It bothered me for nights. How was I going to get that piece back? My heart felt like it was incomplete, torn apart. I don’t even know where she is, I thought to myself. Then I remembered a story. I don’t know where this story came from; it was probably an old fable, although for all my searching on the internet nobody knows who wrote it. This story also meant nothing to me when I first heard it, perhaps because my heart was young and untouched. But it’s different, now. Perhaps, this story will open a little door for those who feel the same way.

The Most Beautiful Heart Story

One day a young man was standing in the middle of the town proclaiming that he had the most beautiful heart in the whole valley.

A large crowd gathered and they all admired his heart for it was perfect. There was not a mark or a flaw in it. Yes, they all agreed. It truly was the most beautiful heart they had ever seen. The young man was very proud and boasted more loudly about his beautiful heart.

Suddenly, an old man appeared at the front of the crowd and said, “Why, your heart is not nearly as beautiful as mine.” The crowd and the young man looked at the old man’s heart. It was beating strongly, but full of scars. It had places where pieces had been removed and other pieces put in, but they didn’t fit quite right and there were several jagged edges. In fact, in some places there were deep gouges where whole pieces were missing. The people stared. “How can he say his heart is more beautiful?”
The young man looked at the old man’s heart and saw its state and laughed. “You must be joking,” he said. “Compare your heart with mine, mine is perfect and yours is a mess of scars and tears.”

“Yes,” said the old man, “Yours is perfect looking but I would never trade with you. You see, every scar represents a person to whom I have given my love – I tear out a piece of my heart and give it to them, and often they give me a piece of their heart which fits into the empty place in my heart, but because the pieces aren’t exact, I have some rough edges, which I cherish, because they remind me of the love we shared.”

“Sometimes I have given pieces of my heart away, and the other person hasn’t returned a piece of his heart to me. These are the empty gouges – giving love is taking a chance. Although these gouges are painful, they stay open, reminding me of the love I have for these people too, and I hope someday they may return and fill the space I have waiting. So now do you see what true beauty is?”

The young man stood silently with tears running down his cheeks. He walked up to the old man, reached into his perfect, young and beautiful heart, and ripped a piece out. He offered it to the old man with trembling hands. The old man took his offering, placed it in his heart and then took a piece from his old scarred heart and placed it in the wound in the young man’s heart. It fit, but not perfectly, as there were some jagged edges.

The young man looked at his heart, not perfect anymore but more beautiful than ever, since love from the old man’s heart flowed into his.

They embraced and walked away side by side.

• Most importantly: None of these replace the care of a good professional or can be taken as medical or psychological advice. A good, licensed, therapist should always be your first port of call, especially if your problems are severe. This list is not an endorsement, they’re just things I’ve tried and benefited from.
• No affiliate links. (I link to Amazon but these links have no affiliate code, meaning I get no money whatsoever.)
• These are my experiences only, not a sweeping statement of their effectiveness/ineffectiveness. Your results may (probably will) vary.

Other posts in this series so far:
1. Mainstream Psychological Approaches
2. The Old Faithfuls

The Journey by Brandon Bays

Overview:
The Journey process was created from the healing steps Brandon Bays used to recover from a large tumour. There are two basic processes, an Emotional Journey and a Physical Journey, depending on which type of problem you are dealing with. Regardless of which you use, there is a strong emphasis of really feeling your emotions, of uncovering denied and repressed emotions, and of emptying them out verbally. I have the most experience with the Emotional Journey, so I’ll focus largely on that.

The Emotional Journey consists of several steps. The first involves dropping through our emotional layers – each emotion we have about a particular problem often have other emotions hidden underneath them. If we go deeper, we eventually reach what she calls more positive emotions, eventually immersing in Source (Oneness, in other teachings). This was very powerful for me, as I had strong resistance to certain feelings (for instance, I could admit to anger at someone, but not to the humiliation that was hiding underneath it). This meant I was stuck in my problem, because I was only trying to heal my anger, ignoring a large part of my pain – the humiliation, and even the fear underneath it. This process short-circuits all of that denial and puts me in touch with that pain.

The second phase is called the campfire, where we are encouraged to verbally empty our painful emotions. With several safeguards in place, we speak to the other person (in our imagination) at a campfire. In speaking from our pain, we begin to release them. I don’t know what it is, but saying our feelings out loud – “You really hurt me, and I really felt scared” – was much more powerful in releasing them than simply feeling those emotions. This part was very important – we allowed everybody at the campfire to have their say and to empty their emotions. From a psychological perspective, letting the other people have their say, re-owns our projected emotions and clears them too (don’t worry if that doesn’t mean anything to you, it still works). There are other steps to the Journey, but these two are the most powerful for me – the others are cleanups and integration processes.

The Physical Journey process is quite similar, but includes steps to find the emotions and memories that are causing our physical pains.

