Why therapy works

Therapy literally means 'healing', from the Greek work 'therapeia'. Clearly this is something we all need at times. But lately, therapy has been given a bad name. Perhaps largely due to 20th century television, in which many television programs regarded therapy with disdain or as a source of humour. Countless shows where people are 'in therapy' for weeks, months or years, and obviously getting nowhere. Meanwhile, a show that continues to survive on the screen these days is Frasier, all about a psychiatrist and his psychiatrist brother, both of whom are quite dysfunctional in life.

But therapy is not only workable, it really should be regarded as an ESSENTIAL part of everyone's life. Consider this- we take our cars in for maintenance and service every year, or at least every couple of years. However, we neglect ourselves. Every year is full of disappointments and losses, sometimes total catastrophes. Why not carry out some maintenance and service on ourselves?

How to repair and maintain ourselves? On the most simple level, talking out our problems will give us a kind of 'release valve', giving us some relief from the growing inner tension. This type of help is what I call 'counselling'. It is light, and is ideal for ongoing support. However, when we introduce a technique or method that is designed to explore the SOURCE of our problems, then we have entered the world of therapy. There is a wide range of possible therapies in the world today. I offer therapies such as Traumatic Incident Reduction, Time Line Therapy, and a series of methods I call Rapid Unblocking Techniques.

Let me explore with you the basics of therapy, why it works and how these therapies can QUICKLY change your life for the better, and open up your pathway to success.

YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND
Your Unconscious Mind has evolved to be able to record EVERYTHING you experience. Why does it do this? Because should something negative happen to you, the recording of that event is available for review. You can learn from what happened, and either avoid a similar incident in the future, or have more idea of what to do about it should it occur again. These negative recordings, containing physical, mental and emotional pain, are kept hidden in deep recesses in the mind, away from conscious awareness. The Conscious Mind is kept free to get on with the business of living life, building shelter, obtaining food, acquiring resources for survival, and so on.

The idea was always that we would, when convenient, access and process these negative aspects of our Unconscious Mind. Accessing and processing this part of the Unconscious Mind is something that older civilizations were fully adept with. They had 'Shamans' in their groups who would facilitate healing with people whenever it was needed.

HOWEVER, in our world- our world of techno-gadgets and economies and mass production and our wild race to get more done and consume more and make more money to be able to consume even more- we have lost sight of the importance of our inner self. In fact for many people in the modern world, the idea of slowing down or even stopping for a while, and consulting their inner goings on, is a painful idea, and something to be avoided. Similarly, meditation for many people is too painful to contemplate. There is so much unprocessed, unresolved material within them that their only recourse is to pursue distraction for every minute of the waking day.

If an event or incident in your life is recorded in the deeper recesses of your Unconscious Mind, seemingly inaccessible to your Conscious Mind, then whatever that event or incident is, it was overwhelming at the time. Too much for your Conscious Mind to deal with. This is the 'blanking out' we are all familiar with. A light example of this is when new father visits a hospital and first sees his newborn triplet children. A happy moment, yes, but also a moment of intense emotion including the prospect of a very busy and demanding future. Meanwhile the possibility of negative experiences is vast. Accidents and moments of actual unconsciousness. The shock of hearing bad news, when we momentarily fade out.

In the illustration below, we can see that incidents of physical pain and/or emotional pain can cause 'unconsciousness', in that they bypass the normal processing functions of the conscious mind, and much or all of their content will be recorded in the Unconscious Mind. An incident such as a car accident can be largely blanked out. People often comment that only memories seconds before an accident and some hours after an accident are available to their conscious memory. Emotional incidents such as losses of significant others, or failures to achieve life purposes, can also record to significant degree on an unconscious level.

The recordings of these negative experiences and events could be called negative imprints, and the complete store of these imprints could be called the Negative Unconscious Mind. Why is this a problem to us? It is because the content of our Unconscious Mind does not lie dormant. It is continually activated by life for two main reasons. (1) Perception of anything similar to the negative imprints can trigger them, bring them back into activation. (2) The Unconscious Mind will, at times, activate these recordings in the hope of them being processed and handled.

This explains why we can be going along quite well in life, when suddenly we are brought down. It could be that we lose focus on our goals. Perhaps we begin to feel unwell. Perhaps our mind becomes scrambled and we begin to act out of character. There are a myriad ways that the unhandled, Negative Unconscious Mind can interrupt our life. And when this happens, we tend to 'rationalize' our reactions. We think that we are 'just having a bad day' and we need to go home early. Or we attribute feeling bad to the idea that our significant other was very remote towards us in the morning. Or the meal we had the previous evening is disagreeing with us. And so on. These 'rationalizations' are not even close to the truth. The reactivation of negative unconscious mind imprints offer us a chance to begin to process them, but most of us do not have the awareness, the training, or the tools to be able to do so.

In the illustration above, we can see the reactivation of negative unconscious mind imprints. Loud sounds, the mere sight of a grey car (the same colour as the car driven in the accident), or a mild jarring of one's neck can be sufficient environmental triggers to reactivate a negative imprint, even one that is held deeply within one's unconscious mind.

WHY THERAPY WORKS
A workable therapy is one that can aid us to access and process / heal the memory imprint of the unconscious incident, or moment of unconsciousness. To try to effect this healing on our own is not always workable. Our Conscious Mind, encountering the memory of being overwhelmed, will not easily access the memory without once again becoming overwhelmed.

Working alone, few people make progress in trying to overcome this particular equation. The Unconscious Mind is hard to penetrate, even harder to process, because the mind has its own inbuilt protection. You will not easily find the memories and emotions you are looking for, your own mind will block your attempts.

But the Conscious Mind of the client / patient, plus the Conscious Mind of the therapist/practitioner, is a winning formula. The combined strength and energy of two Conscious Minds can and will access and heal negative unconscious memories. When I began working as a therapist, it always astounded me how quickly my clients would go into early childhood memories. They themselves would be astonished. Moments of being in a pram, or at a very early birthday party. Very commonly, people would access their own birth within a few hours of therapy. These were examples of this formula at work. This formula does not necessarily occur in random conversations. It is the formality and structure of the session, the presence of a well-trained and disciplined therapist, and the use of workable methods and processes within the session, that allow this formula to work.

To make real gains in life, you will need to explore and review the content of your Unconscious Mind. In particular, you will need to review the imprints that reside there. These memories are repeatedly reactivating and giving you unnecessary distress in life.

But fear not, the last few decades have seen a cascade of breakthroughs in the world of therapy. Therapy is not some kind of lumbering psychoanalytical beast any longer. There is no need to lie back on a couch and have your issues with your parents 'analysed'. Today, there are therapies which are light, quick, and which afford you control and comfort while you steadily grow in terms of wholeness and self-understanding.