I was introduced to the concept of original sin at the tender age of eight.

Without getting into all the heavy duty argy bargy about it, the basic gist is this:

We all have a wrongness at our very core, ostensibly stemming from Adam's fall from grace (eating the apple — ie, acquiring knowledge of right from wrong).

Now, as an eight year old, that's a pretty deep concept, so the way it gets translated is as follows.

Once a week, we all got shepherded off to confession (the priest hears our "sins" and allocates us a certain number of prayers to say as penance/punishment).

While waiting for confession, we all wracked our brains as hard as we could to think of any "sins" we might have committed that week.

We had to have something to say, after all. We couldn't simply go into the dark and say "Well actually Father, I'm terribly sorry, but I'm just a normal eight year old. I've done nothing much since last week."

Of course, we're eight (and not bad kids), what the hell could we possibly have done anyway? So, you start thinking of every little thought, deed or inaction that might be cause for blame.

In other words, once our delightful teachers inform us that we're flawed (and there's nothing we can do about it), IT BECOMES OUR JOB TO PROVE THIS IS TRUE.

Starting self-flagellation early? Nice one.

Of course, this one "fact" leads to all sorts of nasty beliefs and habits.

• Perfectionism (every tiny fault is a sign that we are indeed flawed)
• Beating ourselves up (about those flaws)
• Self criticism (to a ridiculous degree)
• Expectation of punishment (for this inescapable sin)
• Wanting ourselves to suffer (as penance for our sins)

… and so on.

In short? It's fucked.

Obviously, this isn't the only way to pick up the above habits. We all do them, to some degree or other.

Now, in some doctrines the theory is that when Jesus died, he fixed this all up. Voila, sin healed! Go and play, (previously) happy little kids.

But, of course, somehow this all gets lost in translation. All we remember is that we're evil little buggers, and it's our job to figure out just how, so the priest can "forgive" us (and I use that term very loosely in this scenario).

So. Ok. This concept leaves us with a lot of crap to clear up.

How do we do that clearing?

Well, here's what worked for me.

First of all, many of these beliefs (eg perfectionism) can be reinforced later in life.

For me, all the way through school I got stupidly high grades (in the 80's and 90's). In my final year of school, the teachers wanted to scare us into working harder for finals. So, they graded us super intensely. I came home for the first time ever with a grade in the 60's (English. Turns out I'm crap at writing. Who knew? Thanks Teach!)

My parents eviscerated me. 45 minutes of concentrated scolding from both of them and I realised — this was the first time I'd had that much attention since I was a baby. This is one downside of being in a large family, of course. It wasn't that they didn't love me, just that they they didn't have time to express it very often.

At the time, how did I interpret the above bollocking? Well, I had to be perfect (or near perfect) or I would suffer. Badly.

So, my perfectionist belief got strengthened.

Needless to say, all of the above beliefs can be reinforced in this way. Strong traits often don't come from a single isolated life event.

So, each of these needs to be gently pulled apart. Event by event. Emotion by emotion.

EFT, of course, is very good for this — there's no particular need for anything more complicated to clear all this junk out.

Most of these habits (perfectionism, beating myself up, criticising myself etc) I'd already worked on at length.

This morning however, I realised that way deep down, I also wanted to suffer.

What the hell?!?

Ok, now logically, obviously, hell no I don't.

However, the trick is — look at your life. Just describe it. Dispassionately, without blame, judgement or attachment to outcome.

What you see around you, you're creating.

So, if I could see suffering in my life, well, at some subconscious (obviously not an intentional, conscious) level I wanted to create it.

For example, if I looked really closely I could see a pattern in my drinking, if I was feeling particularly shitty about my life. Once I passed a certain level of drunkenness? I'd want to go hard out. Really hammer it.

I disconnected from the fundamental truth of loving, respecting and caring for myself and tapped into something uglier.

This sense that I was somehow, deep down, flawed, and thus should be punished. If I looked really closely, I could see that I was drinking to avoid this pain.

This, needless to say, gets dark pretty quickly.

Good news is? You can just tap it out. TALK OUT LOUD (This makes a HUGE difference) and it all clears out. Super fast.

As always:

1. Be specific (one event/emotion at a time until it's clear)
2. Be persistent (keep going until done)
3. Drink lots of water
4. If you feel energy sticking or emotion welling up when tapping a single point, keep tapping that point until it fades.
5. If any random life event pops in your head, talk about that
6. Don't worry about what to say, just talk around the subject
7. Focus on the specific emotions associated with any given event
8. Start with the negative, eg "I deserve to suffer, I want to suffer", but always end with the positive, eg "I deserve to be happy"
9. Go easy on yourself

To begin with just start on the basic subject. Eg "I have to be perfect because…"

As long as you're relaxed, pretty soon something will pop in your head. Even if it's just "Wahhh, I'm fucking this all up, I'm useless, I can't even do THIS properly" Ha ha. Awesom! Go with that!

