This is a fun pop-psych book with some valuable insights, techniques for releasing negative feelings in relationships, & 100 author-drawn illustrative cartoons. It's a very fast read. His basic premise is that TACT ="Telling the Absolute Complete Truth" will free you from negative emotions. If you repress them instead, you experience "The See Saw Effect--When we push down a feeling, it comes up in our partner." This is an interesting take on projection & repression. The 3 methods to deal with these emotions are:
--Duplication: commonly known as mirroring-repeating what your partner says, ~active listening & role playing
--Anger Process--talking to yourself as if you were another person--calling yourself "you" in a mirror & expressing: 1. anger/blame--, 2. what you want, 3. positive/loving/supportive statements.
--Love Letter Technique--writing letters containing: 1. anger/blame, 2. hurt/sadness, 3. fear/insecurity, 4. guilt/responsibility, 5. love/forgiveness/understanding/desire & reading them to each other.
I think these are valuable in clearing out negative emotions in relationships, but there are assumptions affecting their applicability. Gray assumes love & goodness are underneath surface problems--clearing out anger etc. will reveal this. He is not addressing M. Scott Peck's "People of the Lie." Indeed, I think he's addressing people neither too undeveloped or too advanced. For example, Tibetan Buddhism has techniques to advantageously transforming emotions & Freud addressed sublimation. See Thubten Chodron's "Working with Anger" or Pema Chodron's works (e.g. "No Time to Lose"). Gray aims at couples/pairs not separate individuals. He assumes they have strong emotions needing expression--more extroverted than introverted--but employing his methods may expose hidden neuroses & complexes. Thus, his techniques are valuable at the Level of Abstraction he's addressing herein.
He also provides some valuable insights worth repeating:
"Many people confuse submission with love...A sure-fire way to kill the love in a relationship is to sacrifice your wants & needs in order to be loved by someone else. When you stop caring about yourself & your needs, there are no longer 2 people in the relationship. It's hard to be interested in nobody."
"When your heart is filled with love, life is like a big vacation" = Western Nirvana?
Of the cartoons, my favorite shows fishing for compliments from the love boat. Hilarious!
IMHO it's useful to realize that, like your thoughts, you have feelings, but you aren't your feelings. |
What You Feel You Can Heal Books In Print, Audio Books.