My experiences:
The Journey process was quite hard for me to learn on my own, through the book. I gave up on it a few times, but eventually I went to the weekend seminar, where I really got a lot of benefit out of it. The weekend seminar also provided a lot of skills not available through the book, which were perfect for people like me, who had a lot of suppressed, denied, and hidden emotions.

On the first day, I couldn’t complete the process properly, as I was so blocked off from my feelings (despite having done other emotional systems for years). So the next day, they offered me a personal session with an experienced facilitator. Even then, it took him a long time before he broke through my defences, and then I started crying. I hardly ever cry or show anger, and in that one session I broke through all of that. There was so much denied pain that I nearly threw up at least six or seven times (this is why I would recommend not trying this by yourself). I wept and wailed, letting out pent-up emotion from years ago, and one of my longest standing issues just cleared up by itself. It was about a series of childhood abuse I had suffered, and I had carried the humiliation of that for more than a decade. The pain almost completely went away in that one day – I felt very peaceful and complete whenever I thought of those men, whereas before I would have felt anger and humiliation.

I have heard some stories of the Physical Journey – where major, chronic, or life-threatening diseases were healed. They seemed quite incredible to me, but they were other seminar goers, not from the official sales material, so I don’t know. I don’t have any major physical problems, but I have done it once on my old neck injury, and the pain really did go away. The idea was that we would have some emotion kept in there – for my neck injury, it was a massive childhood argument with my brother, which was strange, because the injury happened when I was in my early twenties. But it still worked – letting out the pent-up anger I felt at my brother made the pain go away, for a few weeks at least. The pain came back eventually, but was much reduced.

Now for some of the quibbles: The way the technique is taught really does get on my nerves after a while. This is probably me projecting my flaws onto others, but I saw a lot of self-righteousness in her book. It got worse in the videos and the seminars, together with hour-long stories about her life that don’t help the reader learn the technique at all, and seem to serve no purpose other than to tell her life story. However, the majority of my fellow seminar goers seemed to eat it up with a spoon, so it might be just me. Maybe you can borrow the book from your library first, to see if the writing style bothers you. If it does, the other material definitely will too.

One Tip:
As discussed, it might be hard to learn on your own, so if you are interested, it might be worth the investment to get a proper session, or at least practice with a friend. Also, if you have physical problems, I suggest that we don’t give up proper medical procedures. Use any technique, Journey or otherwise, as a complement to proper medical care, not as a replacement. Also, give your body a chance to recover after doing such heavy emotional work – at one point in time, I was doing 3-4 processes a day and it really drained my body.

To find out more:
The most common place to start is the basic book: The Journey

However, we have to read lots and lots of boring (to me) story to get to the process at the very end. I actually prefer The Journey for Kids, where the stories are shorter, more relevant, and the process is taught in a slightly simpler manner. It’s the same process for adults and children, so you can use it on yourself also.

Freedom Is contains several shorter processes and stories. Some are pretty standard fare if you’ve been around this field for a while, but a couple are good. Consciousness: The New Currency teaches a longer and more involved version of the Journey, but with different intentions (manifesting abundance, love, and so on.)

Faster EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques)

Overview:
This is where things start to appear a bit funny. Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) involves tapping ourselves in certain parts of our body, along the meridians, while repeating certain statements. Practitioners claim that these treatments can treat many disorders, ranging from the emotional to the physical.

My experiences:
The strange thing is: Many years ago, I tried standard EFT, as well as Thought Field Therapy (TFT), but nothing changed. So for a long time I was sceptical, and agreed heartily with the people who thought it was pseudo-science. But I recently came across Faster EFT, a variation of EFT – I don’t know much about the differences, but it is a streamlined tapping process, and used in a different way. Faster EFT works very well in the short run, but I am undecided on its long-term efficacy, so I’ll detail what happened for me, and let you make up your own minds. Three different areas:

• Emotional Pain. When it comes to emotional problems, I’m a little bit strange. I don’t have many, but the ones I do have are very chronic and stubborn. One was a memory of abuse when I was a young boy, and all the associated pain (a different series of events than the one I healed with the Journey). I went to the weekend seminar, and Robert Smith, the creator, gave me personal attention that took away 90% of my negative emotions in 15 minutes. And this was something I had been healing for years. However, a lot of it came back in a few weeks– whether it rebuilt itself, was just suppressed and bounced back, or if it was just a deeper layer coming up, I don’t know. Keep in mind that this happened with all my other modalities – like I said, my problems were very chronic and very stubborn. Some critics of EFT say that it’s some form of “pattern interrupt”, where we disrupt a chain of thoughts or memories by distracting ourselves midway with the tapping.
• Physical Pain. I was really surprised at the short term emotional results, so I wanted to test it on other things. I don’t have much in terms of physical problems, but once I had a very bad stomach-ache on a long bus ride home. I thought I was going to explode before I got home ( ), but I “tapped on it”, and the pain disappeared until I got home.
• Addictions. That test still wasn’t good enough, so I thought I’d try it on addictions. I drink around 3-4 bottles of Coca-Cola a day, and have been since I was a little boy. Robert has free videos and examples on Youtube, and I found one of him treating a woman with the exact same problem. It took me about 15 minutes of tapping and stopped me from drinking Coke for a few weeks. However, it came back. I think it was a different layer, though, because I discovered other motivations for drinking it so much (I had returned to my traditional modalities by then, so I didn’t address these motivations with EFT). So I am still undecided about Faster EFT for addictions.

