Healing through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair [Hardcover]

Miriam Greenspan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 28, 2003

Here's a book that offers a new prescription for coping with depression and anxiety, as well as other painful emotional states: don't try to escape them. In Healing through the Dark Emotions Miriam Greenspan shows us that there's something good in so-called "bad" feelings, if we would only stop and listen to them. In a down-to-earth and engaging style, Greenspan explains why learning to attend, befriend, and surrender to emotional pain actually leads to lasting relief, as well as to greater wisdom, compassion, and a deep sense of fulfillment. Most of us don't know how to listen very well to emotional pain. This is because we have never been taught that doing so is a good thing, or how to do it. Greenspan offers a step-by-step process for opening ourselves to the wisdom of painful feelings that she calls "the alchemy of dark emotions." She focuses on three of the most common forms of emotional distress: grief, despair (a.k.a. depression), and fear. Surprisingly, when we find the courage to move toward our pain and inhabit it fully, something magical happens. Grief leads us into a state of gratitude. Despair is a doorway to faith. And fear delivers us to joy. Drawing on inspiring examples from her private practice, and integrating some unforgettable stories from her personal life, Greenspan teaches us the art and magic of keeping your heart open in the presence of pain. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, in any one year more than 18 million Americans suffer from depression. More than 19 million are diagnosed with anxiety disorders. In the midst of this alarming epidemic of emotional distress, Greenspan offers a much-needed, penetrating exploration of the causes of our suffering—and practical advice on how to cure it. The culprit, she says, is our cultural intolerance for feeling bad. The biochemical view of emotions and other trends in our society have encouraged us to dismiss, deny, and pathologize the dark emotions. But to find peace and healing, she says, we need to cultivate a more open and trusting relationship to these feelings. We need to learn that the darkness has its own light.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this heartfelt therapeutic manifesto, psychotherapist Greenspan (A New Approach to Women and Therapy) argues that grief, fear and despair are not pathologies to be medicated away but emotions that help us grow psychologically and spiritually. The disavowal of these painful emotions (which she blames on Western culture's privileging of "masculine" reason over "feminine" emotion; lifelong lessons in suppressing emotional pain; and modern psychology's focus on "dispelling feelings, not learning from them") leads to depression, numbness and violence in both individuals and the world at large. But by "attending, befriending, and surrendering" to grief, fear and despair we can effect an "alchemical transformation" through which they become "gratitude, faith and joy." Greenspan's eclectic approach to healing invokes "depth psychology, Hasidic Judaism and Buddhist meditation"; her desire to make "meaning out of suffering" owes something to religious traditions that acknowledge the redemptive value of pain, as well as psychoanalysis's dedication to lighting up the mind's dark recesses, while her praxis includes New Age and recovery movement therapeutics such as visualization, breathing exercises, "chakra bodytalk" and prayer. Drawing on her clinical experience and her own painful recollections of the death of her infant son and her parents' travails during the Second World War, Greenspan writes intensely and compassionately. This is a committed, serious look at the emotions most of us would rather sweep under the rug.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"In this heartfelt therapeutic manifesto, psychotherapist Greenspan ( A New Approach to Women and Therapy ) argues that grief, fear and despair are not pathologies to be medicated away but emotions that help us grow psychologically and spiritually. The disavowal of these painful emotions (which she blames on Western culture's privileging of "masculine" reason over "feminine" emotion; lifelong lessons in suppressing emotional pain; and modern psychology's focus on "dispelling feelings, not learning from them") leads to depression, numbness and violence in both individuals and the world at large. But by "attending, befriending, and surrendering" to grief, fear and despair we can effect an "alchemical transformation" through which they become "gratitude, faith and joy." Greenspan's eclectic approach to healing invokes "depth psychology, Hasidic Judaism and Buddhist meditation"; her desire to make "meaning out of suffering" owes something to religious traditions that acknowledge the redemptive value of pain, as well as psychoanalysis's dedication to lighting up the mind's dark recesses, while her praxis includes New Age and recovery movement therapeutics such as visualization, breathing exercises, "chakra bodytalk" and prayer. Drawing on her clinical experience and her own painful recollections of the death of her infant son and her parents' travails during the Second World War, Greenspan writes intensely and compassionately. This is a committed, serious look at the emotions most of us would rather sweep under the rug."— Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 1 edition (January 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570628777
• ISBN-13: 978-1570628771
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #442,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Definitely a keeper!, August 27, 2003

By 

Dr Cathy Goodwin (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Healing through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair (Hardcover)

Greenspan's book deserves wider recognition. I found it by accident online and I wish I had seen it earlier.

