July 6, 2025 • 14 mins
In this week's Mojo Monday, Carly Taylor discusses key principles of the Japanese therapeutic approach called Morita Therapy to help manage difficult emotions. She emphasises the importance of shifting away from trying to control emotions and thoughts through sheer will, introducing concepts like 'Toraware' (mental preoccupation) and 'Arugmama' (allowing oneself to feel without judgment). By depicting how over-focusing on negative feelings amplifies suffering and how 'acceptance' and purposeful action can lead to emotional freedom, Carly offers valuable strategies for integrating these therapeutic principles into daily life, ultimately helping listeners flow like a river around their emotional obstacles.
00:00 Introduction to Mojo Monday
00:13 Understanding Emotional Control
01:45 Introduction to Morita Therapy
02:02 The Concept of Toraware
03:21 The Cycle of Suffering
04:30 The Gap Between Ideal and Reality
06:13 Avoidance Strategies
07:56 Embracing Arugamama: A New Perspective
10:53 Personal Reflections and Metaphors
13:07 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Everyone, It's Carlie Taylor here for this week's Mojoe Monday.
So today we're going to talk through some principles of
Marita therapy that I consider hugely important when we are
managing our difficult and painful emotions on a daily basis.
So you and I are very aware that when we
feel intense emotions such as anxiety, fear, nervousness, or when
(00:35):
we're overthinking and our thoughts seem to envelop us to
a point where we feel out of control, the natural
thing to do is try and take control. We want
to be able to be the chief and take control
of our emotions and thoughts and ensure they follow our
instructions so we can stop feeling this way and stop
thinking this way and get on with our lives. So
(00:57):
how often do we think, if only I didn't feel
this way, I would be happy, or I would go
and do all the things that I want to do.
But it's these thoughts, on these feelings that are stopping me.
But what we can do is take a different perspective
on this, a different approach. So rather than the control
approach or the control agenda, we can take a step
(01:20):
back and view ourselves from a different perspective, we can
understand ourselves better and we can take control of what
we can control. And in this process, our thoughts and
emotions can be influenced. But the agenda to control our
emotions through sheer will is counterproductive because often they get
(01:40):
worse the more we try, and that is exhausting. So
I'm going to talk about Marita therapy, and if you
are a first time listener, Marita therapy is an approach
that comes from Japan, and I'm a trained Marita therapist
and I talk a lot about Marita therapy in the
context of day to day shear human emotional challenges. And
(02:02):
I want to talk about a principle that Marita called
toroware and it translates to or he translated it to
It has been translated to mental preoccupation. But I also
looked it up and the candy symbols mean prisoner or
to be shackled by and I thought, wow, how relevant
(02:23):
is that? Because how often do we feel like we're
a prisoner of our own emotions or we feel like
we're literally shackled by our thoughts and we can't escape.
And I think that when we feel like this, we
can use the term toroware to describe our state of
mind and our state of body. So when I feel
(02:44):
like this, I'm in a state of to I don't
know about you, but I relate to that more than
using terms or language like overthinking or anxiety or my anxiety.
And I really like the word state because it implies
that it is in this moment, but it's also temporary.
(03:05):
So according to Marita, there are a couple of things
that happen when we are in this state of toro worry,
and as I go through this, relate it to your
own experience and see if it's something that you connect to.
One is that we get into this loop that makes
us feel worse. So we pay too much attention to
(03:27):
symptoms like anxiety or fear or pain, and our mind
jumps ahead with fearful thoughts about what might happen next.
And the more you focus on the discomfort, the worse
it feels, and then that confirms your fears, so you
pay even more attention to it, and then the cycle
keeps going. So this loop is what Marita described as
(03:48):
the cycle we're paying too much attention to how we
feel actually amplifies the suffering. So think of it like this.
I feel anxious. I then focus on the anxiety, and
then I start worrying that it's going to get worse,
and then it does feel worse, and then I feel
more anxious. And you can imagine this in one of
those circular diagrams. And what this does is it keeps
(04:12):
the symptoms alive, not because of the perceived problem, not
because the problem is getting worse, but because your mind
is feeding the pain or the anxiety that's causing this.