To find out more:
I think tapping is one of those things which either works miracles or doesn’t work at all. I introduced tapping to some people I know, and some cleared long-standing problems, and others got nothing out of it. (Also, even for me, some tapping sessions did nothing, and some tapping sessions were amazing – so don’t discard it straight away.) So it is worth your time to investigate this – since time is all it will cost you. The good thing is, most of Robert’s (the creator of Faster EFT) stuff is free on Youtube. There are far too many good ones to list them all (he has hundreds altogether), but I’ll list a couple.

• Video 167 is a good introduction to tapping (20 mins).
• Video 68 is the Coke addiction one I used (7 mins).

Even if you don’t like tapping, Robert’s theoretical model of healing negative memories, as well as all the other theoretical stuff is fantastic. They will be a big help even if you use other healing modalities, so jump around his Youtube channel (Healing Magic) or his official website for some more information.

Core Transformation

Overview:
Core Transformation is a modality for working with our sub-personalities. I am not an expert so I might get some details wrong, but here’s my interpretation. Behind almost every problematic behaviour, thought pattern, or emotion, there is a part of us that is doing it and believing that it is somehow good for us.

An example of this would make it easier to understand. For comparison purposes to the previous modalities, I’ll use a childhood abuse memory, although I can’t remember the exact chain of events. I would be getting constant intrusive memories of that event, hearing the abuser’s voice, and it would bring me into a dark mood of anger and sadness. Now, there is no apparent reason to see how this could be good for me, right? But there was a child part of me who was making me remember these memories, and he thought it was good for me.

CT gets in touch with this part of me, and asks him what he wants to achieve. Then he is asked to imagine having that end result. The prompting repeats in this manner until we reach a Core State, an end goal where we can’t go any further. My chain would be something like:

Relive negative events
> Punish myself for being a wimp
> I am motivated to become stronger
> I can protect myself from future attacks
> Then I can rest and let my guard down
> Then I can be at peace (Core State)

What my sub-part really wanted was to be at peace, but he believed he had to make me do all those things in order to reach it. However, because I didn’t know what was going on, I wasn’t responding the way he wanted – I was just stuck at the “punishing myself” stage. Being a child, he couldn’t change tactics and simply redoubled his efforts. However, once we brought him to his desired end goal, he was more likely to simply stop doing all the preceding events, or modify them to be more positive. (This is done by going back up the chain of events with a different set of questions). There are more advanced processes to CT, but that is it in a nutshell.

Now, the idea of sub-personalities are not new to CT. Versions have existed in various forms of psychological therapy – ranging from Carl Jung’s theories (and Jung inspired modalities such as Voice Dialogue) to Gestalt Therapy. However, I’ve explored several of them, and this is the most powerful I have used.

My experiences:
This is one of the modalities where I cannot really comment on. I’ve always loved the ideas of sub-personalities, and despite seeing firsthand how good this system can be in working with them, I simply don’t use it that much. This is definitely personal preference, however. Maybe it’s because of the Core States – they are really wonderful states of being, and I just tend to get lost in them once I reach them. I end up sitting around blissed out and not completing the process – good for relaxation, but I don’t get the full benefits. I know people who swear by this technique, and as discussed, it is the best out of the similar styles I have tried.

One Tip:
You might want to have a friend lead you through the process, initially. This isn’t because it’s hard or complicated but simply to avoid getting lost in the Core States. Also, it’s hard to fully immerse yourself in the experience when you have to put some of your attention on directing the questions.

To find out more:

This is one of the lesser-known techniques out there. I’ve mostly gone by the book, Core Transformation. The official videos (featuring the creators) available on Youtube seem to cut out the core processes, which is understandable, but I’ve found a few unofficial ones that seem to cover the whole process.

Part One, Part Two and Part Three of a series (6 to 9 minutes each):

Conclusion

Well, what a long post. Thanks for sticking with us till the very end. I’ve also been re-entering the Work of Byron Katie (as discussed in a previous post of this series), and will be updating that post soon to reflect my newer experiences.

