What is Thumotherapy?

Thumotherapy (from thumos and therapeuein the Ancient Greek words for "spirit" and "to attend, serve, take care of") is the art and science of serving the health and well-being of the spirit in all living beings. It is spiritual care understood as the therapeutic care of spirit.

Since thumos, spirit, is that which makes alive, the scope of thumotherapy includes all living beings.

While the focus of thumotherapy is the spirit, it affects the whole being of the one cared for and those with whom the one cared for is connected, including the thumotherapist. 

The ultimate goal and purpose of thumotherapy is to improve the quality of life of all living beings by serving the optimal health and well-being of their spirits.  

Since each spirited being is unique, thumotherapy for each spirited being is unique. It is a process co-created by the living beings engaged in doing it. Since it is a co-creative process, it is an art. It is also a science in that it is informed by thumology, the ongoing study of spirit.

What is Thumology?

Thumology, from thumos, the Ancient Greek word for spirit, is the study of spirit, that which makes alive.

Thumology's scope of study includes all living beings.

The purpose of thumology is to improve the quality of life of all living beings. It does this by engaging in the ongoing process of accurately describing, explaining, predicting, and learning how best to care for the spirit of living beings. 

The ultimate end of thumological research is to promote health and well-being of all living beings.

Eight Basic Emotions: A Thumological Perspective

In my thumological theory of emotions, there are eight basic emotions of our spirit. I pair them as follows:

Anger and guilt

Sadness and gladness

Disgust and desire

Disappointment and gratitude

I paired the emotions because I saw the pairs as essentially related. For example:

Anger is our spirit's response to being wronged and guilt is its response to doing wrong.

Sadness is our spirit's response to loss and gladness is its response to gain.

Disgust is our spirit's response to what repels it and desire is its response to what attracts it.

Disappointment is our spirit's response to desire denied and gratitude is its response to desire relieved.

In my view, our emotions, at their best, are our spirit's life-affirming responses to our in-the-world interactions. They show us what harms and helps our spirit and life. They protect and promote our own spirit and life.

Now that I have articulated a basic theory of emotions from a thumological perspective there are several interesting questions to explore:

Does the basic theory I've articulated survive scrutiny or does it need to be revised? My hunch is that it will need to be revised as we live with it, test it, and learn more.

What do we do, if anything, with our emotions? 

Are our emotions problems that we need to solve as some seem to believe?

Are our emotions ways of knowing that we do well to attend to as others seem to believe?

Are they just facts of life with which we live?

Do we simply watch them come and go as some say we should?

What about disordered emotions, those which deny life with little or no gain? What more can we learn about them? What do we need to do about them to minimize their harm?

Of most interest to me is the question, if emotions are of our spirit, which I believe they are, and we do well to care for our spirit, since it is that which makes us alive, then how do we best care for our own emotions and the emotions of others?

I'll explore some of these questions in future posts.

 

Disappointment of Spirit, Part 1

Disappointment Defined

Disappointment is our spirit's response to being deprived of that which it desires. It is desire denied.

It presupposes desire. No desire, no disappointment.

How Disappointment Feels

We can feel disappointment in the center of our chest, our heart. It can feel like a dull ache or heaviness of heart. If desire lifts our spirit, disappointment brings it down. It sinks downward into our stomach and pulls our facial affect with it. It can cause us to cave inward and lean forward with drooping shoulders.

Disappointment of spirit can lead to sadness or anger of spirit.

Disappointment from Mild to Intense

Disappointment can range from very mild to very intense. It seems that the degree of our disappointment depends on the degree of our desire and the manner of its denial. However, it would be helpful to have some research to confirm this hunch.

Acute and Chronic Disappointment

My observations lead me to conclude that most disappointments are acute. Feelings of disappointment arise the instant we know our desire has been denied.

However, when our desire is for a basic life-affirming need and it is chronically denied, our disappointment of spirit can also be chronic.

Mind-based and Experience-based Disappointment

When our disappointment  is our response to our own self-talk and mental images it is mind-based. As is often the case with mind-based emotions, we conjure up disappointment for ourselves apart from our actual in-the-world experiences. When our in-the-world experience contradicts our self-talk and mental images, we do well to let our disappointment go.

When our disappointment is a response to our in-the-world experiences, it is experience-based. Our desire has been denied. We then do well to examine what happened. How was our desire denied? Was it because of our own inaction or ineffective action or someone else's? Is there something we can do differently that would help us fulfill our desire or not? If our desire cannot be fulfilled, how can we best care for our disappointed spirit?

