.
v You can always return to a feeling you felt previously.
v A common block to feeling feelings is simple performance anxi-
ety. Here we wonder if we’re doing it right. Or do we have a
feeling? Sometimes we might experience confusion. Keep bring-
ing your attention back to your feeling. The performance anxi-
ety, doubt, and confusion all lift.
v If you’ve decided to work on a particular feeling and your body
had another feeling in mind, guess who wins? Your body. You
can ask your body if it’s okay to proceed with this other feeling,
 Learning to Feel Your Feelings 13

but if it says otherwise, pay attention and work with what it

provides.
v If a feeling abruptly vanishes, this might hint you have inten-
tions to hurry up and make it go away.
v Sometimes you might feel good and miss feeling those feelings
because you expect to feel really bad.
v Some newcomers have to learn how to experience their feelings
for the first time instead of avoiding them. If some emotions
have never much been felt, expect some uncomfortable over-
whelm. It dies down.
v Getting rid of emotions and feelings or making them unwanted
creates challenges for us. Some folks miss our basic Emoclear
message of fully feeling feelings and allowing them to be there
without trying to get rid of them or keep them. Don’t get rid of
them—allow them to be there. Find out about the many good
things feelings do for us. All feelings do good things for us even
the painful and uncomfortable ones. It’s also important to know
those so-called “unwanted feelings”, we mistakenly struggle to
rid ourselves of, stick harder. Resisted and avoided feelings have
tremendous staying power. They also tend to intensify.
v Demanding instant gratification and pushing hard. Behind these
are resistance and low frustration tolerance. New York was not
built in a day. Beginners are best off giving themselves time
when they are learning a new process and using it. Pressuring
ourselves tends to slow learning down.
v Expecting instant results because of the hype advertising that
promote the nonsense expectations that change processes
should be simple, easy, and fast acting like taking a pill. Maybe
after you’ve mastered processing, but not at the start when many
have to put in their time learning how any emotional process
works and set time aside to run them.
v Anxiety driven “trying to figure things out”, “thinking about
whether you’re doing it right,” and other forms internalized chat-
ter best be set aside so we can work at the feeling level. Doubts
are sometimes part of the terra firma of feelings work.
v Going after huge targets upon learning a process. Some people
pick some of the most highly resisted targets imaginable. I’m
not joking. I’ve heard of persons going after intense phobias
and traumatic conditions with a process just out of the box. No
small wonder the process groaned and sputtered. Some people
have blown out phobias their first time at bat if they used one
14 Your Emotional Power

of the processes correctly. Many times new persons will take on

a highly resisted target with little knowledge about what to do
when x, y, and z occur.
v Trying to use a process without having mastered each step or
segment first. Do each segment until it feels comfortable. Then
put all of the process together. Pick an easier, less resisted target
first and don’t push yourself to get rid of the target. Some begin-
ners will pick a very difficult target or an inappropriate advanced
target with the idea of getting rid of it. They’ll do it the first time
they ever attempt the process which they never learned to run
in sequence. Then they quit after 10 minutes of going nowhere
and tell themselves processing isn’t for them.
v An emotional target may have aspects or different scenes in-
volved. Without experiencing these different aspects or scenes,
the process seems to be crazy glued to the floor. Learning to rec-
ognize multiple aspects is an important part of learning. Some
targets have multiple parts. Slow or stalled progress is frequently
unnoticed aspects.
v Not knowing how to deal with everyday confusion involved with
learning. Some folks, with performance anxiety, will experience
confusion trances which initially make learning difficult. There
are several basic ways to deal with everyday confusion when it
arises:
1. Plain old persistence without self-pressuring lets confusion
die out.
2. Getting a feel of the confusion and playing with it. Shrinking
it. Expanding it. Move it elsewhere.
3. A favorite way of dealing with confusion is to feel the confu-
sion, label it “That confusion” and step back from it before
you dialogue with it and respectfully ask it what it wants.
v Not taking the time to get the very important emotional bio-
message or “felt knowing”. Some people, still wishing to hurry
through and get rid of their feelings, will give lip service to get-
ting that important intuitive communication from our feelings.
This communication is valuable. It let’s us know what’s going
on and what to do. It’s not thinking or self-talk. Ignoring the
bio-communication generally means the issue will soon land
back on our plates. Learn from our emotional stuckness. It’s got
a message for us. Once we’ve mastered message getting, it’s a
very rapid process. You don’t need to put it into words. All you
need to do is “know” it viscerally. Like someone driving a car
 Learning to Feel Your Feelings 15

