Psychotherapy

My working definition of psychotherapy from the Home Page is The resolution of impediments to personal growth and wellbeing.

To that, I would add… by means of various psychotherapeutic processes.

Usually, when someone seeks out psychotherapy, the driving force is often either at someone else’s urging or because the person is experiencing some difficulty they have been unable to manage themselves (inner or outer).

Either way, the first part of the definition provides the basic framework, which is removing the obstacles to the person’s wellbeing.

The word broken has become a meme that has been used to refer to everything from one’s self or to any system, including political systems. Leaving the latter aside (a topic for the near future), the word has some subtle implications as it applies to psychotherapy.

First, it infers that something was once whole and functioning properly and has been damaged to the point where it is not functioning well or at all. Second, it implies that someone has to fix this, to repair what has been broken.

Notice that this definition is based on a mechanical metaphor.

This is an important point.

The human psyche is not mechanical. It is fluid and dynamic. It does have a physical manifestation, which is the brain, and we do have neurons and studies have been able to demonstrate that different parts of the brain light up during specific activities.

However, along with this statement should come a warning: it is easy to slip into thinking the misconception that the thoughts are coming from the brain structures, rather than seeing that the thoughts and feelings are made possible by awareness coming through these structures.

A simple analogy may help here. Charlie Parker picks up his saxophone and begins to play.

We are enthralled by the music.

The music is made possible by the saxophone and when we take the sax away, there’s no music. A mechanically-based mind can quickly deduce that the saxophone was making the music. In a sense… yes. But in reality… no.

The music was not created by the sax, the music was coming through the sax.

Too often in the field of psychology, in my opinion, we look for some discrete structure as the problem that we need to fix.

While this also may seem intuitively obvious, what neuroscience has taught us and continues to open our eyes to, is that when we change our awareness, our brain changes, not the other way around.

And yes, if there’s a tumour or mechanical damage to a cranial nerve of some discrete part of the brain, this needs to be known and addressed. (1)

Many studies have shown that, with people taking an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course, their prefrontal cortex and other structures are larger and the amygdala is smaller.

The prefrontal cortex is the saxophone whereby we play the music of executive decision making.

The amygdala is where we pull the fire alarm.

These concepts are foundational to the correct perspective of psychotherapy.

People seek out psychotherapy for some form of distress.

This could be any one of the psychiatric diagnoses or just simply the feeling of I just can’t take this anymore.

To look at this more simply, is that, whatever the distress is, we can’t resolve it ourselves; we are befuddled, frustrated, out of ideas.

Another way to say this is, that we are not clearly aware of what the problem is and we have no idea what to do about it, how to stop the suffering.

Thus, a proper framework is very helpful so that we have reasonable expectations and a proper orientation toward the method.

If we realize we are simply resolving blocks to our wellbeing rather than trying to create our wellbeing, that this wellbeing is inherent, innate, and our task is to remove the impediments, it sets us on a better course. It is about emerging, not fixing something broken.

(1) A caveat is important here. I am not an advocate of doing away with medication or brain surgery, they are indispensable when needed.