by Josh Campbell, IT student and a student of life in general, Tauranga, New Zealand
I have no super-amazing story of Serge Benhayon saving me from my pain or my discomfort in life, but rather a simple one of me realising in myself that what he presents is truth. This was not because I had to believe it or try to live a life by idolising the way he lives his, but rather because I could actually feel deep within me that what he said was also a truth for me. This was because I could really experience it for myself by feeling it within me too.
Long before I came across the work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine (through hearing about it from my parents), I was living a heavy emotional life – full of stress, anger, frustration, the odd spurt of happiness (which never really lasted), and the odd combination of other emotions from time to time. This, for me, was my experience of ‘feeling’ things. To me, at this time, a feeling was an emotion.
At this stage of my life I was also heavily embedded in the Catholic faith. Despite many obvious inconsistencies with the belief system of this religion, I continued being a devoted Catholic who always tried to get to church every Sunday.
When I first heard the name, Serge Benhayon, it was on my parents’ audio system about 4 years ago. My first thought was “man, my parents are going insane, first playing this weird music from Chris James and now listening to this!” This thought was confirmed when I first went to a workshop of Chris James’ with my parents where I was told to ‘feel the music’. Chris would then ask everyone how they felt about it, and most would respond and say that it was lovely, or gentle, or they could feel it in their lungs or something to that effect. What?! To me a ‘feeling’ was an ‘emotion’, and an emotion was just that. There was no ‘feeling’ into your organs or ‘feeling’ that it was lovely or gentle. Soft was the best I could do, and Love was something you gave to God or your girlfriend (not that I had one at that stage).
It was not long after that when I realised all of what I was hearing from Serge Benhayon, my parents, and Chris James was actually true. You can feel your body. You can feel love in it… and you certainly can feel much more than emotions. I realised emotions were on the surface. A true feeling in the body was much much deeper. This was a truth for me, not because I heard it from Serge or my parents or Chris, but because I actually experienced it in my own body.
These feelings could actually tell you more than just whether something was true or not. They have a quality to them that enables everyone to be able to know much much more about something than the standard intellectual can fathom. This quality enables us to find out what the quality of energy is behind an action, thought or word. These qualities can be lovelessness or love (prana or fire). When I realised this for myself I realised there was much much more to this world than we currently are allowing ourselves to know. I have come to realise through my own experiences, the fact that children feel much much more than just emotions… in fact to them, they don’t know emotions, only true feelings of love or lovelessness.
Feeling (which, by the way, is something that everyone does every moment of every day – just not realising or honouring of it) into the feelings that I felt as a child of 3 years; “Why is it that? Why not THIS?” was the statement I was asking myself regularly. As a child I felt (as do all children of that age) the energies of life. This meant that I could walk into a house and not have to know the people in it, but I could FEEL THEM. The absurd thing is that, as a child, you DO NOT even THINK of questioning these feelings, you just know that they are true. Young children at this age, for instance, will tell their parents that they feel discomfort in their shoe because there is something in it, like a stone. They do this because at this age they just know by feeling, that that discomfort is not true and need not be there. A child is never taught in any way what is right or wrong: they just know that something like a stone in a shoe is just not right.
YET how is it that even two years past this age the child actually begins to question these feelings to the point that they will actually be prepared to walk around and put up with the discomfort which they just knew two years ago was not right or supposed to be there?
At what point does a child, who will not even think of questioning these natural feelings, actually begin to question them and start living a life of much less sense than that which they had as a wee child?
If everything is energy, then everything (from the smallest bacterium to the stone that is in the child’s shoe) must be because of energy. This means that the loss of the natural way of being of a child can be explained by the science of energies, especially because the child can feel energies and thus will respond to them on a greater level than the contracted human mind can understand.
We all know that a child looks to its parents for guidance and support, but if a child sees the world differently to how the parent thinks it sees the world, is it possible that they may see the things we think are part of ‘good’ parenting differently to how we think they see them?
Could this explain a little bit more of why an innocent child develops into an adult with behaviours that are anything but innocent?
Is it possible, that to a child who has come into the world fresh with true innocence and all they want is LOVE, that ANGER feels like a drop of poison?
Love is therefore not an emotion or some ideal or ultimate form of expression to someone. Love is an energy. If all is energy, then everything must be because of energy. The problem is, science already knows this but chooses to make it a point of study rather than a truth they live in their everyday lives.