It's worth taking it a little bit at a time, because, well, people can be complicated. There's often subtle aspects that might get missed if we rush through.

Ultimately, once you've dealt with the side effects listed above, you'll want to get back to the core of it all — this original sin bullshit. Coz here's the take home point:

THERE'S NOTHING FUCKING WRONG WITH YOU (except maybe, going to the wrong school as a kid and that whole crying during Rambo II thing).

To get to that, I started with something like "I'm broken deep down. There's dark sin, right at the core of me. Somehow, I'm wrong, and I deserve to be punished for it…" and so on. Being a little melodramatic is good. You're trying to tap into something a little below the level of consciousness, so some overacting will often help you connect into that deeper belief.

Generally, deep inside ourselves, we often really are that intensely over-the-top about things "OH, I SUCK. MY LIFE SUCKS. EVERYTHING SUCKS!" Obviously it doesn't. Our conscious, slightly more rational mind knows it's not true. But we're talking about almost lizard brain level automatic thought patterns here. You've got to expect things to be a little nutty.

So, particularly while you're fishing around trying to find a resonance with yourself, a core event that things stem from, or how things are phrased best for you, ham it up a little. Make it end-of-the-world dramatic. Don't worry about sounding silly.

If you said "I'm a purple cabbage" (an obvious lie), well, that wouldn't bother you in the slightest, right? So, you also have nothing to fear about saying other ridiculously exaggerated statements about yourself. If they connect, the energy/feeling will come up and you'll heal it. If they don't, they'll affect you about as much as being called a purple cabbage.

The bottom line is this. Really? The whole original sin thing? Maybe it's true, maybe it's complete bullshit. However, there's no reason in hell it should be screwing up your life, OR making you feel like crap every second of every day. Even just in a tiny little way, in the background.

Nobody deserves to have this kind of pain and mess swilling around inside themselves, I don't care what any church teaches.

On a side note, the funniest thing about all this? Apparently aliens might not have original sin at all. Thanks declarative priest dudes, good to know!

To which I immediately thought "Well, I guess I won't be wearing them much then."

And I had a sudden realisation.

Recently I've been in something of a financial lull — certainly compared to when I was working in investment banking, or managing my own investments.

Back then, I used to iron 7 shirts a week, every week — or 14 at a go (4 mins each, it'd take about an hour) if I got lazy one weekend. That was just part of looking good and feeling good.

So what had changed?

Was I somehow suddenly not worth ironing shirts for?

It turned out yes, that was exactly how I was feeling. One of those old tricks of the English language, if I was "worth less" (financially), I was (to some small degree) "worthless."

As my finances had taken a down turn, I'd forgotten to keep loving myself.

Not in terms of self harm (although I've definitely done plenty of that in the past, if you include overdoing coffee, working too hard, late nights, and an occasionally over-enthusiastic tipple).

It's the little things though.

When you're in a relationship with someone, big things — buying you a new car, going on holiday — well, these definitely stand out. However, it's really the little things that matter.

Do they ask how your day went? Do they touch you? Are they forgiving and supportive? Do they let you be yourself?

These are the things that show how deeply someone truly loves you. These are the things that become life-or-death for a relationship.

And it's these little things that are so easy to forget, particularly when life gets trying — which of course is when we need that love the most.

Of course, this is complicated by the fact that it's so much easier to love someone else than it is to love ourselves.

We are, so often, our own worst critic.

And yet loving ourselves is far more important than having someone else love us. We're the only person who will be with us our entire lives.

Learning to love ourselves. On a daily basis, practising loving ourselves. These are the single most powerful things we can do to increase our sense of well being, our happiness and thus our quality of life.

Ironing my shirts or not is such a ridiculously small thing, and yet, so often the small things in life show us deep truths about the larger. How you do anything is how you do everything.

When I looked deeper, I could see more ways that I've stopped loving myself:

• I've been giving myself an inordinate amount of grief for various choices I've made (and this despite healing everything I've been conscious of — this beating myself up was more like a deep miasmic cloud, below my level of consciousness)
• My sense of self worth and value in the world has dropped through the floor (with all the commensurate side effects this has)
• My boundaries have shrunk in terms of the type of behaviour I'm prepared to accept from others

…and no, I haven't been as forgiving and supportive as I could have been. I haven't let me be truly myself as much as I could have.

These things are so subtle, so easy to miss when life gets a bit hurley burley.

Look at the little things. Check, are you treating yourself as gently as you could be? Are you loving yourself as unconditionally as possible. Letting those daily upsets go? Are you really being your own best friend?

