Psycho-education
Educating every client on the Mind (Psyche), and the various therapies or modalities that are being utilized today, is an important way to start therapy. This is helpful for clients not just to help them select the most appropriate therapist, but also to enable them to engage more fully in the therapy process. It’s an excellent way to build rapport with the client. Today the emphasis on psycho-spiritual education even for people in general can no longer be ignored.
The client therapist relationship is most important to achieve a successful therapy for the client. This can only be built on trust and transparency. It is as important to choose the right therapist, as it is to choose the right form of therapy. Psycho-education is an important goal of this website. It is important that we bust several of the common myths that shroud the subject of the mind and its therapies. A better-informed client is a healthier, more cooperative client.
A psychiatrist is a medical professional. He/she prescribes medication to treat problems of the mind. He/she is licensed as a medical practitioner. Whereas, a psychotherapist is not a medical practitioner, and is not licensed to prescribe medications. He/she uses a variety of other established methods and techniques to help the clients with their issues. There are many forms, processes, and schools of psychotherapy today.
Some of the processes that we use are explained here in:
Psychoanalysis can be seen as the ‘mother’ of most psychotherapeutic modalities, and has thus proven to be a valuable disciplinary foundation for all those seeking to pursue a career in psychotherapy. The discovery of the psychoanalytic process is what made Sigmund Freud famous.
Its contribution to our lives mainly came from facilitating the learning of the practice of non-judgmental observation. Observing yourself, your client and the environment, all at the same time. In this way it resembled the self-reflection processes advocated in many spiritual practices today. It also was the first therapeutic modality to establish a practice to understand the subconscious and unconscious mind.
Today psychoanalysis is seen as a very long intensive process. The International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) requires a minimum of three sessions of 50 minutes each week. This may last for a year or more. As part of their training every trainee has to undergo at least 450 hours of psychoanalysis him/her self. Also psychoanalytic theory grew restricted over the years and other more progressive therapies stole the limelight. Consequently over the years it lost out in popularity.
Clinical Hypnosis or Hypnotherapy seeks to circumvent the conscious mind and all its ‘critical’ faculties to gain access deep into the unconscious mind itself. The form of hypnosis used here is very different from those used by magicians, stage hypnotists or tantrics. The idea is not for the therapist to gain any control over the client, but instead to most effectively deliver a therapy. Here this form of hypnosis does not grant the therapist any such ‘control. Control still vests with the client only, albeit with his/her subconscious mind only. Various depths of hypnosis may be required, and some clients may actually feel they were not hypnotized at all. And yes, every one can be hypnotized. Some people may need more time than others.
Once the therapist has gained access into your subconscious mind, he will then proceed to use any one or more of a number of psychotherapeutic modalities that are otherwise commonly used today. Consequently many feel that hypnotherapy is not a therapy in its own right, but merely a process to amplify the affects of a therapy in process. It does not claim to offer any ‘magical’ solutions, and has its own limitations.
Past Life Regression Therapy is a form of Transpersonal Regression Therapy where we use the processes of classical hypnosis trance inductions. The Unconscious Mind is a vast reservoir of all that you are born with. These include your instincts, your ‘Vasana’s, ‘sanskaras’, i.e. your karmic engineering. It is also the store house of all your past lives ever lived, particularly those that define your karmic baggage of today that you have been carrying with you, which needs final resolution. Regression is not about correcting the past. You can never do this. All we can do is to help you to see how you have been using your past in your present scenario.
Ego States Therapy is based on the premise that all our personalities are composed of separate parts, rather than a homogenous whole. These parts are called ‘ego states’. We all engage in inner ‘self talk’. These inner voices are normal. This is usually the result of our sub-personalities expressing their inner thoughts and feelings. Usually one inner voice may dominate or take centre stage; we call this the executive state.
A dialogue between these voices is good, but usually one voice likes to be heard over all the rest. Our unconscious contains all out ego states that are not executive. The average person has approximately between 5 to 15 ego states that are used throughout a normal week. In addition there are many more that we have used in the past and which we now rarely use. To access the deeper more underlying ego states we would need a hypnosis intervention.
A new ego state is oft created when a person is confronted with frustration or trauma which he/she lacks an adequate coping mechanism.
Inner Childwork or Therapy depends a lot on the use of ego states as an effective therapeutic procedure. Many of us have one or more ‘inner children’ who have been emotionally wounded and need love and healing. Very often we may feel their pain or fear as our pain or fear.
Transpersonal Regression Therapy works at the level of the subconscious or unconscious mind whilst engaging the cooperation of the conscious mind more fully. It does not use hypnosis as an induction or a therapy. The client is merely guided back through his/her memories and then asked to try and relive the more relevant and sometimes painful ones. Clients are made to absorb themselves more fully in their problem and its causes towards achieving a deep healing. The goal of each intervention is catharsis; cleansing, releasing, & liberation. Where insight is the intellectual aspect of catharsis.
This therapy focuses not on what happens to us, but on our cognitions, i.e. how we think about what happens to us and how we behave as a consequence. It then takes a look at whether our thinking and behaviours are improving our difficulties or maintaining them.CBT believes that therapy should be evidence based. That we should evaluate theories and treatments as rigorously as possible, using evidence rather than clinical anecdote. The problem lies in the way we think and feel about our problems or challenges.
There is more to life than what meets the eye. Any true quest for self-knowledge cannot end with only knowledge of the ‘mind’. Higher and higher levels of consciousness do exist.
Today more and more people are looking for spiritual guidance rather than religious proscriptions. These come in the form of many tried and tested ways of thinking about various things such as the purpose and meaningfulness of living. Achieving peace and liberation, as well as a certain mastery over ones lives. Is it necessary to suffer? Why me? What is the point of it all? Does Love really exist? Does God exist? Can materiality coexist with spirituality? Being practical versus being esoteric. My mind is too restless, I cannot meditate, and so on.
This therapy may sometimes include ‘mindfulness’ and guided meditation practices in addition to spiritual counseling sessions, where needed. Mindfulness has today become an integral part of certain psychotherapies. Mindfulness should gradually become a state of mind rather than a practice. Everyone’s final goal is spiritual growth, not material growth. The means is the end. Each of us has an infinite potential, waiting to be discovered. Consequently, growth and learning becomes an end in itself, at least until the ‘infinite’ is realized. Check out our link on ‘Insights’.