My friend, Chuck Hillig, an author and a retired psycho-therapist, shared this essay with me some time ago, and I've asked his permission to post it on my blog:
MAY THE THERAPEUTIC FORCE BE WITH YOU
By: Chuck Hillig
From rather humble beginnings with Freud, Adler and Jung, there are now over 200 different styles of professional psychotherapy being practiced in the world today.
In order to avoid the obvious limitations of using a "one-size-fits-all" approach, over the years, therapists have tended to become much more eclectic. Through an artful blending of many therapeutic modalities, they're better able to impact the lives of their patients with interventions that are both effective and, at the same time, still uniquely their own.
Is it possible, though, to be able to identify one basic, fundamental technique that's present in most of these successful therapeutic encounters? Is there, in fact, an underlying and all-inclusive "unified field theory" that operates just beneath the surface in spite of what modality is being favored?
Consider this: All psychotherapy occurs at a number of different levels. Obviously, there's the physical component: the therapist interacts with the patient at a particular location in space and time. Equally obvious, there's also an emotional component that invariably shows up as the patient, guided by the therapist, walks into the labyrinth of their own belief system in order to meet and confront the shadowy minotaurs that await within.
Finally, (and here's the real power of therapy), there's also the distinct possibility that a genuine spiritual shift can take place for the patient. For example, after courageously changing the context of how he sees the world, he can become transformed through his own insights.
In order to create the opportunity for such a healing, however, I suspect that all effective therapy has to first begin by helping the patient identify and acknowledge the unvarnished inner truth about "what's so" for him.
For example, it's axiomatic that the only place that we can move away from is the very place that we're currently occupying. In other words, it's impossible for us to change ourselves from where we aren't. I've been wondering, then, if we can use the obviousness of this truth to discover that all good psychotherapy is rooted in the patient's willingness to begin to love themselves unconditionally.
Consider this: Before helping them to change into who they are not, what happens when a therapist first encourages his patient to fully "be" who they already are? In other words, instead of, indirectly, implying that their patients are "wrong" for being as they are, what would happen when the focus is first on making them "right?" In short, the therapist actively encourages the patient to begin to free his inner spirit to become, paradoxically, what that spirit already is.
This is how it works: The therapist first acknowledges and honors how the "Universal Life Force" (for lack of a better term) is choosing to express itself through the patient's life at this time. From this awakened (and very non-judgmental) perspective, all of the troublesome symptoms are then reframed as being an integral (although challenging) part of the Life's Forces current presentation.
As bothersome as these symptoms might be, their appearances are never looked upon as being intrinsically "wrong" or "bad." The therapist assumes, instead, that they're present and foreground in this patient's life for very good reasons which, through their time together, the two of them can jointly discover.
In walking down this path, then, the patient shifts his initial inquiry from "What's wrong with me?" to "By expressing itself so painfully in my life right now, what's the Life Force trying to teach me right now?"
Through this non-adversarial approach, the therapist avoids any implication that the patient is "not-OK" for being as he is, or that he needs to, somehow, be "corrected" in order to become more "normal." Since the patient is not being openly labeled as "broken" and in need of "fixing," his resistance to fully accepting himself...warts and all... is greatly reduced.
The focus of this kind of "therapy-with-a-heart" is not, primarily, to "change" the patient from being what he is. On the contrary, it's assumed that the patient is staying stuck because he adamantly refuses to truly be (and to be with) what (and where) he is already. In fact, by resisting his own truth through denial, projection and rationalization, he's only succeeded in aggravating and prolonging his emotional distress. By refusing to openly cop to "what's so" for himself, the patient, quite unwittingly, has created a kind of "constipation-of-the-psyche," a condition that only invites repetitive patterns to be triggered in his life again and again.
The consequences of such an emotional blockage are very significant. Whatever uncomfortable truths about himself that the patient is not willing to fully "acknowledge and own" tend to split off from his awareness, go unconscious, and have a way of ending up owning him.
Consequently, before the patient can say "no" to how he is and transform his life, he has to first become willing to say "yes" to how he is...no matter how difficult or painful that admission might be. For example, why would someone say "no" to anything in their life (say, alcoholism) if they were still denying that such a condition was even present for them? What would be the motivation for ridding themselves of a condition that they didn't even believe that they had? All 12-Step programs begin with the admission of "what's so."
If the patient is ever to have the courage to become who he could be, though, he has to first be willing to find the courage to be who he already is. The most effective therapeutic encounters will assist the patient in fully embracing, through love, his own nature as well as the nature of life, itself, as they both truly are not how the patient wishes either himself (or life) to actually be.
The underlying assumption here is that the grace from the Life Force is never wrong and that its motives are, ultimately, benign. Through this much gentler approach, the patient then begins to experience his symptoms and circumstances more as "gifts-in-disguise" that are appearing on his path to help him discover and grow. The powerful insights come through his willingness to consciously set aside the survival demands of his ego and, instead, to simply to surrender to and lovingly embrace "what is."
In conclusion, the core of all good therapy seems to depend on first creating a safe space for patients to openly and honestly tell their own truth both to someone else and to themselves. In fact, I strongly suspect that almost any modality that's firmly grounded in such a therapeutic matrix will probably be able to produce the desired results.
In fully accepting life on life's terms instead of on his own, the patient reconnects to the unconditional love within his own heart instead of, unsuccessfully, looking for that love somewhere else. By consciously embracing the many contradictory facets of his own inner truth, he's more truly aligned with the Life Force and thus, becomes better empowered to move on in his life to yet further discoveries.
If you have any comments or questions, you can email Chuck. You can also check out his website for more info.
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