Author: Justice Schanfarber

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Current Articles Relationships The Gentle Art of Emotional Mastery The Schanfarber Method

Joy is the New Vulnerability & It Breathes Fresh Life into Intimate Relationships

“I like when they feel sad or hurting because that’s when they open up.”

This kind of candid, unambiguous statement is not uncommon in my work, and I have felt similarly in my own life.

Many of the relationship coaching and marriage counseling clients I’ve helped over the past two decades have shared stories with me about the closeness they feel with their partner through episodes of sadness, grief, doubt, or hurt.

For some couples, it’s only through these “breakdowns” that the protective armor cracks and a deeper emotional connection can finally be reached.

Vulnerability and emotional intimacy

When this association between hurt and openness is established, “vulnerability” comes to be seen as the doorway through which the pleasures of emotional intimacy are accessed.

Vulnerability comes from the Latin word for “wound,” vulnus. Vulnerability is the state of being open to injury, or appearing as if you are.

This attentiveness (and attunement) to the wound, and a willingness to be “open to injury”, defines emotional intimacy for many people.

Vulnerability-based intimacy is promoted and normalized through books, social media, and conventional counseling and therapy.

I’ve been actively immersed in the ever-evolving theories and practices of emotional intimacy for over twenty years as a professional in the field, and through this intimate experience with intimacy I’ve discovered something ironic: the vulnerability-based openness that is presented as emotional intimacy is, itself, a product of hyper-rational living and emotional suppression.

It works like this:

Someone who has adopted pure rationality as their ideal suppresses or denies their emotional experience. This creates inner tension.

It’s only when emotions get the best of them, and their rational armor cracks, that feelings come spilling out, sometimes to the hungry approval and enthusiasm of an intimacy-craving partner.

But there’s a kind of emotional experience waaaaay over at the other end of the spectrum that can also provide doorways into intimacy.

Joy-based emotional intimacy

This other end of the emotional spectrum includes joy, humor, inspiration, excitement, playfulness, exuberance, optimism, contentment, clarity, appreciation, celebration, and fun.

These kinds of emotions are not associated with vulnerability, and they form the basis for something I call “joy-based intimacy.”

To transition from the achy, bittersweet intimacy of meeting each other in vulnerability to the pure, sweet intimacy of meeting each other in joy, it’s helpful to disentangle some popular misunderstandings and to acquaint yourself with the deeper nature of emotion.

“Getting emotional”

Clients often use the words “getting emotional” when they tell me a story of emotional upset or volatility in themselves or in another person.

To “get emotional” is, by this definition, to lose control of a rational grip on reality, and to slip into the clutches of an irrational chaos.

This reflexive negative bias toward emotion is mostly unexamined, and is the product of cultural inheritance rather than any kind of conscious personal view. I know this from my many inquiries of clients who use this language in our sessions.

It’s common to believe that rationality is the backbone of personal and collective progress – an obviously superior mode of being – and to see emotionality as a disruption of order. But this reveals a misunderstanding of the deeper nature of emotion.

It’s true that emotion is non-rational; indeed, emotion operates differently and distinctly from the cognitive/rational mind.

Emotion is an older way of engaging the world, and an older mode of consciousness than the more recently developed cognitive/rational mind, and so it is assumed to be somewhat outdated, an old-brain relic of a human past fraught with danger and threat.

From this perspective, emotion is a reflex or “trigger”, a product of the primordial brain, and an obstacle to the serious endeavors of serious people who have succeeded in boxing emotion up and meeting life reasonably. This attitude is perhaps best exemplified by Victorian-era England, which happens to have had a significant hand in founding modern psychology.

But “getting emotional” does not just mean upset and irrationality. “Getting emotional” also means getting inspired. Inspiration is emotion in one of its purest forms.

“Getting emotional” means confidence and optimism and joy, and is how you bring yourself into your most powerful alignment with your vision.

The deeper nature of emotion

The deeper nature of emotion is not chaotic, uncontrollable, and messy. It is peaceful, stable, clear, and strong. A well-developed emotionality is characterized by qualities of clarity, guidance, and satisfaction unlike anything that the rational/cognitive system can comprehend or deliver.

And although emotion is older than reason, it is not frozen in time.

Emotion continues to evolve in human beings, and people who engage consciously in the development of their own emotionality can make remarkable advances in their pragmatic and fruitful use of it.