Little steps, like this, lead to bliss.

It's a process, but the first step is awareness. Have we simply forgotten to love ourselves?

Needless to say, this immediately piqued my curiosity (not 93%, not 95%, but 94%? Turns out, it was actually 93.6%)

I read a bit further, and his basic approach was this:

1. He'd invite couples into his lab
2. They would write down half a dozen issues they could never agree on
3. He start a video camera
4. He'd then pick an issue and they'd talk about it

After 15 mins, he'd stop the camera, and almost universally the response would be "What?!? It can't have been fifteen minutes. We only just got started."

See, what he realised was — in terms of relationship survival, it doesn't really matter how we are when everything's going well. What really matters, long term, is how we behave when things turn to shit.

And the issues that would provide constant pressure throughout a relationship were those things that could never be resolved. Your mother is an ogre and makes his life a misery. He lives for football and you can't stand it. You know, the basics.

What Dr John Gottman discovered was that there were four attributes that indicated almost universal death for any relationship.

He named these behaviours "The Four Horsemen of the Relationship Apocalypse."

They are (in no particular order):

Criticism

This is easy to spot. If you're stating a complaint in terms of an attack on the other person, or a defect in their personality? That's criticism. Giving the other person negative trait attributes is not constructive, it just escalates the conflict.

Here's the secret: Telling people things that are shitty about them will never, ever make them change. It'll make them hide those behaviours, or lie to you, or leave. Mostly though, it'll just make them feel like crap.

You really want them to change? Praise them when they do the opposite thing, the thing you actually want.

The antidote to criticism is, if you have to raise an issue? Complain.

A complaint is about a specific event. It's aimed at the action, not the person — and the difference is critical. Criticism is global, about the person's character or personality.

CONTEMPT

Contempt is a bit more interesting. It turns out this is the single best predictor of divorce.

Contempt covers anything which expresses disgust for your partner. Some examples: eye-rolling, sarcasm, name-calling, condescension, mockery and hostile humour ("You're such an idiot").

The crazy thing? You can turn down the sound on a video of someone expressing contempt for their partner, and just count the contemptuous body language motions, and it will be an excellent predictor for how many infectious illnesses the receiving partner will experience in the next four years.

Contempt doesn't just kill your relationship, it quite literally kills the other person too.

The antidote to contempt is appreciation. If you let everything else go in your relationship, and do nothing but appreciate the hell out of that person? That'll fix almost anything. It's incredibly powerful.

(No huge surprise to long time readers of this blog, of course: Love heals? Whodda thunk it?)

Here's a great video on contempt:

DEFENSIVENESS

This is a knee-jerk response to criticism or complaint.

It's a way of saying "it's not me, it's you."

This is expressed through making excuses, shifting blame onto the other person, or denying responsibility. Defensiveness wards off a perceived attack.

The antidote to defensiveness is to accept responsibility (as ugly and difficult as that can be at times).

STONEWALLING

Stonewalling is a tough one. This is where one person more or less completely ignores the other. They emotionally withdraw from interaction; refuse to acknowledge the other person exists, let alone talk about an issue, and so on.

This generally only happens after a period of time, when one partner has "given up" or started to tune the other out completely.

The antidote to stonewalling is (pretty obviously) to engage. Any communication, even painful and shitty, is better than no communication at all.

Do I have anything more to add? Well Dr Gottman has spent forty years studying this stuff. His solutions (antidotes he likes to call them) are listed above in blue.

He also recommends three things to avoid in any fight:

1. Saying "You never…"
2. Saying "You always…" (because these are both blanket condemnations)
3. Anything insulting or acting superior

Any of Dr Gottman's videos are worth watching.

Other than that? All the usual. Don't communicate via text, if you can possible help it. Be patient. Say less than you think. Heal everything.

Oh, and good luck. Take it one day at a time. Just try to be a little better today than you were yesterday. Over time, those little daily improvements add up to  disproportionately powerful outcomes.

To do list:

1. Not give a fuck
2. That is all

(many thanks to @AaronM_NZ)

Pretty obviously, our actions are more powerful than words.

Similarly, our words are more powerful than our thoughts.

The problem is, for those of us who are of a *cough* slightly more loquacious nature, oftentimes our words are more or less exactly our thoughts.

Now, I'm not quite in the "blurt before thinking" category, but I have, historically, talked a lot.

Here's where this is a problem.

A lot of crap just doesn't need to be talked about.

Two examples from my experience:

1. I'm in a relationship with someone, and something is bothering me.

Why would I talk about it? To look for insight or emotional support; to try to resolve it, together; To try and subtly bully them into changing (dopey, I know); to get sympathy.