If everything is energy, is it possible that there may be two types of energy: love and a lovelessness? If everything in society was founded on the energy of lovelessness, then is it not possible that people lose a foundation or a mark of what true love is because they would have not felt or lived such an energy enough to know the difference? If God is love, then God must be then the energy of love. If we all come from love, then how wayward have we become as a race of beings if the grandness that we are actually from can at best be intellectualised by many, but is never actually lived?
This is all that Serge Benhayon’s teachings are about: bringing the energy of love into our everyday living so we can start to return to living the truth and full grandness we are all equally from. It can be at times very difficult to see that what Serge is presenting is all about the grandness we all truly are, when the teachings do rock the very foundations of lovelessness many have built their lives upon. This can be why Serge’s teachings appear very challenging. Serge is never showing you that you are not love, but rather he is forever teaching about the love we are all truly, from showing each one of us who we are not and therefore helping present a picture of who we truly are.
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
Having attended a few workshops of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, I discovered that I ran my everyday life in nervous energy, my body was in constant motion it was never still. I went to sleep in nervous energy and woke up the next morning feeling more exhausted than when I went to bed, so I used stimulants such as sugar to keep me going. What I discovered through the presentations of Serge Benhayon was that I didn’t have to live in such a way, that actually felt draining, that there is another way to live which is more energizing and in harmony with our bodies.
Josh this is great read, the difference between the bastardised version of love and God’s love, which just is. Years ago I would not have understood this as I was so caught up in emotions, and yet in all honesty, deep, deep down inside I knew there was more to it, but just didn’t know what it was until I met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
The world is too busy caught up in the emotional love and slowly there will come a point of realisation, and it will happen one day. People will realise there is much more to life than what is occurring right now. Till then we continue to live ‘who we truly are’ and reflect that there is another way, the rest will take care of itself.
Josh, I remember also living like this
‘I was living a heavy emotional life – full of stress, anger, frustration, the odd spurt of happiness (which never really lasted),’
The roller-coaster of life, now I can see its a horrible way to live, well it’s not living it’s just existing from one emotional crisis to the next.
Since attending the workshops and presentations of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I have personally turned my life around. I live in joy, the anger, resentment, frustration and emotional upheaval are things of the past. To live in joy is the best medicine of life.
Mary I hear you, I was full of those emotions that spun me so many times and the unsettlement was unfathomable. Thank God my life is not ruled by those emotions anymore, and turning my life around since meeting Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. I would not go back to the old ways anymore of complications and existence. It has a more gentle flow and my relationship with joy and harmony is becoming stronger and stronger.
If we start with the premise that we are love then this means we also know that which is not love. Hence the wisdom to know when something does not sit right for us comes from within from our connection with Love.
I used to think that love was emotional and full of turmoil and pain and this was just what you had to deal with in order to Love someone. Thankfully I have learned and understand now that this is an emotional version of Love and has nothing to do with true love that just is and beholds – nothing less and nothing more.
Thank you Josh for sharing that there is a difference between feelings and emotions and that love is not an emotion. This is key to confirm what we all know to be true from a very young age.
I came back to this blog and read it in a completely different way which is amazing because there is so much more to this blog than I first allowed myself to feel or understand.
What I have understood since meeting Serge Benhayon is that everything is energy and I agree with you Josh, that Science has to me hijacked this and made it a study rather than teaching or encouraging everyone from young how to stay connected to it. Serge Benhayon is the only person I know who actually teaches how to reconnect back to reading energy again as we did when we were children. When we reconnect back to reading energy first we cannot be fooled by anyone because the energy they are in gives them away.
What Serge Benhayon shares and presents is very simple, yet powerful, ‘This is all that Serge Benhayon’s teachings are about: bringing the energy of love into our everyday living so we can start to return to living the truth and full grandness we are all equally from.’
Many of us are living loveless lives and so the teachings and presentations of Serge Benhayon may be challenging but the great thing about this is if you don’t feel it is something for you then just walk away.
Finally someone who presents truth, no matter what, the world and humanity desperately need this, ‘I have no super-amazing story of Serge Benhayon saving me from my pain or my discomfort in life, but rather a simple one of me realising in myself that what he presents is truth.’