Part of the appeal of vulnerability-based intimacy is that it expresses an attitude of welcoming and acceptance for the full range of human emotional experience. It offers an expansive view beyond pure rationalism. It brings warmth to the cold.

Joy-based intimacy takes this a step further, recognizing that beyond passively accepting the full range of human emotion, there is the possibility of becoming an active, conscious creator of your own emotional experience.

Those practicing, enjoying, and benefiting from joy-based intimacy recognize their power as creators of their emotional life, not just willing observers or allowers.

The move from vulnerability-based intimacy to joy-based intimacy is a process of personal emotional development, and this development proceeds through three predictable stages.

Three stages of emotional development

The three stages of emotional development are explained in detail in my article Growing Beyond Therapy Culture and Learning to Thrive, in my R3 Relationship Masterclass and in Module Six of my Free 7-Day Audio Course: The Gentle Art of Emotional Mastery. Understanding these stages is immensely beneficial for improving a relationship and for enriching a life overall.

Briefly, they are:

  1. Emotional Suppression. At this stage there is little emotional intimacy in a relationship because there is little emotion being expressed.
  2. Emotional Expression. At this stage emotion has been embraced. Emotional intimacy is associated with vulnerability, and tends to be fraught with chaos, volatility, and discomfort or pain. “I like when they feel sad or hurting because that’s when they open up.”
  3. Emotional Discretion. At this stage emotion is engaged and activated discerningly, with conscious intention. Superficial emotionality (chaos, pain) has given way to the deeper nature of emotion (clarity, satisfaction). Vulnerability-based intimacy is still available and enjoyed sparingly, but joy-based intimacy becomes the new standard.

There’s an elegant balance and alignment to be found within our rationality, within our emotionality, and between the two. Only when this elegant balance and alignment is established through our personal developmental journey through the three stages do we gain full access to joy-based intimacy.

Joy-based intimacy is a result of moving past the first stage of idealized rationality and emotional suppression, and past the second stage of indiscriminate emotional glorification and expression.

Re-calibrating for joy-based emotional intimacy

If you, like so many people today, have conditioned yourself to seek vulnerability-based intimacy and closeness, and you are now waking up to the possibility of joy-based intimacy, you can begin by adjusting your emotional attunement and focus. This means re-calibrating your nervous system, your imagination, and even how you experience sensation in your body.

Rather than looking for feelings of connection in sadness, grief, doubt, or hurt, start looking for connection in joy, humor, playfulness, and ease. When you find resonance in these kinds of high-vibe emotions, go deeper. Nurture the part of the experience that feels intimate, like you’re used to doing with grief or sadness.

Look for the deeper connection in playfulness and joy, and then deepen it even more. Don’t try to deepen it through becoming earnest, solemn, or reverent. Deepen it through light-heartedness, cheerfulness, and enjoyment. Notice how different this feels. It’s a different vibration. Different energy. It isn’t intense and achy or cathartic like the old vulnerability-based intimacy, but it’s every bit as deep and satisfying once you get attuned to it.

Going deep into joy

I used to believe that “going deep” meant delving into the bottomless darkness of hurt or conflict, trauma or grief. Now when I go deep, it’s into joy and delight. It turns out there is depth in both, and I have found my preference.

If you think you might prefer joy-based intimacy and depth over vulnerability-based intimacy and depth, start practicing what I’ve described here. And check out some of my other resources like my P2 Power Couple Coaching Program, where you can take advantage of my twenty years in the field with one-on-one coaching. Or my R3 Relationship Masterclass, a distillation of all my experience into a deeply nourishing 3-hour download of audio teachings.

Some of my free offerings will help too:

My 7-Day Audio Course: The Gentle Art of Emotional Mastery covers just about everything you need to know about making the shift from vulnerability-based intimacy to joy-based intimacy, and much more. I recommend starting at module one, but you can also jump right to module three to learn about aligning rationality with emotion. I teach this in terms of the three human operating systems: cognition, emotion, and sensation.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve certainly heard me talk about the three human operating systems. They’re an important foundation of The Schanfarber Method, and have endless practical applications. You can read more about the three operating systems in my description of the method here.

There’s nothing wrong with vulnerability-based intimacy, but there is something better waiting for you whenever you want it.

If you’re experimenting with a shift from vulnerability-based intimacy into joy-based intimacy, or if you are well along on this journey, I’d love to hear about your experiences. Please share your insights in the comments below.

