Adapted from Dr. Judith Orloff’s new book “Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself From Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life” (Harmony Books, 2009)

Our society is in the midst of an emotional meltdown. People are restless, volatile, our tempers about to blow. In the past year, Prozac was prescribed for over thirty million people. Domestic violence occurs in one out of six of households. Half of our marriages end in divorce.

None of this is how we want life to be. Our pressure cooker society pushes us to our emotional limits. We deserve relief from getting crucified by daily stresses. This book empowers you to attain this high quality of life and to handle stress artfully. I’m excited to present practical new tools for mastering your emotions in our hyper-tense world. It’s lunacy to put up with being chronically anxious, fatigued, or depressed as so many of us have. I rebel against that cheerless status quo, and hope you will too.

Emotional Freedom offers the answer to reclaiming your happiness and heart. What is emotional freedom? It means increasing your ability to love by cultivating positive emotions and compassionately witnessing and transforming negative ones. It means keeping your center without absorbing the negativity of others. These fundamental living skills liberate you from fear and let you navigate adversity without attacking, losing your cool, or being derailed by it.

I wrote this book because, as an Assistant Clinical Professor at UCLA, I work in a mainstream medical system where the spiritual/intuitive aspects of emotions aren’t understood. During my UCLA psychiatric training, we treated depression and anxiety, as biochemical imbalances requiring medication. I’d meet with patients for fifteen minutes every few weeks, write a prescription, then send them home. Though I never saw medications as the whole solution, I saw many patients experience at least partial “symptom relief,” an undeniable relief of suffering. However, in the next two decades of medical practice, I’ve learned that emotional freedom involves much, much more.

The intellect, stunning as it may be, has restricted vision when it comes to emotions. This is why bringing intuition to the feeling-realm is so liberating. Intuition is a potent wisdom not mediated by the linear mind--a practical, smart, decision-making aid. Intuition can be a hunch, a dream, a “knowing,” specific guidance, a gut feeling, or a warning of danger.”

Emotions also have an intuitive language that begs to be decoded in our bodies--“subtle energies” that move through us that can be sensed. These are what Chinese medicine calls “chi,” our vital life force. We feel emotions internally, while their energy expands beyond our bodies. Similarly, other people’s emotional energy impacts us.

Today, I am a woman who travels many worlds. My approach to emotional freedom blends traditional and nontraditional realms. In this book, I’ll discuss the four major components of emotions that shape your health and mood: biology, subtle energy, psychology, and spirituality. We must appreciate that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. It’s impossible to grasp how we tick emotionally without a cosmic perspective; everything about us, including our biology, is an expression of the divine. Seeing emotions as a training ground for the soul—a path to spiritual awakening--frames every victory over fear, anxiety, and resentment as a way to develop your spiritual muscles and love more.

A first step towards achieving emotional freedom is to know where you currently stand. Here is a sample from “The Emotional Freedom Test” in my book. It’s a self-assessment tool covering a range of positive and negative emotions. It will help you identify ways you typically respond to a variety of emotionally charged situations in your life today, including the most mundane. It’ll highlight your strong points and those in need of loving attention.

Take The Emotional Freedom Test

(Take the complete test in Chapter 1 Emotional Freedom)

                                       Not True    Sometimes True     Mostly True

                                             0                           1                            2

1. If I’m angry with someone, I’ll breathe and

center myself before I react. _____ _____ _____

2. When I’m filled with self-doubt or fear

I treat myself lovingly. _____ _____ ­­­ _____

3. When stuck in traffic or if something

doesn’t happen on my timetable, I

have patience. _____ _____ _____

4. After a hard day, I focus on what I’m

grateful for rather than beating myself up

for what has gone wrong. _____ _____ _____

5. I have empathy for others but I don’t

become their therapist or absorb their

emotional pain. _____ _____ _____

How to Interpret the Test:

A score of 10 suggests you are experiencing a considerable degree of emotional freedom in your life.

A score of 5-9 suggests a moderate level

A score of 4 or below suggests a beginning level

A zero score (and it takes courage to admit that) indicates that emotional freedom has been elusive in your life but you can start finding it now!

To be free you must go inside. A defining moment of emotional freedom is when you begin to become more conscious of who you are and your motivations. You’re awakening--that’s what counts. It sends a message to all things negative within that their days of usurping your serenity are numbered.