Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

The song from which I borrowed my title continues: “The one you shouldn’t hurt at all.” Yet it does indeed seem to be nearly universal that we hurt, and are hurt by, those with whom we believe we are “in love.”

When we are on the receiving end of the hurt we usually try to understand it in one of four ways: (1) My partner doesn’t understand enough about my sensitive spots, and if I can just get him or her to understand where I am vulnerable then he or she will be more careful not to poke me in those spots. (2) My partner is unconsciously angry at me for some reason, perhaps my gender, and is acting out that anger in a hostile way. (3) My partner has some conscious anger at me for some way he or she feels I have been the cause of his or her pain and I need to either (a) explain that he or she took my words the wrong way and therefore should not feel hurt, or (b) acknowledge the way I have caused him or her pain and promise to refrain from doing it again. (4) I am just being completely paranoid and misinterpreting my partner’s loving behavior as something hurtful.

While all of the above theories may account for some of the pain we experience in intimate relationships, there is a larger perspective that encompasses all of them and can help us stop hurting each other. This perspective is the spiritual one. Much of it is outlined in Deepak Chopra’s book “The Path to Love: Renewing the Power of Spirit in Your Life.”

From the spiritual point of view each attempt at intimate connection with another human contains a projected spiritual component. We try, usually unconsciously, to experience intimate union with The Divine through our intimate human relationships. This happens fairly naturally and easily when we “fall in love.” The other is experienced as perfect in every way—i.e. Divine. Over time this projected image of the Divine collides with human reality—“the honeymoon is over”—and the real work of sacred union through a human relationship can begin. The trick is to realize that the glimpse of The Divine seen when falling in love occurs is something that can be sustained, but that it requires the real interpersonal work of the cultivation of intimacy. The deepest hurt comes from feeling abandoned by The Divine when the honeymoon is over. Without the conscious awareness that one was seeking to connect with The Divine one ends up blaming one’s partner for this terribly painful feeling of abandonment.

©Copyright 2009 by John Rhead, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Sitting in meditation means sitting with what is. The challenge, of course, is that a lot of what is doesn’t feel very good: we experience fear, restlessness, grief, anxiety, shame. For many of us, these experiences are enough to send us fleeing from the cushion, convinced that meditation isn’t for us or that we’re doing it wrong. Others convince themselves they’re meditating when they’re actually engaging in spiritual bypassing, a term coined by John Welwood¹ that refers to the use of spiritual practices to avoid facing pain. When these things happen, a therapist can help us return to the present moment and stay present with what we find there.

When I sit with a client, I pay attention as closely as I can to what I receive through the six sense doors. I consider all of this material relevant, even my own thoughts and emotions. Therapists in my orientation talk about “the field”, which is the space between two people, the place where we throw our unwanted, unacknowledged feelings and experiences. My job is to notice these things, setting aside material that’s clearly about my own personal life, and paying attention to all that remains. In this way, I am focusing on the present moment and trying to stand in the midst of it all, even if it’s painful, frightening, or confusing.

When it seems helpful or relevant, or when what I’m noticing is persistent and strong, I reflect the experience back to the client. This is done as an offering, a pointing to what’s happening now; it’s an invitation to the client to check his/her own experience to see if it matches what I’m noticing. In this way, I invite the client into the present moment. This doesn’t mean that events outside the therapy room or experiences from the past are never discussed. On the contrary—these topics are the heart of therapy. But as they’re explored, the invitation is offered to step back into the present to see how it feels to be talking about these things now. And as we do this, we face the pain that’s there in the present moment together, seeing that it is possible to stand in the middle of it all, even if it’s just for a moment or two.

As we engage in this work of coming back to what is, the client begins to recognize the pain as his/her own cast-off experience. And with this recognition, compassion arises and healing begins. In this way, the relationship between a therapist and client mirrors the relationship we have with ourselves when we meditate. For those of us who struggle to face what is, working with a therapist can help us find our way back.

¹Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation, by John Welwood (2000)

©Copyright 2009 by Anne Ihnen, MA LMHC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Anne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

There is someone I would like to introduce to you. Meet Your Shadow. Your Shadow is all the parts of yourself that you don’t like. It is the darker, repressed, and denied aspects of your being as well as the light. Your Shadow was formed when you banished these parts of yourself from your conscious awareness in order to be accepted and liked.

Like Yin and Yang, your darkness, or your unconscious, negative self-image and your light, your conscious, positive self-image, are complementary opposites that comprise aspects of your whole being. When you only identify with your positive self-image, you live a lopsided existence because you deny your hidden other half. Conversely, when you face and embrace your shadier aspects, you bring your life into balance by giving your whole being permission to exist.

According to Jung, who introduced the Shadow to the field of psychology, the psyche is always striving towards wholeness. Whether you are conscious of it or not, your Shadow is always showing you your forgotten parts to help you remember who you are. As the saying goes, “If you spot it, then you got it.” Think of someone you encountered recently who triggered a strong emotional response in you. What characteristics did you find so repulsive about that person? There’s a good chance that the very qualities you despise in others are the exact opposite of what you believe is true about yourself. You can continue to unconsciously project your disowned negative aspects onto the people around you, believing, “I am NOT like you”. Or you can welcome this person as a messenger who has come to remind you of who you are. Instead, you may ask yourself, “How AM I like you?” The first response likely breeds hatred, suffering and isolation. The second response may offer you an experience of deeper connection and self-awareness. What to do you choose?

Your perceptions of others are colored by how you see yourself, your likes and dislikes and what you think is right and wrong. You judge others for what you cannot face in yourself. Now, think of someone you admire or feel really drawn to. The same principle applies here as well. What characteristics do you love about this person? Again, you can unconsciously project your disowned positive aspects, the light part of your Shadow, onto others. Or you can learn to see the beauty you admire in them as your own. The tremendous power of this work is realizing that you cannot see an aspect in another that you do not possess yourself. You are in fact everything that you experience in this world.

As you can see, confronting your Shadow is like turning shit into gold! Facing and embracing your disowned aspects is essential for living a balanced life, increasing self-awareness and an receiving an experiential understanding of the principle that we are all ONE.

10 Reasons To Face And Embrace Your Shadow:

1. Wake up from the spell of your ignorance, delusions and projections.

2. Release huge amounts of energy that you otherwise expend to keep your shameful
parts hidden.

3. Stop living in fear, pretending that you are someone you are not.

4. Start choosing whoever and whatever you want to be at any moment.

5. Recognize that the people who trigger you are mirroring back aspects of yourself
that you have forgotten.

6. Remove physical aches and pains in your body that are manifestations of blocked
energy or repressed emotional material.

7. Find the gift in each of your Shadow aspects and learn how to use them for good.

8. Admire the greatness you see in others as your own.

9. Manifest your full potential by reclaiming the parts of yourself that you’ve denied,
hidden or given away to others.

10. Finally really get what those spiritual people are talking about when they say
“We are ONE!”

©Copyright 2009 by Alissa Sige Weisman, MFTi. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Alissa and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Many machines with rotating parts contain flywheels. Almost all automobile engines have them. A flywheel is a heavy wheel which rotates when the machine of which it is a part is running. Because it is heavy the flywheel absorbs surges of energy, thereby causing the machine to run more smoothly. The flywheel also stores kinetic energy when it is rotating and can keep a machine running for a period of time even if the usual source of energy (e.g. gasoline motor, water wheel, windmill) stops providing input.

I have begun to notice something like a flywheel in my consciousness. During times when I am meditating or in some other way opening my awareness to a state of equanimity, perhaps even to “the peace that passeth understanding,” I seem to be adding energy to the flywheel that is connected to such a state. Because this state seems incompatible with speeding things up, I do not imagine my flywheel of consciousness is increasing the speed at which it is rotating–the way energy is added to mechanical flywheels. Rather, my flywheel of consciousness seems to increase its mass by growing larger as I rest in equanimity, while continuing to rotate at the same stately speed. Each time I add energy to my equanimity flywheel in this way I imagine that it has grown in size, in thickness and/or diameter. Sometimes I imagine that it has changed in density, going from wood to steel or stone, and therefore is capable of storing even more equanimity energy. The result is that my degree of equanimity is less likely to be reduced when I encounter a situation in my life that would be expected to reduce it, such as something that might stimulate anger, fear, or stress.

It is reasonable to consider psychotherapy to be a process that can enhance equanimity over time, even though any given session may be stressful as one does the hard work of encountering both the personal and the collective unconscious at deeper and deeper levels. It is perhaps even reasonable to assume that the therapist’s flywheel of consciousness, if it is spinning smoothly and with substantial accumulated equanimity momentum, can transfer energy to the client’s flywheel by induction, through the resonance provided by the intimacy of the therapeutic relationship. This assumption implies that the therapist must pursue ongoing experiences of equanimity, through meditation, psychotherapy, prayer, and communion with human or non-human beloveds, vision quests, encounters with mortality, or whatever might meet this need for him or her.

Such activities can be conceptualized as cultivating intimacy with The Divine in order to create an inductive relationship with the Great Flywheel of Life, which in turn can be conceptualized as having infinite mass and therefore rotating at a constant speed under all conditions.

©Copyright 2009 by John Rhead, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry.
Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

While there is no “typical” psychotherapy patient or lifestyle that automatically suggests a need for psychotherapy, there are certainly some fields of work and walks of life which, being subject to especially high or enduring levels of stress, commonly benefit from a positive counselor relationship. One such profession is that of the clergy. While often seen as a stigma, the ability of clergy members to approach and seek growth from psychotherapists is an emerging trend that highlights a growing global appreciation for the potential and power of psychotherapy.

Many ministers and leaders of faith-based communities experience large amounts of stress due to their administrative duties, as well as the pressures of serving as a very public and scrutinizable figure. Long hours and a sense of great responsibility combined with a tendency to work around a fair amount of human suffering — whether as part of a hospital visitation program or simply accepting prayer requests or visits from troubled congregants — add to the psychological load endured by such people.

And adding to the basic “stresses of the cloth,” many clergy members from religious traditions of all backgrounds experience difficulties with ego. Struggling to reconcile their work with their own self-image, many religious figures may develop narcissism, or come to find that negative comments or situations prevent them from functioning normally. Whatever the specific trigger, however, it is clear that religious professionals are faced with everyday challenges and tests of the spirit and self that can easily benefit from therapy.

As more and more clergy members open their minds to the potential benefits of psychotherapy, the tendency for the spiritual community at large to embrace the mental health profession and its ability to heal and empower is experiencing an exciting — and much needed — leap of faith.

Click here to contact Sarah and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” – Alan Alda

I got on the plane, bags in tow. Convinced that I needed everything I had packed, my attire reflected the “business like” image I had to reflect in my interview the next day. I was flying back to the United Kingdom, for a second interview. Driven a strong desire get back “home” and to pursue a job that seemed made for me; I just knew that it was the right path to take.

As expected, I landed in Wales and immediately felt the sense of familiarity, comfort, and peace that the countryside always offered me. Without my conscious control, my soul seemed to jump up and down with glee at its return to the place of my birth. The business suit I wore to the interview reflecting my desire for the job, and underneath it, nostalgia for the country I left as a child.

I got the job offer. I declined it.

Those who knew and loved me, many of them thought I had missed the opportunity of a lifetime. But I knew, that had I taken it, I would have.

“The only real valuable thing is intuition” – Albert Einstein

At face value, my immediate goal, the desire for the job, was what I wanted. Nevertheless, I had not spent enough time reflecting on where that knowledge was coming from. Even though I was not being impulsive in my choices, even though I had given the interview great thought, my decisions were coming from a place within me that was not driven by intuition. Instead, a childhood emotional need to connect with my birthplace had created a series of thoughts that it would be good for me. It created an intellectual knowing of what was right for me. My choice was not driven by a connection to my higher self. Instead, it was driven by my thoughts, my head, not a gut feeling about what was truly right for me.

You see, what I thought was knowing was actually my ego wanting me to go back to how things “used to be,” going back to the fantasy of what my life in the United Kingdom, once was. The fantasy then created a series of thoughts about how I could accomplish that emotional need. Of course, as soon as I became aware that my ego-based thoughts were not real, my true intuition kicked in, and strongly.

You know your intuition, even if you don’t listen to it. It is the internal feeling, knowledge, sound, or vision that you have to do something, that you have no choice but to act in a certain way, because it is, truly, the best thing for you. It is the awareness that hits you like a ton of bricks, perhaps encouraging you to take healthy risks, even if they are truly terrifying. For me, knowledge that came from my higher self, said something completely different from the ego based intellectual knowing that went with me on my initial flight.

I knew, from my gut, not my head, that had I taken the job, I would have missed out on something really important and life changing in the United States. I knew that if I took the job, that I would be “okay” there, but would miss an inspiring opportunity here, in Arizona, one that I would never get back. In explanation, I told the company that offered me the job, and my loved ones, my simple explanation. “I can only tell you that I know I am not supposed to.” One week later, a series of synchronistic events led to a series of new positive relationships and my private practice. Had I not met them, or experienced those synchronistic events, I would have missed the soul-enriching gifts that awaited me here.

It takes a lot to actually allow your intuition to reach you and traverse the highways of fear-based thoughts that seek to distract you from it. It takes a willingness to actually listen to those intuitions, and act on them, rather than tossing them aside as “illogical,” to then ignore them.

Like a muscle, our intuition has to stretch, expand, and be nourished in order for it to develop. It is not something that a select few have; I think it is born in all of us. Intuition is another tool to ensure our survival; it allows us to gain additional information about the world within and outside of us.

At the same time, experiences in your life may have “taught” you that you cannot trust yourself. Or, other people, threatened to sever your connection to your intuition or at least, your willingness to act from it. That being said, you can’t force it. Nevertheless, you can do some things to encourage it.

