14 replies to this topic

[beez]

I wonder are there standard replies which psychologists use for all kinds of issues which a patient might have? Like for example you just have to accept it.

I am really disappointed of PT.

I think it's basically a joke. The advice which they throw out are so generic and unrealistic. I really wonder if their advice would even work

for themselves if they were in the same position,

For example I have been depressed for years because of being sick. This means in all those years I have not been able to simply accept it

or deal with it. Now when I talk to a therapist about this then all he basically says is stuff like well you gotta accept it.

I really cannot help and wonder is this it? Is this the great magic of PT? Do you have to study PT for years in order to then throw out such an advice?!

If this is all PT has to offer then it's really a bad joke. Then I can as well talk to a pastor or a drunk guy in the next pub. They might have even better

advice than that.

 

Edited by beez, 17 May 2014 - 03:46 PM.

[amara bin]

This is the only one that seriously worked for me.

http://www.schemathe...nt planning.pdf

[amara bin]

Actually, if i can do some bluntly, careless advertising:

This is the practitioner manual

http://www.amazon.co...ds=young schema

 

this is the poor man's manual (cheesy title but awesome, although a little aged, book)

http://www.amazon.co...ds=young schema

 

(goes 1.50 used on amazon + shipping)

 

I would say that this is the Methylene Blue of Psycology.

 

 

[beez]

Hi,

can you give some cliffs on how this works? For example what does this guy suggest for people who are depressed cause they are sick and they simply hate their lives?

[amara bin]

Eh...now
1) I'm not a doctor
2) while substances should help you from the chem inbalance point of view, pt should help you from the imbalance of your...soul.
Means...we can pump dopamine in our brains but still one needs to fix the reason why that dopamine goes one way or another.
So I guess if you are sick and sad because you are sick you should cure yourself, alleviate the chemical imbalance that sickness,immunitary response, meds are placing on you and everything should be fine.

If you are sick and sad...and sadness has an origin that is not just your sickness (and only you can know that) then this is a sort of map to investigate some depth of your soul, starting from the neurologic evidence that some of those deseases gets deeply imprinted in one's sympathetic system and have been placed there since your early age, some later.

I don't think is a case that around here we sometimes talk about "fear extinction" because is exactly about that.

This PT approach is about something similar to Fear Extinction: call it..."Brainwashing Exitinction or..."The inheritance of being fucked up that we pass along each other generation after generation Extinction".

That crap in my opinion has the exact same origin and nature (and consequences) of PTSD.

Now...again...I have no idea of the reasons why you are having a hard time (and btw i know what is it, i've been very close to extreme consequences myself), so i don't know if this might be the right approach for you.

But worked great for me (and anyway is not a silver bullet).

[beez]

I'm just scared of buying a book and having some hope and then finding out that it's not helping.

I mean advice like get over it also don't help me.

I don't have marriage issues and things like that which can be fixed and then it's all fine again,

My issues are much bigger. I really don't see how simply changing my mind could help me when these issues

are still there.

Or what if I simply cannot do it? What if others can and I can't? It doesn't help me to be told that others are sick too and

they also manage to be content. Stuff like that only drags me down further.

[amara bin]

It doesn't help me to be told that others are sick too and

they also manage to be content. Stuff like that only drags me down further.

 

 

(stepping out a bit from the semi amateurish but tentatively always scientifically coherent tone of this forum)

 

Screw the others that have managed "to be content". Probably you are suffering way more and losing way more than they do.

Probably whoever said that was meaning "they managed to annoy me lesser" (so screw this whoever as well).

 

PT is valid only within certain limits, only when the roots of our contempt come from the past.

 

I'm becoming very convinced of the fact that about the future everything lies on building yourself a new brain, and that happiness is not essentially connected with anything else than your brain health, by the new neurons/axons you'll be able to build and for any fear or "maladaptive schema" you'll be able to extinct.

 

In the Art of War there is a phrase that says:
"No matter how extreme, is always possible to exit victorious from a siege but neither of the 2 opponents will be the same again".

and

"Is not the strongest opponent the one with greatest possibility of victory but the one that is willing to go to the greatest lengths to obtain that victory"

 

You are the only one that can own your healing. Everything else is just a tool.

