Emotional Detoxification

(Involves gaining knowledge of the ways we get ourselves sick as well as the ways we can get ourselves well.)

Ways to Get Sick (if that's what you really want to do)

1. Don't pay attention to your body. Eat plenty of junk food, drink too much. If you are over-stressed and tired, ignore it and keep pushing yourself.

2. Cultivate the experience of your life as meaningless and of little value.

3. Do the things you don't like and avoid doing what you really want. Follow everyone else's opinion and advice, while seeing yourself as miserable and stuck.

4. Be resentful and hypercritical, especially toward yourself.

5. Fill your mind with dreadful pictures, and obsess over them. Worry most, if not all, of the time.

6. Avoid deep, lasting intimate relationships.

7. Blame other people for all of your problems.

8. Do not express your feelings openly or honestly.

9. Shun anything that resembles a sense of humor. Life is no laughing matter.

10. Avoid making any changes which would bring you greater satisfaction and joy.

Ways to Stay Well (or get better if you're not too well to begin with)

1. Do things that will bring you a sense of fulfillment, joy and purpose that validate your worth. See your life as your own creation, and strive to make it a positive one.

2. Pay close and loving attention to yourself, nourishing, supporting and encouraging yourself.

3. Release all negative emotions--resentment, envy, fear, sadness, anger. Express your feelings appropriately, don't hold on to them. Forgive yourself.

4. Hold positive images and goals in your mind, pictures of what you truly want in your life. When fearful images arise, refocus on images that evoke feelings of peace and joy.

5. Love yourself, and love others, too. Make loving the purpose of primary expression in your life.

6. Create fun, loving, honest, relationships, allowing for the expression and fulfillment of needs for intimacy and security. Try to heal any wounds in past relationships, as with  old loves and parents.

7. Make a commitment to health and well-being, and develop a belief in the possibility of total health. Develop your own healing program, drawing on the support and advice of experts without becoming enslaved to them.

(from Optimum Health Institute)