Does Psychotherapy Work?

by: Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Many years ago, when I became a psychotherapist, all I knew was the traditional psychotherapy that I had learned in school, and that I had personally experienced with many different therapists and many different forms of therapy. For 18 years I practiced what I had learned, and I was never happy with the results.

I saw that people often felt better for the moment, or resolved a particular issue, but that when new issues came up, they didn’t have a process for dealing with them. In all the years of my own therapy, I had never learned a process either – a process for loving myself and taking 100% responsibility for my own feelings and needs. In fact, taking responsibility for my feelings was never a part of any of the therapies I had experienced. I had learned to express my feelings – which often turned out to be a form of control – but not how I was creating my own feelings of anxiety, depression, anger, hurt, guilt and shame.

I no longer practice traditional psychotherapy because, in my experience, it doesn’t work. For the past 23 years I have worked with clients with the Inner Bonding process. In fact, I have many psychotherapists in my practice learning this process, because they are discouraged with the results of traditional psychotherapy in their work and in their own lives.

WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T WORK

Psychotherapy Research (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, does psychotherapy work? It does if what you are learning about is how to connect with your own feelings and take responsibility for them; how to discover the false beliefs that are creating your painful feelings; and how to connect with a personal source of spiritual Guidance that teaches you the truth and the loving action toward yourself. It works when you are willing to learn to take loving action in your own behalf and share your love with others. It works when you are willing to stop blaming the past, your parents, your partner, society, events, or God for your suffering and learn that you are the cause of your own suffering. It works when you are willing to stop seeing yourself as a victim of others and circumstances and learn to be loving to yourself.

What does not work is spending years analyzing the past. While the past shaped our beliefs, and it is important to understand where we learned what we learned, dwelling on it is a waste of time. In my experience, if we stay current with discovering the false beliefs that cause our painful feelings, the past will become illuminated. When we realize, for example, that we spend much time and energy judging ourselves, it is easy to go into the past to see where we learned this. Did one or both of your parents judge you? Did they judge themselves? What was the role modeling you grew up with? Did either of your parents take responsibility for their feelings, or were they victims, blaming each other or you or others for their misery? It is not hard to learn about the past when we are willing to examine our current choices and behavior toward ourselves and others.

YOUR SPIRITUAL CONNECTION

Psychotherapy that does not include developing a spiritual connection does not work. Our spiritual connection is the Source we need to turn to for wisdom and comfort. In order to deal lovingly with the challenges of life, we need to know that we are not alone, and that we always have our higher Guidance to turn to for the truth and loving action toward ourselves and others.

True healing is about learning how to take full, 100% responsibility for our own feelings and needs. It is about moving out of self-abandonment and emotional dependency and into emotional freedom. When you find a therapist, facilitator or coach who helps you to do this, then you will find great benefit.

Source

Related articles

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• Mitchell Tsai: Psychotherapy’s Image Problem Pushes Some Therapists to Become ‘Brands’ [Lori Gottlieb, New York Times - 11/23/12]


• Putting the Psycho in Psychotherapy: Shrunk, a Satirical Novel about…


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The post Does Psychotherapy Work? appeared first on Robert JR Graham.

What is Emotional Freedom?

by: Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

My definition of emotional freedom is being free from feeling like a victim of and controlled by our emotions. We are emotionally free when we know how to learn from and manage our feelings so that we are not reactive to them and they don’t control us.

HOW DO WE ATTAIN EMOTIONAL FREEDOM?

Emotional freedom is the result of learning how to take emotional responsibility, i.e., responsibility for our feelings.

What does this mean and how do we do it?

There are two different kinds of feelings: wounded feelings and core feelings.

WOUNDED FEELINGS are the feelings we cause by our own thoughts and actions. For example if you tell yourself that you better not make a mistake in your presentation at work, you will likely feel anxious, and the anxiety is coming from what you are telling yourself. If you ignore your own needs and do not take loving care of yourself, you will likely feel depressed. Our wounded feelings are feelings such as anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, fear of the past or future, resentment, emptiness, and aloneness.

All of our feelings are an inner guidance system, giving us much information. Our wounded feelings are telling us that we are abandoning ourselves in some way – ignoring our feelings and needs, judging ourselves, turning to various addictions to avoid our feelings, or making others responsible for our feelings, i.e. being emotionally dependent on another person for our good feelings.

