Transforming the face of psychiatry, Judith Orloff, MD, is an assistant clinical professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and author of the New York Times and international bestseller Emotional Freedom. She synthesizes the pearls of traditional medicine with cutting-edge knowledge of intuition, energy, and spirituality to achieve physical and emotional healing. She passionately asserts that we have the power to transform negative emotions and achieve inner peace, and offers practical strategies to overcome frustration, stress, and worry.




Dr. Orloff, who comes from a family of 25 physicians, advocates “a democracy of healing,” wherein every aspect of ourselves is granted a vote in the search for total health. She has been celebrated for her unique approach to mental well-being by proving that the links between physical, emotional, and spiritual health can’t be ignored.



JANET ATTWOOD: In your book, Emotional Freedom, you say it’s possible to gain control of one’s emotions, and this is a big one for a lot of people. Will you share with us exactly what you mean by emotional freedom?



JUDITH ORLOFF: Yes. Emotional freedom means being able to choose to react constructively rather than relinquishing your power of the situation whenever your buttons get pushed, as most people do by just reacting. It’s about setting your intention to come from a different place even if your first reaction is, “I hate this person. I want to kill them.” Of course you’re not going to come from that place, but that is the first level.



Then you get to, “All right. Let me have some empathy for why this person did this horrible thing, and let me deal with it from a place of compassion or, at least, equanimity.” It’s about having a choice about how you respond rather than simply reacting when your buttons get pushed. This lets you communicate more successfully and with more confidence and empathy and, most importantly, it lets you own the moment in any situation.



You can’t wait for the other person to do it. People are going to do all kinds of things that are going to irritate you and upset you, but you have to be the one to claim your emotional freedom, even by taking a breath, pausing, and saying, “I’m not going to react to this person when they’re criticizing me. I’m not going to react. I’m going to choose to come from a different place. I may choose to set limits and boundaries with this person so they don’t do it again, but I’m not just going to react.”



This is such freedom. Emotional freedom is about knowing that everything you go through has spiritual meaning. In the book, I present emotions as a springboard for spiritual transformation. “How to Transform Fear with Courage” is one of the chapters. “How to Transform Frustration with Patience” is another. The transformation of energy-that’s what emotional freedom is.



It’s not just getting rid of depression. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I was taught as a psychiatrist during my training at UCLA is to get rid of depression to get people to feel better. Feeling better is part of emotional freedom, but even more, I teach people to transform the energy of, let’s say, depression into hope. It’s an ongoing skill, and you gain mastery of the transformation of the energy of emotions.



That’s very important, to know how to transform it. I’m defining it in the book as an inherently spiritual act. Everything we go through has spiritual meaning, and we need to look at the meaning of it so our hearts can grow.



JANET ATTWOOD: In your book you describe four practical secrets to empowering your emotional life. Can you tell us a little bit about that?



JUDITH ORLOFF: Yes. I go through the four components of emotions. In each chapter, I’ve devoted it to a different emotion: “Transforming Fear with Courage,” “Transforming Depression with Hope,” and “Transforming Envy and Jealousy with Self-Esteem.” In each chapter, I go through the four components of emotion so that readers can have tools to transform the difficult emotions into something more positive. The first component is the biology of emotions.



For instance, with depression, it may be low serotonin that needs to be shifted. I teach people to harness their own biology, usually without medication. Sometimes, if necessary and appropriate, medication can help. I go through how to differentiate that. In each emotion, I talk about how to harness your own biology. The second component is how to understand the spiritual meaning of what you’re going through.



How does this frustration help you to become a bigger person, become a more heart-centered person, and develop patience? How can this depression help you develop hope? We really look at the spiritual meaning of each emotion. Also, the third component is the energetic power of each emotion. I teach you to transform the energy of difficult emotions into something more positive so it doesn’t get lodged in your body.



You don’t want the energy of emotions lodged in your body because that causes disease of all kinds. Then, the last component is the psychology of emotions where it’s important to backtrack and go back to your childhood and to your mother, father, sisters, upbringing, neighbors, or whoever influenced your energy as a child. Find out negative messages that were communicated to you that you need to deprogram now so you don’t carry them around if you.



Maybe you’re what I call an Emotional Empath in the book, somebody who absorbs other people’s energy into their own body. If you were an Empath as a child and you had an anxious mother, most likely you’ve absorbed that anxiety into your body, and you still may be carrying it around as an adult. Part of understanding the psychology of emotions is seeing what got stuck or still lodged in you so you can release it and be freer as an adult.