What a great blog Joshua, you not only have asked the true questions but at the same time have elucidated us with a deepening truth that comes from your inner-heart, and that is our living essence that we all equally share, which is the gloriousness of God within or our soul that we are all returning to. As you have shared we all feel this essence from an early age but we loose this feeling to be overridden by emotions that take us away from our most natural essences.
“If everything is energy, is it possible that there may be two types of energy: love and a lovelessness?” – and lovelessness cannot be if it wasn’t for love. Lovelessness cannot qualify itself if there was no love in the first place.
I spent a day with a seven year and five year old the other day. There was a moment when the five year old went into a running dance with such abandon and sheer joy it took my breath away. He was fully in his body, felt joy and expressed it. Beautiful to observe. This is how we naturally are as children and somewhere and somehow this gets shut down.
Could it be when we are shut down and we feel the true expression with the joy and seeing we have shut it down we no longer want to recognise it in another so thus we also shut it down in them allow us to an feel an equal-ness that is not True?
Discerning the difference between emotions and feelings is the bridge that takes us closer to ourselves. Emotions devastate the body and relationships. Feelings support us to know we are love, understand the truth of what is going on and read the world as it is, not as our mind would have us imagine it is.
Yes I agree Elizabeth it is usually very early in life when we start to feel that pressure to conform on us from the world in one way or another and in this we shut down our innate awareness of life which we are all born with.
The day I started to acknowledge again my ability to feel energy everything changed.
The day I allowed myself to feel and express what I felt my life changed.
If we are capable of shutting down everything that feels natural in the body, once we do this everything changes. What we consider natural, (that is not truly so) and what we consider normal (that is not truly so either) and this is what we walk afterwards. Shutting down-ness in movement fills our persona. Most likely, we wonder in those lands for the rest of our lives. Those who come across Universal Medicine, though, may feel the expansion that it brings as it sparks our reconnecting with what feels natural to our body. That is the beginning of a fabulous journey back to who we are that leaves behind the character we earnestly constructed.
Yes Elizabeth, to realise we are free to choose our inner state is indeed a revelation and blessing.
It is inconceivable but a fact: the one thing we were not taught about as children is that we are all in essence love. The effects of this gross omission is evident for us all to feel and see in the world around us. We live in a loveless world and the only thing we have to learn is how to return to our true essence which is love. All else is secondary.
We are all love, and have so much to offer this world, we are amazing beings, yet, many people grow up with lack of self worth, and no love of self.
We are all in essence love, ‘If God is love, then God must be then the energy of love. If we all come from love, then how wayward have we become as a race of beings if the grandness that we are actually from can at best be intellectualised by many, but is never actually lived?’
Kehinde all we have to do is look around us to see that we live in a loveless world that we have all contributed to. As you say the greatest omission from our lives is that we are not encouraged to stay with the love that naturally resides within us. We are instead encouraged to seek outside of ourselves and that is the lie that we all have fallen for that love is somewhere outside of us.
When feeling our emotions are they coming from a heart felt place as when we feel Love, Joy, Harmony and Truth as these all bring a stillness within that takes away the so called normal emotions that are such a distraction in our day.
What you have shared about the stone in the shoe shows that we innately know self care and self love, we have within us a true way of living and responding to life that we are born with, and disregarding ourselves and ignoring what we know is loving and true is a learned behaviour.
I am learning to claim within myself and accept that when I live in the absolute knowing of that which is true the jealousy and discomfort it can bring up in another. All I need to do is continue to hold myself in the knowing and not react in any way, shape or form to that which is coming my way. We can either choose inspiration or resistance but whatever the outcome the choice is always ours and there can be no-other to blame for the choice we make.
To me Serge Benhayon is able to present to us in such a way, it’s not the mind that responds but our bodies and we can feel deep within our bodies that what he presents is true. Then we have a choice to ignore what we feel or listen to our bodies and make the changes it is calling out for.
Besides the fact that the first contact with the esoteric work may appear to be weird on every count, the truth is that such contact only reveals something about us first and foremost. What exposes is how we are choosing to move and how firmly we dis-associate with the body of ours. The more dis-associated you are the more weird the esoteric feels at first.
To become aware that there is a difference between our feelings and emotions is one of the greatest blessings we can ever learn.