The Old Faithfuls

This post provides mini-reviews of my favourite healing modalities – except these ones haven’t been supported by the scientific community, and in several cases, are actually criticised by them.

Please let me repeat some of the disclaimer type stuff from the first post:

• Most importantly: None of these replace the care of a good professional or can be taken as medical or psychological advice. A good, licensed, therapist should always be your first port of call, especially if your problems are severe. This list is not an endorsement, they’re just things I’ve tried and benefited from.
• No affiliate links.
• These are my experiences only, not a sweeping statement of their effectiveness/ineffectiveness. Your results may (probably will) vary.
• Are these cults? I can’t say for sure, but in my experience, they are not. Most of my cult paranoia comes from stories about other systems (there is a lot of BS in this field) and time spent on cult education forums. However, even a good system can have evil individual teachers or scammers using them. Further, I am mostly a DIY person (learning from home via video and audio), and live seminars might be different. Bottom line: use caution in everything.

The Barrel of Water

Is anyone still reading after all those warnings? Before I begin, I’d like to introduce you to something I call the “barrel of water” problem. When I first tested several of these techniques, I discarded them within a day, because I thought they didn’t work. But they did – I just didn’t feel them. Why? Because I was in the depths of my depression then, and it was like carrying a barrel of water on my back. One session of healing might remove a cupful of water – good work, but I still have so much water I can’t feel the difference. So if a technique doesn’t work, it might simply be how much water is in your barrel. However, if something makes you feel uncomfortable, definitely move on to the next.

Let’s begin! This article got too long (again), so I split them up. Here are the “Old Faithfuls”, the techniques I’ve been using for a long time.

Sedona Method / Release Technique

Overview:
In Part 1, I described how transformative it was for me to realise I was not my emotions, and to welcome and accept them. The Sedona Method supercharges this by teaching us to simply let these emotions, and their underlying master programs, go.

My experiences:
For a long time, this was my primary method of healing, and was responsible for my recovery from depression. However, releasing can be strange initially – it took me quite a few weeks to really get the hang of it (and the barrel of water made it difficult too). I’ve heard stories of really quick recoveries, but it isn’t a magic pill.

However, the course is sometimes advertised with promises of wealth and health. Besides turning some seekers off, I’ve never gotten anything external. Granted, I only played around with the processes for achieving goals, since emotional healing was my main concern. But just thought you would like to know. I do know (real life, not internet ) people who have gotten financial benefits from this method.

One Tip:
In the basic course, they suggest the Advantages/Disadvantages process, or the Likes/Dislikes process. Many people I know, including myself, overlook this process because it looks so simple, but it is actually one of the most powerful. It asks you to write down all the things you like or dislike about a topic. I used to have a few people I had trouble letting go of – painful memories kept coming into my head, no matter what I did. Then I did this process, and discovered that I secretly enjoyed hating them, and I believed that replaying the memories was somehow protecting me from similar events happening again. I released those beliefs, and the memory disappeared for good. This can apply to many other things: we might secretly want to remain poor, sick, or suffering, and this process will shake that loose.

To find more:
There are actually two major schools of releasing: The Sedona Method and the Release Technique. The SM is probably the better known and marketed of the two, but both have their strong points. The SM website has a free article giving the basics of how it works, and there are other introductions that you have to pay for – The Letting Go movie is being heavily promoted, or you can try the Sedona Method book.

The Work of Byron Katie

Overview:
The Work of Byron Katie consists of four questions:
1) Is it true?
2) Can you absolutely know that it is true?
3) How do you react when you believe that thought?
4) Who would you be without the thought?

We apply these questions to a distressing thought – for example, “XYZ doesn’t love me”. Sometimes we hold on to these painful thoughts tightly, but the first two questions shake our faith in their truth. For example, just because XYZ ignores me sometimes doesn’t mean they don’t love me. The last two questions show the cause-and-effect. With the thought, I might feel angry, sad, and treat XYZ badly. Without the thought, I might be free of these negative emotions, and see that the thought itself is causing my pain; further, I might see the situation in a completely different way. After applying the four questions, we complete the process by finding a few turnarounds.

My experiences:
As many people have suggested, The Work is quite similar to the cognitive therapies of mainstream psychology. This is true in many regards. We find evidence to dispute our negative thoughts, and it does take a bit of work to learn, and a lot more to learn to do it well. However, what many people miss out on are the instructions to treat the Work as a meditation – in other words, trying to answer the questions, not from the mind, but from the heart. In my experience, this makes it much more powerful – as discussed in the previous post, cognitive therapy sometimes gives me a head vs. heart conflict, where my head knows that the painful thought isn’t true, but my heart still feels that it is true. Doing the Work properly speaks directly to my heart, avoiding this problem. I just know, on all levels, that the painful thought isn’t true anymore.

