Why am I not a fan of talk therapy? – Part 1

I spent the first 10 years of my career doing talk therapy.  My training focused on the idea that if people understood what they were doing that was not working for them then they could make new choices.  And, if they had memories associated that by talking about the memories it would release the emotions and free them up from the emotions, physical reactions and beliefs that were causing them to suffer.

What I observed over and over was that rarely did anything change.  At least not in a spontaneous organic way. 

What I observed is that my clients would have the insight about why they did things and know how they wanted to feel and react differently.  But they found themselves either forcing themselves to act differently, they would feel awful, and feel like a fraud.  Or no matter how hard they tried, they would just end up reacting in a way they did not like, causing them to feel awful.

I started to study alternative ways to help people create actual change.  Body-centered psychotherapies, energetic healing modalities, spiritual healing modalities to name a few.  EMDR (alternative at that time) was recommended to me by my mentor in 1991. 

What I learned from these modalities was that the reason they would get change is they are not using the thinking part of the brain for change.

What you have to be aware of, is that all of our experiences (memories) are not just thoughts.  They are sensations, emotions, beliefs, smells, sounds, locations, and so on.  And those are encoded in different parts of the brain.  So just trying to use the thinking part of the brain to force yourself to change does not create authentic change. 

So many of the clients who come to me feel like failures because they have been trying to change things with their thinking brain.

The other thing that is important to know, is that the thinking part of the brain is quite limited.  First of all, it is all conditioning.  What you have been told to think, or believe, or what is right or wrong, good or bad.  We are conditioned by everything from the day we are born, family, culture, socio-economic circumstances, education, media, professions, and so on.  The thinking part of our brain does not even start developing until age 2.  All the conditioning before that is in the other than conscious parts of our brain.  Emotions, smells, sensations, sounds are all encoded in the unconscious parts of our brain.  You will never have a conscious memory of these memories.  You will just get triggered by a smell, sensation, or a sound and usually think it has something to do with what is going on in the moment.

The way we see, understand and experience the world is all from the conditioning we are exposed to.  Obviously, pros and cons depending on our life circumstances.  We really have no choice from birth until we have the opportunity to make our own choices.  But even those choices are already colored by our previous conditioning.  As we are able to make our own choices the more we consciously choose what we let influence us is very important.  Making it a point to see, maybe experience other perspectives is crucial for developing the ability to critically think and counter the brains natural tendency to just default to past experiences.

Media is very destructive.  Media outlets are owned by large corporations that have the agenda to get you to consume a certain point of view or specific products.  Media outlets in particular are no longer investigative entities, like they use to be, designed to give you honest facts.  They use to flush out corruption.  Now they are owned by corporations with an agenda to influence you in a particular point of view. 

Did you know that psychologist have done research on how to influence you to buy what a company wants to sell you?  What they show you on a screen, including subliminal images, what and how they say things, including subliminal audio messages have all been researched to get you to make choices they want you to make, without you knowing it.

So, I have gone off on a tangent here a bit.

Experiences you have after the thinking part of your brain is developed will also include sensations, sounds, emotions, and smells.  Memory is not just visual images you get of a memory.  You may also experience smells, sounds, emotions and sensations.  You can get triggered by anything that is similar to something you experienced in the past, if your brain has not spontaneously reprocessed past experiences.  That is just how the brain works.  It associates experiences.

When you try to address traumatic experiences talking about them you are using your conscious brain.  Conscious thought, intentions, insight does not reprocess the other parts of memory.  People often relive the memory, not reprocess it.