Beautiful blog Joshua, thank you. One thing that came up for me as I read was the awareness that the truths of life – such as feeling and sensing everything – are absolutes and it is therefore very easy to take them for granted. Our eyes are trained to see the special, the particular, the stimulating rather than the everything. Hence, we miss the truths because they are not what we have been trained to perceive. Common sense is another example of this and being common has come to mean lesser in value when in fact, common means common to us all. We have belittled common sense and undermined its value to us – when in truth it is pure wisdom.
This really made me appreciate how much more I am feeling than emoting these days.
Josh I loved reading this blog because it really made me realise how early we start to override what we know to be true.
It is either love or it is not. What if what we live as our normal is not love and therefore we don’t have a foundation of what love is? Well, when I look at that equation it is a bit scary to me. I thought what I lived was love, yet when I felt love and was met by someone who loves as their way of living and there was not an ounce of emotion in it, I realised that I did not live that love in my life and my foundation wobbled. What was I living?! Putting the drama aside and simply starting by being more tender and gentle re-ignites the love that never left us – the feeling, the connection to the all – without an ounce of emotion.
Love the raw honesty of how you started your experience Josh – likewise I was shutdown and critical of something that was new and I did not understand. Over the years I’ve opened up, and developed more sensitivity and that makes a huge difference to everything in my life.
Great point Joshua that we tend to think of feelings as emotions and that emotions are often championed as a good thing e.g. music, films, books, media etc, but emotions fall far short of what we are all actually capable of feeling and sensing about life.
andrewmooney26 while we are ruled by our emotions, we will not know true love as true love is a beholding of oneself and all others without an ounce of emotion. We have been sold emotions but as you say they fall far short of who we truly are. Emotions take us on a rollercoaster ride whereas true love brings a rock solid settlement or contentment to our bodies having experienced both I will choose rock solid settlement.
‘This is all that Serge Benhayon’s teachings are about: bringing the energy of love into our everyday living so we can start to return to living the truth and full grandness we are all equally from.’ And actually this is very simple when we surrender to the energy of love and move accordingly, once in a while there is an ‘oops’ but we can re align with the love that we are at all times.
Learning to feel and live with the energy of love through your body is to learn to be free of emotions that keep you away from the love that we naturally are.
Watching my children grow up I know that they can feel energy all the time and it is completely normal for them. Often when I am witnessing a particular behaviour from children, if I am open to reading what is actually happening, they are often reacting to feeling something but not feeling able or supported to express what they are feeling because the world is constantly telling us to ignore and shut down this energetic awareness that we all naturally possess. No wonder we have so much tension by the time we grow up into adults!
Great subject to raise here Josh and I can say that I definitely can feel energy in my body and I can tell its quality – either emotional energy or love energy so I know without a shadow of a doubt that we can all feel energy in our bodies and that we have the ability to discern its quality and that there are in fact different qualities of energy constantly all around us.
A truly great sharing Josh. I feel you are spot on especially how we are as a small child that naturally knows the truth of energy..
Its so interesting.. when I was a teenager and all through my 20’s I was the same… no idea what someone meant by feelings unless they mugged me with something spectacular and avoiding emotions and what they might mean like the plague. I had desensitised myself through the early years to protect from this and that… enter Universal Medicine and layer by layer that has been coming off so I am left with this natural, sensitive being that has always been there, but just hiding for a bit. Feeling myself again – priceless.
I always turned away from being asked “how are you feeling” it’s like it was the worse thing anyone could say to me. At times I wouldn’t answer and often felt paralysed by this question. I use to think it was because someone was putting pressure on me but I have realised I didn’t like being asked because I didn’t like what I felt. It was like it was a reminder of something that I had walked away from and being reminded of it was panful and so it was easier to turn away. What is funny about this is that it’s a feeling and so turning away only changes the view, it doesn’t stop the feeling part. I can also see that over the years this is the part that has always supported me, whenever I truly felt something it didn’t seem to have impact of when I turned away.
Josh there is a discernment in your blog about love and lovelessness, and for me a the simplicity is in classing all emotions as lovelessness, this makes very clear the choice of which energy we are connected to and expressing from every day.
Yes Josh, Serge Benhayon is reminding us all that we are love and to live all the time in that energy, that is the truth for all of us, ‘If everything is energy, is it possible that there may be two types of energy: love and a lovelessness? If everything in society was founded on the energy of lovelessness, then is it not possible that people lose a foundation or a mark of what true love is because they would have not felt or lived such an energy enough to know the difference?’ We are building the foundation of love back in to our lives.