JANET ATTWOOD: What would you tell someone? One of my very best friends just lost her husband. They were sitting at a meal a month ago, having this great dinner. Right after they had dinner, he started to get ill and lose weight, and so they went to the doctor. It turned out that he had colon cancer and passed away within a month’s time. Every time we would have a get-together-I have eight girlfriends who have been together for over 25 years now-she would walk in and say, “It just doesn’t get any better, guys.



“I’ve just got the perfect relationship.” Then all of a sudden, wham. Just from out of nowhere her perfect relationship, her soul mate, and her right hand is gone. She’s in another world now. You were talking about transforming difficult energy. Right now, she’s in the worst period, I would say, of her whole life. What do you tell someone like that?



JUDITH ORLOFF: Of course she is. There’s a section in Emotional Freedom on grief. I look at grief a little bit differently than the other emotions because I believe that grief has a healing trajectory if you can let it work its way through you. Grief itself is an incredibly painful yet healing energy, and it knows where it’s going. Where I think people get in trouble with grief is when they try to block it out with drugs, alcohol, sex, and shutting it off.



You need to be able to let it work through the body and deal with this initiation by fire. What she’s going through is hell; it’s hell to lose your beloved and to lose him so suddenly. In terms of emotional freedom-and I don’t mean this to be Pollyanna-ish-I believe that everything is meant to make our hearts grow, as unfair as it is and as horribly wrenching as it is.



It seems like, maybe, life isn’t worth living. Whatever she’s feeling is fine. Not that she wants to hurt herself, but she needs to let the grief work through her and not let it stop her from loving. Who would ever ask for these lessons? Nobody in their right mind would. Life presents us with things that seem unfair and horrible and make us just want to bow to our knees and disappear.



Of course it happens, but this is the nature of life. With the support of your group, she’ll get through, but not by changing anything she’s doing or feeling. It’s incomprehensible, this level of loss, for anybody else unless you’ve gone through it. Just support her, and she will come out to another place. I had a friend where this happened to her, and she lost her beloved.



As time went on, she did meet somebody else, but it turned out he knew the beloved. In the relationship with the second man, they kind of revered the beloved and made the beloved part of their relationship with the way they embraced his spirit and memory as part of the relationship. It was quite beautiful in that sense.



JANET ATTWOOD: I love that. These emotions play havoc with our sleep patterns. I know that it’s tricky for my good friend right now, and understandably so. Do you have some practical tips for our listeners who also have problems with sleeping?



JUDITH ORLOFF: Yes. Chapter Three of Emotional Freedom is dedicated to sleep and dreams, two of my favorite subjects. You need to understand the biology of your sleep cycle so that you can really optimize it. I have some really quick tips on how to get better sleep. One quick tip in the book-there’s a diagram there that’ll be useful to look at-is to look at the delta brainwaves of sleep.



They have a certain configuration, like on an EEG there are certain sine waves. If you look at that visual before you go to sleep at night, it trains your brain to go to the deep waves of sleep through the visual. It’s probably a tip people haven’t heard of before.



JANET ATTWOOD: How do they do that? How do they look at their delta brainwaves?



JUDITH ORLOFF: Yes, they look at those. On page 68, there’s a diagram, and they could copy it and put it by their bed. Before you go to sleep, just take a look at it. Don’t try to do anything; just look at it. All you need to do is have the visual input. Look at it, take a breath, go to sleep, and those are the sine waves of your brain when you go into deep sleep. That will, in a way, set the intention in the brain to get there.



JANET ATTWOOD: Perfect. I’m going to pull that out and take that over for her. Thank you for that. That’s really great. What are emotional types, and how does one determine what type one is?



JUDITH ORLOFF: Yes, there’s a chapter in the book on emotional types. It’s so important to know what your emotional type is so that you can know how you respond emotionally, optimize the positive points, and heal the negative points, because not all points work for you. The types include the Intellectual, who is somebody who feels most comfortable in their head.



They’re bright, incisive analysts, and great sparring partners for ideas that you can toss back and forth. They can make lots of positive and negative lists, and they believe they can think their way to a solution for any situation. The upside is that they’re impeccable analyzers, but the downside is that they may live from the neck up and have difficulty connecting to their feelings. Also, they may be seen as cold, withholding, or snobbish.



If you are that type, you need to optimize the positive points and also begin to get more in your body. Exercise, do yoga, do breathing, or anything to get yourself out of your head to balance out the positive points of your beautiful brain. The second emotional type I discuss is the Empath. This is the type I am, so I have particular interest in it because it’s been quite challenging.



