The Soul of Psychotherapy

From the very beginning of my experience with psychotherapy, it was the depth that drew me.

Although I was not trained in psychoanalysis, the training I did included doing our own healing work. From the start there was the clear understanding and felt experience of profound meaning. Repeatedly this was true . . . for me personally, in my training, and in my work with clients. Discovering and reconnecting with one’s self to the very depths of one’s being was at the heart of the psychotherapy I was introduced to and became intimate with. Reconnecting wherever one had split off, body, mind, heart, and soul. It was clear to me that psychotherapy was soul work.

And I was called to do this soul work for myself and with others!

As I went deeper and deeper, I saw what people who didn’t believe there were deeper parts of themselves might call miracles. Miracles of discovery. Miracles of reconnection. Miracles of healing.

But I did believe in all of this and more. So I was honored and blessed to get to help create these miracles. And to find that what I believed and knew in my heart and soul was true . . . that we can heal to the root of our beings.

And as I went deeper and deeper, I saw more and more what people who didn’t believe we create from the inside out might call miracles. Miracles of healing and transformation that people’s healing to the root created in both their own inner lives and outer lives, and also in their families’ lives, and in the life of our world.

I witnessed miracles. I helped people create miracles. I helped people birth miracles of healing from the inside out.

When I began my calling in the psychotherapy world, therapy was beginning to grow and become more accepted, and while people were still attaching stigma to therapy, some of that stigma was beginning to recede. People were beginning to see therapy not as something for the mentally ill, but rather something for all of us, given that all of us were once wounded in some way – whether in our families, our school systems, our communities, or our world.

And at the same time, the process of psychotherapy was starting to nourish in our world the bud of personal self-responsibility – which was deeply needed in individuals and in our world as a whole – was coming to life.

People who were suffering inside themselves began choosing to go to therapy, discovering parts of themselves they hadn’t known existed, learning about the impact they had on other people – particularly their children and their partners – and taking responsibility not only for their actions, but also for their words, their thoughts, and their feelings. As the truth emerged, reconnections occurred, and people felt the pain of it, doorways began to open for individuals and our world alike to fulfill their potentials body, mind, heart and soul.

The growing evolution must have scared someone or someones…

The growing evolution must have scared someone or someones, because as the growth occurred, and the changes in our world as a result – changes like revelations about what was occurring in our homes and to our children – managed care insurance companies and pharmaceuticals also grew and began to have an impact on the life of psychotherapy. New quick fix therapies came into being to claim the insurance moneys with short term techniques that would manage and control people’s behaviors, thoughts, and feelings, while stifling their discoveries of their deeper selves and strangling their reconnection with parts of themselves they didn’t yet know they had. New people began to capitalize on these techniques, and work with people’s psyches and souls . . . people who didn’t have the training and hadn’t done the personal work to know what might open up in someone when s/he began to delve within, people who had no idea how to help someone if something primal and terrifying did open up. A new movement came forth that joined together “body, mind, and soul.” But look! They left the heart out of the title, and even out of the movement! It needed to be “body, mind, heart, and soul.”

People became more and more disconnected from their unconscious selves, and their unconscious selves had more and more impact on people’s lives and on the life of our world.

Greed grew. Violence grew. Fear grew. Many people couldn’t even control and manage their behaviors, thoughts, and feelings anymore. And most people only knew how to control and manage their thoughts and feelings or how to let someone else move their energy for them . . . not how to purposely, consciously, and safely explore their own thoughts and feelings to the root and heal the wounding and disconnection they found there.

The heart and soul of psychotherapy – what had given such meaning, possibility, and hope to people and to our world – had been cut out and replaced with bandaids.

Bandaids could no longer control what was festering within and crying out to be healed. . . and certainly couldn’t help with the healing so deeply, even desperately needed. In such a state, unable to tend to their suffering and heal – even the suffering that came of not knowing themselves, even the suffering that came of being disconnected from themselves, even the suffering that came of not being able to be themselves and fulfill their true potential – people became more and more desperate. Addictions grew and intensified. The forms of addiction multiplied. Attempts to bury and run away from the suffering were out of control . . . and so was the suffering.

The truth had been hidden . . . that there is a way to heal to the root – individually and globally. The truth had been forgotten . . . that we create our world – our inner and outer world – from that which lives within us, whether we’re conscious of that or not! Whether we want to be conscious of that or not.

The truth had been dropped . . . that we need to take responsibility for what we are creating in our world – from the inside out – or we will never be able to create what we so long to create: A conscious, self responsible, compassionate, connected, feeling world that is truly at peace within and without.

It’s true. There is a way to heal to the root.

We do create our world from that which lives within us. We do need to take responsibility for what we are creating. It is possible to create what we most deeply long for. I have never given up on the process or the possibilities that come through the heart and soul of depth psychotherapy. I have experienced it, witnessed it, been a midwife and guide to it. I have never given up on healing to the root! Not for myself, not for my clients, not for those who read my book, subscribe to my newsletter, read my articles, listen to my interviews and web conferences, not for those who attend my workshops and talks. Not for anyone who is called to it! Not for anyone who is willing to say ‘yes’ to it! Not for anyone who can be awakened to it!

I hope you will not give up. I hope you will feel and hear your call