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emergence personality theory
May 2008 
What Do All Good Therapies Have in Common?
Posted on Apr 29th, 2007
by 
Steven
Steven
A question I have been asked many times over the years is, "what kind of therapy do you do?" In part, what makes this hard to answer is that there are so many therapies now. Why all these therapies? And is there a "special something" the good ones all have in common? As it turns out, there is. More important, this "special something" can be described with a fractal. Can you imagine? A fractal for good therapy. This then is what we are about to explore, in this chapter of Plain Talk about Talk Therapy. Can you guess what the "special something" is? Let's find out, shall we.
Getting Better Mileage Out of Your Suffering
I need to warn you right up front. I'll be throwing a tirade somewhere in the midst of this chapter. Thus, you'll need to do your best not to let my emotional Italian nature prevent you from seeing the good in what I'm presenting here. Especially since any and all kinds of therapists can benefit from what I'm about to show you; the Fractal for Good Therapy.
This said, in the last chapter, we discussed the idea that in order to heal in therapy, we must suffer through the healing process. Not too pleasant a thought really if you think about it.
In this chapter I'm going to show you something which can make this suffering a whole lot easier. A fractal for getting the most mileage out of the suffering you experience in therapy. As well as some simple ways in which you can learn to utilize this fractal to focus the therapy in general. Before I do though, I first need to mention a few myths about therapy. Some of which we'll discuss in depth in later chapters.
Myth Number One: It Takes A Long Time To Heal A Wound
If we define therapy as I did in chapter one; as "healing a person's inability to breath properly," then the time in which we do the actual therapy is brief. Moments only.
What makes us think it should take longer then? The idea that prior to Emergence Personality Theory, no one had empirically defined what it is we are healing let alone how these wounds occur. This is somewhat strange since we can do all this in only three sentences; [1] Wounds occur whenever we get startled while we are in a hyperaware state, [2] what being startled wounds is our ability to visualize a particular set of needs and [3], healing restores our ability to visually access these needs.
This is it then. The entire theoretical essence underlying all wounds and healing regardless of the symptoms. Unless, of course, the wound involves non repairable physical damage, such as the loss of a limb or an eye. Even here though, talk therapy has much to offer, beginning with the idea that there is always a psychological component to every wound, and that healing this component requires you help the person to have an aha with regard to visualizing some set of visually inaccessible needs. After which, the person will once again be able to breathe normally. And visualize their needs. In that particular arena of life, anyway.
What complicates this process is that we all during our lifetimes incur many wounds. Most of which happen before we have adult memory making skills. In effect, this means the majority of our wounds root into our personalities like maple tree roots into the foundations of old New England homes. Tough to get them out without taking down the whole house.
So why can't you use the Block Markers I showed you in Chapter Four to heal these wounds? Actually, you can. And healing a single wound this way should take no longer than a few hours at most. Not all in one session, mind you, but cumulatively, no more than this.
At the same time, because all symptoms thread back to multiple injuries, while it need take but a few hours to heal a single wound, healing the wounds beneath things like a serious depression can take years. Which is why even the most motivated people in the best therapies can spend years there and still not be done.
Knowing these two ideas before you start a round of therapy is important then. One, the idea that most wounds can be healed within the space of a few hours, and two, the idea that we all have many nested layers of wounds. This means, when you commit to a therapy, you commit not just to a therapist but to a life style. And while healing does indeed hurt a lot at times, healing as a way of life is a good way to live. Especially since it means you will always have more of the good in life to look forward to. True, discovering this good can feel mighty uncomfortable at times. But no where near as uncomfortable as avoiding this process.
Here then is my first point. Healing a single wound takes only a few hours. Healing a person takes a lifetime and then some.
Myth Number Two: Cognitive Therapy Is The Way to Go
Cognitive Therapies all make an assumption; that the wound is in your thinking. And yes, wounds do affect your thinking. However, as we'll discuss later in this chapter, we can know full well how we should be thinking and still be unable to live this way for long. We all know this already anyway. We just usually choose to ignore this fact.
Why does this happen to us in the first place? Because what we think is only one part of who we are. An important part, yes, but not the whole enchilada. In other words, knowing how you should live and actually being able to live that way are very different things. And thinking is but one part of this decision process.