CORE PAINFUL FEELINGS are the feelings that come from life – from people, events and circumstances. These are feelings such as loneliness, sadness, grief, heartache, heartbreak, sorrow, fear of real and present danger, outrage over injustice, and helplessness over others and events. These feelings are letting us know when someone is being unloving to us, when someone or a situation is dangerous to us, and when we need to attend to ourselves and take loving action in our own behalf.

While we do not cause our core feelings, we are still responsible for managing them with deep compassion for ourselves, and when we avoid them, then we are likely to cause our wounded feelings.

CORE POSITIVE FEELINGS are the feelings that result from taking emotional responsibility for all our feelings. These are feelings such as inner peace, joy, love, excitement, passion, aliveness, happiness, fulfillment, and so on. These feelings are letting us know that we are on the right track regarding our thoughts and actions.

EMOTIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

We take emotional responsibility when we are open to learning about how we are causing our wounded feelings and what loving actions we need to take in our own behalf. We take emotional responsibility when we compassionately embrace our core feelings with deep kindness and gentleness toward ourselves, allowing ourselves to feel and release these painful feelings, and learning about what they may be telling us about others and events.

EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY

Emotional dependency is the opposite of emotional responsibility and emotional freedom. When we are emotionally dependent, we see ourselves as victims of others and circumstances. Rather than compassionately learning from our feelings, we do everything we can to avoid them – using addictions to substances, processes, people and controlling behaviors such as blame.

Avoiding responsibility for our feelings leads to the misery of our wounded feelings. We create great suffering when we avoid our feelings and responsibility for them rather than compassionately embracing them and opening to learning from them.

THE PATH TO EMOTIONAL FREEDOM

You will gradually experience the joy of emotional freedom when you decide that you want responsibility for your feelings. Inner Bonding® is a powerful process for learning how to take emotional responsibility and attain emotional freedom.

Source

Robert Recommends...

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The post What is Emotional Freedom? appeared first on Robert JR Graham.

Does Psychotherapy Work?

by: Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Many years ago, when I became a psychotherapist, all I knew was the traditional psychotherapy that I had learned in school, and that I had personally experienced with many different therapists and many different forms of therapy. For 18 years I practiced what I had learned, and I was never happy with the results.

I saw that people often felt better for the moment, or resolved a particular issue, but that when new issues came up, they didn’t have a process for dealing with them. In all the years of my own therapy, I had never learned a process either – a process for loving myself and taking 100% responsibility for my own feelings and needs. In fact, taking responsibility for my feelings was never a part of any of the therapies I had experienced. I had learned to express my feelings – which often turned out to be a form of control – but not how I was creating my own feelings of anxiety, depression, anger, hurt, guilt and shame.

I no longer practice traditional psychotherapy because, in my experience, it doesn’t work. For the past 23 years I have worked with clients with the Inner Bonding process. In fact, I have many psychotherapists in my practice learning this process, because they are discouraged with the results of traditional psychotherapy in their work and in their own lives.

WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T WORK

Psychotherapy Research (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, does psychotherapy work? It does if what you are learning about is how to connect with your own feelings and take responsibility for them; how to discover the false beliefs that are creating your painful feelings; and how to connect with a personal source of spiritual Guidance that teaches you the truth and the loving action toward yourself. It works when you are willing to learn to take loving action in your own behalf and share your love with others. It works when you are willing to stop blaming the past, your parents, your partner, society, events, or God for your suffering and learn that you are the cause of your own suffering. It works when you are willing to stop seeing yourself as a victim of others and circumstances and learn to be loving to yourself.

What does not work is spending years analyzing the past. While the past shaped our beliefs, and it is important to understand where we learned what we learned, dwelling on it is a waste of time. In my experience, if we stay current with discovering the false beliefs that cause our painful feelings, the past will become illuminated. When we realize, for example, that we spend much time and energy judging ourselves, it is easy to go into the past to see where we learned this. Did one or both of your parents judge you? Did they judge themselves? What was the role modeling you grew up with? Did either of your parents take responsibility for their feelings, or were they victims, blaming each other or you or others for their misery? It is not hard to learn about the past when we are willing to examine our current choices and behavior toward ourselves and others.

YOUR SPIRITUAL CONNECTION

Psychotherapy that does not include developing a spiritual connection does not work. Our spiritual connection is the Source we need to turn to for wisdom and comfort. In order to deal lovingly with the challenges of life, we need to know that we are not alone, and that we always have our higher Guidance to turn to for the truth and loving action toward ourselves and others.

True healing is about learning how to take full, 100% responsibility for our own feelings and needs. It is about moving out of self-abandonment and emotional dependency and into emotional freedom. When you find a therapist, facilitator or coach who helps you to do this, then you will find great benefit.

