Clearing Through Catharsis

Catharsis is elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it expression and thereby release. When I do my emotional clearing, I am going back to my experiences and remembering them in as much detail as possible. This includes remembering the physical aspects of the memory such as the setting, the sights, sounds and smells, etc. Then there are the episodic details, or the events that took place. All this leads to remembering the feelings of the memory.

The more closely I can remember the physical details, the more easily I can remember the episodic details. Then the feelings are much easier to reignite and re-experience. This is often quite painful for me, and also draining. I feel tired after a light session and exhausted after a perticularly intense session. On the other hand, it is really cleansing to do a full reliving of the memory as the more deeply and completely I can recall the memory, the less cleaning I have to do later wtih that memory.

Reliving the memory is therefore cathartic. It is painful and difficult, and exhausting on the one hand but liberating and energizing on the other. Now I find that within a few days or even hours after a deep session, I rebound from the exhaustion and have even more energy than I had before starting.

I find often that I simply cannot go very deep into some memories. The details remain unclear and disjointed. Those sessions are light and incomplete, but they make it easier days or weeks later to come back to the memory and go deeper. Sometimes I have to make several passes in order to remember a particular memory clearly.In a sense it is like digging. As I dig, I unearth more. Then the sol becomes too hard to dig. But if I leave it for a while and come back later the soil has somehow loosened an I can continue digging deeper.

This has caught me by surprise. One memory I thought was mostly finished. I felt I simply could not remember more details or feelings in that memory. Then I had a feeling I should revisit that memory and I was shocked at how much clearer my memory had become and how deep my remembered feelings were. It was unplanned and cathartic but very rewarding.