We are nothing without our emotions, I always like to say. It's such a significant and profound part of our living conscious experience, but we take it so lightly. Many who are troubled or distressed may have very ambivalent or shut off experiences with their emotional life. Take for instance, someone who's always had it difficult in life, and experienced the pain of separation or abuse. These painful emotions or feelings may sometimes be hard pressed to exist in the conscious now, but may manifest and appear in The Unconscious.

The Unconscious, so elusive and so controversial - to some, this may be where you discontinue reading given that its existence cannot be proven (at least not directly). Dreams as they say, are the royal road to our unconscious, and it's true, often we can't make sense of it unless we sit with a psychotherapist long enough, and given the right conditions and pace, allow for some conscious exploration of this phenomena. However, we do have our emotions. For anyone who's ever been supervised or mentored by me, I'm always heard to say, "our emotions help us evaluate the situations we're in". Perhaps there's a lot more that our emotions reveal to us than we know. Just because we feel one way, does not mean we don't feel the "other way". Love/hate, security/insecurity, courage/fear, all represent conflictual emotional states that may pose touchy and distressful contexts for many of us. So it may be useful to first understand how we feel about something, followed by what it may mean to us at a conscious, and then at an unconscious level. We can only know this through our own personal analysis via psychotherapy.

Hear more about this in a fun and engaging video about Anxiety. Why the heck? Understand and Master... by Dr Heath on Freudalicious Mind. Check his videos out on YouTube - they are a good resource for the layman when attempting to get a sense of what psychoanalytic concepts are.

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