Hello, Matthew, you have the most amazing house. I simply love your paintings, furniture, appliance, all of the light the windows let in, which are a haven for gazing at the views from multiple vantage points. I love the soft colors you decorated with. I love the emerald green lawns and all the agreeable people in the community, people in nice suits and lovely long dresses. And there is a sweetness to the air. I suspect this community soothes people’s nerves. You have a look of resolute superiority. Glittering gaze. Handsome, clever brown eyes. Seems many of your mortal descendants believe you are blessed in all your Earthly visitations; did you know that? It is a special blessing visited upon you, apparently, or so I am told. This certainly is an eye-catching property, and the gardens of coventry smell Heavenly. Perhaps it was inspired by a glorious chateau. It reminds me of a luxury retreat, as reflects the magical merging of inspiration and architecture and landscape of Le Castel in the rural West of Normandy. This Cresleigh  house, spanning over 2,400 square feet, is a masterpiece of design and craftsmanship, graced by soaring ceilings, drawing me into a voluminous layout made for entertaining. The deck is the dramatic focal point on the main level, accompanied by an elegant dining room, tremendous chef’s kitchen, and a great room with a beautiful fireplace and glass doors to the patio, and home office with a closet and full ensuite bathroom with a soaking tub, and separate glass shower on the first floor. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12

As for you, I have been hearing about you, Steve. Rather ominous things, it seems. You are not fooling me, not for a moment. You are cut to the quick by the Erin’s words, you are cut to the quick by Matthew also, because no matter how much you try you cannot have Matthew. You are paying for your sins. You are paying now as we speak. You are terrified you will never see either of them again. And maybe you will not. And maybe if you do, they will show you a defiance that will demoralize you even more truly than you are demoralized now. Come, Erin. Let us leave this mountebank to his nightmares. I tire of his company. Balance. It can be hard to maintain in this life. We are often knocked off kilter by events that are out of our control—loss of job, infirmary, relationship challenges. And when we are out of balance emotionally, it is more difficult to feel the Spirit in our lives and to right ourselves. It seems unfair that during times when we most need the Spirit, we are sometimes unable to find it. However, it we look at life as a classroom, where God is providing opportunities for us to learn and grow rather than making the test easier by providing all the answers, then we develop a healthier perspective. We understand that much depends on us and not everything depends on the Lord. Like a good parent, God expects us to do our part to figure things out. And that includes learning to be emotionally self-reliant. Ask yourself, “Does my happiness depend on others’ actions?” #RandolphHarris 2 of 12

Emotions are compounds of feelings, where feelings are taken to be mental elements somewhat like sensations, but differing from them in not being localizable, in not being directly dependent on sensory receptors and in having certain special properties like pleasantness and unpleasantness. What is common to all these views is the conviction that what makes a condition an emotion, and what makes it the particular emotion it is, is the presence in consciousness of a certain felt quality which, like sensory qualities (redness, smell of burning wood), is completely accessible to introspection and accessible in no other way. The one and only way to know what fear, anger, joy, or remorse is, is to actually experience the feeling that is fear, anger, etc. Thus the emotion is only contingently connected with the other factors, including the cognitions which give rise to it and its expressions, whether voluntary or involuntary. It is conceivable that human nature might have been such that the emotion called “fear” would have been associated with cognitions of objects as friendly rather than dangerous and with tendencies to approach rather than tendencies to flee. It is an inexplicable fact that the emotion of pride should regularly be induced by the awareness of things which belong to us rather than by consideration of object which have no connection with us. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12

Many people experience emotional states they cannot understand and identify. They often wonder at the intensity, origin, explanation, and duration of emotions. They also worry about what they might do as a result of these emotions. They may even question whether the emotions are normal or not. Of course, this happens to all of us at times. It is one of the risks of being thinking, sensitive people. We begin questioning, analyzing our own experiences. We also categorize them, because that is what our rationalistic, scientific society expects. And when we cannot find a neat explanation or small compartment where feelings and emotions may be left for a particular experience we either bend it to fit another category, deny it, repress it, or project it onto somebody else (“How am I doing; what’s wrong with you?!”). If we cannot do any of these things because we are too honest with ourselves, we may conclude that the feeling is a bad one or a sick one. Furthermore, if we are happy only when other people are meeting our emotional needs, then we have not learned what our emotions are telling us; we are simply dependent on other people. We need to learn to own our feelings—the whole range of them. And we need to learn from them: what are they telling us? Then when situations of people challenge us, we know better how to cope and progress. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12