2. To prove how difficult or painful my life is. Ie, how much I'm suffering.

Why the hell would I do this? In short: looking for approval/love. I discovered I had a very deep pattern of using personal suffering to (try to) gain love & support.

The thing is, in both these cases — I'm upset. As always, the issue is never the cause, it's my reaction.

In other words: rather than talking about it (and spreading our misery), it's a lot more productive to get down to the root cause (almost never the person who's standing in front of us) and get rid of that, not the seeming immediate stimulus.

At Burning Man, there's a saying: "You don't always get what you want, but you always get what you need."

I'm starting to think this is exactly how life is all the time, not just out on the playa.

Case in point.

A friend recently called me out on exactly this situation. I was upset, and she pulled me up one day and said "Look, you can't talk to me about this stuff."

At the time my immediate reaction was pretty negative, "What the hell? A friendship without emotional support?!?"

The thing is, she was bang on the money.

The message could perhaps have been phrased differently — but I've eventually heard and understood what she meant.

All I was doing by talking about my internal emotional upheaval was making two people miserable, instead of just one.

This is particularly silly given that for me, "misery" is usually extremely short lived — I pull out my tools, I dump the issue and ten minutes later I'm feeling great again (in the vast majority of cases).

There's a slightly more subtle issue too.

If someone on TV says something offensive about you ("People who voted for him are idiots"), well, it's pretty easy to discount.

If, however, someone close to you — a partner or family member — says the exact same thing, it can really hurt.

What's the difference? The level of energetic openness and connection between you. By opening ourselves to someone, we choose to make ourselves vulnerable.

The tradeoff (and why we do this) is, the more we open our hearts the deeper and richer the tapestry we can create together. The more beautiful the relationship has the chance of becoming.

Either way, it's a choice, and they're vulnerable.

So, saying nonloving things to someone who's opened themselves to us causes far more pain than saying it to (say) a random stranger on the street.

Why on earth would we consciously want to cause pain in someone we love?

We should save our speech for adding value to the lives of those around us. Save it for being loving, supportive, encouraging.

If it's our crap, we should deal with it, not smear it around.

As is so often the case, I more or less figured this out years ago.

Some lessons, it would seem, need to be learned a couple of times from a couple of different angles before they really sink in.

It's often harder to detect than anger — its shouty, ranty cousin.

It slips under our radar, disquised as a "but" at the end of another otherwise loving sentence.

• "I love my girlfriend but…"
• "We have a great life but…"

or perhaps an "if only":

• "I'd love her so much more if only…"
• "We'd be much happier if only…"

This is disapproval.

As I've been continuing to clear up a recent (now ex) relationship, I realised — I was wrong before.

Or rather — I didn't have the complete picture.

It's not only resentment that kills relationships. It's disapproval too.

Resentment is easy to see. It's big. It's obvious. Every argument you have — that's resentment.

Disapproval can easily masquerade as a background wistfulness. A quiet wish for something different, better, other. A thought ignored.

But disapproval leads to a withholding of love.

It's conditional love.

"I'd love you more if…"

It's trying to change the other person (which never really works). It's trying to control them (always a bad idea). It's judgemental.

Only once you've let go of disapproval can you move into acceptance. Into a true state of lovingness.

So, how do we do this?

It's actually pretty easy.

Just say to yourself "I disapprove of [their name]…" and watch how your brain fills in the gap:

• "I disapprove of [them] when they…"
• "I disapprove of their…"
• "I wish they'd…"
• "I'd love them more if they…"

Whatever your mind fills in, just repeat it, and let it go. Let the accompanying energy go (you'll feel tightness or pressure — stress energy, if you will, when you say it).

Keep doing it until you don't care about that issue any more. Then try the starter phrase (or another) again, and see what else comes up.

Doing this with my recent relationship, I was utterly shocked at how many things I uncovered. I think I'm finally understanding why she left. Who'd want to stick around if they could feel that much negative energy firing at them?

And this was despite me consciously choosing and working damn hard at (ie, dropping my own crap so I could be) loving her as much as I possibly could.

Wow.

There's a little bit of Mr Gate Closer Horse McBolterson going on here, but the way I figure it — if I'm having those thoughts about her, well, I'm sure I'm also having them about other people…

…like myself?

And once again, we come back to our most important relationship.

The one we have with ourselves.

Have a go. Get quiet, say the phrases above (but aimed at yourself) and see what your brain fills in.

• "I disapprove when I…"
• "I disapprove that I haven't…"
• "I disapprove that I…"
• "I disapproving of my…"
• "I disapproving of how I handled…"
• "I disapprove that I never…"

If it's anything like my experience, you'll be alternately shocked — and then relieved once it's gone. You'll know it's gone when you can say the exact same phrase and feel no reaction at all.