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Addiction Current Articles The Gentle Art of Emotional Mastery The Schanfarber Method

Things that feel good are good for us

It sure feels good to be outside on a day like this, and it’s good for you!

Things that feel good are good for us, and what is good for us is to feel good!

It’s a perfect design, and it’s the result of millions of years of evolution. It only gets tricky or confusing when we are disconnected from our inner guidance.

Our inner guidance is the built-in sensitivity that lets us discern between what truly feels good and satisfying, and what feels other-than-good, plain-old-bad, uncertain, or “pseudo-satisfying”.

There are just three requirements for making proper use of our inner guidance. They aren’t complicated requirements, but they’re also not optional:

  1. You have to actually want to feel good.
  2. You have to be sensitive enough to discern between things that feel good and things that feel other-than-good.
  3. You have to take some kind of action to move yourself toward feeling good once you have this clarity.

Once you decide that you actually want to feel good (be honest with yourself, many people are committed to trying to find satisfaction in feeling bad), then the next step is to establish a strong connection with the sensitivity that informs your inner guidance.

Re-establishing sensitivity and inner guidance

The connection to our sensitivity and inner guidance often gets broken, blocked, or distorted by the time we reach adulthood, not because we mean to do it, but as a consequence of adapting to life.

Years later (decades for some of us), once we recognize that this connection to our own sensitivity has been compromised, we get to embark upon the incredibly satisfying journey of re-discovering and re-establishing it. Some people call this a healing journey, or becoming whole, or self-realization, or integration, or befriending yourself, or self-love.

Before we re-establish this connection to our sensitive self, we often rely on experts to tell us the most basic and obvious facts about our own health and well-being:

Drinking water, apparently, is good for you. Anyone who has been thirsty and has successfully quenched their thirst with fresh water knows this. But some people missed the memo. If you were brought up drinking pop or juice or flavored beverages, you might have never developed a taste for drinking water, or have experienced the good feeling of a thirst properly quenched.

Sleeping until we feel rested is good for us too, and it feels good. But many people have little or no experience of this, and remain disconnected from this very basic example of our in-born clarity about the connection between what feels good and what is good.

When you fall asleep in front of a screen that is telling a story of human drama or suffering, and then “alarm” yourself out of sleep each morning, and then shock your nervous system with bright light and stimulants so that you can gain temporary functionality so that you can force yourself to go to a place that does not feel good to be, and do something that does not feel good to do, you are not going to be sensitive to your own inner guidance.

In fact, if you were sensitive, it would feel like torture. And so we shut it off. We shut down the sensitivity that is our guide in order to fulfill an abstract idea of success, or to fit in, or do what is expected, or sometimes just to survive.

I’m being a little hyperbolical for effect, but the fact remains: if you are falling asleep in front of a screen and then waking up to an alarm before your natural sleep cycle is complete, you can not have any real embodied knowledge of what feels truly good in regards to sleep and restfulness, which is a basic cornerstone of human well-being.

You might know better conceptually, but that doesn’t help. You might know everything there is to know about the benefits of sleep (and there is a LOT to know), but if you are not applying this knowledge through actual practice, it’s worth very little.

This is precisely the reason that people have become mistrustful of using feeling, and feeling good, as a guide. When ideas and concepts become proxies for actual felt experience, then confusion, disconnection, and mistrust is the result. Hence my playful but one hundred percent correct refrain: “There is nothing more practical than feeling good.”

You cannot thrive on just ideas

You can survive on ideas to a point, but you cannot thrive. To thrive is to feel good, and to feel good means engaging directly and enthusiastically with your feeling apparatus.

These feeling apparatus are sensation and emotion, and they represent two of the three human operating systems, which we’ll explore in detail shortly.

First, another example of something that feels good and that is good for you:

Engaging physically, through all your senses, with material, three dimensional phenomena like sunlight, unconditioned air, waterways, plants, animals, and natural ecosystems feels good and is good for you.

Experts can give you truckloads of scientific evidence and dazzling neurobiological explanations for this, which is fun and gratifying. But reading about it or listening to a podcast about it or having ChatGPT tell you about it is not a substitute for the actual first-hand physical experience of doing it.

Playing with a happy child feels good and is good for you.

Helping someone accomplish something that matters to them feels good and is good for you.

Combining mindful movement with intentional breathing feels good and is good for you.

