Chapter 12: Emotional Alchemy

You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. – The Rolling Stones

If left unchecked, our survival instincts are strong enough to run amok and destroy our society. This is why humans have developed laws, regulations, police forces, and armies—yet these powerful instincts are a permanent part of us. They are not going anywhere, and suppressing them never works for long. In Authentic Relating, we allow the full power of these instincts to be expressed, without letting them take over and wreak havoc in our relationships.

Balancing these mighty forces can create a tremendous source of vitality in our life. This skill is far from easy, and yet necessary to develop in our journey into maturity. 

We all have experienced moments when we chose not to speak up, even when our intuition whispered, “This isn’t right.” We simply were not clear or courageous enough to speak the truth. This doesn’t make us inauthentic—it makes us human. Emotional Alchemy is the opposite of the suppression or repression of our experience. With training, we can instead dig into our truth in those moments, and bring that truth to light with the people we care about. We can choose to express instead of suppress. This opens a process of vital digestion and metabolization of our experience, and the result is more available emotional energy. 

 Alchemy Principles

Alchemy is the ancient study of turning lead into gold. In Emotional Alchemy, we are doing the difficult yet sacred work of transforming a “withhold” into an opportunity. Withholds are all the things we don’t share with others—out of fear, resistance, judgment, or avoidance of potential emotional backlash—but that could have some value if we had the courage to express them. When we withhold, we are effectively repressing our true selves, in a misguided attempt to maintain ease in a relationship. 

Unfortunately, this rarely works. Repression leads to a buildup of dissonance and tension, which, over time, only damage our bodies and minds. With the five steps of Emotional Alchemy, we return that energy to a more harmonious state by releasing the withheld communication. It’s the final tool we will cover, because it is a culmination of everything we have learned throughout this journey. 

Think of a time you experienced the relief of telling the truth. Telling the truth just feels good—and that feeling of relief is the transformation of stagnant into useful and usable energy. Learning to do this in real-time is one of the most powerful skills you can master. Just as alchemists transform metal into gold, we can learn to transform conflict into love. When we willingly embrace every energy, emotion, and experience as the precious material that it is, there’s no limit to the depths of connection we can create.