‘Emotional Hygiene Gave Me a Choice’
Paley Burlin, a certified cuddle practitioner, credits emotional hygiene with improving his relationship to himself and others. After working with Westfeldt Institute for Emotional Hygiene Founder Tim Westfeldt for four to five years with a few breaks, Paley now has secure attachment with himself. What does that mean?
“When I feel alone, highly stressed, emotionally overwhelmed, deep depression or despair – anything pretty intense – I have a relationship with myself now that allows me to choose to reach out to someone I trust or to soothe myself,” he said.
Soothing himself looks like talking out loud or looking in the mirror into his eyes as he says comforting things to himself.
Mirror work works. Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash
“I say the things that the stressed or overwhelmed part needs to hear to calm down,” he said. “I give those messages to myself in a way that really regulates my nervous system.”
However, it wasn’t always like that. Before, if Paley felt distressed, or dysregulated to use a term prevalent in the mental health field, he was compelled to reach out to someone else for soothing and regulation. Emotional hygiene has given him a choice in how he responds. And the relationship he has with himself didn’t happen overnight either. He had to look at his own eyes in a mirror for months.
“It didn’t feel like it was helping but Tim persuaded me and said, ‘It doesn’t feel like it’s helping, but keep doing it,” according to Paley. “There was a moment, and I remember it, where I looked in the mirror and started to cry. From that moment onward, I recognized there is someone inside me that is here for me.”
Because of the emotional hygiene work, Paley never feels alone, never feels abandoned.
“I know there will always be someone inside me to come and be with me when I feel abandoned,” he said. “The deepest sense of aloneness, I’m protected within myself from that.”
Managing emotions
Emotional hygiene involves not only changing a person’s relationship with themselves, but also as the name implies, how they manage emotions. For Paley, anger controlled him. It would express as a force that harmed other people with its intensity, and conversely, anger wasn’t available when he really needed it to communicate a boundary violation, for instance.
“The work with Tim has restored anger to its rightful place in my repertoire,” he said. “It’s given me a much deeper sense of safety so I’m far less anxious than before. I used to have panic attacks constantly and I was chronically anxious. I don’t have any of that anymore.”
These days, Paley can set boundaries with other people because of the anger work and feel safer doing so.
Setting boundaries means saying “no.” Photo by Isaiah Rustad on Unsplash
“I’m now capable of saying no, of setting limits. I can say, ‘I don’t like that; this is what I want instead,” he said. “I’m voicing my needs and voicing when I feel violated, intruded upon, or invaded. That allows me to have intimacy with myself and other people.”
Another emotion that was restored to Paley was his capacity to grieve. He wasn’t taught how to grieve. Grief shows up when there’s a loss or a perceived loss and through emotional hygiene work, he grieves not only current losses, but past ones. He’s been able to metabolize traumatic experiences and truly work through them because they are no longer stuck in his body. There is no longer a backlog of grief to work through.
Grieving also allowed Paley to access joy. “A whole world of play came back to me,” he said. “That world had been taken from me or I had become cut off from it, and through reclaiming rage and grief, then I was able to have a true relationship to joy that expresses through play.”
In this case, “play” means how children play – by being spontaneous, silly, and well, playful. Play becomes a full spectrum experience, rich with complexity, and reclaiming joy has been huge for Paley, he said.
Much more could be said about emotional hygiene, but in essence, the practice has allowed Paley to become a friend to himself. Instead of letting critical voices or an “inner judge” shame him, tell him he’s bad and wrong, he’s able to harness that energy and direct it into a conscious, creative expression rather than having it sabotage him.
“I really respect that part of myself and it doesn’t control me or torture me the way it used to,” he said. “I have intimacy with the parts of myself I’m most inclined to reject, be repulsed by, am embarrassed of, and most inclined to hide from the world. Through the work of Carl Jung and Tim, I’ve been encouraged to embrace those parts of myself and love those aspects of my psyche. I respect them and see them as valuable with an important place in my inner world.”
If you’re interested in learning more about emotional hygiene, check out our courses and workshops.