Discerning between satisfaction and pseudo-satisfaction

Things that feel good are satisfying. Much that is offered in the culture today promises satisfaction, but delivers only pseudo-satisfaction. This is so widespread, and has been going on for so long, that many people can no longer feel the difference.

Do you know the difference? There’s only one way to tell them apart: by how they feel.

You don’t need an expert to tell you that aligning your circadian rhythm with natural environmental cues like sunlight and darkness is better for you than bathing yourself in blue light from your laptop until 2am.

Binging on screen-time is a pseudo-satisfaction, not a real satisfaction. You can tell by how it feels, but you have to develop enough sensitivity to make this distinction.

You don’t need an expert to tell you that eating fresh, wholesome food is better for you than eating cheese puffs and cola. Eating junk is a pseudo-satisfaction, even if you initially like how it tastes. You can tell by how it feels, but you have to develop enough sensitivity to make this distinction.

You don’t need an expert to tell you that a peaceful and loving relationship is better for you than a tumultuous and painful relationship. You can tell by how it feels, but you have to develop enough sensitivity to make this distinction.

You can always tell what is best by how you feel. But you need a clear channel to your inner guidance in order to receive the message clearly.

Pseudo-satisfactions don’t genuinely satisfy, and they come with a downside. True satisfaction has no downside. It feels good, and it is good for you.

If you’re used to settling for pseudo-satisfactions – junk food, news cycles, hype and distraction, mood regulation through chemical substances, status seeking, superficial or manipulative interactions with other people – you start to believe that satisfaction comes with a downside. You start to mistrust feeling good because you know it won’t last, or that it will likely betray you. You might even become more desperate and cynical in your yearning for satisfaction, reaching for more and more intense pseudo-satisfactions until they become addiction.

Every bit of this applies to how you engage your inner world too, not just how you engage the outer world.

Feeling good from the inside-out

There are better-feeling and worse-feeling ways of engaging your own mind, your own thoughts. Thinking thoughts that feel good is better for you than thinking thoughts that feel bad. Obvious? Maybe. Are you using this knowledge for your benefit one hundred percent of the time? Fifty percent of the time? Ever?

Are you using your mind with purpose and intention, or does it seem to be using you? What do you think the purpose of your mind is? I think it’s to help you feel good.

The thinking mind is just one of three distinct, interconnected human operating systems, and if you’re not engaging the other two, and bringing all three into alignment, the mind will become agitated, delivering a distorted view of reality, and keeping you at arm’s reach from satisfying your true desires.

The three human operating systems are always guiding us, and are also the source of all satisfaction and dissatisfaction in our lives.

They are:

  1. Cognition
  2. Sensation
  3. Emotion

[The three human operating systems are described in the description page for The Schanfarber Method and are explained in even more detail in my R3 Relationship Masterclass. Descriptions can also be heard in Module Three of my Free 7-Day Audio Course: The Gentle Art of Emotional Mastery.]

Using cognition to feel good is good for you

Cognition is thinking. It’s our mental, rational, conceptual self. When we use this operating system in ways that feel good, it’s good for us. Using our cognitive system in ways that feel good means choosing thought patterns that feel good.

It means using imagination in ways that feel good, using memory in ways that feel good, and creating narratives, stories, and beliefs that feel good.

Using our cognitive system in ways that feel good also means talking about things that feel good. Language is part of the cognitive system.

Using your cognition operating system, your mind, in all these ways feels good, and is good for you.

Using sensation to feel good is good for you

Sensation is how we feel in our body. It’s the messages that our body gives us. When we use our bodies in ways that feel good, it’s good for us. This includes all five senses, and also our intuition or “gut feeling”. It includes how we feel moving our bodies in our physical environment, and how we feel inhabiting our bodies in each moment.

When we look at things that feel good to look at, it’s good for us. When we touch things that feel good, it’s good for us. When we move our bodies in ways that feel good, it’s good for us. When we rest our bodies in ways that feel good, it’s good for us. When we eat foods that make us feel good, it’s good for us. When we breathe in ways that feel good, it’s good for us.

Sensation includes the feelings in our body that result from our interactions with outer experiences, and also with inner experiences.

For example, it might feel good in your body to swim in the lake (outer experience). It might also feel good in your body to remember that time you enjoyed swimming in the lake (inner experience).

Your body, through the sensation operating system, offers infinite ways of feeling genuinely good, and every single one is good for you.