So am I saying there is no value in Cognitive Therapies? Absolutely not. And please do take note of what I've just said to you here. In truth, no decent therapy can ignore logical inconsistencies. If it does, for the most part, you'll cripple the therapy.
The thing is, you also need to know how and when to use cognition during the healing process. Up front, as a way to better define what people are missing, yes, it's outstanding. And difficult to do without. As a healing agent though, cognition remains impotent and misleading. Why? Because the nature of wounds themselves, meaning, the nature of what we actual heal in people is their blocked abilities to picture their needs. This means, since logic by design believes only in what makes sense, logic alone can never restore a person's ability to picture. Why not? Because we already know it is illogical that we do not address these needs. And you can know this for years and still not take proper care of these needs. Thus what is missing is not good logic concerning how you care for your needs. It is that you have blocked visual abilities with regard to picturing yourself taking care of these needs.
My point here? Cognitive therapies work best for identifying what kinds of needs we have trouble visualizing. However, since all logic is based on finding patterns in what we can see, and since the essence of all wounds is that they are needs we cannot see, logic alone can never heal wounds. It can only find where they exist.
Myth Number Three: Behavioral Therapy Can Heal Peoples' Wounds
In it's heyday, Behavioral Therapies were the therapies of choice. And for some conditions, like physical rehab, they still hold great value. Using them to heal wounds of the mind though is like using paint to seal cracks in a boat hull. Not much real strength in stormy weather.
So is there no place for Behavioral Therapies in talk therapy? Again, I am not saying this. Why not? Because if peoples' behavior is so awful as to be generating an avalanche of confounding symptoms, then it's pretty hard to identify what is wrong with them. Even if you use the best of logic. In other words, if a person has too many symptoms to be able to focus in therapy, then you must first deal with these symptoms.
Case in point. Say we are talking about people caught in the undertow of something like a new divorce or a recent affair. Here, behavioral interventions are often the best place to start the therapy. In the long run, however, they are only the first step. Why? Because like cognitive therapies, behavioral therapies cannot heal what underlies these symptoms. Why not? Because they too do not address peoples' visually blocked needs. At least not in a direct and lasting way.
How about the combination of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, the current darling of insurance companies? Is this the answer? The truth. Well think about it. While this combo does generate some great sounding treatment plans, and while these treatment plans can often be understood even by untrained clerks, do two wrongies make a rightie? Naw. Why not? Because healing still requires we restore a person's blocked visual access to their needs. Period. Thus for all the things these two therapies can do well, because neither address peoples' visually block needs, neither can actually heal wounds. At least not purposely.
So what makes us think these therapies can heal our wounds? Mostly something one of my heroes, William James, believed in. That "acting as if" can lead to healing. And while on occasion these therapies can and do lead to healing, this healing happens more by accident than by design. Something like stumbling onto the correct answer to a math problem and not knowing how you got there.
My point? Do you want to bet your suffering on the accidental healing these kinds of therapies sometimes bring you to? I don't. At the same time, they both offer much in the way of preliminary good.
Myth Number Four: Spiritual Healing is The Answer
Yes, I know. I just used the "S" word. Which means I'm opening up a whole horse belly full of worms here. And no. I'm not one of those arrogant heads-with-feet who believes there is no such thing as a spiritual life. Still, whomever created us gave us minds for a reason; to learn to heal whatever injures our ability to love each other.
So what is it that I am saying is a myth here?
I'm saying that while prayer, meditation, laying on of hands, and so on are wonderful adjuncts to talk therapy, these things alone are not enough. At least, not for us folks with an average level of faith.
Am I saying that Spiritual Therapies do not belong in talk therapy then? I am absolutely not saying this. However, I am saying that while I personally believe very much in the power of prayer and so on, I also believe a therapy should never rely on prayer alone. Not as a primary talk therapy anyway. Why not? Because we are all simultaneously spiritual beings and physical beings. Thus only the combination of body and spirit taken together as one gives us access to the true nature of our wounds.
How hard is it to do this then? Fortunately, not hard at all, as addressing these two parts of us simultaneously happens every time we visualize. More important, whenever we visualize, we gain this simultaneous access regardless of whether we believe in it or not. This access is simply built into our nature. It is the way we are designed. Good thing too. Some folks have a pretty hard time believing in things other than what they can hold in their hands. Hard evidence only for them they say. Spiritual things are too flaky to be scientific. And they are. Too flaky for science, that is.