they “know” when to turn or when to apply the brakes or speed

up. They don’t think about it. They “know” and follow that felt
knowing.
v Targeting the untargetable. This is where someone with a neu-
rological anomaly or biologically based mood problem tries to
integrate it with a process. The mood stays put. Better the mood
gets dialogued with and asked where it’s coming from. Some-
times other interventions, like altering diet, sunlight, dealing
with allergies, getting enough sleep etc. will be better suited. In-
frequently an actual medical condition like a hormonal problem
may be the culprit. Time to visit a medical doctor.
v Going directly after compulsions instead of the feelings beneath
them. This is a common challenge. Taking on a compulsion by
feeling it and trying to directly integrate it may give temporary
relief. However that compulsion or one like it will jump right
back in the breach. It’s being stimulated by unfelt and undi-
gested overwhelm. That’s the real target that newcomers miss.
Instead they will become involved in tail chasing.
v Not recognizing a conflict between parts. You integrate one side
of the conflict and the other side grows the integrated part back.
Here both sides better be addressed.
v Giving up in the face of low frustration tolerance. This is the “I
can’t stand it-itis” and “It’s too much” kind of trancey and emo-
tionally charged thinking that makes some quit. Low frustration
tolerance, frustration, and impatience are all viable targets if they
appear during the learning process. If they jump in line ahead of
your target, go for them. Feel them into integration.

Underlying principles of healing and

emotional integration
There appears to be basic principles that underlie healing and emo-
tional integration. These principles of healing and emotional integra-
tion are:

v At some point in both healing and integration our unconscious

processes have to be involved. Our unconscious contains all the
controls for physical healing like immune response, the control
of blood flow and pressure, and wound repair etc. Our uncon-
scious also contains key ingredients in the makeup of emotion-
al charge which is at the heart of our emotional, feeling, and
16 Your Emotional Power

physical sensation response. Our unconscious contains the inte-

grative patterns which lead to the emotional charges dissolving
and our very important intuitive emotional insight.
v In physical healing we have to reconnect with our unconscious,
spirit, deeper creative resources, the force, our essential being,
God, or any other of the “thousand names” we call this vital life
force. This vital life force knows what to do.
v In the integration of emotional charge the feeling target has to
be fully felt and experienced. The feeling at some point has to be
allowed to be there without trying to get rid of it or attempting
to grasp it. In short the emotion, feeling, or physical sensation is
NOT resisted.
v For the emotional charge (what makes for intensity, fixation/
stuckness, discomfort, enduringness) to be integrated, the emo-
tion has to be met at the intuitive/unconscious level. This comes
about through an open, relaxed, and absorbed focus of atten-
tion. Getting the intuitive emotional insight or feeling message
ensures the intuitive/unconscious level of experience.
v Another route to emotional integration is repetitive exposure
and desensitization. This is seen in event reviews and the steady
feeling of emotion or event in methods like the Emotional Writ-
ing Process or the Event Reviewer. In these styles of desensiti-
zation the intuitive emotional insight or intuitive knowing ar-
rives toward the end of the process. This is due to the ending of
resistance.
v In integrators and efficient emotional processes dis-identification
occurs which gives us an observer position on the target. This
can occur through labeling, breathing, or as a natural response
from being in steady contact with a feeling. This outside or wid-
er-view sense of the feeling reduces feeling’s intensity, turns on
our intuitive processes, and opens the door for acceptance or
love to do their transforming magic.
v For permanence in integration the intuitive messages have to be
received. Otherwise the target’s emotional charge will likely re-
form and the issue will return. The issue (An emotionally similar
event) tends to return because the important intuitive message
went unheard and without a response. The phone was never
picked up. No action was taken.
 Learning to Feel Your Feelings 17

v The emotional target is viewed in accepting or loving awareness.

It is in this non-resisting and fully receptive awareness that emo-
tional charge unbinds and dissolves.

Learning to appreciate your feelings

v Engaging the spectrum of feelings in light reverie and noting
how they’ve been helpful, even though painful in the past, can
lead to an underlying sense of appreciation. Someone can re-
call feelings’ yeomen like duty in various situations. If someone
wants to daydream about their emotional past they can do so
while allowing the all seeing eye of their unconscious to review
the small miracles and wonders our feelings performed. Our un-
conscious is stocked with all kinds of memories and resources it
can link to our emotions and feelings.
v Someone could go emotion by emotion and feel them through
recalling or imagining situations where the feelings became in-
tense and held their ground for our resisting attention. Then
when a feeling is in full view, we pop the magic question to
them. “After I have gained an appreciation and acceptance of
you, how will I feel? What good and valuable things will I have
noticed about you?”
v Here’s how to measure your progress with a SUD Scale (Sub-
jective Units of Distress). Bring your attention to any distressful
emotions, feelings, or sensations you are having. When you have
a good sense of the distress level, rate your distress from 0 to 10
with 0 being nothing happening and 10 being overwhelming.
You don’t have to be very accurate—you just want to have rough
idea about how you are progressing. You will perform another
SUD Scale at the completion of each cycle of your process. This
will help you see how far along you are in lowering your distress.
When you get to 0, stop.