•Start writing your dreams down, in first person. Look at how you feel in it, who and what the characters are, and what parts of you they could represent.
•Start a creative project that activates your right brain. Drawing, painting, coloring, or any kind of art therapy.
•Learn about the charkas and how to “clear” them.
•“Play” with your intuition. When you get a “hunch,” write it down. See what happens.
•Start a physical practice that also has a spiritual component, such as Tai Chi or Yoga
Our culture strongly favors the logical left-brain, evidence-based knowledge, over intuition. With this in mind, when clients work with me around their intuition, it often requires getting them out of their “head” and opening up those places within them that hold fear, anxiety, and trepidation about “knowing things.” If you struggle with your intuition, for example, you may have had multiple experiences of being told that what you saw as a child was not true. Or, your “hunches” and other intuitive experiences may have been invalidated or ignored.

Your intuition asks you to release your sense of trying to control it, to just allow the higher self, in whatever form it takes, to present itself. Giving you sudden unexplained knowledge and insights through the senses, intuition waits for you to ask for its guidance. Are you willing to listen?

©Copyright 2008 by Sarah Jenkins, MC, LPC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry.
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Lately I have been reading about solitude and writing about surrender. They seem to go together and have much to say about the spiritual dimension of psychotherapy.

Solitude is usually defined as a period of time away from the company of other humans. However within that definition there is a great deal of variation in terms of how much contact one has with the natural world other than humans. Solitude can be structured to minimize or maximize one’s contact with the natural world. The minimalist version is the Catholic monk living in a hermitage where he stays inside to pray and meditate, living on food that is left for him by other monks whom he never (or rarely) sees. An intermediate version would be spending a few days and nights on a vision quest on a mountain, usually not far from one’s community of supporters down below. The maximum version of contact with the natural world that I have come across is Robert Kull’s new book, Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes. It is a diary, edited and with added commentary, of his year alone on a remote island off the southern coast of Chile, relying completely on the food he brought with him and catching fish for his sustenance. There the climate made physical survival an ongoing challenge as Kull sought psychological and spiritual sustenance through encountering the psychological and spiritual challenges of such deep solitude. He spent a good deal of his time outside the basic shelter he had built for himself, exposing and surrendering himself to being part of the wild forces of the natural world.

I believe we all hunger for surrender (1), whether or not we choose to expose ourselves to the extremes of the natural world. Our hunger is to know our unique soul’s purpose and to find the courage to surrender to it. Psychotherapy is at its core an enterprise devoted to facilitating such knowing and surrendering. Although psychotherapy does not involve absolute solitude in that there is at least one other human present, it does involve an intention to spend some time each week separate from the usual human world. The time regularly spent only with one’s therapist or with other members of one’s therapy group is intended to facilitate the suspension of the usual constraints on human interaction, providing the opportunity to expose and surrender oneself to the wild forces of unconscious process. In this way it is similar to a period of solitude in the wilderness, exposing and surrendering oneself to the wild forces of the natural world. If the therapist’s office has windows that open to the natural world then the weather and/or non-humans outside can become co-therapists, inviting surrender to forces both internal and external.

(1) Rhead, John C. “Hunger for Surrender,” accepted for publication in ¨Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy. Full text can be seen at http://www.johnrhead.com/writings/hunger_for_surrender.html

©Copyright 2008 by John Rhead, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry.
Click here to contact John and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

For a long time I have experimented with various visualizations with regard to breathing. Usually these involve visualizing something associated with inhalation, such as peace, and something else associated with exhalation, such as joy. For the past few months I have settled on the concept/image of grace on inhalation, and love on exhalation. I have refrained from looking up the dictionary definition of “grace,” because it is not the one I am using and I don’t want to confuse myself before I finish writing this. I am using the vague idea of grace that comes from my childhood exposure to religion, primarily Christianity. From that exposure I have come to think of grace as something like divine loving benevolence that is always available for the asking, sort of the way oxygen is available if one inhales. That I might inhale grace and convert it to something like human love seems but a small leap of faith.

The gap spanned by such a leap got even small a few weeks ago when I was meditating in a wooded area and visualizing myself inhaling grace and exhaling love. It suddenly struck me that the trees were doing essentially the same thing. They inhale carbon dioxide, which I have exhaled, and they exhale oxygen, which I am happy to be able to inhale. That such an alchemical process is all around me, and in fact making it possible for me to survive, makes the whole thing seem all the more to be just part of the natural order. My converting grace to love as I breathe seems almost obvious.

Casting my mind back to graduate school I remember something that did not seem so obvious to me at first. When Carl Rogers suggested that “unconditional positive regard” was at the heart of psychotherapeutic healing, I thought it was pretty obvious that he really was talking about what I would call “love.” What was not obvious to me was where that love came from. I noticed that intimacy seemed to generate something like love and I came up with the following postulate: “It is impossible to hate someone you have come to know deeply, and it is probably impossible to refrain from loving them.” This gave me an idea of a mechanism, but still did not explain the source of love. Perhaps it can’t be explained, but now the scientist in me is experimenting with inhaling grace and exhaling love while I am seeing clients. It would seem silly to refrain from making use of something simply because it can’t be explained.

©Copyright 2008 by John Rhead, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry.
Click here to contact John and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Silvia and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

So many of us understand counseling to be an art, a marriage of knowledge and a certain ability to use that knowledge elegantly, incorporating intuition and spirituality. In my experience as a minister offering counseling and as a chaplain in a hospital, I have found that there is another dimension to the “art” of counseling: the intentional creative process coupled with the understandings of self-psychology provide a transformational template that has love and compassion at its center.

In my work as a minister and as a counselor in private practice, I make no distinction between the words soul and self. I use them interchangeably; either word connotes the “essence” of the human being. The work of the self or soul is to become whole, being born and being human already means that the essential ‘isness’ is compromised simply by being in the world.

I have found that one way to help the soul reach toward wholeness is to engage it on the slant. That is: rather that directly confront the ‘issues’, ‘wounds’ and ‘trauma’ experienced by the soul, the cut-off elements of the soul can be enticed into integration. This is possible through the use of the arts. In my particular experience, I have used the art of stone carving to illustrate that the soul can emerge from hiding in a loving, compassionate and non-pathological manner.

My work in this area has been formed by the understandings of self-psychology and my own experience in creating art as well as facilitating that process for others. I would like to articulate a simplified version of the theory of Self-psychology Then, using my student’s own experience, I will demonstrate how engaging in creating art, in this case, stone carvings, allowed them to see themselves differently and integrate the cut-off parts of themselves with love and compassion.

Self-Psychology:

Self Psychology is a theory of self development founded by Heinz Kohut which provides a cogent and practical structure that explores how souls can become authentic. Self-Psychologists understand that souls grow in individual and communal environments which provide enough mirroring, positive affirmation, space, matching behavior and regard.

These are the premises for that understanding.

Each person is born equally elegant and ready to become a whole human being. The interactions with care givers, whose own behaviors are determined by their histories with caretakers, will either provide good enough mirroring for the self to develop, or will close up the space for the soul; or anything in between. The self must adapt to its environment and caretakers as best it can in order to survive.

A child who feels safe, loved, and good enough develops a healthy sense of self and is able to adapt to others without losing its identity. However, when the caretaker does not mirror the child’s own sense of self, the child’s soul has two choices:

The child can choose to abandon the caretaker; if it does so, it faces annihilation or non-being because it has no other way of existing except in relationship to others. This choice leads to self-destruction.

Or, the child can abandon itself; hide behind the false self that seems to please the caregiver. The soul withers, hides and loses ‘authenticity’; in psychological terms, the child’s adaptation to the caregiver is maladaptive albeit understandable for survival.

One of the ways that souls adapt to their environment is to use objects as transitional props. These might be literal (pacifiers, blankets, toys) or imaginary (invisible best friends who really love and understand the child.) These self-objects, as they are called, help the child both mitigate the terror of existence as well as provide something to hold on to as the child changes and grows.

While objects have the power to support a child’s growing sense of self, they are not the only tools available to the developing soul. Other people can function in roles similar to the caregivers. Relatives, teachers, pastors, friends, Sunday school teachers, or encounters with strangers can affirm and call out to the authentic self.

It only takes one person to offer the child an image that resonates with the child’s own self-image. While the contact can be personal, it is sometimes enough for the child to trust that someone would be there if needed to rescue the child’s soul from annihilation. The beauty of this self-as-transformational-object relationship is that the relationship is mutually transformative.

For example, in a class called “Arts in Ministry: Aesthetics and Creativity’ at Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago. I included movement and danced for and with the students. Later, one of them commented on how she was inspired by my risk-taking to take her own risks, in her ministry and in her personal life.

Her reflection inspired me to continue to take risks and once again confirmed the efficacy of the process of transformation I have been describing. It also affirmed the psychological premise of matching behavior. She could see me because I could see her and in our mutual dance we knew one another to be trust worthy and inspirational. This process of transformation includes all of us, all of our interactions with one another and with the creative process itself.

The second premise is that the creative process also changes the creator. Briefly stated, what we create, creates us. This is particularly evident with stone carving. The process of removing layers of stone, listening and engaging in the dialogue between self-as-creator and material-to-be-created, provides a non-rational experience of the self as whole, in relationship with itself through the use of the stone as a selfobject. Sometimes, as with this seminarian, the process of soul making includes healing a relationship with “God” , where the holy functions as the self-as-self-transforming other. She writes:

“Painstaking patience with the stone. Wanting to protect the stone. Listened to the stone, but the stone had little to say, besides its warm and excited colors. It occurred to me that this might be the most real times that I have ever tenderly cared for/loved myself, by caring for the me in the stone. Kind of sad to think of it.

God has a sense of humor. He (that’s how I see God) made sure that I had a harder stone I think, one that didn’t give much. It reminds me of the very slow, tedious, but careful way God has reshaped me in my life. Almost sorry I was so unbendable. [I realize that] I want to dance with God.

God is doing something wonderful and powerful in this class. I pray that it grows in power and goodness over time. And I think that God is making sure I am doing what I need to do with my stone. Care for it.

The most enjoyable moments in the process of sculpting were those when the stone (and I believe God) was participating in the formation of it.

Is all of art God’s transforming work in our lives, or does it at least all have that potential. Maybe that is what has lacked in my poetry and drawing so far. It has been expressing what was already there, rather than seeking to be a medium for changing me, being a process of transformation, instead of a finished product. If the art I create is a transformation of myself, then is the creation that God creates a transformation of God’s self. Our understanding of God is certainly transformed over time.”

And, as she completed the piece entitled “Mother and Child” we can hear the process of integration, through love and compassion for the self that was previously unloved and unaccepted.

The woman (or man) embraces the child as they move. They emerge from the stone. They also escape from the horror behind them. With more time and skill, it would be easier to see their haste, the woman’s determination, the child’s confusion. The two figures share their escape from what they have experienced. But they differ in their power to retaliate. They need each other, as if their lives depend on each other.

Holding the woman who holds the child allowed me, for the first time, to embrace the child who could not previously be forgiven for acquiescing. Now that I have begun to make peace with the child, I can see that I can also let her go. Let her die in the past. As the child I was passes away from the present, now I can see the child that I am.

When we allow our clients the opportunity to use themselves as the prime resource for healing, through the use of the creative process, (clearly it doesn’t need to be stone) then we are providing them with the most useful tool of transformation, themselves.

©Copyright 2008 by Reverend Doctor Silvia R. Behrend . All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Silvia and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

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Intimacy refers to being seen or known. One can be seen or known by oneself, by another being (human or otherwise) or by God. Individual psychotherapy usually focuses on knowing oneself better, which is to say becoming more intimate with one’s self. The usual term for this process is “insight.” Group psychotherapy addresses being better known by others, which of course results in greater knowing of oneself in the process. This is the place where the term “intimacy” is most commonly used. Relationships with non-humans in which one comes to be known can be as mundane as a relationship with a pet dog or cat and as elaborate as encounters with spirit guides in all kinds of animal forms while engaging in shamanic journeying. Finally one may experience being known by God, or the Sacred Mystery, through spiritual practices such as prayer and meditation. Of course many would assume that one does not really reveal oneself to God through such practices, since it is assumed that God already knows everything; the experience of being known by God is really just a result of coming to know oneself better through spiritual practices.

Intimacy can be subdivided into two basic categories: biographical and evolutionary. Biographical intimacy is generated when one reveals to another things already known about one’s personal history. Evolutionary intimacy takes place when one reveals to another what one is just discovering about oneself in the present moment. Early phases of therapy usually involve biographical intimacy, which essentially involves the taking of a history in individual therapy or introducing oneself in group therapy. Later phases of therapy rely on evolutionary intimacy to stimulate the growth/healing of the client or clients.

It is the evolutionary intimacy in the later phases of therapy that is the most interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it tends to become reciprocal, so that the individual therapist comes to be more known to the client just as much as the client become known to the therapist. In group therapy, the group therapist or therapists (in the case of co-therapy) come to be known to the clients just as the clients come to be known to the therapist(s) and each other. One of the most delightful aspects of the group co-therapy situation is the intimacy that develops between the co-therapists. All of these forms of evolutionary intimacy are ultimately part-and-parcel of one’s intimate relationship with the Sacred Mystery, since each little component of intimacy with self or other takes places in this larger context.