There is so much more to this world than we currently experience Josh, I agree, ‘I realised there was much much more to this world than we currently are allowing ourselves to know.’
If we are love and it’s energy how important is it then to express that love and live in a way that honours and claims the energy of love.
I love the example of the stone in the shoe. Why do we choose to override what we feel and begin to question it’s validity? Why do we push ourselves aside so much, ignore ourselves and create complications for ourselves? We once saw everything so clearly and life was so simple, then we got older, and allowed a different way of being to enter our world. Is it possible we have it wrong and that as children we are at our wisest point in life, and the older we get, the less wise we become?
Yes I loved this example too and children are often adamant that this stone in the show needs addressing NOW, not when it is more convenient. I will hold this picture with me as a reminder, and hey, if I forget, I suspect I will be offered a stone in my show to bring me back!
Every time I see young child I instantly feel how love is who we are innately. We emanate it when we are young and but even though most of us bury it as we grow, it is still there just waiting for us to feel back inside for ourselves.
I have found it very challenging at times when Serge Benhayon would present on something where I would feel nothing but a resistance but even in the resistance it meant that I had felt truth and it was simply a matter of surrendering. So whenever I feel not myself in a workshop or presentation to not put up a fight within myself but to embrace and welcome the feeling offering me an opportunity to go deeper and let it go to hold more love in my body.
Understanding that ‘feeling’ doesn’t mean being emotional has really helped me connect back to myself and not live just from the emotional reaction I had to everything, whether that be sadness, happiness, anger, frustration etc.
Identifying that that there are in truth only two energies, love and lovelessness, and that even feelings are energy brings great simplicity and truth to life. You have delineated this with great simplicity and clarity, Joshua, thank you.
Very beautiful Josh, and you share it in a way that gives an understanding that in fact when we are presented love, it’s uncomfortable as it shows us where we are not living that love, but without having the love shown in the first place we often cannot see that there is this love in us to be lived. Not a study but a lived everyday way to being, to be explored and lived.
Hello Josh and we want to hear it all types of different ways but you have described how it truly is beautifully here from Serge Benhayon, “bringing the energy of love into our everyday living so we can start to return to living the truth and full grandness we are all equally from.”
People very often need their foundations of lovelessness rocked and Serge Benhayon’s teachings most certainly do that…. giving people the opportunity to have a new marker of love to live and be inspired by rather than settle for the less we often don’t realise we are settling for.
The simple fact, that you were very much into the emotions that are so rampant in this world but realised that underneath is a calm ocean of simply feeling and being, brings very clearly to fore the two worlds we can choose to live in; the constant emotional rollercoaster and complication or a settling a step deeper into our bodies and allowing ourselves to feel and observe, where life unfolds instead of we needing to run after it.
To differentiate between an emotion and a feeling is one of the basic teachings of Serge Benhayon and understanding this difference has brought a huge change to my life.
Great blog, great wisdom being shared. Emotions completely stop us from feeling, they take over the body and the energy we get caught in is lovelessness. Until we are ready to let go of that indulging energy, we will keep going round and round in circles.
Absolutely brilliant blog Josh – such profound wisdom coming from a beautiful young man.
Thank you Josh for your article, it is interesting that as a young child we know what feelings are, then we lose this and go into reactions which are emotions which we then believe are true until we are shown by what Serge Benhayon presents that underneath emotions are our true feelings, we have gone full circle back to the truth of what we really feel and the grandness of who we truly are.
Thank you Josh for reminding me to be open to the wonder and truth of the work presented by Serge Benhayon, and to be ever grateful for the changes we are all making through The Way of The Livingness.
“It can be at times very difficult to see that what Serge is presenting is all about the grandness we all truly are, when the teachings do rock the very foundations of lovelessness many have built their lives upon.” I love your clear statement Josh, for me it said it all . . . thank you for putting your finger on to it.
Yes Ester and it asks us to let go of the hurt we so easily hang on to, to take responsibility for what has been there and then move in the true direction.
It is challenging that if we are from love and are not living this, when someone like Serge Benhayon comes along to remind us of the truth, is can be a jolt and can cause resentment. This is the most loving thing someone can do for us, remind us of who we are and inspire us to live it.