The second part of torawero is this, there is often
a gap between how you think life should be and
(04:34):
how it actually is. There's this inner tension between how
you feel when your expectations don't meet mat reality. And
I catch myself doing this all the time, and I
think that's important because it's very natural that we feel
like this. It's very natural that we have this ideal
(04:55):
that how we would like things to be. But the
important thing is that we're aware of it, and we
are aware of the effect that's having on our well being. So,
for example, things like I should be over this by now,
I shouldn't feel this way, my life should feel different,
you know. An example, just a daily example, is that
(05:15):
if you are in a hurry and you get stuck
behind a slow driver. I mean, there's definitely a gap
between the ideal over how you would like things to
be and the reality of the situation. And the thing
is is these beliefs can be really sticky, and they
can create this emotional tension. We suffer not just from
(05:37):
what is, but also from what isn't. It's from this
gap between our ideal and the reality. And this is
what they call shiz or no mujon. It's the internal
contradiction between how we think things should be and how
they actually are. And these kinds of thoughts can create
(05:57):
so much suffering. They argue with the truth of what
is happening, and then instead of helping you change, they
pull you into this self defeating state of frustration or
self criticism or hopelessness or blame. And then what tends
to happen is we go into avoidance mode. So we
try and fix or control how we feel by avoidance
(06:21):
strategies like drinking, scrolling on social media to numb the feeling.
Maybe we avoid social situations, or maybe we try and
just reassure ourselves that everything is okay and that we
are okay, and these efforts to fix or control it
inner world are what is called hakarai. So how all
(06:46):
this work that we put into managing or manipulating our feelings.
It usually backfires, especially in the long term. Sometimes it
works in the short term, but long term it usually
everything just comes up again. You know. They keep us
stuck in this same painful loop, feeding the very distress
that we're trying to escape. So let me give you
(07:08):
an example to pull this all together. So let's say
someone gets turned down for a job. They feel sad,
which is understandable. It's very disappointing if your dream job
you suddenly get to the you know, maybe the top
three candidates, and you get rejected. So they start to
focus too much on their sadness and they think, well,
(07:31):
I should be happy, I shouldn't feel like this, and
so they start searching for quick fixes or distractions to
make themselves feel better, but nothing works, and then the
sadness grows, and then they start believing something's wrong with them.
So this is tora ware, being trapped in a state
of mental preoccupation and suffering. So what is the solution?
(07:52):
I hear you ask, well, in my reader, therapy. There
is a beautiful term that some of you heard before
because Paul and I talk about it all the time,
and that is a term called arrogamama. And this describes
a different state where you allow yourself to feel your
(08:12):
internal experience, your emotions, your thoughts, your sensations, your memories,
all the internal stuff without needing to fight them or
change them or make them mean something about who you are.
And it's not really a technique or a strategy. It's
not a mindset like acceptance, where the opposite might be
(08:36):
non acceptance. Instead, arrogamama is more like a way of
being where you walk alongside your emotional that emotional part
of you, without adding layers of judgment or control or
resistance while you live a purpose driven life. So let's
say you're sad in arrogamama. The sadness is there, but
(09:01):
you don't deny it, you don't obsess over it, you
don't try and get rid of it or make it
mean something is wrong with you. You're not doing anything
to the sadness. You're just letting it be a part
of the landscape of what makes you you in that
moment while you keep living your life. So there's an
(09:22):
action part to it. So over time this way of being,
it softens the grip of your internal world that this
internal world has on you, not by fixing or suppressing anything,
but by restoring your ability to live with a full
range of human emotions and a full range of human experience.
(09:43):
So you're not waiting to feel better before you move,
before you take action. You're acting in spite of it.
So this is very different from resisting or denying or
over analyzing how you feel. It's the opposite of being
caught in torore, which is the stuck state where we
(10:04):
fix sate on how we feel and we try to
control it and spiral into more suffering. So do you
know what I love about this is it changes our
perspective of our inner experience. You know, we live in
a culture that fixates on feelings. We talk about my
anxiety or like it's part of our identity, and we're
(10:28):
flooded with content about how to manage your master our emotions.