©Copyright 2008 by John Rhead, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry.
Click here to contact John and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

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A few years ago I was sitting down to begin one of my weekly therapy groups when I had a slight epiphany. I realized many other therapists in all sorts of places were going to be doing the same thing that day, and I felt a sense of connection with them as we all did our best to bring healing to ourselves and our clients. About a year ago, while meditating and praying outdoors at dawn, I had a similar experience. This time it was more explicitly spiritual, as I had the awareness that all around the word there were many others joining me in that very moment, doing our best to invoke and/or join The Divine in the healing of our planet. I shared these experiences with the members of two groups of which I have long been a member—The American Academy of Psychotherapists, a group which believes that the healing and growth of the client is inextricably intertwined with the healing and growth of the therapist, and the Earthtribe, a group that integrates ancient nature-based spirituality with modern psychotherapy. Both groups emphasize direct experience over cognitive understanding. In the descriptions of my experiences as I shared them with these two groups I coined the term “The Unseen Sangha.”

Now Larry Dossey has brought to my attention a body of scientific research that directly addresses the nature of The Unseen Sangha (TUS? Short for ‘tis us?). He is the editor of Explore, an alternative medicine journal, the author of several books having to do with nonlocal (i.e. not confined in time and space or to the brain of a single individual) consciousness. His most recent editorial (Dossey, 2008) explores the ways in which individual minds can join together to access information not available to any one of them alone and not a simple mathematical combination of their individual guesses or opinions. He takes his inspiration from a new book, The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Suroweicki. The book describes some amazing experiments demonstrating this “wisdom of crowds,” including its use in finding the precise location of a lost nuclear submarine—a virtual needle in an ocean. It also describes apparent spontaneous examples of this wisdom, such as occurred immediately after the space shuttle Challenger exploded. Within minutes the stock prices of the four major companies involved in the manufacture and launch of Challenger began to drop. The price of the one that would prove weeks later to be responsible for the failed o-ring dropped much faster than the others, so fast that trading had to be halted, even though there was not even speculation at that point as to the cause of the disaster.

Dossey’s editorial prompts me to speculate about the nature of The Unseen Sangha. If we consciously seek to connect with other healers, whether currently living or not, might we not have a way to access wisdom that could make us more effective? Might such a process be at the root of what we call “clinical intuition?” Doesn’t it seem to make sense to open ourselves to such wisdom before each therapy session, and perhaps repeatedly during it, just in case there is something available to aid us in providing a healing presence? Of course we might do the same thing unconsciously, and if fact Dossey makes the point that most nonlocal awareness seems to take place unconsciously. However, a conscious choice to make oneself available to such wise input would seem to hedge one’s bet.

Dossey, Larry (2008) “Nonlocal Knowing: The Emerging View of Who We Are” Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, Vol. 4, No. 1, pages 1-9.

©Copyright 2008 John Rhead, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile.

Click here to contact Lisa and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

As a long term yogic and vipassana meditator, and a mindfulness-based psychotherapist who regularly teaches meditation practices to my patients, I find the growth of mindfulness as a clinical intervention very timely. Last year, I attended two conferences focused on the use of mindfulness as a clinical intervention: “Meditation and Psychotherapy” at Harvard Medical School and “Mindfulness and Psychotherapy” at UCLA.

Interestingly, the conference at Harvard featured a greater percentage of presenters who do not use meditation as an intervention in their clinical work. For them, mindfulness is a teachable skill set, extrapolated from a way of viewing life gained from sustained Buddhist meditation practices. These presenters included: Steven Hayes, founder of ACT, Lizbeth Roemer, U Mass GAD researcher and clinician, Tal Ben-Shahar, Harvard Lecturer on Positive Psychology, and Jayme Shorin, LICSW, sensorimotor trainer. The fact that the organizers of the Harvard conference felt it necessary to devote over half of the presentation time to methodologies that do not include meditation was, for me, significant.

Though this might be expected at a “Mindfulness and Psychotherapy” conference, in fact the UCLA conference featured more presenters discussing the use of meditation and compassion practices as a clinical intervention. These presenters included: Thich Nhat Hahn, Vietnamese Buddhist monk and meditation teacher, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Harriett Kimble Wrye, and Trudy Goodman, all psychologists and meditation teachers, and Dr. Daniel Siegel & Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar presenting the neurobiology of meditation.

Due to the continuing trend in mental health toward brief, CBT methods and away from depth-oriented, psychodynamic therapies, one can easily see how a reduction of “mindfulness” to an easily deliverable skill set would be a natural outcome of the environment in which it is delivered. But is the doing away with meditation practice psychotherapeutically wrong or ineffective? Not necessarily.

Even in the East, Karma Yoga is an example of a path to liberation which eschews formal meditation practice in favor of a commitment to the work one does in the world as spiritual practice. Also, with neuroscience showing significant brain changes from long-term mindfulness meditation, one can easily see how a researcher like Steven Hayes could create mental exercises that simulate, through active questioning of the validity of language, the realization of the contextual nature of the self., i.e., “Am I really these thoughts and beliefs that my mind continually comes up with?”

Years of meditation cultivates a natural non-reactivity to experience. But why wait years, when simple instructions for distress tolerance, like those featured in DBT can be dispensed to patients suffering from emotion dysregulation? Following in the footsteps of ACT is Acceptance-based psychotherapy which focuses on delivering skills for realizing and accepting here and now experience with compassion; something vipassana meditation and metta practices are well documented at cultivating in long-term practitioners. Yet again, why practice meditation at all when mindfulness skills can be learned and behaviors changed?

Additionally, it must be acknowledged that most psychotherapists will not want to learn and commit to a daily mindfulness meditation practice, or be trained to teach mindfulness meditation. Therefore, it may be more desirable and practical in clinical settings to deliver a CBT-like mindfulness skill set rather than teach meditation

In light of all these benefits, what do we lose in clinical practice when we allow instruction of vipassana/mindfulness meditation to fall into disfavor or become outmoded? The following list is my best guess at an answer to this question:

1.The long and short term stress-reducing physical effects of meditation
2.The plethora of profoundly, positive neural changes evidenced in the brains of long term vipassana/Tibetan Buddhist meditators
3.The deep emotional healing that comes from metta/forgiveness/compassion meditation practices
4.The benefits of setting aside time in our busy lives for silence, meditation and contemplation
5.The cultivation of peacefulness
6.The deepening of connection with and respect for our planet and all living things upon it, which naturally arise from sustained meditation practice
7.The shared joy of a community of meditators; whether traditional sanghas or 8-week mindfulness-based groups like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression Relapse Prevention (MBCT), or Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention for addiction recovery (MBRP).

I have seen patients experience radical change from incorporating mindfulness meditation and mindfulness skills into their daily lives and I am excited to offer MBRP, a mindfulness-based intervention for addiction relapse prevention in San Jose, CA in March 2008. Please contact me for more information.

©Copyright 2008 by Lisa Dale Miller, LMFT. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Lisa and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

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There are three basic models for conceptualizing the process of psychotherapy: implanting something new in the client that is missing (deficiency model), changing or removing something problematic that is already present (pathology model), or nurturing the unfolding of some potential wholeness that is inherent in each human (spiritual model). While each model captures some of what might need to go on in psychotherapy at any given moment, the spiritual model is for me the most interesting and comprehensive.

Each of these three models of psychotherapy also suggests a particular role for the therapist. In the deficiency model the therapist is something like a dietary supplement for the psyche, providing something not already present and not readily available in the usually daily intake of psychological experience. The pathology model makes the therapist something between a mechanic and a surgeon, removing something dysfunctional and possibly replacing it with something new that can be expected to function better. In the spiritual model the therapist works in manner of a midwife, seeking to eliminate obstacles to a natural process of the birthing of new awareness without claiming to create or control what emerges.

Each of these three models of psychotherapy has parallels in religious and spiritual traditions. The deficiency model corresponds to the belief that a person cannot be whole, spiritually mature, or loved by God unless he or she adopts a particular set of beliefs or joins a particular religious or spiritual group. The pathology model corresponds to the concept of original sin. The spiritual model addresses that Matthew Fox has lately been calling Original Blessing, and what Buddhists have for a long time referred to as Buddha Nature.

While any person’s psychotherapy might legitimately work from any one of these three models at a given point in time, the deficiency and pathology models must eventually yield to the spiritual model in any long-term therapy. It is not a question of nature versus nurture, but rather a question of how we nurture our clients’ inherent nature. The most fundamental way in which we do this is through the ongoing nurturing of our own nature, through our own psychotherapy, spiritual practices, and anything else we can find.

©Copyright 2007 John Rhead, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Welcome to this column. I hope it will be interesting and valuable to those who read it, and to me as I write it.

Why “integrating” psychotherapy and spirituality? This question seems silly to many people for one of two reasons. Some would say it is silly because the two must necessarily be kept separate, like church and state. Others would say it is silly because they are inherently intertwined and don’t require any effort on our part to be integrated.

I am inclined toward the view that the two are inherently intertwined, but believe that they have been artificially separated by psychology, the discipline that most clearly undergirds most of what we practice in psychotherapy, in its zeal to be scientific. Freud’s disdain for religion didn’t help either. Of course there have always been those, like Carl Jung, who have kept alive the perspective that psychology and psychotherapy have an intrinsic relationship to spirituality. However, this perspective has only moved toward widespread acceptance among psychotherapists in the last few decades, thanks in part to the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, and the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. Such acceptance in mainstream psychology, as reflected in the American Psychological Association, has only been noticeable in the last few years.

So this column will seek to midwife the rebirthing of the awareness of the inherent interconnectedness between psychotherapy and spirituality. Our attitude will be one of seeking to support a process that is already taking place quite naturally, rather than trying to force or create something new.

We will assume that psychotherapy does more than correct psychopathologies of individuals. We will regard psychotherapy as something that facilitates the client’s emotional and spiritual growth, and will assume that such growth in the client will in some way reverberate positively in the culture in which he or she is embedded. Hopefully this column can facilitate our own emotional and spiritual growth, thereby making us more effective in doing the same for our clients and our species.

Stay tuned.

©Copyright 2007 John Rhead, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Growing up as a Catholic child and teenager in Germany some sixty years ago I learned about original sin.  I was told that I and every other human being inherited the mark of original sin from Adam and Eve because of their disobedience to God’s command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Actually, in German, original sin is called Erbsünde, which means “inherited sin”.  (An aside:  The word Erbsünde also contains the German word Erbse which means “pea”, and for many years of my childhood I visualized my original sin as a pea-sized growth on my soul.)  As a child I accepted what I was told, but as a teenager I could not comprehend why God would make me inherit a sin which I had not committed.  It seemed unfair:  Why should I be responsible for something over which I had had no control?

In my 20s and 30s, when I got married and had children, I began to question whether my original sin is a sin and how it could be original or inherited.  Over the years of trying to raise our children and living in a close relationship with my wife it dawned on me that I was engaging in the same hurtful behavior which I had observed in my parents, both as parents and as spouses, and which I had sworn I would never repeat.  How could this be happening?  Was this the long and large shadow of original sin?

It took me many more years and my intense immersion in the depth psychology of C. G. Jung before I began to understand that although this long shadow, which reaches down to me from my parents and from all of my ancestors, acts with the strength and mystery of magic power, it is in fact a natural and inevitable consequence of my human nature.  It is impossible for us to escape, more than just a little, the powerful patterns of perception, feeling and behavior which have evolved in humans during the millennia of the evolution of homo sapiens.  Although these human patterns appear to be similar to the animal instincts, they are not the same.  The instincts regulate the animals completely in all of their behavior, while our human patterns of perception, feeling and behavior leave us some room, albeit small, to make choices and decisions.  Even Adam and Eve already had a choice to eat or not to eat the fruit from the tree.  In the context of our discussion it does not matter whether these human patterns are “inherited” genetically or through unconscious imitation or both.  In either case they are transmitted so successfully and regularly that they seem to be ordained by divine decree.

The Catholic Church has it partially right, therefore, when it claims that there are inclinations and propensities in us, in each and every human being, which have been “inherited” from, or are “original to” our ancestors, all the way back to Adam and Eve who can be seen as the symbolic and original parents of homo sapiens.  But why should these inclinations and propensities be sinful?

Because these human inclinations and propensities, these patterns of perception, feeling and behavior, are different from the totally dominant instincts, there is some room for choice and decision making.  But as human beings we also share in the instinctual nature of animals which seeks to express itself according to its needs.  The drive of the instincts to assert themselves and the ability of humans to make different choices will inevitable lead to conflict within each individual soul and between individuals in society.  For example, my animal nature may desire my neighbor’s food, shelter, house and mate, but there are rules which prohibit the unfettered exercise of my instinctual wishes.  Or I may experience an inner conflict between the command to honor my parents and my need to become an independent and autonomous adult.  All of these conflicts are governed by rules.  Where do these rules come from?

The rules for the conduct of human behavior are as old as humanity itself.  Although animals also have rules for living in groups – we only need to think of the term “pecking order” which we have borrowed from the birds, or the “order” prevailing in ant heaps and bee hives – their rules are part of their instinctual makeup and are not subject to question by the animals and are not subject to change except insofar as the instinctual nature of a species may change gradually over millions of years in order to keep it adapted.  At the time of our ancestral and original parents, Adam and Eve, rules already existed for their relationship with each other and for their relationship to God.  We are told in Genesis, for example, that God commanded our ancestors to “be fruitful and multiply, and to fill the earth and subdue it”; and a little later God threatened them with death if they were to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We can conclude, therefore, that the patterns of human behavior, and the rules governing them, evolved hand in hand from the origin of homo sapiens.  As anyone who has traveled to different countries or visited different communities within even one country can attest, there is a great deal of variety in the rules and laws governing human conduct.  And as any serious student of human history will confirm, there has been much change in the forms of human behavior over the millennia, and there has also been much change in the laws which apply to this behavior.  One thing only has remained the same, and that is the regularity and inevitability with which rules of some kind have appeared on the scene whenever and wherever there are human beings.