While at one point I was completely in love with this method, there are some disadvantages that I’ve come across while watching other people do it. One, you need some understanding of spiritual principles, and probably Carl Jung’s shadow work, otherwise the modality can be prone to pretty major misunderstandings. This is probably the main reason critics bash it. Two, it is best done with a skilled facilitator, at least initially. It is quite hard to learn alone, and people quit before they really get the hang of it. Three, it can be quite time-consuming. This is why I’ve moved on, but don’t let that stop you from trying it out, because it is very powerful if used properly. And even now, I’m grateful to have it in my toolbox and use it for very hard-to-release beliefs.

One Tip:
While the modality aims at reducing suffering, sometimes the process of healing can be necessarily painful. In my experience, this happens in the turnarounds. In some cases, they make you look at previously denied aspects of the problem. For example, once I had a massive argument with a close friend, and I couldn’t drop the anger and pain even after a lot of work.

One of the thoughts I worked on was: He tried his best to hurt me. Doing the turnaround was very difficult, because I had to find examples of how I tried to hurt him (which I did, many times). I simply didn’t want to do it, but once I did my feelings finally began to shift. Denying certain aspects of a situation is one of the best ways to remain stuck in it. As discussed above, understanding the basics of Carl Jung’s shadow work helps when turning around statements like “He was a liar” to “I was a liar” – or it feels like we are just hurting ourselves even more.

To find out more:
I have written a whole series of articles on using The Work of Byron Katie. The entire system is free on her official website, and you can also learn a lot by searching for her on Youtube. Out of her books, Loving What Is is a great introduction, with examples and troubleshooting. My favourite is I need Your Love – Is That True? It provides lots of variations in application, some of which are very powerful.

3-2-1 Process for the Shadow

Overview:
Carl Jung’s work on the shadow is too rich and important to summarise in one paragraph or even one article, but in short, it consists of all the elements of our psyche that we repress into our unconscious mind. This can include emotions, personality characteristics, instincts, and desires – the whole lot. Everyone carries a shadow, and while even positive elements can be pushed into the shadow, it is most dangerous when it is all the negative stuff.

For example, if I have hatred inside me, I might feel threatened by that hatred, and try to deny it and hide it. But this doesn’t make it go away; on the contrary, it begins to influence us from its hidden location (even more problematic because now we don’t know what is influencing us!). The other possibility is the hatred exploding back when we least expect it. The common analogy is the beach ball being pushed under the water – we might be able to hide it for a while, but after a while it will come bursting back to the surface. Even worse, we start projecting it onto other people; we start seeing hatred where it doesn’t exist – we start seeing our denied hatred on their faces.

The good news is, as we become aware of our shadow parts and reintegrate them, we become more and more whole; we free up a lot of energy – it takes a lot of energy to push down that beach ball! Further, the repressed aspects of ourselves no longer influence and shape us from their hidden location. We become more aware of them and can consciously choose to incorporate them into our lives.

Okay – so what does that have to do with the 3-2-1 Process? I’ve tried almost all the shadow teachers and processes, and this one is the easiest to learn (only a chapter of theory if you read from Ken Wilber’s writings, as opposed to entire books), the most flexible, and the most direct. The name comes from the three step process, which involves facing your shadow in the 3rd person, talking to it in the 2nd person, and finally stepping into it as the 1st person.

*update* Please read the second comment, in the comments section below, for an example of the 3-2-1 process at work. I had denied and repressed my beliefs of racial inferiority, my anger, and my tendency to attack those I feel are “lower” than me. I re-own it in that example.

My experiences:
I believe shadow work has to be a part of everybody’s inner work. Firstly, you simply can’t work on something you are not aware of. If you deny that you have anger issues, you can’t do anything about it. Secondly, some people on the spiritual path can be even more prone to the shadow. It is possible that the more kind and spiritual we force ourselves to be (rather than becoming kind and compassionate naturally as a result of our work), the more we deny the so-called “negative” instincts and impulses, and the more these impulses wreak havoc. I’ve seen people spew the most vehement and venomous words out of their mouths, and in the same breath proclaim themselves masters of their emotions, and hinting they are enlightened. This is likely to be the result of working on the wrong thing – healing and releasing “all those people’s” hatred, when in fact it is their own projected hatred.

As discussed in the section on Byron Katie’s Work, there were many problems in my life that were stuck. All my standard healing processes worked up to a certain point, and then stopped working. For example, a while ago, I was trying to release my anger and hurt about a friend who backstabbed me, but I remained stuck for months. I got hints in my contemplations – sudden, unprovoked, memories of times I backstabbed other people – but I pushed them away. Only when I acknowledged the part of me that was secretly like him, could I heal the whole issue. Not only did my anger and hurt drop away, but my tendency to backstab decreased significantly. Further, my urges to backstab have become much more conscious, meaning I can make a decision to simply stop.

