Last week was wonderful! I heard from two clients that life was going very well. One released over four months of debilitating anxiety in one session and the other is finding joy in life after a crisis of meaning in four sessions.

Victor Frankl was a survivor of Nazi concentration camps and he learned and shared during his life in books and Psychotherapy. One of these learning’s was, that there are many things in our lives we have no control over, we do have the choice of how we respond to those things.

I worked with a client once who would get so mad at her husband if he changed his plans after saying he was going to do something. She couldn’t see that she did the same thing and allowed herself that flexibility. She would take his changes as directed personally at her. Her anger and name calling only served to make her ill. She said she didn’t like being ill. It appeared from her actions that she liked feeling mad, right, and victimized. Anger and similar emotions will make most anyone ill.

Our glands secrete according to impulses from the emotional and nervous system. Anger, resentments, contention, hate, self-condemnation, animosity, and related nervous tensions in turn deplete bodily energies, block eliminations and generally create a condition which predisposes the system to disease. Attitudes and emotions involve nerves and glands.

Here is some good news: Joyful thoughts create the opposite effect in our bodies. We get healthier.

Lao Tsu is one of my favorite people.

If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations, There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities, There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors, There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home, There must be peace in the heart.
Lao Tzu