Some things change very slowly and other things change more rapidly.  The instinctual nature of humans has probably changed very little over millions of years.  The spiritual side of humans, however, has evolved relatively recently.  The unconscious part of our psyche, which is closer to our instincts, is much older than our consciousness which may have evolved over just thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousand years compared to the rest of our nature whose history reaches back into the millions of years.

Originally, laws were considered of sacred or divine origin.  It is only in the last few thousand years that a separate secular body of law has developed.  But whether law had its source with a divine lawgiver or emanated from a human source, in both cases it had to be perceived and articulated by human beings.  And human beings are subject to and influenced by the forces of their environment and by their internal psychic and spiritual realities.

How quickly things can change, even with regard to laws which were perceived as divinely given, can be shown by a couple of examples.  Some six thousand or more years ago Adam and Eve were commanded in Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it”.  Humanity has multiplied so effectively that if the current trend of multiplication continues, the earth’s resources will be insufficient to sustain us.  At a time when the survival of children and their growth into adulthood was the exception rather than the rule, and at a time when natural resources were abundant in comparison to the demands made upon them by human beings, an injunction to multiply as much as possible not only made sense but was necessary for the survival of the human species.  But today, when the same multiplication can only lead to wholesale extinction, such a law must be revised.

AUTH © Philadelphia Inquirer. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

Also in Genesis Adam and Eve are commanded to subdue the earth.  Again, at a time when human beings were much at the mercy of their environment and were few in number compared to the vastness of the earth, it made sense to encourage them to explore and harness the forces of the globe.  Unfortunately, this advice, aided by the explosion of human science and technology in the last few hundred years, has led to an exploitation of the earth’s resources to such an extent that some today even question whether we have not already reached the point of no return in our journey to self-destruction.  Since, therefore, the command to “subdue the earth” has, if anything, been fulfilled and exceeded, that law also needs to be reevaluated.

One might reasonably argue, therefore, that activities which once were divinely encouraged and sanctioned are now becoming immoral and sinful.  What is sinful at any given time can, therefore, not always be immutably stated at the beginning for all times.  What is immutable, on the other hand, at least under the perspective of our memory of the past and our anticipation of the future, is the need for laws to govern the conflicts within and between ourselves and to guide the choices which we have to make.  Equally immutable, therefore, is the making of laws, although their content will change over the generations.

Who are the lawgivers and makers of rules?  Human beings have experienced and continue to experience many makers of laws: God and God’s representatives on earth, parents, teachers, chieftains, legislative bodies and any grouping of people which seeks to set forth its value system as a binding canon of behavior.  A departure from the established rules of behavior is branded as sinful, immoral or illegal depending on whether the source of the rules is religious or secular.  The Catholic Church claims for itself, as God’s representative on earth, the right to state infallibly certain rules for human behavior.  But the doctrine of infallibility implies an absence of change.  Once pronounced, an infallibly proclaimed doctrine or rule is to be valid forever.  The justification for the doctrine of infallibility is God’s eternal truth.  But for us eternal is not the same as immutable.  We experience the revelation of God or our psychic center as an ongoing and changing drama, beginning at the dawn of human understanding and continuing every generation thereafter.  What is “immutable” in this drama is the ongoing revelation, and what is changeable in this drama is our understanding of that revelation.  Law making is likewise an eternal and “immutable” reality, but the actual content of the law changes and needs to change with our changing understanding of the unfolding revelation.  The Catholic Church is wrong, therefore, when it asserts the immutability of a revealed content.

But how did the Catholic Church get itself into the box of arrogating to itself the impossible task of proclaiming immutable (infallible) laws?  It may have to do with its view of original sin.  As we saw, the only thing which is original about original sin is the reality of an inherited conflict in our human nature, between our animal nature and our spiritual aspirations, and between different emotional and spiritual strivings.  The judgment whether a particular behavior is sinful can not be made once and for all and it cannot be unchanging forever.  It must depend on our understanding of good and evil, right and wrong, meaningful and meaningless within a time span that encompasses perhaps many generations but not eternity.
If, however, we view human nature as inherently sinful from and for all times, then it is not too great a leap to see a need for judgments and rules which are binding from and for all times.  If we consider human nature damaged for all times by original sin, it is necessary to have clear and permanent rules to help humans to deal with their sinful nature.  It seems to me that this view is one sided, and it is as one sided as the opposite view represented by Jean-Jacques Rousseau who maintained that human nature is inherently good: “Everything is good as it came from the hands of the creator.”  Probably, both extremes are wrong.  Human nature is neither all bad nor all good.  Experience shows us that human beings are subject to the forces of both good and evil.  We only need to look at history and the current condition of humanity to see that people are both good and bad, and do both right and wrong.  But if we adhere to the extreme view that human nature is inherently and eternally sinful, then it is not a big step to claim the need for eternally unchanging laws to judge and contain such sinfulness.  And in this way original sin seems to lead inevitably to a claim of infallibility.

Summary:

The Catholic doctrine of original sin says that every human being inherits the mark of original sin from Adam and Eve. This raises the questions whether humans do inherit any sin from their parents and ancestors all the way back to the original parents Adam and Eve, and what the nature of that sin might be. With a Jungian perspective it is not difficult to accept the view that humans do inherit attitudes and powerful patterns of perception, feeling and behavior from their ancestors, whether genetically or through unconscious imitation or both. The Catholic Church is partially correct, therefore, in asserting inherited human attitudes and patterns. Human behavior, which grows out of these inherited attitudes and patterns, may violate divine laws as promulgated by the Catholic Church.  But since the formulation of divine laws depends on our human understanding, which changes over time in the course of our evolution, divine laws can not be considered immutable. Even if we accept as immutable that revelation is always ongoing, the claim of the Catholic Church that the content of such revelation in the form of laws and commands can be immutably and infallibly stated, does not agree with the Jungian perspective of an ever ongoing and changing human understanding.

Conclusion:

The realization that original sin is neither original nor a sin in the sense ascribed to it by the Catholic Church could free us from our feelings of guilt and shame due to our old understanding that we are somehow blemished from conception or birth. Rather, we share in the evolutionary human fate of taking on the attitudes and patterns of perception, feeling and behavior which our ancestors have developed before us. These are neither good nor bad; they just are. It is our responsibility, however, to try to learn to understand our “inherited” attitudes and patterns and to modify them, to the extent possible, when we deem this appropriate and desirable.

Likewise, the realization that the claim of the Catholic Church to be infallible in the promulgation of so called eternal truths and divine laws is no more than that: a claim, could free us from our feelings of guilt and shame due to our old understanding that we must submit to that claim without any questioning. Rather, since there is no immutability and since everything is subject to change it is our opportunity and responsibility to evaluate at all times the status quo and attempt to determine where and when change would be appropriate and desirable in order to further our healthy and whole life.

©Copyright 2007 Rainer Maria Kohler, JD  All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. The article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org.

Click here to contact Joan and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Emotional Injuries Hide In Our Unconscious

Throughout our lifetime, most of us have in some significant way been wounded.  The physical wounds we can see.  Their solutions, if available to us, are fairly straightforward.  But those that take place in our minds and in our hearts are not so easy to see and are often stored out of touch, deep within our unconscious.  Those we do remember, we often avoid because it just hurts us too much.  Our culture supports this avoidance in the name of “denial”.
Even though we would like to learn, to grow and to heal, most often we end up feeling powerless, unable to break the patterns which repeatedly lead us to dissatisfaction and pain.  The more we try to run away from our pain, the faster our pain seems to catch up to us.

Pain Is A Warning Signal

Healing asks us to address our pain rather than avoid it.  Pain is a warning signal.–– A call for our attention.  We need to give our pain our attention.  As we explore what there is to learn from our situation and our interactions and as we investigate our thoughts and our feelings, we can begin to see the pain as a part of a dysfunctional pattern that has been repeating itself throughout our lives.

What We Lack

We do not lack the desire, the worthiness, or the ability to change these painful, dysfunctional patterns.  Rather, we are lacking the ability to understand the history and purpose of the pattern as well as the tools and the sensitivities required for effective change.

The Source Of The Problem

The pattern is most often a consequence of some way that we, as children, learned to fit into, cope with, understand or survive vulnerable situations from our family interactions.  Our experience taught us to have expectations and feelings about ourselves, other people, and our environment which were not necessarily accurate.  We grow up believing these falsehoods or generalizing what once seemed true in our families to our experiences outside of our families where they don’t really belong.

Psychic Survival Glasses Misrepresent How We See And Cause Us To Recreate The Past

It’s as if when we were very young, we got a prescription for a pair of “psychic glasses” that fit the way we were seen by our family and the way we, at the time, saw ourselves and the tiny world we lived in.  We grew up and went out into world of new possibilities, experiences and relationships but we kept the same old glasses.  These glasses force us to look at our present experience through the eyes of what happened to us in the past.

These misperceptions, combined with the ways our thoughts and emotions are stored and upheld in our bodies (through defensive armoring and cellular memory), cause us to keep recreating our past, unconsciously interfering with our sincere yet fruitless efforts to change and grow.

What We Need

We need a way in the present to work with our misunderstandings from the past.  So we recreate the “scene of the crime”, where we re-experience the same kinds of feelings we originally felt, even though the names and faces and even the look of the situation may now be different.  This allows the present to serve as a vibrational tuning fork resonating at the very same emotional frequency as the original injury.  We can then locate the conditioned receptor sites in our bodymind that maintain the old belief structures and transform them with a present-time consciousness that now has resources far beyond those we had access to when we were children.

Addressing the Mind, Heart, Body & Spirit

We are mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual beings, and our healing needs reflect these different aspects of ourselves.  We can address our mental healing by developing our consciousness.  First we feel the pain.  Then, we find the pattern and its original intent and defensive development.  We identify the false and outmoded beliefs, attitudes and perceptions and we decide and commit to learn and to live the truth about ourselves.

Denial  Lives In Our Bodies

Emotionally, we have learned to deny and hide the truth of our feelings.  Eventually keeping the secret even from ourselves.  Our physical bodies help us to hold in and disguise these feelings through muscular, organ, and soft tissue contraction.  Without emotional honesty and the physical release of held-in emotions it is very difficult, indeed, to update our thinking and experience ourselves as we truly are.  It is very difficult to leave the past behind us.  Therefore healing  also requires us to address emotional and physical release.

TRANSFORMATIONAL PSYCHOSPIRITUAL THERAPY AND BREATHWORK RELEASE DIRECTLY ASSISTS PEOPLE TO ACTUALIZE THESE GOALS.

Experience As Fertilizer For Our Psycho-Spiritual Growth

Spiritually our healing asks us to view the psychological and physical conditioning of our experience as the fertilizer in the garden of our spiritual growth.  Lack and pain, being the great motivators they are, first get our attention.  We can then identify with, react to, defend against and keep our lack and pain.  Or we can focus our attention on what the lack and pain are here to teach us and we can heal.

For instance, if your psychological issues are unworthiness and rejection, you can probably remember some very real and painful life experiences when you felt completely rejected.  You can take on a rejected identity from those experiences and spend the rest of your life isolating yourself, controlling relationships, hating yourself and/or others, settling for less and resenting the lousy garden you were born into.  Or you can explore the purpose within your experience and learn to give yourself the sense of worthiness and acceptance you have been desperately seeking from others. Of course, as you fulfill your purpose, claim your worthiness and accept yourself, your experience with others will also change.  The change starts first within.

Awareness Of Psycho-Spiritual Purpose Is Empowering!

As we become aware of the psycho-spiritual purpose within our pain we become empowered rather than victimized or martyred.  Combine this awareness with new mental and emotional clarity, and emotional and physical release, and we enter the very heart of our healing.

©Copyright 1999 Joan Levy, LCSW All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. The article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Click here to contact Joan and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Chris and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D. (1892-1949) was the founder of the interpersonal theory of psychiatry. He is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking work with schizophrenics whom he compassionately called “the lonely ones” (Evans, 1996).  A brilliant, complicated, deeply empathic, often irascible intellectual pioneer, he was among the first to deviate from Freud’s structural orthodoxy of the time. Sullivan uniquely viewed human development as forming wholly within the context of culture and inseparable from the interference of anxiety with respect to various patterns and problems in living (i.e. psychopathology).

My own interest in Sullivan dates back to a mental health field placement and a supervisor/mentor well versed in Sullivanian thought. My graduate curriculum, heavily psychodynamic and notably comprehensive, barely acknowledged him. I later came to find this was not unusual, even something of a phenomenon. Once exposed, Sullivan’s ideas became, for me, much less than another body of theory or technique than a kind of permission– a way of being with my clients that resonated viscerally. Without fully knowing it, and as is usually the case with therapist theory of choice, what I also found in Sullivan was clarity, validation and greater hope for resolution of my own particular problems in living.  Most recently, my quest to integrate diverse elements of psychological and spiritual wisdom lead to the rediscovery of the “quantum” core of Sullivan’s ideas.

Sullivan’s work greatly influenced many schools of thought including ecological and family systems, (Yalom’s) interactional group theory, cognitive-behavioral therapy, contemporary relational theory and intersubjectivity.  In addition, his work created an entirely new lens with which to understand and treat individuals with enduring maladaptive personality patterns. In the end, we can’t escape the obvious- psychotherapy, regardless of modality or orientation, is an intrinsically interpersonal process. Indeed Sullivan’s basic conception of personality, mental disorder and psychotherapy flowed from a single source- his fundamental assumption that human nature must be understood from the vantage point of interpersonal relations (Evans, 1996). But perhaps it is the spirit of unity binding his theory; that of the essential oneness of humanity and the human experience that best accounts for the intuitive, timeless applicability of his ideas and the mostly covert influence on the many hallowed theories with which we identify.