Lastly, Ken Wilber also discusses inauthentic emotions. If I project my hatred onto another person, then I don’t feel my hatred. What I feel instead, is my fear – “what a hateful world it is out there!” This fear is inauthentic – it isn’t the real problem. Even if I release it, heal it, or witness it, or whatever I do, it will never stop, because the real emotion, the real hatred, is still there generating this fear. By re-discovering and re-owning this hatred, both the authentic hatred and inauthentic fear can be healed. (Remember that the shadow isn’t about hatred, it can involve almost anything – don’t get caught up in examples!)

One Tip:
In the Overview section, I had a whole paragraph on projection, but I cut it out. It is still a good idea to read up on shadow work, but stick to looking for your own projections and re-integrating your own shadow. Avoid the strong temptation to start hunting for other people’s projections. It might feel good for a while, but as someone who has fallen into that trap before, I think it’s best to leave other people’s shadows alone.

To find out more:
You can get the basic process for free on the Integral Life website. It might be a good idea to understand more on shadow theory before starting the process, however. For those who want to jump right in, Ken Wilber’s books are fantastic as they provide a concise chapter on shadow theory – my favourite Wilber book is No Boundary. For those who like reading, Meeting the Shadow is a fantastic collection of short writings on the topic. The more popular books out there don’t really do it for me, unfortunately.

What’s Next?

This series gets longer and longer every time I edit it. Wait for Part 3 – coming up!

Mainstream Psychological Approaches

The most common questions on this blog come from people who are suffering emotionally, and would like to know what they can do about it. While I always answer with “please get professional help”, especially if the problem is big, sometimes it isn’t feasible. And so, this series of “mini-reviews” of the methods and teachers I can recommend, and suggestions on how to find out more. Again, none of these replace the care of a good professional.

Some disclaimer type stuff, first. This list covers healing modalities and teachers that I have tried with good success, and I won’t put in any affiliate links. It isn’t a comprehensive list and doesn’t cover the modalities I’ve tried and had no results with. These are ones that you can apply to yourself; I’ve left out the good approaches that require a therapist. Finally, I would like to emphasise that these are my personal experiences of these therapies as a method of “self-help” only – not a sweeping statement of their effectiveness. I have not tried these in proper one on one therapy. Your results may vary.

Let’s begin! We start out with the mainstream psychological techniques that are, to the best of my knowledge, backed up by proper scientific studies. If you want the juicy, controversial techniques, they’re coming in part 2.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Overview:
Currently one of the most popular therapies out there. There are many aspects to the techniques from CBT. Personally, the most useful are disputing our “cognitive distortions”. In other words, seeing how irrational some of our painful thoughts can be, and aligning them more with reality. For example, if a friend disappeared from my life, I might feel quite upset. These feelings have a thought that causes them – for example, “She doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.” I can dispute these thoughts – what if her phone got lost? What if she’s going through a hard time and ignored everyone, not just me? This will help my bad feelings, and also reduce the impact on my self-esteem.

My experiences:
Of all the psychological approaches, this is relatively easy to learn and apply to oneself. Most books will give a list of common distortions, which makes it easier to see where your own thinking has gone awry. However, I find it a bit slow, and often I end up getting a conflict where my head knows “Alright, maybe she is going through a hard time and didn’t ignore me on purpose”, but my heart still feels abandoned and rejected. Some people also think that disputing your thoughts is no different from warring with yourself, so if you try this, it is important to be gentle. For maximum effectiveness, try combining CBT with an emotional technique (see below). CBT also provides a host of other techniques that can be helpful.

To find out more:
I have an article that might serve as an introduction: Knowing and Mastering Your Thoughts. Of the books I have read, one of the most comprehensive is David Burns’s Feeling Good. On the other hand, it’s also one of the thickest, so if that is not your cup of tea, there are other options, such as Change Your Thinking.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Overview:
ACT provides an entirely different approach to handling painful thoughts and feelings. There are six main principles in ACT: Defusion, Acceptance, the Observing Self, Contacting the Present Moment, Values, and Committed Action. Essentially, the first four principles mean we take a step back from engaging in our thoughts and emotions, therefore create space for them to be without wallowing in them or, conversely, trying to fix them.

The last two principles are concerned with our external world instead of our thoughts and feelings. By connecting with and clarifying our values, and committing to effective action, we begin to build a meaningful life.

My experiences:
This section might be a bit funny, because I haven’t used ACT in my life at all, yet still feel like I can give a good review. Please let me explain. The first four principles are very similar to the practices, such as mindfulness, that were critical for me when I started coming out of depression, many years ago. In that sense, I have been using ACT for years. In those days, I was completely identified with my painful thoughts and feelings – the thoughts that tortured me literally every single second of my waking life (I tried counting them once). However, learning to distance myself and be the observer of these thoughts and feelings – realising the difference between “I have anger in me” and “I am angry” was one of the most powerful shifts I have ever experienced.