Consider the case of the girl raised to believe that nice people do not get angry, never feel anything like anger. However, in the course of her life, things happened that irritated her. Frustrations would lead to aggression and at times she not only felt anger but strong dislike as well. She often felt these things so strongly that she feared what she might do. She had dreams that often involved somebody getting detention, suspended from school, or being grounded by her parents. What brought her for professional help, however, were headaches. A medical doctor, after extensive testing, found no brain tumors, pinched or collapsed nerves or blood vessels, lesions, or anything else that might explain the severe headaches. In observing her, he found her to be an extremely cautious and fastidious person. She was very careful how she sat, walked, and carried herself. She was even more cautious in conversation, selecting each word, unable to relax and let the words come out easily or casually. The doctor suggested that she might be uncomfortable with some of the thoughts and feelings which she had. When she finally admitted as much, he sent her to a psychological clinic where such things can be handled with patience and tolerance for the person’s inability to deal with them right away. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12

In the course of therapy, she came to see that it was not anger that was causing the psychological tensions, but the attitudes she had been taught about anger. Having been told that anger was not a nice person’s emotion, she felt that she must be bad. So she felt guilt. Guilt caused her to be extremely cautious about her words or actions, to avoid doing or saying anything that might reveal the anger that would expose her as the wicked creature she felt she was! The physiological tension resulted partly from the strain she was undergoing by her cautiousness. This, incidentally, is a perfect description of a tense and sometimes confusing, overly controlled individual. Anger itself is not the problem. If there is a problem, it is what we are going with our anger. Are we turning it into aggression, hostility, ill will, hatred, violence? Are we swallowing it? Are we using it to control or manipulate? Are we channeling it into sarcasm or passive-aggressiveness? Pushing anger away does not work. Nor does indulging in it. Nor does rising above it or treating it like some primitive relic from preliterate times. The key is to wake up to our anger as soon as possible after it starts arising, stepping back just far enough from it—from its energy prevailing viewpoint—so as to be able to relate to it rather than from it. This means not allowing it to flame or further flame into reactivity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12

Therefore, it is crucial to understand anger and to know it well, to have enough familiarity with our history with it and our usual ways of expressing it to be able to employ it in ways that serve our best interests. A person who is intimate with his or her anger and who can express it skillfully is a person in whom forcefulness coexists with vulnerability and compassion, a person worthy of our trust, a person capable of deep intimacy. Another thing that was causing the tensions in the young lady was her unconscious need to punish herself for having anger in the first place. The headaches were her punishment, her penance. Yet the body does not work that simply. The headaches made her angrier, at herself for both anger and guilt, and at others who made her angry or who reminded her of anger and thus her perceived badness. So she was caught in a vicious circle. Therapy exposed the circle, both intellectually and through psychodrama, where she felt and experienced the whole thing herself in from of accepting fellow-clients. The story ending was only partly happy. She began to realize the tension-release of the experiencing her angers, safely, nondestructively, and more importantly, with the full approval of therapist and other members of her therapy group. She learned to accept and like herself as a human being, a full, feeling person. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12

However, her family, with a long history of emotional suppression behind it, believing that anger was a weapon of the adversary, could not accept her open, honest, expression of irritation or anger as her therapy group could. Since she had discovered that certain so-called profanities were the only words that worked to express certain feelings, she horrified her family, who not only told her she should be ashamed for using “such language!”, but also stopped her from continuing psychotherapy. Hopefully, the release she has attained can be practiced in her own way, her own time, and she can continue to appreciate that her humanness includes such emotions as anger and guilt. Was the young lady abnormal? Was her anger abnormal? Objectively, we can say that the anger was not pathological, but since she felt it was, it had a pathogenic (illness-producing) effect. Furthermore, according to the norms of a society stresses control of emotions, her emotional expressions could be considered statistically abnormal. This is rather interesting, because all human beings experience anger, and not of them express it openly. Some express it indirectly, or through some physical symptom, to the point where tension headaches, ulcers, lower back pains, and other physical complaints that are often converted rage-reactions can almost be considered normal behavior! An interesting commentary on our way of life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12