The Emotional Empath is somebody who’s intuitive, sensitive, and loving but tends to absorb the energy of emotions in the world into their own body. They tend to get exhausted by it or pick up other people’s aches, pains, depression, or anger. It has a negative effect. It can cause physical symptoms. It can wreak havoc in your body unless you learn the strategies that I practice and talk about in Emotional Freedom to not absorb energy.



It is not a good thing to absorb other people’s energy, and I believe people are mistaken about that, because they feel that to be compassionate people, they need to take on the pain of the world. As a psychiatrist, as an intuitive, if I did that, I would be dead. Really, I would not be able to move, and it wouldn’t help anything. I can be compassionate with my patients. I can sit there, listen to what it is they’re going through, and hold the energy and the light for them without taking on their stuff.



With the Empath, the upside is how sensitive, beautiful, and deep the experience of life is. You feel everything, which I love. I’d never give it up because you get to feel, see, know, and go deeper and deeper. I love that. The downside is you absorb other people’s negativities, and you’re so sensitive to emotions you feel like a wire without insulation. You’re prone to anxiety, depression, or fatigue.



You feel hemmed in living in the same space with other people. That’s been a big one for me, to really carve out my own space and have my alone time. The second emotional type is the Emotional Empath, and setting limits and boundaries with people is key. You’ve got to be fierce with your limits and boundaries so that you know you have enough alone time.



When I go to social things and parties, I always take my own car so that I can get out of there. I cannot stand sitting there for five hours talking. It’s beyond me, even if I love the people. I’m maxed out at a certain point. I’ve absorbed enough. I can’t interact. I’m done, so it helps, and my friends understand that. You have to explain it to them so they don’t feel like you’re not respecting them.



JANET ATTWOOD: That’s a hard one when you’re so sensitive and loving. If you’re not communicating why you need your own space, they’re probably thinking, “What’s with that? She’s usually so sensitive and loving.”



JUDITH ORLOFF: I tell them. I’ve even told friends who get in my space. I have a periphery of personal space around me, which is about a foot or two. I like people to keep that distance from me usually when they’re talking to me because I’m more comfortable. I have one friend who kept talking in my face. As an Empath, it was too much for me, so I asked her, “Can you please just step back a few inches because you’re in my personal space?”



It took a while for her to really get that, but I didn’t want to have to deal with her and have to avoid her because she was talking too close to me. The way I tell people is this. If you’re an Empath and you’re listening to this, go right to the Empath section on page 109 of Emotional Freedom. Learn how to set limits and boundaries with a kind but firm tone. You feel angry when somebody imposes on your space.



You feel like, “Get away from me.” That’s just a natural feeling if you’re an Empath, but you can’t communicate it that way. As I said before, emotional freedom is owning the moment. It’s really having a choice about how you respond. If you say it lovingly and kindly, then people can hear it. It might be a different kind of idea for them, like they feel it’s personal to them.



You have to tell them, “It’s not personal to you. It’s just my own personal space requirements.” As an Empath, I have all kinds of creative conversations with people. With men I’ve been with, I prefer sleeping alone a lot, and that’s an issue for an Empath.



JANET ATTWOOD: What do you prefer? Say that again.



JUDITH ORLOFF: Sleeping alone. It’s a tricky subject when you’re with somebody, but I have to broach it because sometimes I just can’t take sleeping with someone in the same bed. I need to be alone. I’m used to being alone sleeping, and sometimes I love sleeping with people, but sometimes I don’t. It depends, and I don’t want to be trapped in a bed with someone when I don’t want to be there.



You have to do it really lovingly and let them know it’s not personal and that you love them. It’s not a matter of not loving them or being passionate about them. It’s just a matter of the needs of an Empath to be alone. When an Empath can speak about his or her needs, then they can have a loving relationship. Otherwise, Empaths feel trapped. They feel they have to adhere to social convention, and they’re miserable in terms of staying in the same room with somebody too long.



When I travel with somebody, as an Empath, I always get an adjoining room, because I need to get away. For Empaths, that’s their trademark. They need to get away. When I have my separate room, I feel good. I might not even go to it, but I feel good because I have my room. I usually do go to it because I need it. I always have my own bathroom because it’s too much to think about sharing a bathroom with somebody.



JANET ATTWOOD: Judith, I’m really glad you’re so transparent.



JUDITH ORLOFF: I’ve had to be because I love people, and I want to be in love and be in relationships and have intimacy, but I can’t unless I set these limits.



JANET ATTWOOD: There are other emotional types, right? What else do we have going on here?



For details on how you can get the complete interview, including a transcript and recording… ==>Click Here




For more information about Judith Orloff and her work, please go to www.DrJudithOrloff.com.

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