Secondly, emotions hurt because we resist them – if we welcome them, they diminish in waves, and eventually disappear. This was another major shift for me (and you can read about them in an old article on Emotional Mastery, and coincidentally, that article describes the emotional “technique” I used in conjunction with CBT). I haven’t had time to explore the last two principles in-depth, so I can’t review those. Being in the Present Moment is a special case, and has to be left for a separate article.

To find out more:
If accepting your thoughts sounds better than disputing them, ACT might be the way to go. Also, I’ve met people who didn’t want to explore spiritual or Buddhist techniques (like mindfulness) due to fears that it will clash with their religion and beliefs. Despite the overlaps, ACT is completely separated from spirituality and religion, and so fits well with everyone.

To find out more, try the Act Mindfully website. It has an excellent overview of ACT and some free PDFs for further reading. If you want a proper book, I like The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. Don’t be turned off by the title, which makes it sound like some shallow self-help book. It’s actually very good, and most of the other books available are aimed at the therapist, not the everyday reader.

Schema Therapy

Overview:
One of the modalities I love is Schema Therapy. This approach builds on traditional cognitive therapy, and focuses a lot more on identifying and healing schemas. Schemas are long-standing patterns of negative thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. They are underneath and cause a lot of our more surface problems, and the ST researchers have identified a list of the most common schemas that many of us have. Even better, they incorporate a lot of techniques from other systems such as psychoanalysis. In my experience, these techniques add so much more to the method and their inclusion is the main reason I enjoy it so much.

My experiences:
ST stands out from the other approaches as a “bottom-up” approach; in other words, they start by identifying and healing the underlying cause instead of the surface problem. Although healing the underlying cause might be slower, once it changes, so does all our surface problems.

For example, one of my old problems was the tendency to give too much and then feel hurt if the other person didn’t reciprocate enough (and even if they do I still felt it wasn’t enough). Now this was a surface problem. However, this problem had an underlying root, the schema of emotional deprivation. If I fixed this problem but not the underlying schema, it leaves my deprivation active in other parts of my life. Further, it makes me vulnerable to restart my surface problem, the selfish giving. (This is not to say the “top-down” approaches are worthless, most problems are not so long-standing or hard to change.) Identifying my schemas showed me all the other unhealthy behaviours I was doing but was unaware of – very eye-opening and powerful.

One possible danger, though, is going through the list and finding out more schemas than you bargained for, therefore giving yourself more reason to hate yourself. Take note if you’re prone to beating yourself up or are feeling very down.

To find out more:
When I used ST, I found two major books on it. Re-inventing Your Life is the “self-help” version of the book, and it provides information on the schemas, how to identify if it is something you suffer from, and practical self-applicable advice on recognizing how it negatively affects you and how to overcome them. There is an emphasis on taking action, which is something many of us need.

The Practitioner’s Guide was the other book I found. This was the book I really fell in love with, mostly because it contained some very powerful techniques that aren’t available in RYL. However, this is with good reason, as you would need a professional in order to apply these additional techniques. If you are experienced in such techniques, try the Practitioner’s Guide. I’ve used these additional techniques on myself, and even though I’m not a ST professional, I got a lot of benefit from them. This is not to say that RYL is not good though, as it is fantastic.

You can find information on the official website and on Wikipedia, but they don’t present the best parts of ST, IMHO. There’s also a third book out, although I only found out because I was researching this article and haven’t read it.

Outside the Mainsteam

OK, that section turned out to be much longer than I thought it would. To be honest, I just wanted to write a couple of paragraphs on the professional methods. My original article focused on some “outside-the-mainstream” and sometimes controversial methods, and I thought I would add some proper psychological methods so I don’t look like a complete weirdo. I’ll save the juicy, fun, stuff for the next article, so stay tuned for that!

Link Love

Haven’t had one of these in a while, I forgot completely about these little link love sections! A big hello to Peter Fernando of A Month of Mindfulness. Peter is a great guy and our newest sponsor. The Month of Mindfulness provides, amongst other things, five complementary approaches to meditation practice, in both written format and with an accompanying 30 minute guided audio meditation. As Peter says, it is his intention to create a community based on kindness and respect, and to facilitate a heart space where we feel we have permission to be completely where we are, as we are.

She went through a personal crisis recently. Despite my efforts to reach out and help her, she needed time alone, and disappeared without telling me. At that time, I had no idea what was going on, and I felt like I had something to do with it. As the days went past, the pain of abandonment only grew, grew into an ache that was always there no matter what.

