Kidney problems expanded from Messages from the Body

I invite other users of the Messages book to post their revisions and expansions here for other clinicians to benefit from.

Kidneys

“Sub- and unconscious negative thinking and feelings” — Kidney problems convey the message the person needs to acknowledge, face; and, with some simple, systematic method, unburden each internal voice who forever looks only at what’s wrong with things. Also catastrophic thoughts, how things could go wrong.

There is no way for internal parts, on their own, to feel, or intuit, or talk their way out of their habit of glass always “half-empty” or “all the way empty.” They are stuck in a one-sided view, reinforced by decades of practice. Healing intelligences from the person’s non-dominant nervous system (gut or head) have to come forward and contribute an alternate, more balanced view. Our kidneys are and express a large fraction of our deepest; often, non-verbal thinking-feeling habits.

Thru another lens, the lens of developmental age, our kidneys are some of our very youngest parts. It’s common for them to be stuck between the age of 12 to 24 months old. For these internal parts to heal requires either a trained professional counselor who has gone thru at least some of their own work here; or, the client has to commit to; and follow thru on, a serious study of Internal Family Systems (IFS). Since at least 2015, IFS is our current Best Practice Method in self-connection. If you find a safer, more effective method, be sure to shre with me.

Without IFS or a similar method, clients are left with using their mental will power to assert healthy dominion over their own negative habits. Chronically occurring negative thoughts and feelings are no more, nor less than habits no longer working for your healthy Self. Each time a negative thought or feeling comes up, it is possible to use mental will power to consciously redirect your old habit towards a positive goal, vision, or outcome. This method matured in the 1950s. The goal was to use conscious redirection each time to one at a time, extinguish each negative thought and feeling.

Behavior Therapy’s origins are in the 1950s. Key figures like Joseph Wolpe, Hans Eysenck, and Ogden Lindsley, along with B.F. Skinner, independently developed methods of operant conditioning focused on unlearning rigid, maladaptive behaviors; replacing them, with healthy expressions. Then in the 1960s, Dr. Aaron Beck innovated Cognitive Behavior Therapy. CBT is structured talk therapy supporting clients to learn to recognize and change negative patterns of thinking and behavior; literally, to contest and challenge, one at a tme, their own negative beliefs and feelings. However, without consideration for safety, compassion, empathy and forgiveness, CBT and its variants are mental and male-oriented. IFS is the first very effective brain-balanced approach to redressing unwanted negative sub- and unconscious habits, equally friendly to both genders.

It is a Law of Manifestation, in your Inner Game of Life, if one wishes to find who is blocking you and holding you back, each internal part, habituated to negative expression, has to be brought “into the light” of conscious awareness, unburdened, and given new direction for being creative with what it has learned.

The more serious a kidney issue is, the more it points to a major lesson this life, the need to learn about and master how to re-direct our own negative habits.

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“Shadow-boxing” ~ The person has been habituated to fearing rejection from the world and other people. As a child, we learned to shove our fears “into the shadows.” Thereafter, many situations can trigger (activate) our repressed fears. Once an old fear is triggered, the client may simply deflect it with confusion. Claiming confusion is one way to block unwanted, disowned, fearful feelings.

Before age 28, this can look like difficulty with accepting and getting along with other people, especially intimate partners. Inevitably, disowned, unwanted negative traits are projected onto other people.

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”Blew it!” ~ The person experiences failures, losses and set-backs; and, is disappointment by reversals. They accept blame for their failures, over-reacting to disappointing situations. The family-of-origin may have been blame-throwing, accountability-attributing, wrong-making and exploitive.

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“Feeling intensely anxious and vulnerable” ~ They may suffer from a chronic primal fear of loss. This impels them to run their life around “saving up for a rainy day.” They have considerable anxiety, worries and fears over money. There is no internal feeling of well-being. They may feel intensely abandonment-anxious. They may have no trust in partnership, commitment nor connection to others (because they have exiled so many of their own unwanted internal parts). They feel resigned to being an Island Man or Island Woman, lost and alone. [The 2006 TV series, LOST, now on Netflix, over and over dramatizes deep kidney-level issues and feelings, especially in the episodes covering the early biographies of chracters. The negative drama of kidney-level issues draws our attention magnetically].

The early family-of-origin may have been a family where much went wrong; and, everyone felt helpless and could conceive of no solution.

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“Healthy self-esteem cancelled by shame” ~ The person is ashamed of their own child within and early upbringing. This creates much self-doubt and cancels self-confidence. As a kid, they felt “not good enuf;” and, “I can’t do it right.” A strong sense of failure; and a profound sense of loss and grief may weigh them down.

While there is much self-disappointment, self-disapproval and self-rejection — at the same time — they are mightily reluctant to release their own negative beliefs and feelings [This point back to Rudolf Driekurs: A young child prefers negative attention to no attention at all.]

Because their own self-respect is so low, they may become unmotivated to even take care of themselves [a big issue with homeless street people]. They manifest little effort or ability to take care of themselves.

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“Selfish on top; paranoid on the bottom” ~ If they grew up in a severely authoritarian, patriarchal household; in later life, the person may be severely uncaring and selfish. They couldn’t care less about ecological issues or helping the world. They are prone to criticalness; with, a propensity for jealous possessiveness. Envy and greed are defensive strategies to cover up their internal fears. They have lost their cleverness and capacity for energetic work to the background drum-beat of fear, fear, fear. They have given up on their life goals. The majority of their choices are made to get away and stay away from all the things and people they fear.

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YANG kidney negativity: “Right and righteous” ~ They come from a moralistic, perfectionistic and demanding family. Their life game is to control everything, to make everything correct according to their criteria. They may resent others for not living up to their standards. They may be full of unjustified criticalness and worng-making.

Revised and expanded from pages 343–344