[pamojja]

You are the only one that can own your healing. Everything else is just a tool.

 

 

Now when I talk to a therapist about this then all he basically says is stuff like well you gotta accept it.

Though without a serious depression myself, I like focusing assistance a lot. Particularly because it enables oneself to be the best expert there is about oneself, and find the unique way forward right there. So not to comply to other's 'shoulds' - but what wants to live from within of you, without constrains we sometime impose ourself (for alleged selfdevence). Then it can also be used in a self-help setting without the self-defeating professional-myth about Psychotherapists (ie. he is the expert and able to fix it).

[beez]

@amara bin

 

But can you build a better brain for yourself? It sucks cause doctors only use prescrition drugs. I'd like to have a doctor who knows drugs and supplements,alternative treatments

and who could combine them. Maybe antidepressants simply don't work for some people no matter what. I also wonder if ssri can even work if a person for example lacks serotonine

in the first place.

 

@pamojja

This focusing sounds a bit esoteric. Is this about leaving the body? I don't think that's for me. I'm not into esoteric stuff.

[pamojja]

This focusing sounds a bit esoteric. Is this about leaving the body? I don't think that's for me. I'm not into esoteric stuff.

 

Right the oposite, it's actually about entering this very body in a healthier way. Simplified, you can analyze your problem with your brain again and again - or recreate and relive emotional difficulties the same, but in the worst case without change occurring. In Focusing one learns to listens to what is intuitively felt in the body (much more then linear thinking can come up with, or what plain catharsis could bring) by attending as less identified observer. You aren't your difficulty, but there is much more to you than your difficulty makes you believe. And that is felt when you attend in a special, attentive way to your body in the here and now.
 

[amara bin]

Here there is a lot of discussion around brain growth...

Edited by amara bin, 21 May 2014 - 09:55 AM.

[beez]

 

This focusing sounds a bit esoteric. Is this about leaving the body? I don't think that's for me. I'm not into esoteric stuff.

 

Right the oposite, it's actually about entering this very body in a healthier way. Simplified, you can analyze your problem with your brain again and again - or recreate and relive emotional difficulties the same, but in the worst case without change occurring. In Focusing one learns to listens to what is intuitively felt in the body (much more then linear thinking can come up with, or what plain catharsis could bring) by attending as less identified observer. You aren't your difficulty, but there is much more to you than your difficulty makes you believe. And that is felt when you attend in a special, attentive way to your body in the here and now.
 

 

 

This sounds very complicated. Is this even something you can learn or use without first having to be taught it by a specialist? I don't really have much time to get into something which takes a long time to learn. Can you also learn this alone?
 

[pamojja]

This sounds very complicated. Is this even something you can learn or use without first having to be taught it by a specialist? I don't really have much time to get into something which takes a long time to learn. Can you also learn this alone?

 

Maybe my explanation made it appear much more complicated as it is. Specialist actually found it by analyzing countless tapes of client-centered counseling sessions, thereby recognizing that there is one particular feature in successful therapies on the client side without being taught first, which was lacking in unsuccessful clients. Mind it, nothing to do with different therapists.

 

To didactically use this distinct process - seemingly happing on its own in successful client - with successless clients it was simplified into 6 teachable steps.

 

You need only 1 person who trained in Focusing assistance, which would lead you through these steps without having to recognize, and could also be done by phone. Unless you would first learn to give assistance yourself, you would need an other.

[beez]

Ok. And I assume that these instructions are pretty expensive right? How many sessions do you need for those 6 steps?

[pamojja]

Ok. And I assume that these instructions are pretty expensive right? How many sessions do you need for those 6 steps?

 

I trained in focusing therapy and had to exercise with volunteers. That way it would be the cheapest.

 

Haven't encountered any volunteer yet, where it wouldn't work right away. (But don't misunderstand: Focusing encourages processes of change in small steps. The only case where one session was already enough was with a very experienced mediator. Or someone realizing in the 3rd session that changing would take him out his comfort zone, and preferred not to continue.

The instructions them self cost nothing: http://www.focusing.org/sixsteps.html

 

But as already said, being guided doesn't teach you how to guide yourself. For that you have to take courses and they are expensive as any other courses.

Edited by pamojja, 23 May 2014 - 12:34 AM.