Cathartic psychotherapies (Primal therapy, Gestalt therapy, Experiential psychotherapy, Holotropic Breathwork, Energy breathing)

Cathartic psychotherapies are based on the notion that if you express your feelings you will purge yourself of your troubles. We have probably all heard this because psychotherapy today have spread far out over its disciplinary limits, and have become a part of an ideology, that thinks it have to take care of, not just psychological problems, but also philosophical, political and religious problems. In schools and in workingplaces we are for example forced to lay bare our feelings on the slightest occasion. Cathartic psychotherapies are therapies such as Primal therapy, Gestalt therapy, Experiential psychotherapy, Holotropic Breathwork, Energy breathing, etc., etc.

Psychotherapy is a branch of psychology, and therefore something scientific, which have to be empirical tested. The problem is that there is no evidence for the notion that you will purge yourself for your troubles if you express your feelings. On the contrary. The notion seem disproved by experiments with children, which find that rather than sublimate aggression when encouraged to be aggressive, the children become more aggressive. Why is that?

The problem is that cathartic psychotherapies are neglecting the importance of thoughts. Feelings are the body´s reaction on the mind (the thoughts). Feelings arise where the mind and the body meet. They are reflections of the mind in the body. Feelings can also be a reflection of a whole thoughtpattern. A thoughtpattern can create an enlarged and energycharged reflection of itself in the form of a feeling. This means, that the whole of the thought´s past also can create a reflection of itself in the body. And if this past is filled with pain, then it can show itself as a negative energyfield in the body. Eckhart Tolle calls this the emotional painbody. It contains all the pain you have accumulated in the past. It is the sum of the negative feelings which you have ”saved together” through life and which you carry. And it can nearly be seen as an invisible, independent creature. Therefore we also could, as H.C. Andersen does in his fairy tale, call it the Shadow.

The painbody is the inner demon, or the devil in the heart. Some painbody´s are relatively harmless, some are anxietyfilled, depressive or angry, others are directly malicious and demonical. They can be passive or active. Some are passive 90% of the time, others are active 100% of the time.

The painbody is the expression of suffering itself, as well as an expression of violence (see my articles The emotional painbody and why psychotherapy can´t heal it and Suffering as an entrance to the Source).

The painbody is activated in the same moment as specific challenges activate the inappropriate basic assumptions, which have been created by bad experiences in the past. And they are being maintained by the vortex of negative automatic thinking, which follows from these basic assumptions. In other words it constitutes a rather particular reaction-pattern, a manuscript, which gets you to play the same role (or the same roles) again and again. That will say, that specific situations will continue to activate it, so that your actions become an eternal repetition of the same. It takes control over you, so to speak.

Therefore you should of course not seek to activate your painbody, as the cathartic psychotherapies believe you should, because they thereby also activate the negative thoughtpattern behind the painbody. The painbody lives of, that you are identified with the negative thoughtpattern behind it. In this way the painbody gets your energy. And for that reason you also give energy to your negative feelings, when you activate your thoughtpattern. Negative feelings will in other words increase if you express them. And the painbody is, through the inner evaluating ego, which the painbody is constructed around, connected with the more dangerous dephts of the collective history of the astral plane. The energies found here are unfathomable, and when you direct them into your painbody, you are really facing problems (see my article Spiritual crises as the cause of paranormal phenomena).

Instead you should relate completely neutral in relation to your painbody, and through critical thinking seek to explore, re-structure and change the inappropriate basic assumptions, rules of living and thought distortions, which are the thoughtpattern behind the painbody. That is how philosophy and true spirituality works (see my article A dictionary of thought distortions).

Also read the philosophical question What are feelings? in my book Meditation as an Art of Life – a basic reader.

Related article:

A critique of Stanislav Grof and Holotropic Breathwork