Late one evening after a day in which negative news dominated the media, psychiatrist Judith Orloff took to the airwaves on a radio call-in program. The economy was on every listener's mind. Many people are struggling with their emotions now says Orloff. “We live in a world permeated with fear and negativity. …What we have to do to achieve emotional freedom is to turn our attention to what is more positive and not get sucked up into the vortex of negativity.”

In an interview with Unity Magazine, Orloff reflected on calls she fielded. “I believe that our society is in the midst of an emotional meltdown,” she said. “People are restless, volatile and their tempers are about to blow. In the past year, Prozac has been prescribed for over 30 million people.”

Orloff, once called a “serene maverick” by USA Today, is convinced there is a better way to happiness. “I wrote Emotional Freedom because we deserve relief,” she said. “I want to offer new solutions for dealing with emotions because conventional coping mechanisms just aren't holding up in our hyper-tense world. It's madness that we've come to tolerate chronic anxiety or depression as normal.”

Orloff is a pioneer in the field of energy psychiatry—a discipline that blends the traditional psychiatric understanding of emotions with a spiritual, subtle, energetic, and intuitive perspective. “When a patient comes to me for depression, I will always help them find the spiritual meaning of the experience and how to transform depression with hope. Emotional freedom involves connecting with a sense of spirit, however you define it, and tapping into that powerful energy to find hope. We can't do it with our intellects alone.”

In her book Emotional Freedom, Orloff outlines specific steps that lead to the achievement of emotional freedom:

Identify the emotion
“When you deal with an emotion, you have to identify it and say, ‘This is what I'm feeling.' It might be ‘I'm afraid I'll never be a success' or ‘I'm afraid I'm going to be ill the rest of my life.' Get to the very bottom of the fear. Don't airbrush it. Do not attempt to get to a higher place with the emotion until you've leveled with yourself about how you're actually feeling.”

Talk about it
Share that emotion with a supportive person. “Say ‘This is how I feel' so you can get that energy out. Then you have to look at whatever emotion that is and ask yourself, How can I rise above this emotion so that I can develop courage?”

Investigate your fears
Emotions are a path to spiritual awakening. “You have to identify where the fears originate in order to get past them. Fears can go back as far as childhood. Then you have to ask yourself what emotions set off the fear.”

Develop spiritual courage
The final step in the process is to ask, What change can I make in my attitude to be freer? “This is your opportunity to do something differently. The greatest spiritual challenge we face is developing spiritual courage. You have to reframe every adversity as a spiritual challenge. There is always a reason for everything, and I believe that Spirit has given us this thing called emotions in order to help our soul grow, and in order for our soul to grow, we must go through some very disturbing things.”

Dr. Orloff will appear at Unity Village on April 3, 2009.

Judith Orloff, M.D., will be appearing at a number of Unity churches this spring as part of her Emotional Freedom book tour. She says every part of her methodology is in sync with Unity principles. “What attracts me is the powerful love, compassion and conscience that Unity has for every living being in the world and the selfless commitment to pray for others without receiving anything in return. The love and the honoring of intuition and spirit that Unity has is one of the great lights of the world.” For more information and inspiration, visit www.drjudithorloff.com.

This article is excerpted from the March/April 2009 issue of Unity Magazine.