Subjective Units of Distress Scale

0. No distress at all. Feeling okay and calm.
1. Feeling little if any stress. Not quite fully calm.
2. Faint tension or mild stress.
3. Feeling slightly unpleasant or uncomfortable.
4. Growing distress or discomfort. Mildly agitated.
5. Verging on becoming very uncomfortable and distressed.
18 Your Emotional Power

6. Very uncomfortable—affecting my attention.

7. Emotionally painful—becoming severe.
8. The emotional pain is taking over my attention.
9. The emotional discomfort is almost unbearable.
10. The emotional pain is overwhelming me—the worst possible

Some tips for doing Subjective Units of Distress scale

v Place your right palm on your heartbeat region for the duration
of the exercise and do some left nasal dominance breath work
prior to doing the scale. Simply pinch your right nostril shut
and breathe deeply and fully through your left nostril only for
12 inhalations and exhalations. When you’ve concluded this left
nasal dominance breathing, then remove your finger and return
to regular breathing.
v Make sure you are properly hydrated prior to this exercise.
v Closing your eyes can help in tuning into each emotion. Use
each of your five senses in evoking memories or imagery to stim-
ulate your emotional reaction. Hear what happened. See what
happened. Feel what happened. Taste what happened. Smell
what happened.
v Fully feel your feelings and allow them to be there without at-
tempting to get rid of them or keep them.

Handling stuckness with acceptance

When a belief, feeling, or physical sensation exhibits staying power
or stuckness this is usually due to a lack of acceptance. Likely we are
trapped in a strong judgment about our belief, feeling, or physical sen-
sation. We may hate it or fear it. This judgment puts us out of contact
with our emotion, feeling, or physical sensation. And with little or no
contact with our challenge we can’t fully experience it or naturally
process it.
The most powerful antidote to stuckness is our natural ability to
accept.
What is acceptance? Acceptance, our viewing reality as clearly
as possible, helps us live fully and see our world without judgment
or absolute or extreme evaluation. Not meaning we are pleased with
our situation or resigned to it, acceptance is viewing ourselves, events,
feelings, thoughts, impulses, others, and the world with uncritical
eyes, observing without demanding ourselves or the world be any-
thing other than what we are or it is.
 Learning to Feel Your Feelings 19

How do we accept things? One way is by altering the way we

perceive and think about ourselves, others, and the world. If our per-
ceptions and thoughts are clouded by absolutistic and judgmental at-
titudes, our view of ourselves, others, and the world will be distorted.
Acknowledging reality as it “stands” is important to our happi-
ness and survival. When we accept reality, we cope with it better. Our
beliefs, feelings, and physical sensations integrate easier—they are no
longer stuck. Acceptance leads to less enduring and intense negative
emotions. Acceptance creates a clearer and more focused mind lead-
ing to constructive and positive actions. We see what is—we know
what better be done. And we act in our long-term best interests and
feel better.
Besides stuckness, what are some of the hints that we are not
accepting reality? Rage, panic, depression, anger, anxiety, hostility,
guilt, impatience, judgmentalness, shame, and an array of self-defeat-
ing behaviors.

Tips on acceptance
v Accept your negative feelings. Whatever you are feeling, you
really should be feeling because those feelings are flavored by
your beliefs about them.
v Denying, ignoring, and rationalizing away reality blocks accep-
tance. Sometimes we don’t want to accept reality because we
believe it’s too painful. People can accept emotional pain by ac-
cepting and experiencing their feelings.
v Acceptance does not rule out committing yourself to changing
your circumstances if you can.
v Clarity and acceptance are directly related. You increase one
and the other increases.
v Do you ask: “Why me or why did it occur?” Why is often an-
other way of saying: “It should not.” Better ask: “Why not?”
v How did you accept painful reality in the past? Did the accep-
tance come in stages? Did you deny reality at first by not believ-
ing it? Did you blame someone or something for reality happen-
ing? Sometimes denial, disbelief, anger, and depression occur in
stages before acceptance is reached. Grieving sometimes hap-
pens this way. Some or all of the mentioned stages may not be
present in the grieving process due to our varying perspectives
and beliefs about reality.
20 Your Emotional Power