The strange thing is, most scientific geniuses are very spiritual people. Einstein. Newton. Descartes. Stephen Hawking. To these great men, spiritual things were not flaky. They were real. Which means what exactly? Which means in order to begin to address the whole person in therapy, we need the combination of Cognitive / Behavioral / Spiritual Therapies and then some.
So is this combination the answer then? The combination of Cognitive / Behavioral / Spiritual Therapies? Not completely. You see, while all therapists wanting to be good therapists need be educated in all three, even here, a critical element is missing. What critical element? The clear and conscious ability to help people to heal their blocked visual abilities with regard to their needs. Which is where the Fractal for Good Therapy comes in. The Layer Five to Layer Seven contrast and compare.
To what am I referring? Before we look, I have one more myth to mention.
Myth Number Five: If There's No Research Behind a Therapy, It's Just Pseudoscience
[Tirade warning light on]
I have to admit, when I see someone say this stuff in print, it makes my blood boil. To what am I referring? To the idea that if the good old boys in Parrot Maker land do not see twenty years of statistically based, parrot approved research to back up a therapy, then they dismiss it as pseudoscience. That this therapy helps people is never enough.
What I'm saying is, these proponents of the Emperor's New Clothes school of science require that in order to sanction a therapy, this therapy must first have a logical proof that should work or else it is bunk. Can you imagine? That it works as a therapy is not enough!
The thing is, most of these pencil necked experts couldn't actually practice therapy with a lab rat let alone with a hurting child. Which is why, I suppose, they prefer to spend their days hiding, oops, I mean "researching" human nature from the safety of their well equipped one way glass labs, all the while dismissing what we therapists out in the field have to say as unfounded. Unless of course we back it up with two hundred pages of faceless numbers and cold hard data, all of which they say is necessary in order to "protect" folks from unscrupulous therapists.
Are there unscrupulous therapists out there? A few. Yes. But is the proof for this that a therapist uses alternative or intuitive methods? No. And while I do see the good in that therapists are being asked to explain what they do, dismissing the parts of a therapy which in essence can never be explained with hard evidence is just plain wrong. Not all parts of human nature show up in linear based research.
What's wrong with linear based research anyway? Everything. Starting with the idea that trying to fit the roundness of human nature into the square hole of research numbers is like asking an oak tree to prove itself by growing a predefined set of limbs and leaves and then dismissing it as an oak tree when it can't pass this test. This is what using statistically based research data gleaned from controlled studies about human nature is like. Repeatability. Reliability. And fitting living things like human nature into facelessly dead pages of predictably repetitive data.
The sad thing is, most people, some of them incredibly smart, accept these pronouncements of legitimacy as valid. And the pronouncements of those who do not follow this regimen as pseudoscience. All this without a shred of fractally based evidence. Why the tirade? Because some of the best therapists of all time; Carl Jung and Pierre Janet to name two, made up their therapies on the fly and only then supported what they saw with theory.
How exactly did they do this? Simple. They looked for fractal patterns in human nature and then used what they found to better help their patients, all the while refining what they did. More important, this process took place entirely in real life situations with real live people and not just in controlled, artificially inseminated lab settings.
My point? I've gleaned the fractal pattern I'm about to present from having sat with thousands of hurting people. Literally, at this point, I have sat with thousands. And like my heroes, Jung, James, Janet, Freud, Adler and so on, I base what I am about to present on that it helps people. In real life settings. And not just in pseudo real life science lab settings.
Just imagine how much might change about therapy if what I'm presenting here is true? Can you imagine? Making understandable what great therapists like Jung and Janet did. Not just in artificially controlled research settings but in real life, face to face, talk therapy settings. And before you dismiss what I've been saying about these great men, go back and read what was written about them by their adversaries. If you do, you'll find they too were called pseudoscientists by the parrot makers of their times.
On the other hand, if you dig beneath these dismissive remarks, you'll also find things like that even the folks who dismissed James and Jung sent them students and clients. Jung was in fact seen as one of the best therapists of his day. And James as one of the best teachers.
My point? Yes. Make people show you that what they do really helps people. But do this in real live, case by case tests and not in pseudo therapeutic settings from behind a one way glass or worse, from behind pages of numbers.
