Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself from Negative Emotions
An Interview with Judith Orloff, MD
by Barbara Stahura, Tucson, AZ

Judith Orloff, MD, is a psychiatrist who synthesizes traditional medicine with intuition, energy and spirituality to create a new blend of healing wisdom. She believes that the future of medicine depends upon integrating all these elements to achieve emotional freedom and total wellness. (Note: emotional freedom is unrelated to the tapping technique of the same name).

Barbara: What is emotional freedom, and why is it so important for individuals and our world today?
Judith Orloff, MD: Emotional freedom is your ability to love by cultivating positive emotions and being able to compassionately witness and transform negative ones, whether they’re yours or another’s. This skill liberates you from fear and lets you navigate adversity without attacking someone, losing your cool, or being derailed by negativity. If you’re mired in the muck of negativity, you can’t lead a liberated, happy life, and most people don’t have the tools to transform frustration, depression, anxiety, worry and fear into positive emotions.

Barbara: What is the role of compassion in emotional freedom?

Judith Orloff, MD: Compassion is key because unless you have self-compassion, it’s hard to heal difficult emotional states. Also, when a loved one is going through a trying time, being compassionate without judging them is essential. My spiritual teacher says we make progress on the spiritual path by beating ourselves up a little bit less each day. It’s about baby steps.

Barbara: You believe that emotions are a path to spiritual awakening?

Judith Orloff, MD: To experience emotional freedom it’s necessary to understand the four basic components of emotion: biology, spirituality, energy and psychology. I see difficult emotions as a laboratory for spiritual growth, whereas traditional psychiatry often views them more as tormentors, something to get rid of. I believe that emotions come to us—even wrenching ones like depression—to spiritually awaken us. You learn to see the spiritual and psychological meaning of what you’re going through. This perspective really changes how you deal with all emotional challenges.

Barbara: When dealing with difficult personalities, it’s easy to lose our cool or attack back. How can emotional freedom teach us to cope in a calmer manner?

Judith Orloff, MD: Let the difficult people—criticizers, victims, narcissists, and controllers—be our teachers rather than tormentors. How do they teach us to communicate with more heart and better boundaries? How can we deal differently when feeling irritated, controlled, or insulted? The old way was to get nasty or withdraw. The new way is to not react. Reacting is a behavior that perpetuates war. Practice what I call “the namaste effect,” which is, ”I respect the spirit within you even if I don’t like what you’re doing.” Your victories over emotional vampires are not small—they’re huge. With every success, you’re creating more hope for the world. We’re all interconnected: my emotional freedom affects your emotional freedom which in turn, affects everyone in the world.

Barbara: What are the four emotional types?

Judith Orloff, MD: The intellectual, empath, gusher, and the rock. These are the filters through which you see the world—the default setting of your personality to which you revert, especially under stress. Each type is determined by inborn temperament, upbringing, and perhaps karma.
Barbara: What can sleep and dreams teach us about emotional freedom?

Judith Orloff, MD: Sleep and dreams are a conduit for emotional freedom. Sleep is a great awakener because your linear mind quiets down, and you enter a purely intuitive state where you can better understand your emotions and other realms. Dreams are revolutionary states of consciousness that impart intuitive wisdom.

Once, I went through a period when nothing was working. Then I had a dream about my deceased father. I asked, “Daddy, is there anything I can get you?” Smiling, he said, “No, darling, I don’t need anything except a pen and a piece of paper in case I want to write a thank-you note.” This was a wake-up call that highlighted the importance of gratefulness, and was all I needed to adjust my attitude to being more grateful for my life.

Barbara: How can we overcome fear during times of terrorism, economic turmoil, and natural disasters?

Judith Orloff, MD: To be free, we must view fear as something to overcome, not to be defeated by. In a world with so much to be afraid of, you must choose not to come from fear. Part of emotional freedom is making a vow not to lead a fear-driven life. Then do everything possible to overcome fear and worry with faith in goodness, and trying to stay in the moment rather than catastrophizing about the future. You can develop the courage to be centered and find non-fear-based solutions to anything! Courage or fear is a choice. It’s not something that just happens to you.

Barbara: I love that you say emotional freedom offers us opportunities to be heroes in our own lives. Would you elaborate?

Judith Orloff, MD: If you suffer loss, if you’re having an anxiety attack or feeling depressed or lonely—these are all very spiritual experiences. You become a hero in your own life as you learn to use
emotions as a chance to become stronger, brighter. This is critical on a personal level because it frees you from suffering. But it’s just as important on a collective level because if we don’t face the fear and anger in ourselves, then we risk projecting it globally. This creates war and massive suffering to our human family, so we must find inner peace before we can have outer peace. That’s why I consider emotional freedom an inner peace movement.

Barbara Stahura (www.barbarastahura.com) has interviewed many of the major transformative individuals of our time. For information about Judith Orloff’s workshops and books, including Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself from Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life, visit www.drjudithorloff.com.

For a free video class on emotional freedom and intuition check out www.youtube.com/judithorloffmd.