But Marita flips that on its head. It says, let
your emotions be, shift your attention to what needs doing.
Focus on your feet, not your feelings. So focus on
moving on doing, not your feelings, and this has been
(10:52):
a game changer for me. This is like, I am
somebody who has spent years in a constant state of
toro ware, and I also spent years searching for solutions,
searching for answers to be able to control my emotions
and control my thoughts. And when I was introduced to
Marita therapy, it was like a lightbulb moment for me,
(11:15):
and it was a huge relief that I could just
stop struggling. But in saying that, it's not easy either.
But what it is, what it means is that even
when these emotions and thoughts show up, which for me
they do, they keep showing up. I've changed my relationship
(11:36):
with them and they don't stop me. Now. They don't
stop me from challenging myself. They don't stop me from
taking risks, they don't stop me from finding joy in living.
So it's been a massive game changer for me personally.
And there's a beautiful metaphor that the Japanese often refer to,
(11:59):
and I really hope my interpretation does it justice. So
we are like a river continually flowing, and when an
obstacle comes along that's in the way of the flow.
The water doesn't stop or try and remove the obstacle.
It flows around it, over it, through it, and by
continually flowing the path of the river forever changes. It
(12:22):
carves out new paths. And if the water is caught
and becomes stagnant, what happens. It becomes murky, it gets
filled with mosquitoes, and it starts to get stale. So
compare this to our lives. If we stop because we're challenged,
if we stop because of how we feel, we can
become stagnant. If we can keep moving forward whatever that
(12:47):
is in your capacity, you will carve out new paths
and you will keep moving in the direction of the
life you want. So rogamama allows life to flow. We
can choose to focus our life force, our energy towards
what matters, even when emotions are heavy. So if you
(13:08):
are feeling stuck this week, if you are entangled up
in these thoughts and emotions, if you are exhausted, try this.
Don't try and fix it, don't try to outthink it,
don't give into it either. Ask yourself with things as
they are, what needs doing right now. Then go and
(13:29):
do that with your emotions in to let them be
the rock in the river that you flow through because
you are not your anxiety, you are not your sadness.
You are a river, and that's what you need to do.
You need to keep flowing. So I hope that has
(13:49):
been valuable. I'm very passionate about this stuff. It has
been hugely valuable for me and for my clients, and
I do hope that this episode has been valuable for
you too. So have a great week everyone, and I'll
catch you next week. See you
Everyone, It's Carlie Taylor here for this week's Mojoe Monday.
So today we're going to talk through some principles of
Marita therapy that I consider hugely important when we are
managing our difficult and painful emotions on a daily basis.
So you and I are very aware that when we
feel intense emotions such as anxiety, fear, nervousness, or when
(00:35):
we're overthinking and our thoughts seem to envelop us to
a point where we feel out of control, the natural
thing to do is try and take control. We want
to be able to be the chief and take control
of our emotions and thoughts and ensure they follow our
instructions so we can stop feeling this way and stop
thinking this way and get on with our lives. So
(00:57):
how often do we think, if only I didn't feel
this way, I would be happy, or I would go
and do all the things that I want to do.
But it's these thoughts, on these feelings that are stopping me.
But what we can do is take a different perspective
on this, a different approach. So rather than the control
approach or the control agenda, we can take a step
(01:20):
back and view ourselves from a different perspective, we can
understand ourselves better and we can take control of what
we can control. And in this process, our thoughts and
emotions can be influenced. But the agenda to control our
emotions through sheer will is counterproductive because often they get
(01:40):
worse the more we try, and that is exhausting. So
I'm going to talk about Marita therapy, and if you
are a first time listener, Marita therapy is an approach
that comes from Japan, and I'm a trained Marita therapist
and I talk a lot about Marita therapy in the
context of day to day shear human emotional challenges. And
(02:02):
I want to talk about a principle that Marita called
toroware and it translates to or he translated it to
It has been translated to mental preoccupation. But I also
looked it up and the candy symbols mean prisoner or
to be shackled by and I thought, wow, how relevant
(02:23):
is that? Because how often do we feel like we're
a prisoner of our own emotions or we feel like
we're literally shackled by our thoughts and we can't escape.