Okay. I'm done.
[Tirade warning light off]
Please note, to read the rest of this article, you'll have to click the article title below. Why? For one thing, I frequently revise these articles. For another, because these articles can be a bit long for a blog entry. Plain Talk about Talk Therapy - Week Ten.]
Getting Better Mileage Out of Your Suffering
I need to warn you right up front. I'll be throwing a tirade somewhere in the midst of this chapter. Thus, you'll need to do your best not to let my emotional Italian nature prevent you from seeing the good in what I'm presenting here. Especially since any and all kinds of therapists can benefit from what I'm about to show you; the Fractal for Good Therapy.
This said, in the last chapter, we discussed the idea that in order to heal in therapy, we must suffer through the healing process. Not too pleasant a thought really if you think about it.
In this chapter I'm going to show you something which can make this suffering a whole lot easier. A fractal for getting the most mileage out of the suffering you experience in therapy. As well as some simple ways in which you can learn to utilize this fractal to focus the therapy in general. Before I do though, I first need to mention a few myths about therapy. Some of which we'll discuss in depth in later chapters.
Myth Number One: It Takes A Long Time To Heal A Wound
If we define therapy as I did in chapter one; as "healing a person's inability to breath properly," then the time in which we do the actual therapy is brief. Moments only.
What makes us think it should take longer then? The idea that prior to Emergence Personality Theory, no one had empirically defined what it is we are healing let alone how these wounds occur. This is somewhat strange since we can do all this in only three sentences; [1] Wounds occur whenever we get startled while we are in a hyperaware state, [2] what being startled wounds is our ability to visualize a particular set of needs and [3], healing restores our ability to visually access these needs.
This is it then. The entire theoretical essence underlying all wounds and healing regardless of the symptoms. Unless, of course, the wound involves non repairable physical damage, such as the loss of a limb or an eye. Even here though, talk therapy has much to offer, beginning with the idea that there is always a psychological component to every wound, and that healing this component requires you help the person to have an aha with regard to visualizing some set of visually inaccessible needs. After which, the person will once again be able to breathe normally. And visualize their needs. In that particular arena of life, anyway.
What complicates this process is that we all during our lifetimes incur many wounds. Most of which happen before we have adult memory making skills. In effect, this means the majority of our wounds root into our personalities like maple tree roots into the foundations of old New England homes. Tough to get them out without taking down the whole house.
So why can't you use the Block Markers I showed you in Chapter Four to heal these wounds? Actually, you can. And healing a single wound this way should take no longer than a few hours at most. Not all in one session, mind you, but cumulatively, no more than this.
At the same time, because all symptoms thread back to multiple injuries, while it need take but a few hours to heal a single wound, healing the wounds beneath things like a serious depression can take years. Which is why even the most motivated people in the best therapies can spend years there and still not be done.
Knowing these two ideas before you start a round of therapy is important then. One, the idea that most wounds can be healed within the space of a few hours, and two, the idea that we all have many nested layers of wounds. This means, when you commit to a therapy, you commit not just to a therapist but to a life style. And while healing does indeed hurt a lot at times, healing as a way of life is a good way to live. Especially since it means you will always have more of the good in life to look forward to. True, discovering this good can feel mighty uncomfortable at times. But no where near as uncomfortable as avoiding this process.
Here then is my first point. Healing a single wound takes only a few hours. Healing a person takes a lifetime and then some.
Myth Number Two: Cognitive Therapy Is The Way to Go
Cognitive Therapies all make an assumption; that the wound is in your thinking. And yes, wounds do affect your thinking. However, as we'll discuss later in this chapter, we can know full well how we should be thinking and still be unable to live this way for long. We all know this already anyway. We just usually choose to ignore this fact.
Why does this happen to us in the first place? Because what we think is only one part of who we are. An important part, yes, but not the whole enchilada. In other words, knowing how you should live and actually being able to live that way are very different things. And thinking is but one part of this decision process.
So am I saying there is no value in Cognitive Therapies? Absolutely not. And please do take note of what I've just said to you here. In truth, no decent therapy can ignore logical inconsistencies. If it does, for the most part, you'll cripple the therapy.
