The Plowboy Interview: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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PLOWBOY: In the "Life, Death, and Transition" workshop I attended, you helped people to deal with their grief work, to learn to forgive themselves. Could you explain what, for you, the overall purpose of those workshops is?

The only way to heal this world is to heal yourself.

KÜBLER-ROSS: I am trying now to show people how to diagnose the Hiders inside them and to become, symbolically speaking, Mother Theresas ... so that they can live fully and pass love, instead of negativity, down to their children.

Healthy people, you see, don't react they act. They're in control of their lives. But if you spend your whole life reacting to others, you never live your own life. You become a cripple. The fastest, easiest way to become emotionally healthy is to diagnose your own unfinished business, to admit the existence of those negative feelings that block you from acting in positive, constructive ways.

PLOWBOY: Are there other negative feelings besides what you call grief work?

KÜBLER-ROSS: As I see it, there are five natural emotions ... and each one has a negative, unnatural counterpart. The first basic positive emotion is fear ... which is a gift from God that helps preserve our lives. However, I believe that the only two natural ones are fear of failing and fear of loud noises. All the rest—including concern about what your neighbors think of you, being scared of your boss, and other phobias—are unnatural. They only drain your energy and lead to ill health.

PLOWBOY: How can a person get rid of such unnatural fears?

KÜBLER-ROSS: Scream. If you live in the country, go out in the forest. If you live in an apartment in New York City, get in your car, close the windows, drive down the highway ... and scream at the top of your voice. When you do that, you can get in touch again with all the horrors you've repressed. It will feel really good, and provide you with relief.

Grief, the second natural emotion, is also a God-given gift, and it helps us deal with all the thousand little deaths in life. And tears are the blessing that helps us get rid of grief. The unnatural corollary to grief is, of course, guilt ... and I've already mentioned some ways to deal with that.

The third natural emotion is anger. This, too, is a God-given gift. It's my opinion, though, that natural anger lasts only 15 seconds. Whenever you're mad for longer than that, it's because you're full of leftover, unfinished anger from something else. If you don't get rid of that, you will end up becoming a bucket full of rage, hate, and lust for revenge, and you'll eventually get very sick.

PLOWBOY: How do you get rid of anger or repressed rage?

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