When you can say all of the phrases above and have your brain add nothing? That's when you know you're getting really clear.

Ever wonder why you feel crappy half the time for no particular reason? Yeah. It's internal noise like this. It doesn't help.

Fortunately, just bringing it into the light is really all that needs be done to get rid of it. You could use EFT if you feel like something needs a solid bash, but generally just letting it go is enough.

What's the advantage to dumping disapproval?

Well, we're all looking for approval (love). Once we let go of disapproving of ourselves, it leaves the gate open for us to unconditionally love ourselves. That self-love becomes effortless and automatic, instead of an ongoing daily battle.

It's also always, always a much better idea to be self-loving than be looking to others to provide this approval. After all, we're the only ones who will be with us every second for the rest of our lives.

As a friend of mine recently described "It feels like I'm getting a hole kicked in my chest every 6 hours."

Wow. Yes.

If you have no idea what I mean by this, well, I'm damn happy for you. It sucks. No-one should have to experience this kind of pain. Unfortunately though, many of us do.

Now, depending on how hard these situations hit us, our motivation can go from normal to death level. So, it's less about what we SHOULD do, and more about what we CAN do. If you can't even lift your head off the floor (yes, I've been there), then recommending that we go do some exercise isn't going to help.

We may need to work our way up to standing before we go for that five mile jog.

To that end, here's a list of suggested approaches. If you're feeling only slightly crap, then you could start with the first one — it'll give you the biggest bang for your buck.

If you're not up to that, it's ok, just work down the list until you find something you can do. It'll help. It all helps. When you're feeling better, you can work your way back up the list to number 1.

Oh, and if you're feeling up to doing any given item, then you should be able to easily do everything below it on the list too. Again, it all helps.

The only thing that matters is getting you feeling good again, as soon as possible.

1. Release it all

Emotional or psychic pain usually has a physical component — often in our stomach or chests. They're just feelings. They're coming up because they want to leave.

Imagine a big balloon way above your house. Send all the pain there — not angrily, not defensively; authoritatively. Give it a name "the hole kicked in my chest"; "this shit I'm dealing with"; (or whatever best describes it, succinctly). Tap your karate chop point and say its name to help connect with the feeling. Welcome it all up & send it out until it's done & gone.

Then blow up the balloon.

Here's the thing — it all ties together. You get rid of the physical, the emotional goes with it too. Our systems (physical, emotional, mental, energetic) are incredibly sympathetic.

2. EFT
Don't worry about saying anything. When things are this rough, you don't need to. Just do three full rounds. Drink some water. That'll help damp it all down and get the energy moving out, take the edge off. That's the absolute worst case. More likely, it'll get you feeling better, calmer — and damn quickly.

3. Tap your karate chop point
If EFT feels like too much work (or, say, you can't even lift your head off the pillow), then just tap your karate chop point.

Here's my friend Rod, being happy & tapping his karate chop point

(Rod's at Tap4Health. I've worked with him, he kicks ass)

Do that for a few minutes. Seems like bullshit, but it will help. It all helps.

4. Take care of your body
Drink some water. Have a multivitamin, and, ideally, a 5HTP if you have any around (it'll get your seretonin back to normal levels). You know, just help your physical body. I suppose if you were feeling enthusiastic you could also go do some exercise. Go to the gym. Go punch something. Anything to get a sweat up. That'll help too.

What's the deal with exercise? Well, apart from the endorphins etc that are kicked up, using your muscles is the only way for your lymphatic system to flush itself clean. Why is this important? Coz your lymph system is basically the toxin garbage system for your body, but, unlike your vascular system (your blood) the lymph system doesn't have a pump (like the heart). You have to use your muscles to clear it out.

The upshot of this? A lot of times, particularly when under stress, our body gets loaded up with toxins, which makes us feel even crappier — but it's just biochemistry. Exercise, help the lymph system clear itself out, the toxins etc go, and voila, we feel better. Simple, really.

You can feel when your lymph nodes are blocked up by pushing/rubbing them — under the armpits, inside thigh, or just below the clavicle. If they hurt, they need clearing. The sharper among you will have noticed — these points coincide perfectly with some of the EFT tapping points. No, this is not an accident.

And the water thing? (yes, I rave about it). Very simple. We're 70+% water. All your internal organs need water to operate properly. They can't flush junk out of your system if they're dehdryated. If your organs aren't working optimally? Yes, you'll feel crappier.

5. Get someone who loves you to hug you for a minute
A full minute. Just let them hold you, and know that while they are, the entire rest of the world can go away. You're safe.

We're all monkeys (and people say we monkey around). We all need physical contact.