Using emotion to feel good is good for you

Emotion is the third human operating system, and it is special. Emotion is the totality of our subjective inner state of being. Associated with our heart, it is at the center of our life experience. It’s our temperament, our disposition, our mood. When we speak of well-being, we speak primarily of emotional well-being. When we talk about mental health, we often mean emotional health.

Emotion is the meeting place or the synthesis of the other two operating systems, cognition and sensation.

We can learn to influence our emotional state through cognition, which is sometimes called a “top-down” approach, and we can learn to influence our emotional state through sensation, sometimes called a “bottom-up” approach.

Some of us can also shape our emotional state directly, through applied intention. This emergent ability represents a leading edge of evolutionary development in human beings. It’s something I am very excited about, and helping people develop this ability has become a cornerstone of my work. I see this as my most valuable contribution to the field of psychology and human thriving to date.

Using your emotional operating system to feel good, through any of these means, is good for you.

Applied knowledge: turning ideas into reality

Is any of what you’re reading here brand new to you? Probably not, although perhaps I’m offering some nuance or clarification that feels fresh.

Are you in agreement with what I’m saying? You probably are. It would be hard to make a convincing argument otherwise.

Are you applying the truth of what you are reading here in tangible, real ways most of the time in your life?

Be honest. If you are… isn’t it awesome?!

If you are, please write to me and share your experience. Better yet, leave a comment to inspire other people too.

A quick report from my personal experience

I’ve been intentionally engaging and developing my sensitivity and alignment within and throughout my three operating systems every day for five years now, and the results are enriching my life beyond description.

My discernment between what feels good and what feels bad, and between real satisfaction and pseudo-satisfaction keeps getting sharper and sharper in clarity, and with this clarity my confidence and ability in creating my own life through the choices I make improves by leaps and bounds.

Relationships have improved, or peacefully dissolved. My physical health is better than it has ever been. Emotionally and mentally I am thriving. My enjoyment of nature has blossomed. My outlook and my experience of life have become far more positive and fulfilling in every way.

My discernment and sense of choice about what I want to engage and manifest in my life and what I do not want to engage and manifest in my life has clarified by a factor of at least ten. In all of these ways and more, I’ve discovered what self-empowerment actually means.

It’s been so powerful that I had to develop a new method for working with clients if I wanted to keep my professional practice up to speed with what I was discovering and applying in my own life. I simply couldn’t work in the old therapy paradigms any longer.

When someone comes for help because they feel anxious or because their marriage is falling apart, I can’t in good conscience offer any treatment that isn’t rooted in what I am describing on this page. It would be like withholding food from someone who is starving. I’ve learned that not everyone is ready for this kind of empowerment, but for those who are, transformation and relief come quickly.

Your inner world shapes your outer world

Developing sensitivity and alignment throughout the three operating systems – cognition, sensation, and emotion – leads to an embodied clarity about what feels genuinely good and what feels other-than-good. Letting that clarity guide you, and putting that inner guidance into real, practical action through the choices you make is when the results come to life and the benefits gain visible momentum.

When I talk about “choices” I mean outer behaviors and how we skillfully engage with the physical world (job, home, spouse, kids), but I also mean inner behaviors and how we skillfully engage with our self through thought, sensation, and emotion.

“Things that feel good are good for you” becomes dependably true only when we become sensitive and receptive to what feels genuinely good. Only then can we use the guidance that is our biological inheritance.

Without this, we are bumbling around with disembodied notions of good and bad, creating elaborate arguments and justifications for absurd behaviors, and missing the point entirely, which is to live with ever-increasing optimism, clarity, joy, and satisfaction.

Establishing a stable and balanced connection (right relationship) with all three of our human operating systems is the only way to make full use of our inner guidance, and is also the only way to receive the full nourishment and satisfaction that life offers. There might be nothing more pragmatic.

Learn as you go, let it be fun

Don’t worry if you don’t know precisely what feels good to you all the time. It’s OK, you’ll learn quickly, and it never ends. Let yourself enjoy the journey of discovering the difference between real satisfaction and pseudo-satisfaction.

Don’t worry too much about why you got disconnected from your own guidance in the first place. Disconnection happens to the best of us, for lots of reasons that all make sense. Search out answers if that feels satisfying, but don’t get too hung up on figuring out the past. Life moves forward. Move with it.