v Blow your misfortunes out of proportion and employ humor. If

you lost your wallet—tell yourself you lost your entire life sav-
ings, right to social security, Medicare, and your identity. Laugh-
ing at your situation shows you’ve likely accepted it.
v Having taboo subjects demonstrates you don’t want to hear
about or view certain segments of reality. Glossing over, fib-
bing, or not admitting your mistakes are other active methods
of non-acceptance.
v Often the expression: “I don’t believe it!” is non-acceptance.
v Blaming and fault finding equal non-acceptance.
v Beware of ironclad rules and demandingness. These are cues
that you’re on the path to non-acceptance.
v If you can’t change a situation—ask yourself how you can accept
it. What beliefs hold you back?
v Own your own behavior—you are responsible for it unless some-
one physically forced you or your judgment was impaired by
brain injury.
v Uncertainty and the unknown are parts of life. To demand cer-
tainty is to avoid reality.
v Awful, horrible, and terrible strongly hint we are not clearly ex-
periencing reality or accepting it.
v Imagine how you might accept a deadly disease, a handicap,
pain and death, losing your life savings, deaths of close friends
or spouse, being fired, or your home burns down.
 AMAZON
REVIEWS
Your Emotional Power, August 10, 2007
By M. Shay

A valuable message Steve Mensing communicates in Your Emotional Power is to

befriend our emotions and find them messengers that offer greater meaning as well
as guidance to an enriched and healthier life experience.

The processes are a balance of creative and cognitve techniques that include tips and
methods by which the reader can explore emotions and broaden personal horizons.
These Emoclear techniques, simple and very powerful, have greatly improved my
life, and I make use of them often.

"Your Emotional Power" is a book for those wanting to improve the quality of life in
many ways through the dynamics of emotions, beliefs, and behaviors. In fact, it is
just as much a book for the reader who may currently be avoiding emotions or may
have not considered this avenue of exploration yet.

Steve Mensing's writing is friendly and concise, and each chapter elaborates a
process or more. Within the chapters, processes are illustrated with the experiences
of those who have employed the techniques. Elaboration follows, which is
accompanied by suggestions to enhance exploration of emotions and insightful
questions to deepen the integration. This book is a toolbox I will return to many
times and is definitely one that has become a companion to me.

The directions the processes in this book have taken me have enabled me to
experience and make use of my emotions to create and achieve new goals, end an
unhealthy relationship, experience unconditional love, and relieve pain and anxiety
experienced due to emotional avoidance. My experiences with these processes have
also included grieving the death of my father, during which time the integration
rather than avoidance of emotions has been an extraordinarily effective way of
healing.
I strongly recommend "Your Emotional Power" for positive growth and healing in
ways I have found quite rewarding.

An Excellent Book, August 23, 2007

By Jane S.

I've used Emoclear processes from the Internet and found them to be quite valuable.
I've been waiting for this book to be released. As I hoped, "Your Emotional Power" is
not only informative but is a gentle precise guide to readers on how to achieve
balanced emotions, change behaviors and create belief systems that work in their
best interests. Those of us familiar with the Emoclear techniques created by Steve
Mensing are thrilled the book has come out and is filled with updated and expanded
information about processes geared to aid us in reaching goals and well-being.

My personal favorite techniques from "Your Emotional Power" are The Emotional
Writing Process, The Belief Repeater, and the Behavior Repatterner. Using these
methods, I've moved beyond childhood and adult traumas and no longer create
negative scenarios. I've also been able to change distorted beliefs so I see myself
and others in healthier ways. I'm able to change my behaviors so they are no longer
self-defeating. It's a pleasure to have this guide available. I give it an A+.

A great forward path for personal growth, October 18, 2007

By Peter Shepherd

This book is based on the famous Emoclear techniques created by Steve Mensing.
Emoclear comes from the words "clear emotions." The simple and powerful
processes for clearing unwanted emotions are based on mindfulness, modern
exposure methods, and ageless integration techniques made more comfortable.
Modern behavioral repatterners and visualization techniques are also included. The
methods cover every specific need and are freely posted on Steve's Emoclear site.

So why the need for a book? 'Your Emotional Power' both explains the need for the
approach and presents a carefully thought out action plan, with the techniques in
their ideal sequence. It also contains the combined wisdom and experience of both
Steve and the worldwide Emoclear community. Far more than just presenting the
techniques, this book for the first time explains exactly why and how to use them,
with a tremendous ampount of helpful practical advice. You will discover a treasure
trove of cutting edge and highly effective methods for mastering even your most
powerful and negative emotional states and befriending them.

I personally endorse this method. I've found that Emoclear works well in the field of
therapy but also it works for oneself, in the direction of personal growth: a
reasonably stable person can apply these processes, without a practitioner, and they
will serve to integrate body and mind in a way that provides a degree of clarity and
integrity that is far beyond the normal. This book provides the map and the
compass.