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March/April 2009 Featured Stories
Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself from Negative Emotions

by Barbara Stahura

Dr. Judith Orloff, author of Emotional Freedom, is a psychiatrist and intuition expert who synthesizes the pearls of traditional medicine with cutting-edge knowledge of intuition, energy and spirituality to create a new blend of healing wisdom. She passionately believes that the future of medicine depends upon integrating these elements to achieve emotional freedom and total wellness.

Q. Why did you write Emotional Freedom?

A. I'm passionate about teaching people to transform negative emotions into positive ones. If you get mired in the muck of negativity, you can't lead a liberated, happy life. As a physician, I see that most people don't have the everyday tools to transform frustration, depression, anxiety, worry and fear into positive emotions. This book is a how-to guide that offers you these tools.

Dr. Judith Orloff

I work in a mainstream medical system that doesn't generally deal with emotions in an expanded way. As a UCLA psychiatric resident I learned to prescribe medications and use traditional psychotherapy. In this book, I also bring spirituality, subtle energy, and intuition into this equation and offer strategies that go beyond mainstream medicine.

Another powerful reason I wrote this book is that I watched my mother, a physician, literally lose her life to stress and fear. I loved her more than anything, but I didn't want to do the same thing to myself, as I have similar tendencies.

Q. What is emotional freedom, and why is it so important for individuals and our world today?

A. Emotional freedom is your ability to love by cultivating positive emotions and being able to compassionately witness and transform negative ones, whether they're yours or another's. This skill liberates you from fear and lets you navigate adversity without attacking someone, losing your cool or being derailed by negativity. With emotional freedom you can choose to react constructively rather than relinquishing command of the situation when your buttons get pushed.

Q. What is the role of compassion in emotional freedom?

A. Compassion is key because unless you have self-compassion, it's hard to heal difficult emotional states. And also when a loved one is going through a trying time, being compassionate without judging them is essential. My spiritual teacher says we make progress on the spiritual path by beating ourselves up a little bit less each day. I believe that. It's about baby steps.

Q. How are emotions a path to spiritual awakening?

A. I see difficult emotions as a laboratory for spiritual growth - whereas traditional psychiatry often views them more as tormentors, something to get rid of. I believe that emotions come to us - even wrenching ones like depression - to spiritually awaken us. Each emotion is a prompt for us to get more in touch with our hearts and expand our light. This perspective really changes how you deal with all emotional challenges.

Q. How can emotional freedom help us to not absorb negative emotions from others?

A. Many sensitive people come to me, as patients and in workshops, who've been labeled "overly sensitive." These people, including myself, are what I call "emotional empaths." Because we are so sensitive, we absorb the energy of others. We sense their fear, anxiety, and stress and take them into our bodies. Then we get exhausted or feel ill ourselves.

As a child, I couldn't go into shopping malls or crowded places because I'd walk in fine and then walk out exhausted, or with some ache or pain I didn't have before. I didn't realize what was happening. I went to my mother, a physician, who said, "Oh no, dear, you just don't have a thick enough skin." Not a good thing to tell an intuitive child! But as I've matured intuitively and as a physician, I've realized that people on a spiritual path tend to gain more sensitivity as they develop. Thus, they need to learn how not to absorb outside energy so they can feel joyous and free. You can be compassionate but stay centered without becoming an emotional sponge.

Q. When dealing with difficult personalities, it's easy to lose our cool or attack back. How can Emotional Freedom teach us to cope in a calmer manner?

A. There's a chapter on emotional vampires, which is my term for many difficult people - for instance, a criticizer, a victim, a narcissist or a controller. Let them be our teachers, rather than tormentors. We must ask ourselves: How do they teach us to communicate with more heart and better boundaries? How can we deal differently with feeling irritated, controlled or insulted?

The old way is to get nasty or withdraw. The new way is to not simply react when your buttons get pushed - a behavior that perpetuates war. Practice what I call "the namaste effect," which is, "I respect the spirit within you even if I don't like what you're doing." Your victories over emotional vampires are not small - they're huge. With every success, you are creating more hope for the world. From an intuitive standpoint, we are all interconnected: my emotional freedom affects your emotional freedom, which affects everyone in the world.

Q. You define four emotional types. What can they tell us about ourselves?

A. They are the intellectual, the empath, the gusher and the rock. These are the filters through which you see the world - the default setting of your personality to which you revert, especially under stress. Each type is determined by inborn temperament, upbringing and perhaps karma. Since emotional freedom means being able to remain sensitive but centered in an overwhelming world, it's essential to know your emotional type. Without this knowledge, many people dysfunctionally hunker down in their type for decades without examining which aspects do and don't serve them.

Q. What can sleep and dreams teach us about emotional freedom?

A. Sleep and dreams are a conduit for emotional freedom. Sleep is a great awakener because your linear mind quiets down, and you enter a purely intuitive state where you can better understand your emotions and other realms. Dreams are revolutionary states of consciousness that impart intuitive wisdom about being free.

Once I went through a period of complaining a lot when nothing was working. Projects were falling through, patients were canceling appointments, I couldn't even get the plumber to come and fix the toilet. I was in victim mode.

Then I had a dream in which my deceased father came to me, and he was moving from one location to another. I asked, "Daddy, is there anything I can get you?" Smiling, he said, "No, darling, I don't need anything except a pen and a piece of paper in case I want to write a thank-you note." For me, this was a wake-up call that highlighted the importance of gratefulness here and in the hereafter. It was all I needed to adjust my attitude to being more grateful for my life.

Q. How can we overcome fear during times of terrorism, economic turmoil and natural disasters?

A. To be free, we must view fear as something to overcome, not something to be defeated by. When you see a world with so much to be afraid of - skyrocketing gas prices, the failing economy and violence - you must choose not to come from fear. Part of emotional freedom is making a vow not to lead a fear-driven life. That must be a deep desire in your heart. Then do everything possible to overcome fear and worry with faith in goodness, and try to stay in the moment rather than catastrophizing the future. Courage or fear is a choice. It's not something that just happens to you.

Q. How does emotional freedom offer opportunities to be heroes in our own lives?

A. If you suffer loss, if you're having an anxiety attack, or feeling depressed or lonely - these are all very spiritual experiences to me. You become a hero in your own life as you learn to use emotions as a chance to become stronger, brighter - more. This is critical on a personal level because it frees you from suffering. But it's just as important on a collective level because if we don't face the fear and anger in ourselves, then we risk projecting it onto a global sphere. This creates war and massive suffering to our human family. We must find inner peace before we can have outer peace. That's why I consider emotional freedom an inner peace movement.

Judith Orloff, M.D. presents lectures in Portland on March 18 and in Seattle on March 20. Visit www.drjudithorloff.com. Freelance writer Barbara Stahura has interviewed many of the major transformative individuals of our time, including Louise Hay, Carolyn Myss and Wayne Dyer. Visit www.barbarastahura.com.