And I think that when we feel like this, we
can use the term toroware to describe our state of
mind and our state of body. So when I feel
(02:44):
like this, I'm in a state of to I don't
know about you, but I relate to that more than
using terms or language like overthinking or anxiety or my anxiety.
And I really like the word state because it implies
that it is in this moment, but it's also temporary.
(03:05):
So according to Marita, there are a couple of things
that happen when we are in this state of toro worry,
and as I go through this, relate it to your
own experience and see if it's something that you connect to.
One is that we get into this loop that makes
us feel worse. So we pay too much attention to
(03:27):
symptoms like anxiety or fear or pain, and our mind
jumps ahead with fearful thoughts about what might happen next.
And the more you focus on the discomfort, the worse
it feels, and then that confirms your fears, so you
pay even more attention to it, and then the cycle
keeps going. So this loop is what Marita described as
(03:48):
the cycle we're paying too much attention to how we
feel actually amplifies the suffering. So think of it like this.
I feel anxious. I then focus on the anxiety, and
then I start worrying that it's going to get worse,
and then it does feel worse, and then I feel
more anxious. And you can imagine this in one of
those circular diagrams. And what this does is it keeps
(04:12):
the symptoms alive, not because of the perceived problem, not
because the problem is getting worse, but because your mind
is feeding the pain or the anxiety that's causing this.
The second part of torawero is this, there is often
a gap between how you think life should be and
(04:34):
how it actually is. There's this inner tension between how
you feel when your expectations don't meet mat reality. And
I catch myself doing this all the time, and I
think that's important because it's very natural that we feel
like this. It's very natural that we have this ideal
(04:55):
that how we would like things to be. But the
important thing is that we're aware of it, and we
are aware of the effect that's having on our well being. So,
for example, things like I should be over this by now,
I shouldn't feel this way, my life should feel different,
you know. An example, just a daily example, is that
(05:15):
if you are in a hurry and you get stuck
behind a slow driver. I mean, there's definitely a gap
between the ideal over how you would like things to
be and the reality of the situation. And the thing
is is these beliefs can be really sticky, and they
can create this emotional tension. We suffer not just from
(05:37):
what is, but also from what isn't. It's from this
gap between our ideal and the reality. And this is
what they call shiz or no mujon. It's the internal
contradiction between how we think things should be and how
they actually are. And these kinds of thoughts can create
(05:57):
so much suffering. They argue with the truth of what
is happening, and then instead of helping you change, they
pull you into this self defeating state of frustration or
self criticism or hopelessness or blame. And then what tends
to happen is we go into avoidance mode. So we
try and fix or control how we feel by avoidance
(06:21):
strategies like drinking, scrolling on social media to numb the feeling.
Maybe we avoid social situations, or maybe we try and
just reassure ourselves that everything is okay and that we
are okay, and these efforts to fix or control it
inner world are what is called hakarai. So how all
(06:46):
this work that we put into managing or manipulating our feelings.
It usually backfires, especially in the long term. Sometimes it
works in the short term, but long term it usually
everything just comes up again. You know. They keep us
stuck in this same painful loop, feeding the very distress
that we're trying to escape. So let me give you
(07:08):
an example to pull this all together. So let's say
someone gets turned down for a job. They feel sad,
which is understandable. It's very disappointing if your dream job
you suddenly get to the you know, maybe the top
three candidates, and you get rejected. So they start to
focus too much on their sadness and they think, well,
(07:31):
I should be happy, I shouldn't feel like this, and
so they start searching for quick fixes or distractions to
make themselves feel better, but nothing works, and then the
sadness grows, and then they start believing something's wrong with them.
So this is tora ware, being trapped in a state
of mental preoccupation and suffering. So what is the solution?