Monism, largely considered an Eastern conception with Indian philosophical origins (and subject to many interpretive definitions) is a metaphysical/theological view that all is of one essence, principle, substance or energy (Wikipedia, 2001).  Sullivan’s placing of the personality itself within the interpersonal field presumes a larger metaphysical view based on the principle that life is a process and flux, a never static, continual series of energy transformations (Greenberg and Mitchell, 1983). This echoes his parallel conclusion that “the ultimate reality in the universe is energy” (Sullivan, 1953b). Sullivan’s oft-quoted One Genus Hypothesis “Everyone is much more simply more human than otherwise…” (Sullivan, 1953b) illustrates the monistic heart of his worldview.  For all its compassionate humility, it is also a painfully informed postulate rooted in Sullivan’s profound childhood isolation and early insecure/ambivalent attachments.

This exquisite awareness and Sullivan’s proposed developmental imperatives of interpersonal connectedness and cooperation, security, empathic attunement, compassion, tenderness and consensual validation would stem from a keen ability to sublimate and universalize the frustrations of his early environment.  Sullivan, like most wounded observers of the human condition, generalized his experience and struck a primordial chord of universal truth that echoes in spite of the scant credit he receives to this day. (Ask three therapists today; one will have never heard or know little of his contributions.)

Holism, another concept with ancient Eastern roots and parallels to quantum mechanics, by definition, is the idea that all the properties of a given system cannot be determined or explained by the sum of its component parts alone, but the system as a whole determines how the parts behave (Wikipedia, 2001).  Equal parts humanist, behaviorist, culturalist and psychiatrist, Sullivan was among the first to study and clinically operationalize the non-verbal aspects of the interaction between client and therapist as well as to expound a fundamentally holistic theory of Self as the sum of reflected appraisals of others (Sullivan, 1953a).  Moreover, he was the first to conceptualize the role of the psychotherapist as one of participant-observer.  Perhaps intuitively, Sullivan applied the observer effect phenomenon (similar to the Heisenberg Principle of theoretical physics) in which a difference is always made to an activity or person by the act of observation itself (Wikipedia, 2001).  Sullivan’s participant-observer stance, in stark contrast to the “blank screen” of the psychoanalyst expanded the role and function of therapist to “co-creator” (to quote a contemporary new age term) of the psychotherapy experience. The new paradigm undoubtedly re-contextualized (and likely neutralized) iatrogenic patient responses through the introduction of the first truly holistic, two-person psychology in which a patient is viewed through the wider lens of the therapist-patient dyad.

For all his subjective madness, undeniable brilliance, alleged deviances and idiosyncratic interpersonalisms, Sullivan’s core axiomatic principles, not unlike most deceptively simple and timeless Eastern philosophical/metaphysical concepts remain vital and relevant today despite his comparatively obscure legacy. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Sullivan dwelled little on themes of fantasy, spirit, soul or love.  He steered clear of distinctly teleological arguments, remaining foremost interested in the pragmatic, and more directly inferable problems in living that affected everyone, most notably himself.  There is of course more to Sullivan than presented here, yet it may in fact be the Tao of Sullivan that best accounts for his broad applicability and enduring importance in this whole business of understanding and uniting in our inescapably common humanity.  For this, he should not be forgotten.

Evans, F. Barton III (1996)  Harry Stack Sullivan; Interpersonal theory and psychotherapy. New York: Routledge.

Greenberg, J. & Mitchell, S. (1983)  Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Sullivan, H.S. (1953a)  Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry.  New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Sullivan, H.S.  (1953)  The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Wikipedia (2001)  World Wide Web.

©Copyright 2007 Chris Hancock, LCSW. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. The article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Click here to contact Chris and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

There are several reasons why existential, religious and spiritual problems are important in psychotherapy. First it is important that therapists recognize that existential, religious and spiritual beliefs are at the foundation of individual, cultural, and societal frameworks of expression of internal and external experience. Whether the therapist or client recognizes it as an intregal part of life or not, conscious and unconscious beliefs about the nature of human existence and its meaning lie at the core of our relationships, values, ethics, morals, and how we act and interact in public and private life.

William James (1958) said that religion is the, “. . . belief that there is an unseen order and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto” (Wm. James, quoted in Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, and Gorsuch 1996 p. 6). Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, and Gorsuch (1996) explain its importance, “The great theologians have always contended that no aspect of living, including the most commonplace of activities, can be divorced from a truly religious perspective. ‘The poet Kahlil Gibran said it well when he claimed that “. . . your daily life is your temple and your religion.” Religion thus becomes life as lived in its prosaic, enlightened, and even seamy aspect.” (Gibran as quoted by Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, and Gorsuch 1996, p. 7). Brown (1988) finds that, “ . . . religious belief, experience and practice can transform reality, at least for some people and for the groups to which they belong” (p. 28). Wulff (1996) writes that, “ . . religion is the response an individual gives to existential questions-that is, questions issuing out of one’s awareness of the vicissitudes of life and death” (in Shafranske 1996 p. 61). Hood, et al (1996) indicate that “Few human concerns are more seriously regarded than religion. People surround themselves with spiritual reference, making it a context in which the sacred is invoked to convey the significance of every major life event” (p. 1).

There is a second problem or question that lies in the wide variation of how theorists and mental health practitioners regard religion and spirituality. At one extreme Freudian psychological theory regards religion as mass delusion and individual neurosis stemming from childlike fear and anxiety. To the opposite extreme transpersonal psychological theory regards religious and spiritual experiences as a possible cure for society’s ills and earth’s survival. Between those two extremes is a position that prefers not to address the issues as presented but to reduce them to biological processes and psychological factors. Some theories reduce their significance to a defense mechanism. For example Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, and Gorsuch (1996) review theories that see anxiety, guilt, and deprivation as a source of religion, “For many people moral anxiety based on guilt and guilt activates religious concerns” (p. 19). In this way it could help the anxious and deprived feel more peaceful as to whether the universe is a friendly place or not. Some might explain their deprivation as God’s punishment or can justify the deprivation as something God has done to test our faith, or to purify our souls, or that we will be rewarded for suffering in the afterlife.
A third question or problem asks: without any educational requirements or training of mental health professionals what determines how therapists respond to existential, religious and spiritual problems? Do therapists draw from their own experience and their religious or spiritual beliefs or do they limit their responses to the theories they have accepted as their theoretical orientation? If they respond from one of these two positions, how do they respond to existential, religious and spiritual problems that fall outside of their theoretical orientation or their religious or spiritual beliefs? Shafranske and Gorsuch (1984) ask,

To what extent do psychologists recognize, respect, respond to or
influence the spiritual or religious values of their clients? To
what extent does a psychologist’s personal beliefs and personal
history, in respect to religiosity, influence clinical work? To
what extent does a psychologist’s training prepare the
practitioner to be aware of the religious orientations of clients
and spiritual issues within psychotherapy? (p. 232)

Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, and Gorsuch (1996) warn that, “Humans are valuing beings, and if there is a specific human nature, it may be to act on valuesÑto accept what is liked and reject what is disliked. People’s interests complement their biases and prejudices, and religion is an area that people do not deal with dispassionately” (p. 3). It becomes impossible to separate the therapist from their beliefs, their chosen theoretical orientation and how they respond to existential, religious and spiritual problems that are addressed in the therapeutic encounter. Value-free therapy does not exist because therapists are not free of values and in the controversial area of religion and spirituality it would be difficult to find a therapist without any opinion. Jones (1996) states, “Psychology is, in American society, filling the void created by the waning influence of religion in answering questions of ultimacy and providing moral guidance” (in Shafranske 1996 p. 131).

To begin with there is a growing awareness that clients do bring these issues into therapy and that with the variety of religions and spiritual beliefs and the cultural diversity of our populations, therapists needed a way to name these presenting problems without delegating them to pathological designations. A significant but subtle addition of a newly added “V” code to the DSM IV. “V62.89 Religious or Spiritual Problem,” moves such problems into the domain of the therapist. The DSM IV. states about this “V” code, “This category can be used when the focus of clinical attention is a religious or spiritual problem. Examples include distressing experiences that involve loss or questioning of faith, problems associated with conversion to a new faith, or questioning of spiritual values that may not necessarily be related to an organized church or religious institution” (1994, p. 685). The APA (1994) reconsidered its former stand in light of demands that they become more sensitive to differing world views arising from an increasingly multicultural society.

A clinician who is unfamiliar with the nuances of an individual’s
cultural frame of reference may incorrectly judge as
psychopathology those normal variations in behavior, belief, or
experience that are particular to the individual’s culture. For
example, certain religious practices or beliefs (e.g., hearing or
seeing a deceased relative during bereavement) may be misdiagnosed
as manifestations of a Psychotic Disorder. Applying Personality
Disorder criteria across cultural settings may be especially
difficult because of the wide cultural variation in concepts of
self, styles of communication, and coping mechanisms
(APA p. xxiv).

The new “V” code can refer to any number of, and, wide range of spiritual and religious crises. These include, religious experiences, peak and transpersonal experiences, ecstatic, blissful experiences, conflict between experience and religious doctrine, religious fear, conflict between conscious and/or unconscious beliefs and experience, conversion and cult experiences, confrontations with mortality, existential crisises of meaning and moral conflict, to mention a few. Because of the inclusion of this new “V” code and the problems it encompasses there is a new awareness. Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, and Gorsuch (1996) state, “As a part of this new awareness, religion and spirituality can be considered psychotherapeutic tools” (p. 407).

Are psychotherapists ready to deal with the spiritual or religious aspect of their clients? Most psychotherapists are trained to diagnose and treat psychopathology, the scientific study of mental diseases and abnormalities. Evaluating the validity of an individual’s beliefs is of utmost importance in assessing the mental health of a client. Targeting dysfunction and maladaptive behaviors, magical thinking and delusions can be
terms used by therapists for a belief that conflicts with the therapist’s definition of normality. Shafranske and Gorsuch (1984) state, “Within the context of psychologists ‘professional and personal perspectives on religion, it is relevant to address the profession’s preparedness to respond to the spiritual dimension which the majority of Americans’ and we might purport the majority of consumers of psychological services ‘attest to experience within their lives” (p. 232). Bergin, Payne, and Richards (1996) write that,

A therapist needs to be open to an assessment of religious and
spiritual needs even though he or she may not initiate such
topics. Avoiding religious issues or routinely redirecting
spiritual concerns in therapy is no more justifiable than refusing
to deal with the death of a family member or fears of social
encounters. Religious and spiritual concerns can be initiated by
the client, but therapists are always in a position to approve or
disapprove, to be open or closed to the concern, or to show
interest or lack of interest in the experiences and perceptions of
the client as they take on spiritual meanings. Can there be a
separation, in practice, between one’s professional and personal
values (Beutler, Machado, Neufeldt, 1994, p. 120)? (in
Shafranske, 1996, p. 313)

Lukoff, Turner and Lu, (1992) state that, “Knowledge of specific features of religious and spiritual belief systems is often essential in clinical decision-making, e.g., to assess assertions such as, ‘God spoke to me.’ This may, but does not necessarily, indicate the presence of a hallucination and/or a delusion . . .” (p. 48). Pathology or human potential, religious behaviors and spiritual experiences whether adaptive, evolutive or detrimental are not easily discriminated by the untrained eye. Whether termed spiritual experience, transpersonal experience, mystical experience, exceptional human experience, peak experience or religious experience, they refer to experiences that are nearly indistinguishable from each other. Some appear to the observer as mental disturbance. Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, and Gorsuch (1996) state that, “. . . a committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry indicated that it was unable ‘to make a firm distinction between a mystical state and a psychopathological state’” (p. 410). To further complicate the distinction Grof (1985) states, “. . . a clearly psychotic state can evolve into an experience of mystical revelation. Individuals involved in spiritual search and practices occasionally confront psychotic territories within themselves, while
schizophrenic patients often visit the mystical experiential realms” (p. 309).

In our most revered testing mechanisms, there is a fine line between creativity and psychosis. Creativity researcher Frank Barron (1977) states, “The creative individual not only respects the irrational in himself, but courts the most promising source of novelty in his own thought . . . The creative person is both more primitive and more cultured, more destructive and more constructive, crazier and saner, than the average person” (in Harman; Rheingold, p. 50). Lukoff, Turner and Lu, (1992) conclude that, “. . . studies have found that people reporting mystical experiences scored lower on psychopathology scales and higher on measures of psychological well-being than controls” (in Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, and Gorsuch 1996 p. 411). Here too we see that fine line between psychosis and genius.

In a study of Religion and Subjective Well-being in Adulthood: A quantitative synthesis by Witter, Stock, Okun & Haring (1985) found, “Results indicate that religion is significantly and positively related to subjective well-being. The authors conclude that ‘religion should not, as has often occurred, be ignored in testing causal models of subjective well-being in adulthood’” (in Turner, Lukoff and Lu, 1992, p. 49). In a
study of divine relations, social relations, and well-being, Pollner (1989) stated that, “In fact, participation in a divine relation was ‘the strongest correlate in three of four measures of well-being, surpassing in strength such usually potent predictors as race, sex, income, age, marital status, and church attendance’” (in Lukoff, et al., 1992, p. 50). With these facts in mind, it seems as though the mental health profession is operating on an
unconscious level in this area. Turner, et. al. (1992) observe that, “Although the role of religion in therapy has been acknowledged since Jung, little is known of the dynamics and effective components involved” (p. 50-51).