Your growing dissatisfaction with pseudo-satisfactions is working to your advantage. It’s leading you to discover the genuine article, the real deal. But don’t explore those feelings of dissatisfaction for too long. The purpose of dissatisfaction is to provide you with valuable clarity about what you want next. Pivot your attention quickly and completely in the direction of that clarity. There’s an energetic shift, a pulse, that comes with this pivot of attention, and it will propel you. Catch the wave.

By the way, no one else has to understand what feels good for you. No one else has to understand or agree with any of this. It will work anyway. If it feels good to walk barefoot in the sand or to be naked on your private deck, do it. If cold plunges or saunas feel good, do it. If eating one thing and not another thing feels good, do it, even if everyone you know is doing the opposite.

Especially if believing something different from what everyone else seems to believe feels good, do it.

Let what feels good shape your thinking and your use of your mind. Don’t focus so much on what is true if what is true is unwanted. Don’t reject or deny it, just leave it alone and find another truth that feels better. There is no end to truths to choose from!

If being really, really nice to yourself and gentle with yourself feels good, do it. Do it even if everyone else around you is torturing themselves with worry, criticism, and doubt, and expects you to do the same.

Trusting yourself means trusting what feels good. And it’s all going to change along the way. Did I mention that it will change? It will change. Let it change.

Drinking fancy wine felt good to me until it didn’t. Today I don’t drink alcohol. What I enjoyed yesterday felt good yesterday. What I enjoy today feels good today. I’m looking forward to discovering what will feel good tomorrow.

I don’t have to justify changing. I just have to keep up. I don’t have to explain why I want what I want now. I just have to keep up. Keeping up with what feels good now is synonymous with fulfilling my potential, living with purpose, and being my best self.

A relationship or a job might feel good, and then it doesn’t. Accept that you will continue to want different things, new things, more. Today it might be acquiring things that feels good and is good for you. Tomorrow it might be getting rid of things that feels good and is good for you. Be flexible. Around our house we call this “nimbleosity.”

Quit trying to figure it all out in your head once and for all. Your head can’t tell you what feels good, but it can confuse you with ideas about what should and shouldn’t. Use your mind, but use it appropriately and to your benefit. Cognition is not the answer to everything, and it can never deliver all the satisfaction that it promises. It’s OK, we forgive it. It’s the nature of the cognition system to over-promise, to take itself too seriously, and also to ignore or deny the existence and value of the other two human operating systems.

Quit trying to make a plan and quit trying to stick to it. Quit holding yourself accountable and quit making commitments to yourself. Stop trying to force outcomes and stop hitching your well-being to those outcomes. Be less conditional in your joy and well-being. Joy and well-being are your essence, like emotional DNA, not something to prove or earn. Enjoy clarity as it comes, with all its twists and turns. It’s supposed to be an adventure. It’s supposed to be fun. Trust yourself. Trust that what feels good is good for you. It’s so much easier this way.

Be easier-going about feeling good. Feeling good is not supposed to be hard. Feeling good is who you are when you’re not cut off, shut down, confused, or throwing obstacles in your own way. Feeling good (and benefiting from feeling good) is something you allow, not something you force, figure out, or solve. Let yourself feel good, and follow that feeling where it takes you. That’s inner guidance. That’s clarity. That’s purpose. It feels good, and it’s good for you.

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Current Articles The Schanfarber Method

Tension is energy, and energy animates our lives

The person who has a shopping addiction and worries about money is creating tension. This tension is energy, and this energy animates their life.

The person who is having a secret affair is creating tension. This tension is energy, and this energy animates their life.

The couple who argue about their child are creating tension. This tension is energy, and this energy animates their lives.

Secrets, compulsions, dilemmas, conflicts, and worries all create tension. Tension is energy, and this energy animates life.

Animating your life (or relationship) with tension is surprisingly common. So common, that many people assume that it is normal. But tension is just one way to bring energy and color and shape to your life.

Tension and stress and anxiety become habituated into default patterns and normalized because they are fuel. When your nervous system becomes accustomed to that type of fuel, it seeks it out and creates it.

If you’d like to convert your nervous system to use another type of fuel, something more sustainable and cleaner burning, you’ll need to re-tool it. You’ll need to learn how to use peace or joy or relaxation or eagerness or contentment as an energy source for your life. These energies feel very different from tension, and the transition can take a bit of getting used to.

Fueling your life with contentment rather than irritation might even feel boring at first. Looking for things to feel good about rather than looking for things to feel bad about is a habit just like any habit, and it’s all changeable when there is a desire and willingness.

