Toward Emotional Maturity (1954)

“Toward Emotional Maturity” is a 10-minute film produced in 1954 for McGraw-Hill as part of its “Psychology for Living Series.”

A teenage girl reflects on her emotional growth, remembering when feelings of love, jealousy, fear, and anger took control.  The narrator says she learns through experience that no matter how deep an emotion is, you don’t have to let it take you over.  She comes to realize that by bringing calm reasoning to emotional questions, your decisions will be what you really want them to be.

The film concludes, “she has begun to think about her emotions and she is on her way to emotional maturity.”




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Emotional Wisdom – Harriet Haberman

Dr. Harriet Haberman is a licensed clinical social worker who received a Ph.D. from Rutgers University and has been a psychologist in private practice for 25 years.

Her book, Emotional Wisdom: A Compassionate Guide to the Messages Hidden in Your Feelings, was published in April 2008.

Book Description: “It provides you with the essential skills to access the hidden messages in your feelings; for it is these messages that are at the heart of the healing process. Your emotions are the key to discovering your inner wisdom, or in other words, your authentic self. The numerous client examples throughout the book and the exercises at the end of each chapter will help you integrate on a sensory level, what you learn from the text.”

Emotional Wisdom draws on Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and the law of attraction, popularized in Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret.

Based in Northern New Jersey, Harriet Haberman is a leader of Woman’s Empowerment Support Groups and practices Imago Relationship Skills for Couples and Singles.

Harriet Haberman’s original website:  harriethabermanphd.com

See it at Amazon:  Emotional-Wisdom-Compassionate-Messages-Feelings

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Emotional Health & Happiness – Launa Virgo

Would you rather be rich (financially) or healthy and happy?

Rev. Dr. Launa Virgo has written a two-part article at Examiner.com, “Does wealth equal happiness? How joy in life affects your health.”

In Part One, Virgo shares the results of a Gallup world poll conducted in 140 countries that found “wealth was not a determining factor” with respect to happiness. She also refers to the “Happy Planet Index” (HPI) published by the New Economics Foundation.

In Part Two, Virgo focuses on “how happiness impacts a healthy life.” Here are some excerpts…

“True health is not the absence of disease, but a balance of life’s forces.”

Quoting Alexis Carrel, she writes what when envy, hate and fear are habitual, they “are capable of starting organic changes and genuine disease.”

Virgo writes, “Illness can be a way of adding interest to a bland, meaningless existence.”

“Challenges are ordinary and so is emotional pain.”

“Those who judge circumstances as good or bad find themselves always at the mercy of their own perception. Those who accept that life happens around and with a person, but not to a person, enables that individual to pass through challenges without being taken down by them.”

“The American consumer culture would lead you to believe that happiness is just a purchase away and all of life’s ills are solved with a pill.  As it turns out, Americans have become the world’s leading pill consumers.”

Concluding her list of  “some pathways to happiness,” Virgo writes, “Talking about things that are bothering you will help relieve stress.  Counselors and support groups offer non-judgmental help.”

See the web site for HappyPlanetIndex.org

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New Focus on Mental/Emotional Health in Georgia

A new Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities initiated operations in the state of Georgia on July 1. Previously, mental health was one of 36 agencies within the state’s welfare department competing for attention and funding.

Georgia has nearly 100,000 children and adolescents with severe emotional disturbances and the agency created to care for them has served just 32 percent. What’s more, the Governor’s Commission on Mental Health concluded last year that too many are treated only after a crisis.

Now, a new pilot program treats people with mental illness while they have the support of a family, teachers, coaches and dance instructors. One person describing the program said, “They have been there 24/7 and for everything. I have never seen an agency that did all of that.”

Read about it here at Jacksonville.com.

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Emotional Health Alliance

Based in the United Kingdom, the Emotional Health Alliance is a learning network comprised of twenty organizations that works to ensure that today’s emotional challenge does not become tomorrow’s problem.