Some therapists may hold negative opinions or have unresolved issues with their religious past. M. Scott Peck (1978) states, “. . . there is a tendency for them [therapists] to consider any passionate belief in God to be pathological. Upon occasion this tendency may go over the line into frank bias and prejudice” (p. 224). Without knowing where the therapist stands on religion, will a client feel safe enough to reveal religious or spiritual concerns? Peck tells a story about a college senior who had been in therapy for a year, but was unable to tell his therapist about his desire to join the monastery. Though Peck wanted to encourage him to talk to his therapist about such a serious life change, and to trust the therapist to be objective, he did not. Peck (1978) wrote,

For I was not at all sure that his therapist would be objective,
that he would understand, in the true meaning of the word.
Psychiatrists and psychotherapists who have simplistic attitudes
toward religion are likely to do a disservice to some of their
patients. This will be true if they regard all religion as good or
healthy. It will also be true if they throw out the baby with the
bath water and regard all religion as sickness or the Enemy. And,
finally, it will be true if in the face of the complexity of the
matter they withdraw themselves from dealing at all with the
religious issues of their patients, hiding behind a cloak of such
total objectivity that they do not consider it to be their role to
be, themselves, in any way spiritually or religiously involved.
For their patients often need their involvement. I do not mean to
imply that they should forsake their objectivity, or that
balancing their objectivity with their own spirituality is an easy
matter. It is not. To the contrary, my plea would be that
psychotherapists of all kinds should push themselves to become not
less involved but rather more sophisticated in religious matters
than they frequently are. (p. 224).

We know that the countertransference of the therapist affects therapy. For example, if sex is an uncomfortable subject for the therapist the client will learn the first time the client brings it up in a session.

Feeling the discomfort of the therapist, the client will take a cue that the therapist does not want to hear about it and this important aspect of the client’s life may never be fully addressed. And so it may be with the spiritual life of the client as well. Currently the Board of Behavioral Science requires that MFCC graduate students receive during their education 10 classroom hours on human sexuality; however there are no requirements in the area of religion and spirituality. Lukoff, Turner and Lu, (1992) say of our more educated mental health professionals, “Despite the importance that religion plays in most patients’ lives, neither psychologists nor psychiatrists are given adequate training to prepare them to deal with issues that arise in this realm” (p. 47). Barnhouse (1986) observed,

Thus psychologists and psychiatrists are often operating outside
the boundaries of their professional competence, which raises
ethical and educational concerns. Barnhouse has pointed out that,
‘Sex and religion are, in some form, universal components of human
experience. . . . . Psychiatrists who know very little about
religion would do well to study it’
(p. 103) (in Lukoff, Turner and Lu, 1992, p. 48).

In “Religions, Values and Peak Experiences,” Abraham Maslow (1964) looked at the ability of psychologists to address these issues and found them wanting, perhaps not willing to address them, and unaware of how little they actually know,

. . . this is true of the psychologist whose ratio of knowledge to
mystery must be the smallest of all scientists . . . Perhaps it
is because he is so innocently unaware of his smallness, of the
feebleness of his knowledge, of the smallness of his playpen, or
the smallness of his portion of the cosmos and because he takes
his narrow limits so for granted that he reminds me of the little
boy who was seen standing uncertainly at a street corner with a
bundle under his arm. A concerned bypasser asked him where he was
going and he replied that he was running away from home. Why was
he waiting at the corner? He wasn’t allowed to cross the street!
(p. 46).

Maslow (1964) urges us to consider the human potential, “. . . aid the person to grow to fullest humanness, to the greatest fulfillment and actualization of his highest potentials, to his greatest possible stature. In a word, it should help him to become the best he is capable of becoming, to become actually what he deeply is potentially” (p. 49). Lukoff, Turner and Lu (1992) state, “In summary, available research has established religion’s potential to foster positive mental health. However, its potential for preventing mental illness can only be inferred at this point” (p. 50). Considering the potential for well-being, and as Menninger (in Walsh and Vaughn, 1988, p. 133) wrote, the possibility of going beyond to become “weller than well” is a significant question to ponder. Why is there a prevalence to pathologize or ignore the religious and spiritual life of clients by the mental health profession and mental health educators?

Maslow (1964) urges us to cross the street and look at the existential, religious and spiritual problems, “Education must be seen as at least partially an effort to produce the good human being, to foster the good life and the good society. Renouncing this is like renouncing the reality and desirability of morals and ethics. Furthermore, ÔAn education which leaves untouched the entire region of transcendental thought is an
education which has nothing important to say about the meaning of human life.” (Manas (July 17, 1963)” (p. 58).

When we see clients do we only look for dysfunction? Do we see them in terms of psychopathology to be eliminated, or can we look deeper? We are taught to look for pathology and ask “what function does this serve?” Waldgrave (1989, 1990) asks, “ . . . when therapists use a physical science model to seek the ‘correct diagnosis’ with the ‘right interpretation or explanation’ in order to ‘treat’ the ‘pathology’, they frequently further entrench the problem-centered web of meaning by further defining it. . . . Thus the meaning created in therapy can actually strengthen their problem’s influence over them, offering scientific explanations for its onset and persistent domination” (p. 13). Do we ever ask what does this mean to the client? “. . . it is intended to emphasize that central to practically all therapeutic problems is meaning, whose created pattern determines the manner in which the problem is responded to” (p. 13). Whether the client’s meaning system depends on religion, spiritual beliefs, or a personally defined existential system of meaning, therapists need to be more attentive. To do this we must engage a different mindset, “Instead of addressing a known pathology, therapists engage in conversation, listening respectfully for the articulation of meaning by the person or family. The conversation enables the generation of new meaning by the therapist. The threads that the family have woven into a problem-focussed pattern, are joined by new threads of new colour with different meanings that encourage new possibilities, or ways of resolution and hope” (p. 13).

The reductive approach is no help to clients trying to find answers, LeShan (1990) states,

Whether it is worse for the scientists who study human feelings
and behavior to explain these as a bunch of connected reflex arcs,
or to explain them as artifacts of an advanced computer, or to
explain them as a collection of reaction-formations to
pathological drives ( which of these is worse for the effect it
has on our attitudes toward ourselves and for the future of
humankind ) is a moot point indeed. All these things play a part
in our being, but they no more explain them than the nuts and
bolts that hold an automobile together explain and make up the
automobile. . . . It is largely for this reason ( that the
scientists who should be responsibly working with the spiritual
and aspirational aspects of human beings have rejected this area
as unworthy of them ) that those people who are seeking to
find these parts of themselves go so frequently to the
irresponsible, kooky, and predatory groups that pretend to have
knowledge and working methods to help us grow in these ways. . .
. When psychologists realize that these positive aspects are real
aspects of being human and they are of tremendous importance to
us, then people will not have to seek the solution to their needs
at the hands of second-rate gurus, nuts, and those seeking to make
personal fortunes out of these hopes and aspirations (p.
126-127).

Invalidated, reduced, ignored, demonized or pathologized therapists could overlook the potential in the “peak experience.” Lack of understanding of “spiritual experiences” and issues is a central theme in the book “Spiritual Emergency,” by transpersonal theorists Stanislav and Christina Grof (1989) who write in the introduction, “. . . some of the dramatic experiences and unusual states of mind that traditional psychiatry diagnoses and treats as mental diseases are actually crises of personal transformation or ‘spiritual emergencies’” (p. x). In an interdisciplinary exploration of these “peak” experiences, the authors state that in many cultures, ancient and modern experience profound transformational consequences that our western society has long invalidated. The Grofs (1989) continue,

The concept of spiritual emergency integrates findings from many
disciplines, including clinical and experimental psychiatry,
modern consciousness research, experiential psychotherapies,
anthropological field studies, parapsychology, thanatology,
comparative religion, and mythology. Observation from all these
fields suggest strongly that spiritual emergencies have a positive
potential and should not be confused with diseases that have a
biological cause and necessitate medical treatment. (p. x).

Grof (1989) writes, “We are now realizing to our surprise that, in the process of relegating mystical experiences to pathology, we may have thrown the baby out with the bath water” (p. xii). If clients bring us their experiences and we pathologize or ignore rather than explore them we may lose the most powerful tool for healing, the human psyche.

What meaning do extraordinary experiences hold for our clients? Near-death experiences have become more prevalent due to advances in medical and resuscitation technology. Studied by transpersonal theorists, the near-death experience has great potential for harm if invalidated and labeled as hallucination and great potential for personal transformation and healing if addressed and integrated by the client. Ignored, it is a lost opportunity. Researcher Cherie Sutherland (1992) after contacting over 200 subjects from all over Australia settled on a sample of 50 which included 15 men and 35 women whom she used in her doctoral dissertation research. Since she was focusing on the aftereffects the near-death experiences, the episode had to have been 2 years or more past, reasonable geographical accessibility within the eastern states of Australia and English-speaking. Sutherland states that, “Almost all of them are changed by the experience and through their interactions with others these changes move beyond the personal, beyond the lives of individual experiencers into the social realm, presaging a profound transformation of great benefit to society as a whole” (p. 243). Morse (1994) states that “Research has also shown that paying attention to spiritual issues has an immediate practical effect on human suffering. Paying attention to a patient’s feelings and spiritual beliefs can lead to shorter hospital stays and the use of less pain medication. It has also been documented to reduce costs and unnecessary procedures” (p. 125).

National surveys from 1980 to 1985 indicated that 15% of Americans have been near death, 8% have had a “near-death experience.” This experience puts an immense strain on personal relationships. The person who has had the near-death experience often becomes more optimistic, yet experiences the breakup of primary relationships. This paradoxical result is due to a change in priorities, and values which result in less interest in acquiring material possessions. This study done by Cherie Sutherland Ph.D. (1992), showed that another change in priority was a “. . . widespread desire for knowledge” and a strong desire to help others. Almost three-quarters of those she interviewed made major career changes, many to a work that involved helping others, many expressing an increased interest is social issues. “When death is no longer feared, it is possible, as has been shown by these experiencers, to engage in meaningful relationships with the dying, to abandon immortality projects and to see attachment to immortality vehicles such as money, fame, and heroism as ultimately illusory. Such crucial changes in attitude provide a fundamental challenge to the widely accepted norms of Western society” (p. 242).

Near-death experiences not only heal the individual but in a transpersonal sense ripple out to benefit the whole of society. Can therapists afford to ignore the possibilities inherent in listening to and facilitating the integration of these experiences and their effects on relationships, the family and society? In the work of the therapist the potential of successful resolution and integration of near-death and other peak, spiritual and paranormal experiences is too great to ignore. Our society stands on the precipice of self destruction. Stanislav Grof (1989) suggests, “On the collective scale, the loss of spirituality might be a significant factor in the current dangerous global crisis that threatens the survival of humanity and of all life on the plane” (p .xiii). Considering this potential how can we afford to ignore or minimize this type of experience in the therapeutic setting? To pathologize it would be a crime. The gap between spirituality and psychology can be bridged.

Authors define religious experiences such as “Mystical Experience,” “Glossolalia” or “speaking in tongues,” “Conversion” and “Scrupulosity” (Mora 1969 in Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger and Gorsuch 1996, p. 414) as “. . . the religious manifestation of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder” (Askin Palutre, White, and Van Ornum 1993 in Hood, et al., 1996, p. 414). Also, they indicate that the “Religion of Mentally Disordered Persons” deals with concepts which are closest to straddling the fine and variable line between pathology and normal cultural and religious behavior, “. . . refers to intense religious experiences and conversion as ‘adaptive regression” that may “help reorganize a weakened ego’” (Hood, et al., 1996, p. 416). The effects of various religion on the individual has yet to be studied.

Argyle (1959) found context and culture can make a great difference in determining the difference between pathology and religious behavior. Religions such as Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, and Orthodox Judaism and the countries in which they predominate show the lowest suicide rates, while suicide rates for Protestants are “two to three times higher” (in Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger and Gorsuch, 1996, p. 417). However members of a religion may be less willing to report the death as suicide, except if evidence is undeniable, witnesses reveal it as such or it is publicly known. Gibbs (1966) observed that the Jewish Zealots at Masada in a mass suicide protested their lack of freedom and are remembered as examples of a principle founded on an admired quality of commitment to human dignity. Contrasted with the mass suicide at Jonestown and the People’s Temple there seems to be no research that can be generalized to all religions and all religious people (in Hood, et al., 1996, p. 417).

The significance of existential, religious and spiritual problems lies in three areas. First, therapists need to be aware that beliefs and meaning are central themes inherent in existential, religious and spiritual problems, which are at the foundation of individual, cultural, and societal frameworks of experience and at the core of values, ethics, morals and therefore how people interact in relationships. Second, without any educational requirements, therapists are faced with wide variations of what theorists say about religion and spirituality. Therapists need to be aware of their own beliefs in order to recognize and respect their influence on clients’ existential, religious and spiritual beliefs and need to consider the issue of values in this controversial area. Third, therapists need to address these problems in a well-informed way so not not to miss the dismiss the human potential nor the opportunities inherent in the cultural, clinical and experiential aspects of existential, religious and spiritual problems.

EXISTENTIAL, RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL WHAT DOES IT MEAN ?