Source

Related articles

• Putting the Psycho in Psychotherapy: Shrunk, a Satirical Novel about Mental Health


• Positive Group Psychotherapy


• Mitchell Tsai: Psychotherapy’s Image Problem Pushes Some Therapists to Become ‘Brands’ [Lori Gottlieb, New York Times - 11/23/12]


• Putting the Psycho in Psychotherapy: Shrunk, a Satirical Novel about…


• You don’t have to be a potential shooter to benefit from psychotherapy!


• Combat PTSD, Pools of Emotion, and Putting the Truth Into Words (III)


• Past-Life Therapy to Transform Relationships with Yourself and Others – Part 1


• Why Psychotherapy Efficacy Studies are Nearly Impossible


• My Philosophy on Therapy


• What Brand Is Your Therapist?

Robert Recommends...

• Moving Away From Judgement


• Relationships and Emotional Connection


• Intercepting Chatter


• You Are Not Who You Think You Are


• Personal Power


• What is Emotional Freedom?

The post Does Psychotherapy Work? appeared first on Robert JR Graham.

What is Emotional Freedom?

by: Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

My definition of emotional freedom is being free from feeling like a victim of and controlled by our emotions. We are emotionally free when we know how to learn from and manage our feelings so that we are not reactive to them and they don’t control us.

HOW DO WE ATTAIN EMOTIONAL FREEDOM?

Emotional freedom is the result of learning how to take emotional responsibility, i.e., responsibility for our feelings.

What does this mean and how do we do it?

There are two different kinds of feelings: wounded feelings and core feelings.

WOUNDED FEELINGS are the feelings we cause by our own thoughts and actions. For example if you tell yourself that you better not make a mistake in your presentation at work, you will likely feel anxious, and the anxiety is coming from what you are telling yourself. If you ignore your own needs and do not take loving care of yourself, you will likely feel depressed. Our wounded feelings are feelings such as anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, fear of the past or future, resentment, emptiness, and aloneness.

All of our feelings are an inner guidance system, giving us much information. Our wounded feelings are telling us that we are abandoning ourselves in some way – ignoring our feelings and needs, judging ourselves, turning to various addictions to avoid our feelings, or making others responsible for our feelings, i.e. being emotionally dependent on another person for our good feelings.

CORE PAINFUL FEELINGS are the feelings that come from life – from people, events and circumstances. These are feelings such as loneliness, sadness, grief, heartache, heartbreak, sorrow, fear of real and present danger, outrage over injustice, and helplessness over others and events. These feelings are letting us know when someone is being unloving to us, when someone or a situation is dangerous to us, and when we need to attend to ourselves and take loving action in our own behalf.

While we do not cause our core feelings, we are still responsible for managing them with deep compassion for ourselves, and when we avoid them, then we are likely to cause our wounded feelings.

CORE POSITIVE FEELINGS are the feelings that result from taking emotional responsibility for all our feelings. These are feelings such as inner peace, joy, love, excitement, passion, aliveness, happiness, fulfillment, and so on. These feelings are letting us know that we are on the right track regarding our thoughts and actions.

EMOTIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

We take emotional responsibility when we are open to learning about how we are causing our wounded feelings and what loving actions we need to take in our own behalf. We take emotional responsibility when we compassionately embrace our core feelings with deep kindness and gentleness toward ourselves, allowing ourselves to feel and release these painful feelings, and learning about what they may be telling us about others and events.

EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY

Emotional dependency is the opposite of emotional responsibility and emotional freedom. When we are emotionally dependent, we see ourselves as victims of others and circumstances. Rather than compassionately learning from our feelings, we do everything we can to avoid them – using addictions to substances, processes, people and controlling behaviors such as blame.

Avoiding responsibility for our feelings leads to the misery of our wounded feelings. We create great suffering when we avoid our feelings and responsibility for them rather than compassionately embracing them and opening to learning from them.

THE PATH TO EMOTIONAL FREEDOM

You will gradually experience the joy of emotional freedom when you decide that you want responsibility for your feelings. Inner Bonding® is a powerful process for learning how to take emotional responsibility and attain emotional freedom.

Source

Robert Recommends...

• Does Psychotherapy Work?


• Discovering Your Passion and Purpose


• Personal Power


• Relationship Conflict and Primal Behaviour


• An Addiction To Judgement


• 10 Signs of a Healthy Relationship

The post What is Emotional Freedom? appeared first on Robert JR Graham.