James Park, Chair of the Emotional Health Alliance: “The approaches we offer are designed to help children and young people free themselves from emotional confusion so that they can work out much better solutions that work for them.  That means offering children and young people the experience of a relationship that enables them to replace confusion with coherence, anger with containment, anxiety with calm, and fear with comfort.”

“We can insure that today’s emotional challenge does not become tomorrow’s problem because building relationships in which young people can work things out for themselves is a much better stimulus for their growth and maturity than telling them how to behave; because enabling young people to think, together with their teachers and with each other about how they want to learn and what they want to learn, will do much more for their attainment than driving them to higher exam results; and because shaping school environments in which staff, as well as students, feel capable, listened to, accepted, safe and included (CLASI) will enable everyone to achieve more and enrich alliance.”

Original Web Site: www.ehalliance.org.uk

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Writing For Emotional Balance – Beth Jacobs

Writing For Emotional Balance: A Guided Journal To Help You Manage Overwhelming Emotions was written by Beth Jacobs and published in 2005.

“Beginning with an explanation about the value of keeping a journal, Jacobs then guides readers through various processes to clarify our understanding of the subjective nature of emotions and how they are influenced by time and memory. Readers then learn how to define and evaluate their emotions, predict their emotional patterns, release emotions that no longer serve them, and refocus and organize their emotional life in ways that are more appropriate and fulfilling. Supported by over 30 hands-on exercises, this guide is an excellent resource for novice and seasoned journalists alike.” — Larry Trivieri Jr.

Excerpt from editorial review: “The process of writing about overwhelming emotions is a remarkably effective means of creating clarity and perspective in your life. Regular journal writers and diarists rely on their writing to help them keep their emotions in perspective; this book distills the best emotional benefits of regular personal writing into a series of engaging and easy-to-practice writing exercises…

By learning to gauge their emotional reactions on a “feelings barometer,” readers will come to understand the perceived strength of an emotion. Further exercises encourage readers to discover emotional triggers, write an emotional history, and connect physical and emotional responses. By practicing these exercises, readers will develop a language of positive imagery that will enhance comfort and peace of mind.”

Website:  WritingForEmotionalBalance.com

For sale at Amazon.com.

“The Brain, Emotions, and Writing: Why They All Work Together” by Beth Jacobs was published in August 2008 at lifejournal.com

Beyond the Shadows of Stigma

“Beyond the Shadows of Stigma” is an 8-minute video produced by the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation (CPR) that highlights the work of participants in a Photovoice course, “Taking off the Blinders: A Project to Combat Stigma and Discrimination.”

Photovoice puts cameras in the hands of individuals and asks them to produce statements made up of pictures and words that communicate their experience. CPR’s Photovoice course supports the personal empowerment of those living with serious mental illnesses in combating stigma.

The Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation (CPR) is affiliated with Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at Boston University. The Center is a research, training, and service organization dedicated to improving the lives of persons who have psychiatric disabilities by improving the effectiveness of people, programs, and service systems.

CPR’s Personal Assistance Services (PAS) Curriculum delivers training that prepares individuals to become PAS providers for those with psychiatric disabilities. The curriculum is designed to be used by individuals with disabilities, mental health workers, and those with no expertise in mental health. The PAS Curriculum is free and available for download from the Center’s website.

Emotional Blackmail – Susan Forward, Beverly Engel

In her book, Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You, Susan Forward writes, “Emotional blackmail is a powerful form of manipulation in which people close to us threaten to punish us for not doing what they want… This book offers a method to break this cycle for good by giving blackmail targets the tools they need and steps they can take.”

Susan Forward’s web site: SusanForward.com

In her book, The Emotionally Abusive Relationship, Beverly Engel writes, “Emotional blackmail is one of the most powerful forms of manipulation. It occurs when one partner either consciously or unconsciously coerces the other into doing what he wants by playing on his partner’s fear, guilt, or compassion.”

Beverly Engel is an MFCT (Marriage, Family, Child Therapist), psychotherapist, and author of eighteen self-help books, including Healing Your Emotional Self, Honor Your Anger, and The Emotionally Abusive Relationship.