In “A Generation of Seekers” a study of the religious and spiritual experience of “Baby Boomers” started in 1988, Wade Clark Roof and his researchers interviewed hundreds of this generation on the phone, and, also, visited churches and synagogues in an effort to understand their search for a spiritual home. These researchers sought to “. . . learn as much as possible about their religious and spiritual biographies, . . .” (p. 2).
Asked by their research subjects “Why are you asking questions about religion and spirituality?” Roof (1993) answers,

Because there is widespread ferment today that reaches deep within
their lives. Members of this generation are asking questions about
the meaning of their lives, about what they want for themselves
and for their children. They are still exploring, as they did in
their years growing up; but now they are exploring in new, and, we
think, more profound ways. Religious and spiritual themes are
surfacing in a rich variety of ways in Eastern religions, in
evangelical and fundamentalist teachings, in mysticism and New Age
movements, in Goddess worship and other ancient religious rituals,
in the mainline churches and synagogues, in Twelve-Step recovery
groups, in concern about the environment, in holistic health, and
in personal and social transformation. Many within this generation
who dropped out of churches and synagogues years ago are now
shopping around for a congregation. They move freely in and out,
across religious boundaries; many combine elements from various
traditions to create their own personal, tailor-made meaning
systems. Choice, so much a part of life for this generation, now
expresses itself in dynamic and fluid religious styles.
Religion and spirituality, of course, are an integral part
of human culture.

©Copyright 1997 Nancy Poitou, M.A., M.F.T., C.T.S.  All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. The article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org.

In our fast paced society and culture that values youth, individuality, material things and accomplishments, more and more people hunger for meaning and connection to some larger purpose. This especially becomes important when dealing with life-changing events, confrontation with mortality or pain that is mental, emotional or physical in which an interpretation may be necessary that gives meaning to the event. This sets the stage for a “spiritual crisis,” where previously held beliefs are called into question. This is a common experience after a traumatic event where the unexpected has happened, whether a car accident, injury, being diagnosed with a life threatening illness, experiencing being the victim of a crime, the premature death of a loved one or having an unusual spiritual experience. A commonly held belief may be that bad things only happen to bad people, or these things only happen to someone else. When it happens to us the life changing event shatters a sense of safety in the world and creates conflict, confusion, disorientation or guilt.

The individual’s solution to a problem or crisis such as this lies in addressing questions regarding beliefs, meaning and purpose. It might be said that the sufficiency or deficiency of a belief system is called into question. Resolution may require greater definition of beliefs toward a sort of “cosmic world view” to such questions as, 1. Why do I/we exist?, 2. What am I here to do?, 3.Who am I?, 4. What makes me different or the same as others?, 5. What is my or our relationship to the interplay of forces, cause and effect or to a supreme force?, 6. What is my real potential?, 7. What is the meaning of life over and above survival?, 8. What do I believe God is and does God exist?, 9. Why do I and others suffer?, 10. Why me?, 11. Why this?, 12. Why now?, 11. Why does life seem unfair?, 13. Where do I/we come from really?, 14. If God exists, why does God allow suffering?, 15. How can we create a more peaceful state of existence?, 17. What happens when we die? To these questions science fails to give satisfactory answers. We need to search beyond the rational mind for these answers. “Research confirms this view that God becomes part of the “big picture” for the significant things that happen” (Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, and Gorsuch, 1996, p. 30).

People will endure anything life throws at them as long as they believe it has meaning. For some event to have meaning we must believe that learning and growth has come from it, that the event has motivated us to take some action that will help others or that it has taught us something about ourselves. Answering these questions has the potential to provide meaning, can help us to feel connected to the divine, or to feel that our actions in life have been meaningful, because we have made a difference to someone, somewhere at some time. A spiritual crisis may launch us on a journey that leads to a unique task or mission in life that continues to give our lives meaning. Victor Frankl, an author who endured a Nazi Death Camp believed that “striving to find meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.” (p. 121, Man’s Search for Meaning)

A spiritual crisis can cause a conflict with traditional religious beliefs and take us on an exploration of other traditions. In Roof’s study of baby boomers, “More than half of all Protestant boomers feel that the churches have lost the spiritual part of religion” (p. 236). Roof (1994) writes a section of his book about religious struggles, “Distinguishing between religion and spirituality, or between the outer and inner aspects of faith, is an important theme and helps individuals to find a more enriching, favorable connection with the divine” (p. 215). This begins an “independent spiritual path” where the individual must take responsibility for their own beliefs. The previously accepted beliefs may no longer helpful. It means looking deeper beyond religious doctrine and what one has been taught. This may also call into question the need for an intermediary such as a minister, priest or rabbi. Current best selling author Carolyn Myss states in The Creation of Health, “. . . all beliefs, regardless of their source – be it cultural, social or religious – are worthy of being challenged if they no longer serve us in terms of helping up cope with challenges of our lives.” (p. 140)

One woman’s experience of spiritual crisis was borne of her deep devotion to Catholicism. She loved the church so much that at age eight she wanted to become a nun. She went to Catholic schools and a Catholic College. During her first year at college, she was raped by a priest. This threw her into a “crisis in faith.” She told me , “. . . the whole concept of clergy representing God, of a priest representing Jesus Christ, if that was true, then how could this betrayal have happened?” This sexual assault and the way it was handled by the nuns, other priests and the church itself shook her beliefs and religious aspirations to the core of her being. She describes what happened next, “I tried after the initial shock to get help. I told a priest and two nuns, but no one believed me and they made it about me. Nothing was done, which further deepened this split, because where was my community, where was the ‘mother church,’ who was going to be there for me in my time of need and suffering? So I went off the deep end in terms of my psychological process, . . .” What had brought her meaning and deep trust in the church was shattered by this experience.

Traumatic events tear the veil of illusion that insulate us from reality; beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, support that illusion. For example, a belief that one is safe in Catholic church with a priest or that the church is a source of refuge and support. In this example the spiritual crisis arose when the rape created conflict between spiritual beliefs and life experience. This split took her away from the church to explore other avenues of spirituality “. . . this was in the sixties and so I explored different disciplines, meditation, Buddhism, yoga, Sufism, and even hallucinogenic drugs.” She became interested in eastern religions, nature and music. She eventually found ways to rebuild her spiritual foundation and connect to the sacred in experiential ways.

The author of a 1994 study of Baby Boomers, Wade Clark Roof states, “Boomer women, especially the working, career-oriented women, struggle with religion more than do their male counterparts” (p. 217). “Sexist language came up more than any other single concern among women. Words that ignore the existence of women alienate and cut them off from a wholehearted affirmation of their personhood and continue to remind them of the evils of patriarchy and sexism. Women feel starved spiritually with symbols and rituals that fail to include them and nurture them as whole people” (p. 218). “Traditional models of piety and spirituality are often tied to outdated dualisms of body and spirit, fail to nurture” (p. 185) yet “. . . history is replete with maternal imageries in many eras. The Virgin, the Madonna, the Goddess, and Sophia are among the images that express a feminine archetype. In reaction to the traditional, patriarchal conceptions of God, many Americans today hold to feminine images; One-fourth of the boomers say they can imagine God as Mother” (p. 76).

Spiritual crisis and the inner struggle that ensues is often experienced as an existential depression. Andrea Nelson (1996) writes about depression, “A state of depression contains within it the potential for growth. When a depressed person is confronted with the turmoil of a life crisis, she is, willingly or unwillingly, immersed in the far-from equilibrium conditions that are ripe for a spontaneous shift to a higher level of integration” (p. 133). The breakdown that ensues with depression may actually portend a breakthrough. My own research indicated that the breakthrough may mean a more integrated and embodied spirituality. A need in finding a new spiritual belief system is to find the authentic Self and an authentic way of expressing spiritual impulses. Wade Clark Roof (1994) writes, “The struggle is to get beyond the facade, the external shell of religion, to its ‘embodiment,’ or the link between spirituality and responsible action. . . . what is important is that it be an authentic expression of a deeply felt conviction” (p. 236).

Sometimes people in a spiritual crisis do not know where to turn. The usual sources of spiritual comfort are not available due to the current conflict with the beliefs that he or she held up to that time. Some psychotherapists have knowledge and training that include the spiritual dimension of humanity and can help the seeker in spiritual crisis. A transpersonal theoretical orientation is the most likely to have the background with which to help resolve the spiritual crisis that may linger long after the precipitating event is over. However most consumers of psychotherapy may be reluctant to bring spiritual questions to any therapist since psychology’s genesis rejected the spiritual dimension to find acceptance as a science. Now coming full circle transpersonal psychology is the result of the mounting evidence of the benefits of spirituality to physical and mental health, relationships, fulfillment and meaning. It can balance our society’s emphasis on the external and provide a firm foundation internally that serves to weather the storms of stressful life events.

Beyond the limited range of a model of mental health as free of pathology, transpersonal psychology sees this traditional model’s norm as arrested development. We know from a theory developed by Abraham Maslow that beyond this lies a greater potential for humanity, a spiritual evolution that goes beyond (trans) the personal to concern ourselves with the larger picture to become “self-actualizing”, contributing to the greater good. To quote Albert Einstein, “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’ – a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and to the whole of nature in its beauty.” A narrow concern limited to the individual is a denial of our interconnected nature that is Nature. When we recognize this our beliefs become more responsible. We alone are responsible for what we believe and whether we act in accordance with those beliefs.

Out of a spiritual crisis comes a conscious exploration and redefining of our beliefs. This process can create a more authentic and integrated approach to life. Now knowing what we believe, having answered enough of the questions that arose as the result of the initial life shaking event, we begin to use the beliefs which we have consciously chosen. We develop a new attitude toward life. This new attitude can bring about positive self esteem through living a life congruent with the beliefs chosen consciously. Integrating consciously chosen beliefs provides a firm foundation with which to weather the storms of life changing events. It allows us to live with greater peace not from a belief system we inherited or unconsciously accepted. But from a belief system that makes sense to us and has the capacity to provide meaning and account for life events and changes, as the stepping stones that allow us to grow and change. This is a more realistic pragmatic and meaningful approach to life challenges.

References
Maslow, Abraham H. (1968) Toward a Psychology of Being. Princeton: Van Nostrand
Nelson, John E. M.D. and Nelson, Andrea, Psy.D. (1996)
Sacred Sorrows: Embracing and Transforming Depression.
New York: Tarcher/Putnam Books
Maslow, Abraham H. (1964) Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences.
New York: Penguin Arkana
Frankl, Viktor E. (1959) ManÕs Search for Meaning.
New York: Washington Square Press
Hood, Ralph W. Jr., Spilka, B., Hunsberger, B. & Gorsuch, R. (1996) The Psychology of Religion. New York: The Guilford Press
Roof, Wade Clark (1993) A Generation of Seekers. New York: HarperSanFrancisco

©Copyright Nancy Poitou, M.A., M.F.T., C.T.S., 2007. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. The article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org.

Unfortunately we do not have enough pronouns and saying he or she, or s/he is clumsy. In this article it may sound as though I am characterizing men and women in different ways. I want to be clear that the examples I use, men do this and women do that are only for ease of reading. Both sexes make the mistakes and do the behaviors I describe. I have chosen pronouns by which sex seems to lean toward that particular behavior more often.

As a relationship therapist I have made observations of the troubled relationships in my practice. Non-professionals do not get any training or education in relationships or parenting unless they seek it out or come to a therapist’s office when in crisis. Yet these are two of the most important roles in life. The only examples a person has in life is their parents and if those role models were not good, that means that people not only do not have an understanding but may be starting out in life with a misunderstanding of relationships.

Tao means “the path” or “the way.” Tao is the way of ultimate reality, it exceeds all thoughts and imaginings, known only through mystical insight. Though words fall short, aspects can be described as both transcendent and immanent it is the way, the power, and the ordering principle of all life. Spirit that does not end, it is the graceful, flowing and infinite. The Tao is the way human beings can order their lives to be in harmony with the way the universe functions. It is the paradox and mystery of the universe. Like love. A paradox of being in harmony with rather than striving for specific outcomes.

“Taoism’s approach is the opposite — to get the foundations of the self in tune with Tao and let behavior flow spontaneously.” (Huston, p.277)

One of my observations of relationships is that those seeking a relationship want one too much and those in a relationship where the newness has worn off don’t want it enough. Single people seeking a relationship are way too anxious and in a hurry to be in a relationship and are therefore vulnerable to not seeing the prospective partner objectively and not using critical thinking. Low self-esteem is often behind this. They want a relationship to prove to themselves and the world that they are lovable. This is the basis of many relationship problems.

Some of the mistakes are:

1. Making an Impression. Putting far more energy into making a favorable impression on a prospective partner than evaluating whether this is a person is someone with whom they would want to be in a relationship. Thus they are not being an objective observer of the prospective partner. Examples: Most often it is the woman who will do this, the man may talk about himself for a while, then ask his date, tell me about yourself. She will tell him not about herself but rather what she thinks he wants in a woman. A man will begin a relationship acting as though money were no object, only later does the truth surface, she find out that he is deeply in debt and does not manage his money well. (This goes along with 2. Not knowing one self and 3. Inauthentic.)

2. Not knowing one self. Denying their own desires, feeling and opinions. Thus they set a precedent in the relationship of not speaking their truth. Later this backfires, once they finally begin to disagree they are already involved way over their head with someone who is now shocked to find out what they really feel. (This goes along with 3. Inauthentic.) The Tao Teh Ching states, “He who knows men is clever; He who knows himself has insight.”” (Tzu, Ch. 33)

3. Inauthentic. Chameleon like behavior, meaning they are suddenly interested in the prospective partner’s interests and hobbies. I have seen people change their majors in college to the same major as the prospective partner, with each new relationship comes a new major. The prospective partner may have voiced an opinion regarding some aspect of life, though the opposite is an important aspect of their of their life, they often down play that importance, again the truth always surfaces later and you’ll hear them defending, “If you really love me, you will be supportive and accept this about me.”