When you upgrade fuels, your whole system runs differently. It runs more smoothly, with an easier shifting of gears, with far less pollution, and without any sacrifice in speed or power. It’s a better ride overall. You’ll like it.

Making an inner energy transition to cleaner fuel benefits you and the people around you. It will improve your life, the lives of your children, and the generations yet to come.

The Schanarber Method is designed to help you make this transition. If you like the idea of animating your life with a better feeling energy, I can help you implement the steps that make the idea a reality. Learn more about the method here.

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Addiction Current Articles The Schanfarber Method

I stopped drinking and it was easy because of this one thing

In the act: Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction! Whether it’s a fragrant rose or a glass of Barolo, I like to go in deep.
I stopped drinking alcohol recently

I like my beer and my whiskey sours, but I love fine wines. I love my Italian Brunello and Nebbiolo. I was just getting into Burgundies and Spanish Fino and Priorat.

Vermentino, Grillo, Douro… there are endless wines to be discovered and enjoyed. My palette, and my personal wine collection, were becoming very nicely developed.

But for a few good reasons, I stopped. And you know what? It was easy.

When someone asks me if I crave it, I have to pause for a moment and remember what craving feels like because it has become so absent from my experience.

It was easy to stop drinking for one reason, and I want to explain it properly because it surprised and delighted me, and it provides a wonderful, real-life example of how The Schanfarber Method provides practical tools for health and well-being.

We are satisfaction-seeking creatures (and that’s a good thing)

Long before I stopped drinking, I had been intentionally building a broad repertoire of satisfactions. I had come to recognize, through my work as a coach and counselor mostly, that people are satisfaction-seeking creatures through-and-through.

Everything we want in this life is for the satisfaction we imagine it bringing. All that we want to do, be, or have is because we want to have the satisfaction of doing, being, or having it.

Satisfaction is a feeling, an emotion, and it is the common thread uniting all human desire and all human activity. A desire to feel satisfaction is at the heart of everything we want and everything we do.

The trouble is, we can get very fixated on particular forms of satisfaction. We want to feel satisfied from this and not from that. When our fixation on one kind of satisfaction squeezes out our receptivity to the other forms available, we call it addiction, and people can become addicted to just about anything.

One day I realized that I live in a world with an infinite variety of satisfactions constantly on offer to me. The world is always plying me with a continuous rainbow of assorted satisfactions and delights in every form imaginable.

It was a shocking realization. Even more shocking was the simultaneous realization of how narrow I had been in my willingness to receive satisfaction from anywhere but a handful of specific sources. I was starving myself, all the while sitting at the grandest buffet imaginable.

I made it my mission to enjoy as many of the satisfactions on offer as possible. I discovered, as we all do, that some forms of satisfaction come with a downside (for me that included drinking alcohol), and some are purely nourishing, with no cost and no downside whatsoever.

Three human operating systems

I also discovered that my satisfaction always flows to me through three primary channels, and I named these the three human operating systems – Cognition, Sensation, and Emotion.

I explain them in detail in my R3 Relationship Masterclass and in module three of my Gentle Art of Emotional Mastery course.

As I realized that my satisfaction always comes through the channels of cognition, sensation, and emotion, I started experimenting with each, one by one. I began with cognition, with my thoughts.

I quickly discovered that some thoughts and some ways of thinking are satisfying, some are not. As my discernment of the difference between satisfying thoughts and unsatisfying thoughts became clear, my use of my cognitive apparatus became more refined and intentional.

I no longer allow my thoughts to wander toward unsatisfying topics. When I catch them early enough, it’s relatively easy to steer them. If they get away from me and gain momentum, it can take a little time for them to run their course, which they always do if I don’t fuss over them.

Satisfying thoughts get my attention and my attention gives them momentum, creating more satisfaction. Unsatisfying thoughts do not get more attention, and they fizzle out, making way for something better. That’s how it works.

Something similar happened as I turned this awareness to sensation in my body. Focusing on sensations that feel satisfying creates a cascade of further satisfaction. Pleasure, by the way, is another word for satisfaction. We can also call it joy, delight, happiness, or just plain old feeling good.

At the emotional level too, the same is revealed to be true. As I find the essence of a satisfying emotion or feeling, and give it my attention, it begins to expand. Only satisfying feelings get my attention now, and with that attention they grow.

Then I discovered that within each of these three operating systems or channels, infinite depths of subtlety can be accessed and enjoyed.

