Trouble With Psychotherapy

The trouble with psychotherapy, as it is generally done today, is that both the therapist and the patient don't grasp the fact that most of what occurs in the counseling office is that the patient is trying to "fix" their history.

The patient is still angry and hurt about being shortchanged by earlier abandonment or abuse, and wants to be somehow reimbursed. Wants justice. Wants recognition for the pain. Wants the therapist to place blame on the abuser, or the horrible circumstances, and take any blame away from the patient for failing their own life. antisocial personality disorder test

No kind of psychological reimbursement is possible. Even if the abuser relents and apologizes, the debt still remains if the patient is avoiding his pain by assessing blame. That's how a human being avoids dealing with their fear and pain, which is extremely painful. To distract themselves from the pain, the patient looks to place blame and concentrate on the bad behavior of the abuser or the bad circumstances he has had to endure. online marriage counseling

Which is why therapy takes so many years. The patient is still using the process of blame to avoid seeing their fear and being able to address their fear so they can make more positive behavior choices. So the "other causes" and "life history" start to seem more important and powerful than "the patient" and his effort at making something out of his day. Psychotherapy

Both the therapist and the patient think the patient is trying to fix the patient's daily life. But if that were true, they would not need to go over the patient's past background. Child abuse has nothing to do with adult choices except that it is easier to fall into habitual use of old negative habit patterns than to form new positive patterns of behaviour marriage counseling near me

The scientific fact is that old poor behavior patterns have no power to limit one's use of good behavior patterns. This includes former crazy behavior as well, which is not often thought of as a choice. But a person has to realize this fact. Once they do, then they can simply put all their energy into practicing new thinking and behavior patterns, until the new patterns become dominant over the old poor thinking and behavior patterns.

The old thinking and behavior patterns will still exist in the memory banks but as new ones take precedence, the old ones cease to be used as often. This is due to the brain's plasticity. The brain creates new neural patterns as a result of new behavior and new thinking. These new neural patterns can be used instead of the old ones. It is the patient's choice which patterns to use. marriage counseling

But this seems too simple. Most people prefer the "therapy" for fixing their life to be complicated so that there is more excuse for lack of success. Why would we want lack of success? It is human nature to settle for the old ways, the known, even if it's miserable, than to risk the new. As the old phrase goes " better the Devil we know than the Devil we don't know."

The new positive behavior choices generally involve dealing with your fear. Repressed fears are extremely painful. The more you are willing to risk addressing your fear, the less need you have for excuses, and the more you will use your energy to take the simple road to instituting new and better behavior and thinking patterns, and therefore making yourself a better brain to insure yourself a better life.

The funny thing is that you could write yourself any kind of life-story history, and substitute it for your real background, and take it to a therapist, and the change would have no effect on your therapy. The only difference is that your real history EXPLAINS your fear. But you don't need your fear explained. You just need to address your fear so that it can finish, and you can move on to make something of your day.