Part 2 will discuss life-denying and life-affirming as well as suppressed, addressed, and expressed disappointment. 

Desire of Spirit, Part 2

Mind-based and Experience-based Desire

Desire of spirit that is aroused by our own self-talk and mental images is mind-based. Daydreams and fantasies about things we want, people we want to be with, and things we want to do are familiar examples of mental images that can arouse desire.

Desire of spirit aroused by our own natural needs or in-the-world interactions are experience-based. Hunger for food, water, freedom, safety, self-determination, companionship, love, sexual pleasure, authentic interactions with others, giving to others, and making a meaningful difference in the world are examples of experience-based desire.

Life-denying and Life-Affirming Desire

Desires that hinder our own or others' efforts to become who we are meant to become, desires that injure or kill are life-denying.

Desires that promote, sustain, heal, and strengthen the living are life-affirming.

Yes, there are times when we must deny the life of another in order to sustain or protect our own life and the lives of family, friends, and others who are dear to us. Indeed, every life is sustained by the death of others. 

Desire Suppressed, Addressed, Expressed (Directly and Indirectly)

When the life-affirming desires of our hearts are suppressed by ourselves or others our life is denied and devalued. Some indigenous peoples, like the Iroquois, believe on the basis of generations of experience that desires denied are the main cause of disease. I think this notion is worth exploring further.

Not all our the desires of our spirit are life-affirming. Some are disordered and life-denying. These we do well to address. I think we have much work to do in learning more about disordered desires and how best to address them.

Ideally, life-affirming desires are best expressed directly and fulfilled. Fulfilling them affirms our own life and that of others. However, there are times, given unhealthy social mores, that we can suffer negative consequence for expressing directly our desires and taking action to fulfill them. We do well to find ways of expressing such desires indirectly. 

As with other matters related to our spirit, we have much to explore and learn about how best to indirectly express the life-affirming desires of our hearts.

Desire of Spirit, Part 1

Desire Defined

Desire is the hunger-pang of our spirit. It's emotional hunger, our spirit's longing for something it needs.

It needs more than food for the body to continue living and giving life. Our spirit desires more.

Our spirit desires to both give and receive.

It desires physical, emotional connection. It desires love and affection. Sex? Yes, it desires sex.

It longs to create and produce, to do meaningful work, to give and make a significant difference in the world while it is here.

Desire is our spirit yearning for life. It is that which makes alive longing for itself.

Desire denied is spirit denied. Spirit denied is life denied.

Desire fulfilled is spirit fulfilled. Spirit fulfilled is life fulfilled. 

Our spirit, that which makes us alive, yearns to be fulfilled.

How Desire Feels

We can feel our spirit's desire as a longing and ache in the center of our chest, our heart. Sometimes it spreads its ache downward into our gut where it feels like physical hunger.

Desire: From Mild to Intense

Our spirit's desire can range from a mild want to intense, even debilitating desperation.

Acute and Chronic Desire

It can arise in a heart-beat as a sudden surprise, like Cupid's arrow piercing its mark.

It can make one slowly waste away when it's famished for days, weeks, months, and years.

Part 2 will discuss mind-based and experienced-based, life-denying and life-affirming, and suppressed, addressed, and expressed desire

Gratitude of Spirit, Part 2

Mind-based and Experience-based Gratitude

The popular "attitude of gratitude" movement is mind-based. It's based on what we tell ourselves and our own mental images. However, this does not diminish the fact that we can still feel the emotion of gratitude in response to our self-talk and mental images. We can.

Experience-based gratitude is our spirit's response to our in-the-world interactions with others who meet our needs and fulfill our desires that we cannot do for ourselves. Again, it's our spirit's response to having an itch on our back scratched, a flat tire changed, a bill paid, a meal provided, an organ donated, CPR provided, or any other need met that we could not meet for ourselves.

Life-denying and Life-Affirming Gratitude

It is difficult for me to imagine instances of either mind-based or experience-based gratitude that are life-denying. At this time it seems to me that both  kinds of gratitude affirm our own life and the lives of others. However, the matter is not settled. I believe more observation and research is warranted.

Gratitude Suppressed, Addressed, Expressed (Directly and Indirectly)

While I cannot imagine instances when feelings of gratitude would need to be address due to being life-denying, perhaps there are times when social  mores dictate that we suppress  or indirectly express our gratitude. In my opinion, the more open, honest and free our expressions of gratitude, the better. 

In my view, a world with more gratitude is a better world.