The thing is, you also need to know how and when to use cognition during the healing process. Up front, as a way to better define what people are missing, yes, it's outstanding. And difficult to do without. As a healing agent though, cognition remains impotent and misleading. Why? Because the nature of wounds themselves, meaning, the nature of what we actual heal in people is their blocked abilities to picture their needs. This means, since logic by design believes only in what makes sense, logic alone can never restore a person's ability to picture. Why not? Because we already know it is illogical that we do not address these needs. And you can know this for years and still not take proper care of these needs. Thus what is missing is not good logic concerning how you care for your needs. It is that you have blocked visual abilities with regard to picturing yourself taking care of these needs.
My point here? Cognitive therapies work best for identifying what kinds of needs we have trouble visualizing. However, since all logic is based on finding patterns in what we can see, and since the essence of all wounds is that they are needs we cannot see, logic alone can never heal wounds. It can only find where they exist.
Myth Number Three: Behavioral Therapy Can Heal Peoples' Wounds
In it's heyday, Behavioral Therapies were the therapies of choice. And for some conditions, like physical rehab, they still hold great value. Using them to heal wounds of the mind though is like using paint to seal cracks in a boat hull. Not much real strength in stormy weather.
So is there no place for Behavioral Therapies in talk therapy? Again, I am not saying this. Why not? Because if peoples' behavior is so awful as to be generating an avalanche of confounding symptoms, then it's pretty hard to identify what is wrong with them. Even if you use the best of logic. In other words, if a person has too many symptoms to be able to focus in therapy, then you must first deal with these symptoms.
Case in point. Say we are talking about people caught in the undertow of something like a new divorce or a recent affair. Here, behavioral interventions are often the best place to start the therapy. In the long run, however, they are only the first step. Why? Because like cognitive therapies, behavioral therapies cannot heal what underlies these symptoms. Why not? Because they too do not address peoples' visually blocked needs. At least not in a direct and lasting way.
How about the combination of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, the current darling of insurance companies? Is this the answer? The truth. Well think about it. While this combo does generate some great sounding treatment plans, and while these treatment plans can often be understood even by untrained clerks, do two wrongies make a rightie? Naw. Why not? Because healing still requires we restore a person's blocked visual access to their needs. Period. Thus for all the things these two therapies can do well, because neither address peoples' visually block needs, neither can actually heal wounds. At least not purposely.
So what makes us think these therapies can heal our wounds? Mostly something one of my heroes, William James, believed in. That "acting as if" can lead to healing. And while on occasion these therapies can and do lead to healing, this healing happens more by accident than by design. Something like stumbling onto the correct answer to a math problem and not knowing how you got there.
My point? Do you want to bet your suffering on the accidental healing these kinds of therapies sometimes bring you to? I don't. At the same time, they both offer much in the way of preliminary good.
Myth Number Four: Spiritual Healing is The Answer
Yes, I know. I just used the "S" word. Which means I'm opening up a whole horse belly full of worms here. And no. I'm not one of those arrogant heads-with-feet who believes there is no such thing as a spiritual life. Still, whomever created us gave us minds for a reason; to learn to heal whatever injures our ability to love each other.
So what is it that I am saying is a myth here?
I'm saying that while prayer, meditation, laying on of hands, and so on are wonderful adjuncts to talk therapy, these things alone are not enough. At least, not for us folks with an average level of faith.
Am I saying that Spiritual Therapies do not belong in talk therapy then? I am absolutely not saying this. However, I am saying that while I personally believe very much in the power of prayer and so on, I also believe a therapy should never rely on prayer alone. Not as a primary talk therapy anyway. Why not? Because we are all simultaneously spiritual beings and physical beings. Thus only the combination of body and spirit taken together as one gives us access to the true nature of our wounds.
How hard is it to do this then? Fortunately, not hard at all, as addressing these two parts of us simultaneously happens every time we visualize. More important, whenever we visualize, we gain this simultaneous access regardless of whether we believe in it or not. This access is simply built into our nature. It is the way we are designed. Good thing too. Some folks have a pretty hard time believing in things other than what they can hold in their hands. Hard evidence only for them they say. Spiritual things are too flaky to be scientific. And they are. Too flaky for science, that is.
The strange thing is, most scientific geniuses are very spiritual people. Einstein. Newton. Descartes. Stephen Hawking. To these great men, spiritual things were not flaky. They were real. Which means what exactly? Which means in order to begin to address the whole person in therapy, we need the combination of Cognitive / Behavioral / Spiritual Therapies and then some.