6. It will be ok
If all the above just seems like too much work and you can't even do #5, then just hear this:

I know it doesn't feel like it right now. I know it feels like a world of never ending shit, but it will get better. Life can't, won't continue being this shitty for the rest of forever. Yep, crappy as all hell right now. Hurts. Sucks. Is rough as hell… but life changes, everything changes. Always. If nothing else, just know that in a coupla weeks, a ton of this stuff won't feel quite as bad. It'll be a memory.

In ten years you'll probably struggle to remember it at all (or you simply won't care). There might be some ongoing stuff, but a big chunk of it will be a distant memory. You will feel better again. You'll have up days. All you gotta do is keep eating. Keep breathing. Keep drinking water. Keep getting hugs anywhere you can. I know that doesn't help you right now, but it's something to hang on to. Something to look forward to.

No matter how shit things are right now, life will always change. This will pass.

Also? I love you.

Under all this though, there's one core reason most relationships die.

It's the same reason buildings rot away and collapse: Lack of regular care.

Now, I'm not saying you should lacquer your partner every summer (unless that's their thing of course), it's a little more subtle than that.

See, the reason relationships die is because of a gradual piling up of resentments.

Resentments about what?

Let's step back a little first and I'll explain.

People come into our lives (ie, we have relationships with them) to help us grow.

How do they do that? Well, usually by pissing us off.

Why?

Because we attract people that reflect us; both our strengths and our weaknesses.

So, they're gonna rub up against those weaknesses, irritating us — just like a grain of sand in an oyster — and potentially with exactly the same outcome.

When our frailties are exposed like this, letting it go can be easier said than done.

Additionally, the closer someone is emotionally the more they're able to influence us — for better or worse. This is why our family (particularly our parents) get under our skin so often.

On top of all this, the basic experience of building a relationship with someone requires compromise and growth by both parties.

So every time we have one of these natural little upsets we're given a choice: hang on or let it go?

• If you're still bothered by something that happened a month ago, you're collecting resentment.
• If you're fearful they're going to behave as they have in the past, you're collecting resentment.
• If there's things you wish they wouldn't do any more, you're collecting resentment.
• If there's things you wish they would do but don't, you're collecting resentment.

What typically happens is that we happily burble along sharing our lives. All the while these resentments are slowly building up, until eventually it's all too much and everything explodes.

Depending on the temperaments involved, this may happen sooner or later.

This is all a bit miserable, so what's the solution?

As I mentioned above: regular care.

In terms of relationships rather than houses, we're talking daily if not minute-by-minute care. A little bit often vs lots when desperation strikes.

Couples often head off to marriage counselling in an attempt to repair twenty years of cumulative damage; this isn't practical.

Much simpler and easier is simply to commit to dumping everything that comes up, immediately.

How do you do this?

As with everything, you simply make a choice.

What is more important — being loving to this person, or hanging on to this resentment?

So often we self-justify feeling crappy "I'm allowed to be upset or angry, they hurt me!" — but really, why do this?

Isn't it better to feel good?

And, after all, we love this person. Surely being unconditionally loving is better than only loving them if they behave exactly how we want. For a start, that's trying to control them. Secondly, we never feel better than when we're being completely loving, regardless of their behaviour.

If we let go of the resentment as soon as it happens, we shift quickly back into feeling loving and feeling great again.

The more we let go of, the better we feel. Not only that, but the easier it is to love that person. The deeper our love together grows.

Essentially, we have a choice:

1. We can hang on to our resentments until things inevitably explode
2. We can choose to let go of everything as soon as it comes up

Or, put another way:

1. We can feel crappier and crappier until we can't stand to be around them
2. We can feel better and better until our love together is burning hotter than the sun

Seems a little silly to even have to choose, but you know, free will. Yadda yadda yadda.

So how do we let go of stuff? Well, all the usual ways I've talked about endlessly.

In general though, the simplest way is to keep all of your attention on loving the hell out of them. Don't leave any free to focus on whatever-it-is. Constantly pull your attention back to pouring love out of your heart and into theirs. Let everything else go. Whatever they're doing, whatever they're saying, you're going to be 100% loving, all your energy unreservedly embracing them.

Here's the funny thing with all this.

When you're truly in that space, letting go as soon as anything comes up?

Whatever it is that is happening doesn't have a chance to hurt you. Not even slightly.

I've been in situations, with someone I cared about enormously, where they were saying the most vile, violent things to me (they had their own shit going on at the time) — and because I was so focused on loving them, what they said didn't even connect. There was absolutely zero pain or damage from it, even later.

Not a great thing to have happen maybe, but a damn good learning experience. Particularly in terms of reminding me — our behaviour is always our choice.

