Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABIHM

Much of counseling and psychotherapy focuses on the releasing of negative feelings, memories and beliefs. Clearly this is essential in bringing healing to trauma and conflict situations. Once the negative emotions, thoughts and beliefs are identified and their intensity is decreased, people can relate to their life situations in much more calm and healing manners. WHEE is wonderful for achieving these goals.

Many therapies stop at this point in progress. The relief of these sorts of negativity can be deeply healing – both personally and in one's relationships.

Opportunities may be missed, however, for further enhancing of self-healing and interpersonal relationships. Installing positive thoughts and life-enhancing feelings can provide enormous boosts to your quality of inner life and to your interactions with others who are important to you.

WHEE regularly encourages users to install 'replacement positives' after a negative issue has been cleared. In other words, we need not stop at the point of unraveling and neutralizing the vicious circles in which we get trapped.

When 'Sam' had finished clearing his distress over his work supervisor's chronic bullying that had stressed Sam to the point of feeling depressed and worthless, Sam installed the following positives: "I now understand that my boss wants to put me down (along with others in our department) in order to give himself a feeling of being superior, and that his behaving that way must be an indication that he himself feels inferior. I can acknowledge to myself that this is his problem and not mine whenever he does this. I can also be grateful to him for helping me realize that I've been vulnerable to such put-downs because my father has always critical of me throughout my life. Sam's behaviors have actually helped me free myself of a lot of my self-critical tendencies through using WHEE."

Once we have installed positives to replace the negatives that we released, the negatives are much less likely to recur. Should we encounter the triggers which used to lead us into negative emotions and thoughts, these will now trigger positive cognitions instead. 

Taking this to another level of positivity, we can even develop such strong positive inner shifts that we find ourselves in meta-positive spaces. That is, we become so confident in the positives in our lives that we know we can handle any negatives and transform them to nurturing, healing experiences. This is what I call being in a 'sweetening spiral,' which is the opposite of getting stuck in a vicious circle.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2008 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM   All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.  

Further information about WHEE

Basics of the WHEE process

WHEE Videos

Appreciations for benefits of WHEE

Problems helped by WHEE

Book on WHEE for Pain 

WHEE workbook

WHEE workshops

Articles:
   Introductory WHEE article
 
   WHEE for trauma and re-entry problems 
 
   WHEE for children

   WHEE-kly brief articles

WHEE research