Some types of psychotherapy operate under the assumption that the therapist and client form a relationship that mimics how the client relates to all others in his or her real world.
Yet that theory makes no sense. The therapy situation does not represent an equal terms relationship. Instead the therapist sits in the seat of power while the client, consciously or unconsciously, yields to the “wisdom” of the therapist’s experiences.
Hmm.
No two people experience life the same way.
One hundred people watching an event interpret it one hundred ways and tell you one hundred different versions of what happened. Not a single accounting of the event reflects reality. Each person creates his or her own reality according to how he or she filters incoming stimuli.
In the therapy relationship the message sent by the therapist or client may not even resemble the message received by the other party. Result? The likelihood of misinterpretation and the resulting misinformation hamper progress.
Yet the therapist imagines the client interacts with others the same way he or she interacts in the session. Frankly, most people put on different faces depending upon who they find themselves with and what circumstances put them together.
Most people want the approval of others so they act in ways to accomplish that end.
Clients want therapists to fix them. Many therapists believe they know how to remedy what’s wrong in the lives of their clients. They follow through with what they believe to be healthy choices of action telling their clients, or at least suggesting, what steps to take.
Obedient, people-pleasing clients take direction for two reasons: they do not want to think for themselves OR they do not want to take responsibility for how their lives turn out knowing if they continue to be unhappy they can blame the therapist who told them how and what to do.
Therapists are people learning how to live their own lives. They cannot possibly know what is best for anybody else.
Psychotherapy appears to fill many needs for individuals. Does it really accomplish that end?
Your path is just that – your path.
When you seek advice from someone else you surrender your choice to follow decisions made by someone who cannot possibly know what is in your highest and best interest.
Talking with someone, even a great listener, does help – but not in the way most people think. In fact, most people who seek the aid of psychotherapy seek answers.
They want the psychotherapist to fix them, to tell them what to do or what not to do so they can relieve the pressure and pain under which they see themselves functioning.
Notice I said the pressure and pain they see or interpret as painful.
Unfortunately most therapists work under the illusion they know what is best for the client.
After all they studied their craft and worked with many individuals. Often those clients completed their therapy sessions remarking how great they felt and moved on with their lives.
Ah, but did they really? Or did they wind up substituting one form of dissatisfaction for another? They did unless they exposed the root cause, the bottom line that placed them in the vulnerable position in the first place.
Unrevealed causes present as health issues and injuries. They show up in emotions that seem unconnected to the reason for which they originally sought talk therapy.
How then can talk therapy help?
When people write down their thoughts (especially when they write from their right brain, unencumbered by left brain “reason and logic”) they discover what they had no clue existed within.
When a person shares those thoughts aloud their impact becomes even more profound.
Rather than inappropriately burden a friend when you go through emotional upheavals in your life go talk with a professional who truly knows how to listen. Avoid anyone who thinks you came for answers.
You have your own accurate answers. You just need help recognizing how they appear in your world.
Psychotherapy fails to clear the programs in the subconscious mind, the ones the client will never access by talking or even through hypnosis. It doesn’t really resolve problems.
What?
Sure, you will definitely find some events that you interpreted as hurtful or painful when you search for them either on your own or with the guidance of a skilled therapist. However, you will not find the basic cause that sparked the emotional blocks, those that keep you stuck in life.
When I worked in the field I saw people meeting (are you ready for this) weekly with their therapists for seven years. Yet no one could detect any progress – any discernible progress toward bringing those people into the present moment free of past experiences.
Whatever you focus on expands. More importantly, your mind interprets what you think and feel as the actual living of that experience.
Hmm. So what does that mean?
When you look for what is wrong with you or what is missing from your life you shift away from the present, the only time that truly exists and the only moment in which you can act.
Nothing is wrong in the present moment. What is off kilter happened in the past.
You may project your past into your future causing fear. Yet you can only make fear happen by going into your past, again away from the here and now, and deciding the circumstance that hurt you before will re-occur.
Guess what. When you focus on what you fear you will cause an event to happen that will leave you feeling the same as the one you retrieved from your past. Ta da! Congratulations. You get to stay stuck in your own prison.
Loving yourself first is not selfish It’s mandatory. No one will ever look out for #1 the way only you can.
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Many psychotherapists describe their clients as innocent victims of a chemical imbalances, something beyond the control of the client. They tell you that depression, bipolar disorder and most aberrant behaviors cannot be helped and are best treated with drugs.
Not true.
How then, do those professionals explain the fact that people who exhibit multiple personalities change their physiology as they change from one personality to another?
Documented cases reveal a client having diabetes when living as personality A yet normal blood sugar while living as personality B. Personality C may break out in hives while eating a certain food yet a switch to personality D instantly eliminates the itchy bumps.
Body chemistry is not the cause of the seeming personality disorder. What the person thinks and how he or she feels and acts determine the body’s chemistry.
Indeed, as the saying goes, “You are not what you think you are. But what you think – you are.”
Your thoughts create your world. Each individual, therefore, is solely responsible for his mental health. There are no innocent victims – ever.
People who choose to abdicate responsibility for how they live in each moment run self-limiting negative thoughts, often completely outside their awareness, all day long.
Those negative thoughts lower their frequency of vibrations. They find themselves attracting what they do not want in their lives because they can only attract other low vibration people, things and circumstances that vibrate in harmony with them.
Negative thoughts lead to a loss of well being that leads to chemical imbalances. How convenient is that? What a great escape from reality!
Such people, seeking labels that “justify” their lack of productivity or happiness or success, visit psychotherapists and psychiatrists who gladly perpetuate the myth that chemical imbalances cause mental illness.