She chose to be hateful. I chose to be loving. As a result, I came out of it feeling like a million bucks. How is that even possible? I don't know, but it sure as hell works.

Of course, the usual caveats apply. Being loving doesn't mean you have to be stupid. Eg, if I'd loved and respected myself more, I wouldn't have put myself in the above situation in the first place.

If only one party is loving, then the other person will continue to pile up resentments (with the inevitable conclusion). Obviously, the optimal solution is if both of you make this choice. If only you do then at least you'll feel great, even if they choose to feel crappy.

Loving the hell out of each other doesn't mean you necessarily have to be together forever. However, when you're in that loving place, you can make the optimal choice for both of you. If it's the right choice, you can end things in a loving way, without an ugly death.

All the junk that normally buffets you around is absent, freeing you to do what's best for both of you.

Being loving means making loving decisions. For you. For them.

It also beats the hell out of some bullshit resentment from months or years ago making those decisions for us — killing our relationships without us having any say whatsoever.

Feelings come and feelings go. It's just energy moving through us. Not good, not bad. Just energy.

Our subconscious moves in mysterious ways. Thoughts and memories often jiggle around below the surface, too deeply buried for us to consciously identify what they are.

Sometimes it's our mind protecting us from something traumatic. Sometimes it's merely unpleasant and we'd rather not think about it.

Regardless, there's still an awful lot going on that we can't get to. At least, not consciously.

The problem is, these icebergs still affect us. We still feel crappy when we're having crappy thoughts, even if we don't know exactly what those thoughts are.

What to do, what to do?

Ahh, it's a sticky one.

Here's the thing though: it doesn't matter why we're having these feelings.

If you don't know what a feeling is about within a second or two, it's generally not worth wasting any more time analysing it.

If you don't know it now? Let it go.

It's a common trap, to get tied up in knots trying to figure something out.

Letting go of this "figuring it out" is always a huge step forward.

The problem with "figuring it out" is that it keeps us connected to the crappy feeling. All that mental energy keeps us picking away at the crappiness, pulling it closer to us. What you resist, persists.

If you're feeling crappy, there's only one thing that really matters, and that's to stop feeling crappy. To feel good again.

With that in mind, here's what works super well:

With any feeling, if we pay attention we can feel it in our body. It's called a feeling for a reason, right? Coz we can feel it. Big duh there.

If you quieten down a bit, you can generally become aware of just where in your body that feeling is. How big it is. Where it's centred, and so on. Sometimes that feeling might have a colour, a level of tension, a texture, or whatever. It's not a big deal either way though (remember: don't try to figure it out).

For me, I typically feel things in my chest or stomach, but sometimes up into my neck and head as well.

You can tune yourself into the specific feeling (help bring it up to the surface) by naming it "This Crappy Feeling About Blah", "Helplessness About Yadda" or whatever feels most write and obvious. Tapping your karate chop point (squishy side of your hand between little finger and wrist, where you'd karate chop someone) also helps.

So, just like before, imagine a balloon above you. Then just grab the whole feeling and throw it up into the balloon. Finally, check again, see if any of that feeling is still left, grab what remains and flick that up there too.

Once you're done, send the balloon out somewhere far away and blow it up, same as always.

Alternatively, you can simply choose to just let the feeling go. It's your intent that's doing the magic here.

I just find there's something about that last stage, of sending the balloon off and blowing it up. It's a very definite "Ok, I'm done with you now. You're gone. Forever."

Really though, it's exactly the same as letting go of physical tension. How hard is it to relax a tensed fist?

Simple.

Same thing here.

It turns out, as much as we love using our brains, and we love to discover what everything is about — what's this feeling, what's that feeling — we don't have to.

All we have to do is connect to this crappy feeling, and choose to let it go.

Being a teenager at the time, I thought she was on crack (also, mothers, what do they know? Nothing. Obviously.)

I've had a decade or two to think about it since then (while gaining a clue or three), and I now think not only was she right, she didn't go far enough.

Yes, being physically intimate with someone creates energetic ties that never really go away.

Remember the first person you ever had sex with? Yeah, that.

It's not just  our sexual interactions though. Any relationship has an energetic component. The more emotionally intense the interaction, the stronger that connection.

This is why our parents can drive us so bonkers. There's generally only one person we've spent nine months living inside of, and it's hard to top that in terms of physical closeness.

So where does a "relationship" start? Well, think about a small shop you go into regularly. You say hi to the proprietor, maybe comment on the weather. That's a relationship.

Smile at someone on the street? That's a relationship. Now, it's a tiny flickering of light compared to the thunder and lightning that embodies most intimate relationships, but it's a relationship all the same.

Of course, people we walk past on the street aren't typically the ones that cause us problems (unless you've ever been mugged).