I remembered the old teachings, teachings that I’ve tried to live up to many times in the past. Don’t run away from the pain, experience it directly. Love her, not with condition, as I have in the past, but love her for what precisely who she is, and what she has done. In other words, love her for abandoning me.

As I went into this pain, I realised what a gift she had given me. This pain wasn’t just her. My biggest injury was abandonment, and she was giving me a chance to look at all those wounds I had stored, all the sorrow I hadn’t dared to look at and heal. It was all the abandonment I had ever felt, all at once.

It took weeks, but one day I managed to do it. I dropped the pain, and was able to send her my blessings. I didn’t contact her, but silently I wanted for her what she wanted for herself. If she wanted to be without me, that made her happy, and I loved that. I genuinely meant it, even though it was only a silent thought, and it felt good.

A few days ago, she came back into my life. She had no idea what had happened, no idea how I had felt, any of that. Her long absence was purely innocent; she just needed some time alone and didn’t know how it made me feel. I didn’t tell her anything, but there was a quiet happiness inside me that was different from the happiness I had felt before.

It was not relief that the friendship hadn’t ended; it was not the happiness I got from our previous friendship, which was just her fulfilling my needs and me fulfilling hers. This happiness was different – I had already mourned her loss, so there was nothing for me to be afraid of, there was nothing I wanted from her. There was no clinging, no neediness, no pain, nor fear of pain. She had come back because she wanted to, and I loved it. If she ever went again, it was because she wanted to, and I would love that too.

And because of this freedom, every moment – no matter how mundane – became special. Silently, alone, mourn every relationship right now, even if it is still strong. Experience the loss, the pain, the anger, the guilt. Live through it purely, and then all that remains – whether it lasts for an hour or for a hundred years – can truly be savoured and lived freely.

If you are thinking that this is impossible, realise that giving doesn’t have to involve physical objects. In fact, in my experience, it is better for it not to be. Give a smile or a kind thought, hug a crying friend, open a door for a stranger, work to forgive those who hurt you, say a silent prayer when you drive past an accident. That way, we never run out, and we never get tired.

Why? This is a step towards one of the most transformative spiritual practices of all – the simple decision to be kind, easy-going, and forgiving to everyone, including oneself.

If you believe in the idea that we are all one consciousness, that the idea of “me” is just an illusion of separation, then this is a practice that dissolves that boundary between self and not-self. When we give, no longer are we thinking of ourselves. No longer are we the tiny ego, the small self, the selfish person. If we are genuinely kind, we become – for that brief moment – connected to something far bigger, far more majestic.

Other teachings say that whatever you give comes back to you, since we are all interconnected. If we all swim in the same ocean, then whatever we spread outwards also affects us. Would you put kindness or hatred into the ocean that you yourself swim in?

This can have psychological benefits too – caring for a beloved pet is a proven effective way to reduce depression. Giving kindness, whoever the recipient is, makes you feel better.

If you don’t believe in any of this, then you will have lived a kind and generous life for its own sake.

We cannot give with expectation of a reward. Not even a “thank you”. It is very easy to fall into the trap of giving for the sake of receiving. And this “temptation” returns again and again. When I first made the decision to be kind to everyone, I did it without any expectations of return, which is how it should be. But over the months that followed, I noticed how everyone reacted to me – people treated me kindly, went out of their way for me, gave me lots of approval. This was something I craved, so this temptation had come back in – I wanted their affection and approval, and that had contaminated my kindness. It was kindness at first, but became corrupted further down the road.

In fact, there were deeper levels to this false giving. This kindness came from a secret feeling of worthlessness. That I will not be liked for who I am, so at least I will be liked for my giving. This was unknown and hidden from me at first, and can be quite hard to see, so look especially hard for similar motivations in yourself.

Even worse, false giving won’t heal any deeper insecurities you might have. In my case, it didn’t heal my hidden sense of worthlessness at all – because the appreciation and kindness I got back never reached it. If I give from a mask, then the appreciation I get only reaches that mask, and not my heart.

This just leads to more frustration, and a deepening insecurity. Sometimes we even hate ourselves for our false giving, because on some level, we know it isn’t genuine.

This simple decision can be hard at times; it is something that I am still practicing. But the more I practice, the more I see the truth in the old saying – happiness comes not from being loved, but from loving. Loving is its own reward.

About [Raw]

Standard posts on UM.Net are the result of lots of reading and experience, backed up by spiritual teachings or psychological research, and edited repeatedly to cover any possible misunderstandings. A raw post is relatively short and unedited, not backed up by research, and is similar to “thinking out loud”. Therefore they might be harder to read, or are more susceptible to disagreement and misinterpretation (as I haven’t taken the time to consider other points of view). Please voice disagreements in the comments, and more importantly, if anything makes you feel uncomfortable then ignore the post – like all other articles it is just my opinion. Read more about Urban Monk Raw.