What I liked best: Greenspan writes from her own experienced as therapist and bereaved mother, a woman who came to the US as a young child and lost her first child due to unexplained brain defects. She knows the darker emotions first-hand.

Even better, Greenspan is not afraid to confront the received wisdom of the psychiatric establishment. Medication works for some depressed clients, but it is only by going into the emotion that we can transform despair into faith and fear into joy. She picks up on the values embedded in the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria: depression is a "mood disorder," which means that only cheerful, upbeat people are "normal."

I found myself making notes of key points that were unusual and insightful. In particular, her discussion of "boomerang emotions" will be especially valuable to anyone who's ever been frustrated in one area and acted out in another. It is easy to make impulsive, often dysfunctional decisions after stifling feelings for a long time. This section is one of the best in the book.

On the downside, I wish Greenspan had been more rigorous. Although her views seem sensible, some research suggets disagreement. For example, one study found that people recovered from grief as well if they were medicated as if they were allowed the full experience. Other studies have demonstrated that people experience grief differently. Some may not need to go deep into the feeling.

Because Greenspan works with therapy patients, she does not discuss the context of these "dark" emotions. Despair can be experienced by someone like William Styron, whom she discusses, as a person who seems on top of the world. But would there be a different experience of despair for someone who just lost a job, has little chance of finding a new job, anticipates old age and perhaps has family stresses too? Despair rooted in real obstacles seems somehow different from despair that has more existential "why are we here" origins. And biologically based depression seems to be different altogether.

Many New Age and popular authors (such as best-selling author Lynn Grabhorn) make exactly the opposite point: if you force yourself to be upbeat, your life gets better. I wish Greenspan had addressed this point directly, as some people do seem to do better after forced cheerfulness. This topic may not be amenable to scientific research but it would be nice to see some science-based discussion.

Finally, I wish Greenspan had stated her credentials on the book jacket. Is she a PhD? Does she have degrees? Has she published articles in academic or research journals? I was a little disconcerted by the discussion of chakras in a book by a more-or-less mainstream therapist.

Then again, Greenspan seems to be making a statement. She doesn't like the way we treat the darker emotions. And maybe she doesn't like the way therapists are categorized and pigeon-holed either. After all, there's no research (as far as I know) demonstrating that certain training results in better therapeutic outcomes. Definitely worth a read.

69 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ESSENTIAL READING FOR ALL PEOPLE., April 3, 2003

By 

Phyllis Chesler (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Healing through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair (Hardcover)

From Phyllis Chesler, author of eleven titles, including "Women and Madness" and "Woman's Inhumanity to Woman":

Greenspan is the gentlest and therefore the wisest of healers. Her book is a poem, a prayer, a guide, a ritual. She herself models what can be done. She is vulnerable, grief-stricken, mindful, supple, connecting, and joyful. She describes enormous grief and terror--her own, that of the world's--and explains what it means to surrender to fear, to face straight into it, to "let it be" as the royal road to sanity, rightful action and rightful non-action, and to exuberance and freedom.

This book is very easy to read--but not simplistic; political but not rhetorical; spiritual but not dogmatic; literary but also practical. It beholds that which is tragic about the human condition but embraces it in a therapeutic and consoling way. It is both Jewish and Buddhist, feminist and humanist, grave but sometimes funny. Greenspan provides an excellent discussion of the "alchemy of fear," and of the Buddhist concept of "tonglen": non-action, action, surrender. She is excellent on violence, trauma, numbing, and the consequences of omnipresent media in our lives. Her discussion of the world post 9/11 is compelling. The tone is grave, measured, supple, vital, enchanting.

Greenspan is a trustworthy guide for us in these times.

61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars RIVETING AND WISE, March 25, 2003

By 

Harriet Lerner (Lawrence, Kansas United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Healing through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair (Hardcover)

This is a book of remarkable depth. It is also engaging and wonderfully readable. The author is a brilliant thinker and a natural storyteller. Best of all, I loved the stories from her own life. As a psychologist and writer myself, I've read countless books about the difficult emotions. None is as interesting, helpful, and riveting as this one--or offer as much hope for our personal suffering and turbulent times.