I had found breadths of satisfactions beyond anything before. Now I was finding the depths.

Surprisingly, the strength of my satisfaction does not diminish as the satisfaction becomes more subtle.

In fact, the opposite is true. As I find my way into subtler forms of thought, sensation, and emotion, the satisfaction also becomes subtler, but paradoxically, the more subtle the satisfaction, the more profound it becomes!

I suppose this shouldn’t be very surprising. Every good meditation teacher or traditional spiritual practice teaches this, but hearing it as words and as a concept is a lot different from feeling it as my lived experience.

The thing I liked best about wine was developing my palette so that I could detect and enjoy increasingly subtle aspects of the tasting experience. Terroir, acidity, tannin, vintage, varietals… there are endless subtleties to discover on the wine journey.

So why don’t I miss it?

Because now I recognize that the same thing is true for absolutely everything I enjoy.

And my life mission is to find a lot of things to enjoy.

I’ve even given this a playful name. I call it: Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction.

Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction

Every enjoyable experience that I engage through all three of my operating systems offers an endless depth of subtlety to be discovered. And because I’m always looking for new things to enjoy, I’m always finding them!

Whether it’s a leading edge idea, a lively conversation, a vivid walk in the forest, a beautiful meal, a relaxing or invigorating yoga flow, dancing, reading, breathing, rolling around on the floor, daydreaming, working, having a shower, having a nap, having sex… there’s no end to the subtle attunement and enjoyment available. It’s literally endless.

From my perspective today, it would be silly to miss drinking wine. My life is rich in a million and one ways. It would be like lamenting the loss of my favorite grain of sand or my cherished drop of water.

But the most important part of all this, the part I really want to share, is how beneficial it has been for me to Build a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction BEFORE I stopped drinking.

I now realize that Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction is the single most empowering thing I can do for myself.

And it never ends.

And there’s no downside.

And hardly anyone is doing it.

That’s nuts. It’s the biggest, sweetest, ripest, juiciest, lowest hanging fruit, and it’s virtually ignored, even though there’s plenty for everyone!

Open thousands of windows – start now

It’s been said that when a door closes, a window opens. I have opened thousands of windows and I am opening thousands more. If a door closes I will never have a shortage of open windows because I have been opening so many in advance.

And here’s the most wonderful part: I haven’t opened them in preparation for coming hardship, I have opened them for the joy of it.

In the mental health field, words like “resilience” and “resourced” are the norm. Living joyfully happens to be the best way I know to build resilience and resourcefulness, but resilience and resourcefulness barely begin to describe the true benefits.

Resilience and resourcefulness are good, but wouldn’t you rather set your sights on exuberance, eagerness, inspiration, clarity, success, and delight? Thankfully you don’t have to choose.

Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction also happens to be your best protection against experiencing trauma or PTSD.

Trauma is subjective: the same experience for two people can be traumatizing for one but not the other. Researchers have found that one of the factors is a person’s baseline sense of well-being.

People who have established a solid sense of well-being in themselves, and who are enjoying high levels of satisfaction in diverse ways everyday are more resilient to trauma and PTSD. They’re also more likely to experience post-traumatic growth (PTG).

But don’t do it for that. Don’t enrich yourself with a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction because you want to brace yourself against tragedy.

Do it because it feels good – do it for the joy

Do it because it feels good right now. Do it because you care about how you feel. How you feel matters. It matters a lot. It matters most. You might have lost sight of this basic truth. Maybe no one taught you or supported you in this way, so let me be very clear: You are meant to live a life that feels mostly good, most of the time. That is your purpose and your highest potential.

Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction is good protection against unwanted experiences, but don’t do it for that reason. Do it because you feel most purposeful when you are thriving. Do it because you love feeling yourself as creator of your life experience. Do it for the joy.

I help people worldwide embrace their desire to feel good, and Build a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction. If you’d like my help, request a client package by email. Please tell me a little bit about yourself in your email, and include your country of residence.

All My Best,
Justice Schanfarber
Teacher, Coach, and Founder at The Schanfarber Method

P.S. The only thing better than Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction is doing it with your partner. My partner and collaborator Vanessa and I have been doing this together for four years and are reaping massive benefits in our mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Check out my P2 Power Couple Coaching Program and my R3 Relationship Masterclass to learn more about creating synergy and alignment in a marriage or relationship.

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