In her review of Engel’s book, Healing Your Emotional Self, Joyce Catlett, coauthor of Fear of Intimacy, wrote, “As adults, many of us are still limited by the defenses we formed when trying to protect ourselves in the face of the painful circumstances we found ourselves in as children. Engel’s insightful questionnaires and exercises provide concrete help in the healing process.”

Beverly Engel’s web site: BeverlyEngel.com

Positive Emotional Psychology – Barbara Fredrickson

Barbara Fredrickson, a pioneer in the field of positive emotional psychology, is a Professor of Psychology and principal investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory (a.k.a. PEP Lab) at the University of North Carolina.

In her new book (published in January), Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive, Fredrickson shares how experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio to negative emotions leads people “to a tipping point beyond which they naturally become more resilient to adversity and effortlessly achieve what they once could only imagine.”

Publishers Weekly: “Positivity introduces readers to the power of harnessing happiness to transform their lives, backed up by impressive lab research. The author lays out the core truths and 10 forms of positivity – joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe and love – in a book that promises to change the way people look at feeling good…  The book includes compelling case studies, concrete tips, a Positivity Self Test and a tool kit for decreasing negativity and raising the positivity ratio.”

Fredrickson offers a two minute online quiz designed to provide a snapshot of how your emotions of the past day combine to create your positivity ratio.  The result is that it might help you learn the sources of your positive emotions and the triggers for your negative ones.

The Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory “studies people’s emotions, particularly their positive emotions. We are interested in how positive emotions affect people’s thinking patterns, social behavior, and physiological reactions. Our ultimate goal is to understand how positive emotions might accumulate and compound to transform people’s lives for the better.”

The International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) was founded in 2007 to promote the science and practice of positive psychology and to facilitate communication and collaboration among researchers and practitioners around the world who are interested in positive psychology. The First World Congress on Positive Psychology was held last week (June 18-21) in Philadelphia.

See Barbara Fredrickson’s website:  PositivityRatio.com

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Emotional Healing – Barbara Miller Fishman

Barbara Miller Fishman, Ph.D. is an author, psychotherapist, and meditation teacher who has extensive experience working with people on a psychological and spiritual path toward healing and wholeness.  After years of working with women as a psychotherapist, she developed the discipline of Mindfulness Psychotherapy, a combination of mindfulness meditation and psychotherapy.

Fishman’s book, Emotional Healing through Mindfulness Meditation: Stories and Meditations on the Search for Wholeness (Inner Traditions, 2002), features healing stories of eight women who faced serious trouble before discovering the will to walk “on the path toward wholeness.”

Excerpts from her web site, EmotionalHealing.net:

“This commitment came with a heavy price. If they wanted to truly live, they had to penetrate the inner turmoil that comes with trouble, be it shame, despair, or any one of a number of difficult emotions…  Getting to know the emotions that drove the old patterns, the women felt more grounded…  Emotions that once raged became quiet. The women felt at peace with themselves; they had more energy for life.”

Fishman writes about the importance of naming the emotions that accompany trouble.  “Naming these emotions, even if it is painful, produces a more authentic, genuine response to life.”

She also writes about “cultivating complete acceptance,” and “developing equanimity” – referring to emotions that are in balance.

“After each story, you’ll find the instructions for a mindfulness meditation. Taken together, these meditations are a course in what I call Mindfulness Psychotherapy. Try taking the course; perhaps it will help you heal your own emotions. For those who prefer to hear rather than read, an accompanying 70 minute CD provides four of the meditations.”

“The narratives are punctuated at points when the women had insights that shifted the ground on which they stood, if only a millimeter or two. These insights led them to make choices that freed them from patterned, habitual behavior and moved them forward on their path toward wholeness.”

In her blog, Barbara Miller Fishman writes, “If an emotion is too powerful, it overrides other emotions. When that happens, it’s important to look for the presence of other feeling states (body sensations indicative of an emotion.)”

Fishman, who lives in Pennsylvania, is also co-author of Resonance: The New Chemistry of Love.

Web Site:  EmotionalHealing.net

Blog:  meditationexperience.blogspot.com