I am finding writing these Blogs useful. It is like being your own counsellor. As we all know, a lot of the time in our lives, we never really know what is going on in us, until we put it out of ourselves. Its like putting out a stall, and seeing what we have! In our culture, we have a habit of putting things in the closet, whereas we are designed as Humans to constantly clear the closet. The problem is, that what we leave in the closet, has a way of effecting our today`s as fear,guilt,authority,avoidance etc etc etc. Yet when we clear some of the closet (skeletons, ie history) we find that those things, loose their power over us, and we are more freer to move on. A case that comes to my mind regarding this, was seeing a elderly client in the NHS who suffered from severe pins and needles for a number of years. Regardless of the medication,nothing helped. I saw her for one session, and in the session, she eventually spoke about a occurrence that had happened in her childhood, that she had never ever spoken about. I then get a call from her Doctor a few days later, wondering what had occurred in the session, as the client had told him that for the first time in years, the Pins and Needles had disappeared! I saw the client a few more times, to cement the progress, and as far as I know, the pins and needles never came back. Ive wondered about this, and what I think happens, is that us Humans are processing machines, ie we breathe in and we breathe out, or we eat,digest,and expel what we don't need. This is how we are supposed to go on in our lives, and in this particular clients case, what she had locked up in her closet, was really destroying her, and the natural barometer in her complex was saying 'hey we are overloaded, please help, and find a release'!This points to how a unfortunate aspect of modern medicine, is inclined to subscribe pychotheruputic drugs, which tends to stifle our pain, which unfortunately tends to lock the problem in, rather than in dealing with it. We do seem to live in a society,that wants to avoid uncomfortability and pain, rather than facing up to things. I know that I can allow this as well. Watch tv, have a cigarette etc rather than deal with what I need to do!
This opens up a curious phenomena, which is a main feature of Brief/Solution Therapy and NLP,which are both mainstays of my own approach. That is how quickly change can happen, if we really allow it!A short lazy history on Brief Therapy from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 'Milton Erickson was a master of brief therapy, using clinical hypnosis as his primary tool. To a great extent he developed this himself. His approach was popularized by Jay Haley, in the book "Uncommon therapy: The psychiatric techniques of Milton Erickson M.D."
"The analogy Erickson uses is that of a person who wants to change the course of a river. if he opposes the river by trying to block it, the river will merely go over and around him. But if he accepts the force of the river and diverts it in a new direction, the force of the river will cut a new channel." (Haley, "Uncommon therapy", p.24, emphasis in original)
Richard Bandler, the co-founder of neuro-linguistic programming, is another firm proponent of brief therapy. After many years of studying Erickson's therapeutic work, he wrote:
"It's easier to cure a phobia in ten minutes than in five years... I didn't realize that the speed with which you do things makes them last... I taught people the phobia cure. They'd do part of it one week, part of it the next, and part of it the week after. Then they'd come to me and say "It doesn't work!" If, however, you do it in five minutes, and repeat it till it happens very fast, the brain understands. That's part of how the brain learns... I discovered that the human mind does not learn slowly. It learns quickly. I didn't know that." (Time for a change, 1993, p.20) .
My own analogy, is that Brief therapy takes you to the top of a mountain, that allows you a view of the valley where the problem is (without being effected by it), while being at the top of the mountain, gives you a clearer view about the future you want' This is why partly I have titled my Blog 21st Century Counselling, because of the new paradigm shift in psychology which in the past has looked more at the problem, to the new realisation, that the Human is designed to go forwards, rather than be stuck in the past and than concentrating on the problem! When you think about it, soon as you look at how you would like something to be, your more likely you are to find creativity and inspiration and a answer, than when you get immersed in the problem!
So the message at least for me today is change,improvement and change is possible. Thankyou