So is this combination the answer then? The combination of Cognitive / Behavioral / Spiritual Therapies? Not completely. You see, while all therapists wanting to be good therapists need be educated in all three, even here, a critical element is missing. What critical element? The clear and conscious ability to help people to heal their blocked visual abilities with regard to their needs. Which is where the Fractal for Good Therapy comes in. The Layer Five to Layer Seven contrast and compare.
To what am I referring? Before we look, I have one more myth to mention.
Myth Number Five: If There's No Research Behind a Therapy, It's Just Pseudoscience
[Tirade warning light on]
I have to admit, when I see someone say this stuff in print, it makes my blood boil. To what am I referring? To the idea that if the good old boys in Parrot Maker land do not see twenty years of statistically based, parrot approved research to back up a therapy, then they dismiss it as pseudoscience. That this therapy helps people is never enough.
What I'm saying is, these proponents of the Emperor's New Clothes school of science require that in order to sanction a therapy, this therapy must first have a logical proof that should work or else it is bunk. Can you imagine? That it works as a therapy is not enough!
The thing is, most of these pencil necked experts couldn't actually practice therapy with a lab rat let alone with a hurting child. Which is why, I suppose, they prefer to spend their days hiding, oops, I mean "researching" human nature from the safety of their well equipped one way glass labs, all the while dismissing what we therapists out in the field have to say as unfounded. Unless of course we back it up with two hundred pages of faceless numbers and cold hard data, all of which they say is necessary in order to "protect" folks from unscrupulous therapists.
Are there unscrupulous therapists out there? A few. Yes. But is the proof for this that a therapist uses alternative or intuitive methods? No. And while I do see the good in that therapists are being asked to explain what they do, dismissing the parts of a therapy which in essence can never be explained with hard evidence is just plain wrong. Not all parts of human nature show up in linear based research.
What's wrong with linear based research anyway? Everything. Starting with the idea that trying to fit the roundness of human nature into the square hole of research numbers is like asking an oak tree to prove itself by growing a predefined set of limbs and leaves and then dismissing it as an oak tree when it can't pass this test. This is what using statistically based research data gleaned from controlled studies about human nature is like. Repeatability. Reliability. And fitting living things like human nature into facelessly dead pages of predictably repetitive data.
The sad thing is, most people, some of them incredibly smart, accept these pronouncements of legitimacy as valid. And the pronouncements of those who do not follow this regimen as pseudoscience. All this without a shred of fractally based evidence. Why the tirade? Because some of the best therapists of all time; Carl Jung and Pierre Janet to name two, made up their therapies on the fly and only then supported what they saw with theory.
How exactly did they do this? Simple. They looked for fractal patterns in human nature and then used what they found to better help their patients, all the while refining what they did. More important, this process took place entirely in real life situations with real live people and not just in controlled, artificially inseminated lab settings.
My point? I've gleaned the fractal pattern I'm about to present from having sat with thousands of hurting people. Literally, at this point, I have sat with thousands. And like my heroes, Jung, James, Janet, Freud, Adler and so on, I base what I am about to present on that it helps people. In real life settings. And not just in pseudo real life science lab settings.
Just imagine how much might change about therapy if what I'm presenting here is true? Can you imagine? Making understandable what great therapists like Jung and Janet did. Not just in artificially controlled research settings but in real life, face to face, talk therapy settings. And before you dismiss what I've been saying about these great men, go back and read what was written about them by their adversaries. If you do, you'll find they too were called pseudoscientists by the parrot makers of their times.
On the other hand, if you dig beneath these dismissive remarks, you'll also find things like that even the folks who dismissed James and Jung sent them students and clients. Jung was in fact seen as one of the best therapists of his day. And James as one of the best teachers.
My point? Yes. Make people show you that what they do really helps people. But do this in real live, case by case tests and not in pseudo therapeutic settings from behind a one way glass or worse, from behind pages of numbers.
Okay. I'm done.
[Tirade warning light off]
Please note, to read the rest of this article, you'll have to click the article title below. Why? For one thing, I frequently revise these articles. For another, because these articles can be a bit long for a blog entry. Plain Talk about Talk Therapy - Week Ten.]
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