We feel from our bodies, and we know very well how to counter this. But Serge Benhayon teaches that we can choose to not counter it and let go of the contraction we choose early in life to not feel what we get reflected from our parents, who chose the same. It is about letting in the love that we innately know.
When you spoke about emotions being on the surface and feelings being deeper that makes total sense. I always saw emotions as the reactions to the feelings, which of course they usually are, but the 3D visual is great to understand it on many different levels. We are love and love cannot be on the surface level, it is not just 2D or 3D it is every D. Kids know it, so it is worth considering … re-connecting with that space inside us might just be the amazing coming home we have been searching for.
“I realised there was much much more to this world than we currently are allowing ourselves to know.” Josh, this brief statement speaks volumes. Serge Benhayon makes sense of it all and shines a light on the purpose of life and the understanding that everything is energy.
What you share is so true Josh, ‘you certainly can feel much more than emotions’. I also totally agree, our emotions are much more superficial and usually occur as a reaction to something we have pictured in our mind that got smashed or expectation we had that did not occur. In comparison what we feel is much more deeper than this as our feelings bring far more simplicity, clarity and understanding to the narrow pictures our emotions only see.
“….These qualities can be lovelessness or love (prana or fire). When I realised this for myself I realised there was much much more to this world than we currently are allowing ourselves to know.” So true and so simply and beautifully expressed. Children feel this and know it, but are so often surrounded by the lovelessness, that they move away from the truth that they are inherently born with.
Thank you Joshua for explaining so aptly what feeling is and how as children we all lived quite naturally by feeling/sensing the world.
“This was not because I had to believe it or try to live a life by idolising the way he lives his, but rather because I could actually feel deep within me that what he said was also a truth for me.” You say that you don’t have a super amazing story to tell about Serge Benhayon, but what you share here is the simplest example you can bring. When we hear truth we can feel it in our bodies and know deep inside that it is our truth too.
It is quite a shock to realise that the way most people live is devoid of love. It is a shock to wake up to the fact that what we thought was love pales when we know that true love has no emotion in it whatsoever. But once realised and freed from this veil of unknowing, it is the most beautiful thing to know love and to know we are made of this and are from this. That God is love, makes so much more sense to me now than it did before when I thought I knew love but had no notion of the vastness and depth of true love.
The class of love is to never teach you what you are not but to show you once more everything that you are.
‘I could walk into a house and not have to know the people in it, but I could FEEL THEM’. It’s the same when we walk into an unfamiliar office building. We can feel the organisational culture of the place instantly – and that culture is itself merely the whole of the sum of the individual parts – the employees – and how they collectively feel. One welcome mat soup of aggregate feelings.
HA! “Love is an energy. If all is energy, then everything must be because of energy. The problem is, science already knows this but chooses to make it a point of study rather than a truth they live in their everyday lives.” What a point!! There is this truth we discovered, ‘Everything is Energy and because of this, all is because of Energy’ – And we study it, instead of living it. But that is an illusion as well, that we study it. A true study can not be less then living it.
Josh, your blog got me wondering at what age I was when I first learnt to shut down what I could feel and go along with the flow of the environment I lived in. My mother found it challenging to keep track of where I was as a young child because I would often leave the yard and go off on my own. I am wondering now if this was part natural curiosity to explore but also part to escape the pressure I was feeling from shutting down my light and not expressing what I could feel. Later on I was a bit of a black sheep whereby I would make some very direct comments to people. Yet there was no tenderness in how I was speaking and it was more about enjoying the shock value of saying something aloud that others were avoiding like the plague. It was like I was feeling the energy but not knowing what I was feeling or how to handle it so I would just blurt it out with no discernment. It is just making me realise how sensitive I have been all my life.
Gorgeous reflections Helen – and this shows how attuned you have been to knowing that things do not sit right in our world. Knowing deep within that what you saw around you was not from the love that you are within and it was your way of trying to show it and yet today your connection itself speaks louder than any words.
Helen I can so relate to what you are sharing and looking back I was very sensitive and shut myself down to avoid the feelings of being so sensitive, not realising of course that to harden or to shut down to the world is very damaging to our bodies as it affects the vascular system which can lead to all sorts of health problems later in life.