Healing from Emotional Abuse:
Mastering Mind-Emotion-Body Connection in Healing for Emotional Abuse

by Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D.

The mind-emotion-body connection is something some of us take for granted, while others remain in awe. I do both.

Now here is a little psychological insight that will open doors for your recovery from psychological, mental and emotional abuse.

Go ahead and get your coffee or herbal tea because we’re going to have another one of those psychological conversations.

Thought-Emotion-Physiology

When a little thought registers in our minds—when we intentionally or unconsciously think a thought—limbic system activation occurs. Now the limbic system is the emotional brain. It’s the place in the brain where emotion registers.

This limbic system activation triggers a hypothalamic-pituitary response, as though the emotional brain is telling the primitive brain how to gear up in order to prepare the body to meet the demands of what IS...what lies before you.

Now this primitive brain (hypothalamic-pituitary) triggers specific glandular activation that subsequently sparks specific body system responses that prepare the body to carry out the necessary action, or inaction, to meet the demands before it.

So it is apparent that the thoughts we think and the images we hold in our mind’s eye yield what we feel and how we act, right?

Finding the Thought Behind Distressful Experience

Now let’s imagine that you are experiencing the emotional distress associated with current or past verbal, mental or emotional abuse.

You feel the upset emotionally. And, fortunately for you, you can find the thought that is driving this emotional discomfort. Here’s how.

If you close your eyes and pay attention to the part of the body where you usually feel things, chances are the emotional distress will both magnify and localize in that region.

By staying with this bodily “felt sense” with bare attention (i.e., not analyzing; instead, merely witnessing), words can then bubble up as though to articulate (explicate) what’s internally meaningful. As renowned psychologist Gene Gendlin, showed me in the 70’s: what’s implicitly meaningful becomes explicit.

Releasing the Thought Driving the Distressful Experience

Now once the words speak themselves, you have the thought behind the distressful experience. If you put that thought to inquiry, guess what happens? You will discover that you have indeed attached to a thought that is NOT true for you. It is a thought that has separated you from what is more authentically YOU.

As the work of Byron Katie demonstrates so eloquently, once this cognitive lie makes itself apparent, that is once your story is seen as no more than just “a story,” then the thought can let go of you.

And once this happens, the emotional distress associated with that thought vanishes, leaving you at peace with yourself emotionally and psychologically. I have both experienced and witnessed this thousands of times and to this day I still hold reverence and awe around the precision of this psychotherapeutic technique for healing emotional abuse.

Now I’m aware that I have provided you with some rather esoteric practices here, but I promise you that inside this article is a message of hope. In summary:

a) You can pick your thoughts.
b) You can find the thought behind emotional distress.
c) You can engineer the release of thoughts that cause emotional
    discomfort.

In a nutshell, you can heal the emotional pain from psychological, mental and emotional abuse.

For more information about emotional healing, see Domestic Abuse Healing from Within. Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D. helps people recognize, end and heal from verbal and emotional abuse. www.PreventAbuseRelationships.com

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© 2009 Jeanne King, Ph.D. – Domestic Abuse Prevention and Intervention