Question:-- Have you ever avoided feeling material which was pressing for release?

Answer: Yes, I have.


One evening in 1978, in my original feeling oriented group, I "fell through" my defenses. I found myself back at my boarding school. The year was 1948, and I was eleven years old. I had awakened in the middle of the night in a room surrounded by seven little boys.

In the regression I saw the texture of the walls, and felt the wooden floors under me as I made my way to the bathroom. I was crossing the hall's marble floor when I sensed something behind me and to my left. I turned and saw what appeared to be a small child sized "whirlwind' approaching me. It appeared like a tiny tornado and was absolutely black.

As it got within an arm's length, I suddenly realized that these were not only my feelings coming to me. But they were twenty times stronger than anything that I had ever dreamed of or theorized about.

There is only way I can convey to you the power of that tornado coming within a foot of my little body. Imagine being lifted up and carried toward a blast furnace, on the way to being thrown in, like a child sacrifice at the mouth of the God Baal's furnace in ancient Babylon.

I knew I was on the verge of a grand mal seizure, as described by Janov, in his book Primal Man: The New Consciousness. Even though I was present in the scene, some part of me knew that the seizure was going to seriously damage my neck for which I had been receiving treatment over the past year. I was also at the emotional level terrified to a point beyond even terror itself.

I was facing something so frightful that I could not let go and let it happen. I consciously jerked back and terminated the experience.

I got up off the mat and ran to find a male therapist whom I trusted. He came over and sat with me, but on that night and on the succeeding nights I could not find my way back into that dread. Although I have raged on mats many times since, I have never found my way back to that moment.

In my heart I knew that I had avoided a level of rage in me that I had not been able to face. I wondered how and when it would ultimately leak into and deform my life.

In the end, I know it was the product of that unworked through material which would cause me to move towards and finally use the judgment that brought my professional life to an end twelve years after this event. This was when I made the decision to help someone in a way that I should never have. Rage and despair underlay that moment and stopped my life in its tracks. (Editor's note: See the Preface to Dr. Vereshack's online book.)

Of course without that moment, my online book about primal therapy would not exist, nor would I have undergone the positive changes of the last several years.

Thus, in the end, all things seemed to have worked out well.

However, I know that somewhere within me is some feeling from which I ran, -- something that I "should" have felt. Only today, as I write this, do I forgive myself.

Paul Vereshack


Dr Vereshack is the author of an online book entitled Help Me -- I'm Tired of Feeling Bad



Other pages on this website about Dr. Vereshack's writings include:

Book Review of Help Me -- I'm Tired of Feeling Bad
The Primal Page's Favorite Quotations from Help Me -- I'm Tired of Feeling Bad
The Primal Psychotherapy Page Interviews Paul Vereshack, M.D.


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