No, the most problematic relationships are ex-relationships.

Ex partners. Friends that have left our lives. Old schoolmates. And so on.

Why are they a problem? Because they continue to take up psychic space. This translates to sucking time and attention from our lives. If there's one thing we should be jealously guarding it's those, uhh, two things. If there's two things we should be jealously guarding, it's our time, attention and energy. Three things! The three things we should be jealously guarding!

We're never getting this time back. We have limited attention and ever increasing demands on it.

Every thought or feeling we have about an ex-relationship is psychic drag.

So, how do we stop this?

Obviously, tools like EFT or releasing can help a lot — particularly if there's been emotional trauma. In other words, anything that upset us. That's (relatively) easy to clear out.

But what about the subtler aspects? The fact that you keep thinking about an ex, or that whenever you hear about them it pisses you off or depresses you?

Here's what I've found works incredibly well for me:

• Imagine the person in front of you
• See that there is a white cord connecting your hearts. Energy flows down this between you.
• The more significant the relationship, the bigger the cord. A guy you smile at in the street may be only a hair's breadth; your parents, gigantic.
• When the relationship is super healthy, this cord will be glowing white. If you're throwing shit back and forth, there'll be black gunk choking the cord, or twisting it up.

Don't panic if this all sounds a bit airy fairy and whacked out, it's just a useful visual representation.

Remember how a map is only an abstracted representation of reality, not reality itself? Or in an extreme case, the London tube map which is nothing at all like reality; it just makes it a damn sight easier to get around London.

Same thing here.

The reason this person is still taking up psychic space is because you still have a strong connection to them, with lots of crap in that connection. Lots of thoughts, lots of feelings.

Once you can see (or feel) the cord there:

1. Imagine a huge balloon (or a rose — ie, just a neutral object), well away from you, outside your house.
2. Grab the cord from between you, and throw it into the balloon.
3. Make sure the entire cord and any remaining black gunk in you (or them) is sucked up with it, into the balloon. This translates to all your thoughts and all your feelings about them.
4. Once you feel clear and it's all in there, explode the balloon making sure it all disappears into tiny pieces (feel free to blow it up several times).

This is obviously a strongly visual approach. If you're not such a visual person (maybe you're more kinaesthetic), you might find a different method works better. Eg, feel all those feelings and thoughts as a giant ball of energy, and throw that  into the balloon.

As always, trust your gut.

The specifics don't matter too much. It's about intent. It (like all of life) is just a choice.

Often I find I have to do this technique a few times to deeply clear things out. I do it, then wait an hour or two and check it all again, see how I feel about that person. If I feel there are remnants still hanging around, I do it again.

People are complicated. Relationships, complication squared.

It may take a few goes as you work down the layers if you have a lot of history with that person or the issues are complex. Each layer is deeper, but generally easier and quicker than the layer before.

This is ok. It's still a damn sight easier and faster than spending years thinking, worrying or feeling crappy about someone who's no longer in your life.

Now, here's another use for this technique that I discovered just the other day.

Apply it to people still in your life.

Why?

Well, because in any relationship things happen. Resentments, differences,  difficulties build up.

Most of these are pretty trivial, but they still colour the quality of our interactions. It's still psychic drag.

By pooling all this junk together and throwing it out — in other words, by consciously choosing to let go of any of the crap that has built up — we free ourselves to have a pure, loving connection with that person.

I did this last week with someone who'd been causing me a lot of stress. I had (of course) been trying to control them, to change their behaviour.

They, being at least as obstinate as I am, were having none of it.

Eventually I realised what I'd been doing and used the above technique. I took all the crap between us (everything I could think of I just added to the pile "yep, that… and that… yep, and that…"), threw it into a balloon & blew the damn lot up. I immediately felt a ton lighter and happier. I did it a couple more times over the next hour or two.

Total time taken? Two, maybe three minutes.

What was I actually doing? I was choosing to let go of all nonloving thoughts towards this person. Deciding that being in a peaceful place and being loving was far more important than holding onto the angst.

This choice may have been helped by the fact that all I was really achieving was stressing myself out and being even more bothered when their behaviour didn't change. Ha ha. Oops!

Ultimately, carrying negative emotions around mostly just hurts ourselves.

Once I'd done this a couple of times, the only feelings I had left for them were loving. It was quite an amazing transition. I tried and failed to muster any opinion at all about their so called "crappy behaviour". If they acted like that again.. well.. uhh.. I couldn't even imagine it. Most weird.

Anyway, I felt great, so what did it matter any more?

Oh, except the next day they got in touch with me. They'd decided to stop that specific behaviour, "I realised it was just me being obstinate," they said, "and I don't want to hurt you, I want to support you."

Coincidence, right? *cough*