Some of the ways in which natural behavior is controlled are the really sick or abnormal behaviors. We become disturbed, ill, out-of-sorts, not ourselves, neurotic even, because we are pushed to be what we are not, to act unnaturally, in the name of social order, etiquette, propriety. Most of these disturbances are the result of some kind of suppression or repression—suppression is conscious blocking out, repression is unconscious—of natural, human emotion, especially the stronger ones like anger, fear, sexual passion, or creed. If people were allowed full expression of strong emotions, what would happen to our social order? We do not know, but imagination might paint a picture of wild, lawlessness, various assaults, endangering lives, plundering, rioting, singly or in combination. On the other hand, let us assume a society where children are raised to have a healthy acceptance of their full nature, to appreciate their emotions, to enjoy the tension-reduction and experience of emotions. Guilt would be the emotion that any person in that society might feel when he or she violated one of the rules of his or her society, but one would not assume that one was bad or outcast person. The guilt might simply be experienced as a total realization of having let down those expectations one had of oneself, and could provide the motive force for one to re-group oneself and try new behavior. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12

The socialization process of this ideal society would probably include showing the individual one’s kinship with every other member of society rather than instructing one in terms of obligations and duties. Thus, the child could grow up as a person who utilized one’s reason and emotions in living a fuller life, knowing that one was among many who were also doing the same things. In the process, one could develop the kinds of emotional expressions that would be satisfying, redeeming, and creative for one but not offensive or injurious to others. If this utopian picture were broadened, the resulting social order might well be one of personal joy and self-expression, satisfaction of both individual and group needs, easy interaction, full experiencing of emotional states, and a creative style of life. In our present society, however, to suddenly let everybody do as one felt might produce confusion and fear instead of creativity and peace. In other words, because many emotions are labeled strong or dangerous, we react to them as such. We build up attitude about them that are not removed by suddenly telling people: “Okay, go ahead; do it!” We would not expect, for example, should the rule priestly chastity be lifted, that all priests, monks, and nuns would immediately rush out and find sexual partners, nor that those who did would feel completely free and easy about their sexual involvement even if they were married. Many would feel guilt about breaking a long-held rule. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12

Radical changes in long-standing social attitudes disrupt the smooth functioning of a societal organization. The fact tat it may be perceived as a destructive organization is beside the point; it will still not condone a sudden breaking with the traditions that have built and sustained it. Nevertheless, we are convinced that the future development of human life demands a fuller, freer experiencing of all human emotions. A few people can change over right now and make the adjustment with little harm done. Others will bungle, perhaps causing harm, alienation or misunderstanding. The Love Generations and the Hippies, Hipsters, and Gen X are three examples of people attempting to free themselves from long-standing repressive attitudes toward emotions. Neither of the groups offers a way of life acceptable for all Americans. Rather, in our view, they and other movements that will come along may be change agents, catalysts, in the process of showing the rest of us what we are capable of experiencing. Are you mindful? Part of being mindful is to be in tune with your emotions, asking why you feel a certain way, and fully processing them. Keeping a journal is a good way to process feelings. “All who walk in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 89.18. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12

Do you have healthy emotional outlets? Talking honestly about your feelings with a trusted friend is a great way to keep your emotional health in balance. Good listeners make valuable friends. Share your emotions without expecting your friends to solve the problems for you. There may be people in your life who are always trying to fix your problems. Remember, you have the responsibility to make changes in your own life with Heavenly Father’s help. When you pray, you may consider changing phrases from desires like, “Please, Heavenly Father, balance my emotions, to others like “Please, Heavenly Father, show me what I need to learn and do myself to balance my emotions.” With this simple change in perspective you can notice an amazing difference and become more emotionally self-reliant. Prayer, pondering the scriptures, physical exercise, and taking mental breaks to do something you enjoy can help relieve stress. “And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a person should run father than one has strength. And again, it is experiment that one should be diligent, that thereby one might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order,” reports Mosiah 4.27. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12

Nothing is better than going home to a family and eating good food and relaxing.