But this acknowledgement provides the context in which we can effectively let go to the feelings and thus let go of them - knowing them for what they are. Emotions always have a rational basis. At other times, though, the appropriate form of discharge is in real life action, by getting angry with whoever is oppressing us and making them stop. We can use our heads, and other people's, to work out which sort of situation is which, to disentangle the mixture of past and present which is usually involved. The key point is that emotions are e-motions, movements out , their natural function is precisely to clear what stops us moving on.
Feelings are value-neutral, neither good nor bad, simply there .
Resistance' is a word for all the ways in which people seek to avoid their own movement, their own living process. Oh God, I'm so blocked. It is important to see that resistance in therapy is like resistance in politics - it originates in fighting oppression . If a child finds its feelings invalidated by the adult world in the ways we discussed in the last chapter, this is oppression of a very powerful kind. We have all built up defences against outside threat and inside emotion for the best possible reasons, and in the best possible way.