(07:52):
I hear you ask, well, in my reader, therapy. There
is a beautiful term that some of you heard before
because Paul and I talk about it all the time,
and that is a term called arrogamama. And this describes
a different state where you allow yourself to feel your
(08:12):
internal experience, your emotions, your thoughts, your sensations, your memories,
all the internal stuff without needing to fight them or
change them or make them mean something about who you are.
And it's not really a technique or a strategy. It's
not a mindset like acceptance, where the opposite might be
(08:36):
non acceptance. Instead, arrogamama is more like a way of
being where you walk alongside your emotional that emotional part
of you, without adding layers of judgment or control or
resistance while you live a purpose driven life. So let's
say you're sad in arrogamama. The sadness is there, but
(09:01):
you don't deny it, you don't obsess over it, you
don't try and get rid of it or make it
mean something is wrong with you. You're not doing anything
to the sadness. You're just letting it be a part
of the landscape of what makes you you in that
moment while you keep living your life. So there's an
(09:22):
action part to it. So over time this way of being,
it softens the grip of your internal world that this
internal world has on you, not by fixing or suppressing anything,
but by restoring your ability to live with a full
range of human emotions and a full range of human experience.
(09:43):
So you're not waiting to feel better before you move,
before you take action. You're acting in spite of it.
So this is very different from resisting or denying or
over analyzing how you feel. It's the opposite of being
caught in torore, which is the stuck state where we
(10:04):
fix sate on how we feel and we try to
control it and spiral into more suffering. So do you
know what I love about this is it changes our
perspective of our inner experience. You know, we live in
a culture that fixates on feelings. We talk about my
anxiety or like it's part of our identity, and we're
(10:28):
flooded with content about how to manage your master our emotions.
But Marita flips that on its head. It says, let
your emotions be, shift your attention to what needs doing.
Focus on your feet, not your feelings. So focus on
moving on doing, not your feelings, and this has been
(10:52):
a game changer for me. This is like, I am
somebody who has spent years in a constant state of
toro ware, and I also spent years searching for solutions,
searching for answers to be able to control my emotions
and control my thoughts. And when I was introduced to
Marita therapy, it was like a lightbulb moment for me,
(11:15):
and it was a huge relief that I could just
stop struggling. But in saying that, it's not easy either.
But what it is, what it means is that even
when these emotions and thoughts show up, which for me
they do, they keep showing up. I've changed my relationship
(11:36):
with them and they don't stop me. Now. They don't
stop me from challenging myself. They don't stop me from
taking risks, they don't stop me from finding joy in living.
So it's been a massive game changer for me personally.
And there's a beautiful metaphor that the Japanese often refer to,
(11:59):
and I really hope my interpretation does it justice. So
we are like a river continually flowing, and when an
obstacle comes along that's in the way of the flow.
The water doesn't stop or try and remove the obstacle.
It flows around it, over it, through it, and by
continually flowing the path of the river forever changes. It
(12:22):
carves out new paths. And if the water is caught
and becomes stagnant, what happens. It becomes murky, it gets
filled with mosquitoes, and it starts to get stale. So
compare this to our lives. If we stop because we're challenged,
if we stop because of how we feel, we can
become stagnant. If we can keep moving forward whatever that
(12:47):
is in your capacity, you will carve out new paths
and you will keep moving in the direction of the
life you want. So rogamama allows life to flow. We
can choose to focus our life force, our energy towards
what matters, even when emotions are heavy. So if you
(13:08):
are feeling stuck this week, if you are entangled up
in these thoughts and emotions, if you are exhausted, try this.
Don't try and fix it, don't try to outthink it,
don't give into it either. Ask yourself with things as
they are, what needs doing right now. Then go and
(13:29):
do that with your emotions in to let them be
the rock in the river that you flow through because
you are not your anxiety, you are not your sadness.
You are a river, and that's what you need to do.
You need to keep flowing. So I hope that has
(13:49):
been valuable. I'm very passionate about this stuff. It has
been hugely valuable for me and for my clients, and
I do hope that this episode has been valuable for
you too. So have a great week everyone, and I'll
catch you next week. See you
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