4. Fools Rush In. Not being able to tolerate the anxiety of dating and getting to know a prospective partner slowly means the individual often becomes sexually, emotionally, socially and sometimes financially involved before they know the person behind the mask, the authentic self. Don’t just pay attention to what a prospective partner says about themselves, but how is it demonstrated in their life? Do they say they love kids, but never see their own? Do they say they are ambitious and want a degree and a career, but drop out of school three months later? How do they talk about their “ex’s”? If there is contact, is it amiable? Does he describe every woman he ever had a relationship with as a bitch? But tells you how nice you are? I estimate that in most cases, you have barely scratched the surface of the authentic person until you have had six months of steady contact. What I see is they go out, very soon talking on the phone every day, seeing each other several times a week, before long they are living together and only 2-3 months have passed, sometimes less. Usually by that time the problems they had in their last relationship are just beginning to surface.

5. Abandoning your authentic self. They give up their own friendships, interests and activities to be available to the prospective partner. Their life goes on hold. Thus expecting the prospective partner to do the same and meet all their needs. Some go to the extreme, one man sold the airplane he had been rebuilding for the previous ten years, flying was a lifelong interest. He said he needed to sell it to get married though his girlfriend did not want him to sell it, she knew the plane was important and did not want him to be bitter about selling it years later. It was also somewhat manipulative, “see I gave up this to marry you, now you must marry me.” She later broke off the engagement, he was devastated and no longer had his plane.

6. Opposites Attract. For example an introvert may be attracted to an extrovert, because the extrovert makes it easy for them to meet and get to know people. Later in the relationship they are tired of being around other people so much and want to spend quiet time alone so they begin to try to change the partner. The qualities that first attracted them are the very reasons they become dissatisfied. Qualities that attract us to someone are qualities we are better off developing within ourselves. Yes, opposites do attract, but do not always make good relationships. Seek a partner that is more like you, and has similar values and interests. Another example is one partner saying, the other good for me because his frugality will help me find balance. Only later to be fed up with the tightwad who is now perceived as being a penny pincher. This line of thinking is a form of justification and denial.

7. Denial. Some relationships that start as an affair are in denial about trust. They think that the prospective partner would never cheat on them, because their relationship will be different and the excuse or justification for this betrayal is accepted because they are nothing like the last partner. Some people habitually get involved with the next person before letting go of the previous relationship. (Very needy) Another example, one of my supervisors tells a story about a couple that met in a bar and in that first meeting she gets insulted and pours a drink over his head. In couples counseling she complains that he is an alcoholic. The clues were there from day one, she just refused to see them.

8. Cultural Conditioning. Again a lack of critical thinking. Our culture looks at relationships through rose colored glasses, never so much as considering do they really want to be in a relationship or have children, then are shocked when they realize they are unhappy. Most people assume they need a relationship to be happy, never even considering that they have a choice about marriage and children. The reality is that the segment of the population that is most at risk for depression is married women with young children. Statistics show that single, divorced and widowed women cope better and are happier than men in the same situations. For men the opposite is true. How did we buy into the cultural lie that women want and need marriage and men don’t? Men actually need women more than women need men.

9. Unrealistic thinking. Thinking the other person will change after they are married. If there are problems before marriage, I will guarantee that those problems will only get worse after marriage. If you are not happy now do not marry thinking things will change. Some people justify marriage because then there will be an official commitment and he won’t be so insecure, jealous and suspicious all the time. I wish marriage licenses contained that kind of magic.

10. Misperception. Mistaking jealous, controlling behavior for love. It is abuse not love. It is about insecurity and low self esteem. Or the reverse. Thinking that they need to control the other person to keep them in the relationship. A lot of very needy behavior is thinking that they can keep the other person by clinging, being suspicious, having them account for every moment of their time apart or simply not allowing the other to have any outside relationships. This behavior will only result in driving the other person away, the opposite of what was intended. If you cannot trust the person, you shouldn’t be in a relationship with them. The Tao, “He who conquers men has force; He who conquers himself is truly strong.” (Tzu, Ch. 33) Let go, if they choose to be with you, you can be sure they are there for the right reasons. Neediness is not attractive, confidence is. If you are that needy then you need to go to therapy and not be in a relationship until you can let go. “When you are lacking in faith, Other will be unfaithful to you.” (Tzu, Ch. 17)

The Tao Teh Ching has quite a bit to teach us.

“Man at his best, like water,
Serves as he goes along:
Like water he seeks his own level,
The common level of life. (Ch. 8).”
(Huston, p. 279)

We need to learn about letting go and allowing life and love to find it’s own level. If you have to struggle in a relationship to keep it together you are fighting the Tao. If you fight about making a commitment, making a greater commitment under pressure is asking for trouble. If people were to let go and not try so hard to be in a relationship they run the risk of not being in a relationship for a longer periods of time, but they are more likely to be available when the right person comes along rather than pursuing every prospective partner, changing colors like a chameleon, attempting to make it work, (pushing the river) becoming frustrated and cynical. Chasing after a relationship with another rather than pursuing a relationship with oneself, this only makes you less interesting because you don’t bring much to the relationship. If you have a solid relationship with yourself, like your own company, you will be a lot more selective about who you pair up with and able to tolerate the anxiety of getting to know another person slowly so that you not only know yourself, but hopefully will be objective enough to avoid making the mistakes I have mentioned.

“What is well planted cannot be uprooted.” (Tzu, Ch. 54)

Avoiding a relationship with oneself and being constantly on the hunt for a partner says something about not being whole, seeking wholeness outside of yourself. If you don’t like being alone with you how can you expect someone else to? There is such a fear of being alone and the perception that there is something wrong with you if you are not in a relationship that causes fools to rush in so they can prove to the world and themselves, “see I am lovable, because I am in a relationship.”

“Those who flow as life flows know
They need no other force:
They feel no wear, they feel no tear,
They need no mending, no repair. “
(Tzu, Ch. 15)

The wisdom of “you must love yourself first before you can truly love another or have another love you” may sound like a cliché’ but I find a great deal of truth in it. Healthy relationships mean spending time together and time alone and trusting enough to spend time apart. Often in the beginning of a relationship people choose tone and words carefully, yet after they are in a committed relationship and the mask has fallen away, often feelings are expressed without regard to the words or tone that can make a huge difference in the way in which the words are received. Therapists see the need for good communication skills, teaching couples the difference between taking responsibility for one’s own feelings or making the partner responsible. There is a huge difference between blaming, “You made me angry . . .” and taking responsibility and information, “I feel angry when you . . .” Sharing information and feelings about matters gives the other more understanding of your thought process.

Years into a relationship we often take the other for granted. Men are shocked when after years of marriage the woman up and leaves. She has been telling him what she needs and had he been listening and taking her seriously he could have prevented the breakup. Then suddenly he tries to get her back by romancing her. But often it is too little, too late. If your partner suggests couples therapy, do not hesitate. It is much better to go sooner and be proactive than trying to repair a broken relationship. Married therapists will go see another therapist at the first sign of a problem, “a marriage tune up” Once problems are ignored and the fighting and anger begin, it soon spirals out of control. Then the hurt and damage to the relationship is now a mountain rather than a bump in the road. Often by the time most couples seek therapy it is already too late. Therapists will find out that the couple does not spend any time on their relationship, quality time alone with just the two of them. They often by that time have no relationship. It is as though before a commitment people tend to be overly flexible and later on become inflexible.

I often hear, “He never . . .” or “She always . . .”. one of the quickest ways to doom a relationship. Eliminate never and always from your vocabulary. I will often say “oh really he never expressed his feelings? Then you knew that before you married him.” What was meant to show me how awful the partner is shows me just how much denial she has been in since the very beginning. It gives the partner no credit for any attempts to ever talk about his feelings. And it is hope banishing if he has any idea of trying to change. As therapists we create a space for change, hold the hope even when the client feels hopeless. I assume that the individual is capable and has tried in the past, but either didn’t know how, or felt discouraged when he tried. A much more hopeful and less judgmental attitude would be to say, “I would really like to know more about what he feels.” It sounds more like an invitation to share, rather than a judgment about his total lack of communication about his feelings. If he has tried and his efforts have gone unnoticed, evidenced by the fact that she believes that he never talks about his feelings, it is likely to be so discouraging he will give up.

One of the most prevalent problems I see is expressing anger when the original feeling is something else. Feeling hurt should be expressed as “I felt hurt when you said. . .” Not only is it the truth, it is a lot easier to respond to and address than anger. Most likely it is a defense mechanism learned early on to protect one from the vulnerable feelings like hurt. Some people are not aware of the true feelings the habit is so ingrained. How can anyone communicate and get their needs met if they cannot identify and express feelings other than anger? I have heard men say women are so emotional, yet they respond to every uncomfortable feeling with anger and do not think that anger is an emotion. Men are actually just as emotional as women; they just have more cultural conditioning to conquer before they can recognize that they have feelings besides anger. Trying to control the other, or get your needs met through anger and criticism is not only ineffective, but also damages the relationship. The Tao, “A good soldier is never aggressive; A good fighter is never angry.” (Tzu, Ch. 68) It also reminds of an Elvis Costello song that goes, “Two little Hitlers fight it out until, one little Hitler does the other one’s will.”

We thoughtlessly unconsciously react in relationships is one reason relationship difficulties spiral out of control. It is far better to take a time-out when the discussion gets too emotional so that we can regain objectivity and focus on solutions rather than blaming and in the heat of anger saying things that will be regretted later. Sometimes in an out of control argument partners have broken possessions of the other, items that might be very personally meaningful to them. How is this supposed to get you what you want or need in a relationship? People seem to think one person wins and the other loses. The truth is they both lose. Even if they do go on to repair the relationship and stay together sometimes the hurt and the damage done in this out of control fighting lingers, smoldering, and one day years later when you think it long forgotten, in an unconscious moment anger slips out, and not only has it not been forgotten, you find the resentment has built. It never helps to put the other down and say or do things that cause hurt. The old golden rule is the best foundation on which to help us have any skill in relationships. If your partner had something to tell you that might hurt your feelings how would you like to be told? Think about this first before speaking.

If people would know themselves and be authentic in interacting with prospective partners rather than trying so hard to impress the other, many bad relationships would never even begin. If we do what is truly best for us, it will also be best for those around us. No matter how much a partner tries to convince us that the reason they are so angry is because they love us so much, you are doing the partner no favors by giving in and staying in the relationship when you are miserable. To break off a relationship because it is not good for you is not only good for you but for your partner as well. He or she will forced to re-evaluate their beliefs and habits in relationships. The Tao, “Truly, one may gain by losing; And one may lose by gaining.” (Tzu, Ch. 42 ) Sometimes an individual will come to therapy depressed over the breakup of a relationship, but stop therapy immediately when they start a new relationship, because the depression has lifted. It is normal to be depressed over the breakup of a relationship. Getting re-involved before working through the last one to a point where you can be once again happy alone is once again the wrong reason to be in a relationship, the neediness puts too much reliance on the partner to “make them happy,” thus the rebound relationship, an escape from, not a resolution of the feelings of depression nor the reasons the relationship broke up. Under the circumstances this is the best time to be in therapy, to become conscious about what went wrong in the last relationship, and learn new relationship skills while beginning to get to know someone. The Tao says, “He who feels punctured, must once have been a bubble.” (Huston, p. 291)

If authenticity were the rule rather than the exception like water running downstream seeking its own level, we would automatically pair up with the best match. As long as people continue to try so hard they make the mistakes I have observed, continue to seek fulfillment and completion through another rather that seeking it within. One who seeks fulfillment and completion within is a far better partner. They want the relationship because they love the other for who they truly are and not because they need a relationship to feel whole, complete, loved or fulfilled. They see the other clearly and not project what they want to see in order to justify their need.

The following poem is very much in the spirit of the Tao, one that I encourage clients to read every day to remind themselves to let go.

LETTING GO
To “let go” does not mean to stop caring it means, I can’t do it for someone else
To “let go” is not to cut myself off it’s the realization, I can’t control another
To “let go” is not to enable but to allow learning from natural consequences
To “let go” is to admit powerlessness which means the outcome is not in my hands
To “let go” is not to try to change or blame another it’s to make the most of myself
To “let go” is not to “care for” but to “care about”
To “let go” is not to “fix” but to be supportive
To “let go” is not to judge but to allow another to be a human being
To “let go” is to not be in the middle arranging all the outcomes but to allow others to affect their destinies
To “let go” is not to be protective it’s to permit another to face reality
To “let go” is not to deny but to accept
To “let go” is not to nag, scold or argue but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them
To “let go” is not to adjust everything to my desires but to take each day as it comes, and cherish myself in it
To “let go” is not to criticize and regulate anybody but to try to become what I dream I can be
To “let go” is not to regret the past but to try to become what I dream I can be
To “let go” is to fear less and love more

Learn to love and accept your self and you will learn to love and accept others.
Sage advice from the Tao…..

“The highest form of goodness is like water.
Water knows how to benefit all things without striving with them.
It stays in places loathed by all men.
Therefore, it comes near the Tao.
In choosing your dwelling, know how to keep to the ground.
In cultivating your mind, know how to dive in the hidden deeps.
In dealing with others, know how to be gentle and kind.
In speaking, know how to keep your words.
In governing, know how to maintain order.
In transacting business, know how to be efficient.
In making a move, know how to choose the right moment.
If you do not strive with others,
You will be free from blame.” (Tzu, Ch. 8)

References
Tzu, Lao (1990) Tao Teh Ching. Boston & London: Shambhala
Smith, Huston ( 1986) The Religions of Man. New York: Harper and Row Publishers
Gibran, Kahlil (1923) The Prophet. New York: Alfred A. Knopf
unknown author, Letting Go
Costello, Elvis (1990) Two Little Hitlers.

©2007 Copyright Nancy Poitou, M.A., M.F.T., C.T.S.  All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. The article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org.