Upcoming book excerpt: Madness

Feeling Your Madness, And Other People’s. Madness feels like strong internal pressure or explosives wanting to go off inside you in several directions at once. Some perceive this sensation as tension or stress. Some don’t perceive it at all. Some act it out at the expense of those around them. Some hold it in at the expense of their own bodies. You can pick it up from others and end up holding it in your own body. None of these is optimum. To really feel your madness, I honestly believe that you MUST master safe exploding with real destructiveness that imitates real explosions. There is a big difference between hitting or pounding a pillow or BoBo doll versus actually destroying something. Just hitting or pounding imitates aggressiveness or impatience but it doesn’t imitate condescension, arrogance, contempt, hostility, rage, fury, despair, terror or any other madness. The latter require destruction for accurate expression. Children practice safe explosions regularly: knocking down blocks they’ve piled up, pulling Leggos apart, squishing up their Play-Do figures, crumpling or tearing up their pictures or written work.When you physically exert yourself to destroy something with the intention that you get your worst, maddest thoughts and feelings safely expressed and exposed right in front of you, you allow the emotion of madness to emerge into the light of day, within range of enlightenment. Respect madness. Be patient with it in the way that explosives experts are patient when dismantling bombs.  EXERCISE: Teens and adults can easily incorporate madness into safe private play by thinking of what they’re mad about while: writing out your mean thoughts and shredding the paper you’ve written them on; vigorously scratching out something written so that the pen goes through the paper (magazines ready for the trash are great for this); tearing up junk mail (using a shredder may use too little energy); weeding and pruning; chewing gum; chewing food and spitting it out; mashing leftover food and throwing it away; cleaning house, throwing out trash; doing the destruction part of any kind construction (cutting, disposal), from carpentry to sewing; 

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