Article originally published on naturalpsychotherapy.com
What is Natural Therapy?
Natural psychotherapy is an alternative, drug-free and thoroughly holistic therapy for all types of psychological stresses and difficulties – from the most common and mildest, to the most unusual and severe.
Natural psychotherapy is positive and constructive: it does not involve psychiatric diagnosis, labeling or medicating. Throughout, it is focused on understanding the situation that causes one’s confusion and suffering and on relief of the confusion and suffering.
This medication-free and practical therapy empowers people to shape their lives. It always makes use of each person’s natural creative capacities to solve problems in living and to achieve greater psychological balance and well-being.
And most important, this down-to-earth, naturally integrating approach works for individuals, couples and families, and across all age groups.
WHICH PROBLEMS DOES NATURAL THERAPY DEAL WITH?
Natural psychotherapy is an effective way for individuals, couples and families to learn how to resolve relationship and communication issues and make significant positive changes.
They learn how to change for the better: they discover how to motivate themselves to give up the practice of self-defeating behaviors, emotional habits and thought patterns.
And above all, they become empowered to acquire the knowledge and skills to practice self-enhancing behaviors, emotional habits and ways of thinking.
These positive changes empower people to develop successful strategies to resolve:
- anxiety, depression, confusion, inadequacy feelings, and obsessive worry
- spiritual emptiness, lack of purpose, loneliness, alienation, and despair
- creativity, work and career issues
- personal and sexual identity issues
- relationship and communication problems
- sexual, erotic, love, and marital problems
- difficulties in concentration, organization and focus
- attention deficit and hyperactivity reactions
- addictions and alcoholism
- feelings of hopelessness, mild, moderate and severe depressive patterns
- postpartum depressive and panic reactions
- bi-polar patterns
- altered states and dissociative responses
- panic reactions and overwhelming fears
- schizophrenic and paranoid patterns
- temper, anger and rage patterns
- obsessive-compulsive patterns
- chronic fatigue, immune, allergic and somatic reactions
- posttraumatic stress and panic reactions
- eating and weight issues
- irritable bowel responses
- sleep problems and nightmares
If you still have questions whether natural, drug-free therapy can help with the problems you have, contact a professional in your area.
WHAT IS THE APPROACH OF NATURAL PSYCHOTHERAPY THAT MAKES IT A MIND-FREEING THERAPY?
THE GOAL OF FREEDOM:
The goal of natural psychotherapy is to free people to be themselves, to free the mind from negative self-defeating patterns as well as from negative and harmful people.
They learn how to free themselves from ever being a victim, from toxic relationships, from false ideas, from ignorance, damaging preconceptions and prejudices, superstitions, obfuscations, lies, unnecessary fears and unresolved (but resolvable) conflicts. And concomitantly, the goal is to help each person live in (or find) a social group, be it family, friends, society or culture, that does not block that freedom.
Thus, in the positive approach of this natural therapy people learn, by means of natural psychological methods, to free their minds from both internal and external harmful and inhibiting patterns. They are enabled to attain and maintain a self-determined authentic life that is purposeful and satisfying.
HOW TO ACCOMPLISH ONE’S GOALS
To accomplish these goals, natural psychotherapy has evolved a unified psychosocial, interpersonal, cognitive and psychodynamic humanistic approach. What does this mean?
In natural psychotherapy, a person’s mental, spiritual and emotional problems are seen for what they are: natural, fully understandable bio-social reactions; reactions of despair to unbearable situations which produce severe, and often prolonged pain, conflict and stress.
From the interpersonal, psychodynamic viewpoint, natural therapy regards human experience as always related to one’s situation, interactions, and relationships. Thus, in its natural state human experience is always suffused with culture in all its aspects, be they social, linguistic, spiritual, traditional, political, economic, legal, etc.
And its psychodynamic perspective simply means that the nature and quality of the relationships one has with oneself and others are influenced by aspects one is aware of and also aspects one is not aware of. And these influences have their roots in one’s present psychosocial situation as well as in one’s past. All the workings, the dynamics of the human mind are thus seen as being both conscious and unconscious, in the present and in the past.
How one has learned to feel and express emotions about one’s problems, under what assumptions and preconceptions one operates, how one thinks about one’s problems, one’s cognitions and cognitive patterns and habits, whether self-enhancing and positive or self-defeating and negative, for example, are always focused on, examined and improved in natural therapy.
With the eclectic and positive viewpoint of natural psychotherapy, the often very intense emotional reactions of every upset and psychologically distressed person are seen as wake-up calls, and are used as opportunities to make choices that will enable one to learn how to become truly in charge of one’s life in constructive ways.
As a result of deciding to take charge of one’s destiny in such positive ways, one can then learn to survive, to prevail and to flourish despite cultural, societal and family deceptions, obfuscations, oppressions and abuses in which one may find oneself.
ACHIEVING SELF-EMPOWERMENT
And if one has such a perspective, how specifically can such self-empowerment be achieved?
Such self-direction can be accomplished in natural psychotherapy by learning how (1) to make practical use of one’s feelings, dreams, thoughts and fantasies despite one’s fears to do so (2) to understand and use one’s emotional reactions and symbolic expressions constructively as guides to self-understanding and self-actualization (3) to attend to one’s whole bio-social situation, understand it, and become empowered to lessen its abusive and increase its enhancing patterns (4) to figure out how to eliminate inner and outer forms of oppression and suppression of one’s creative and spiritual nature (5) to make use of and thus rid oneself of specific “symptoms” by dealing constructively and actively with their underlying bio-psycho-social causes (6) to make use of one’s natural capacities to resolve the conflicts underlying one’s problems so one can heal and then (7) to attain and maintain a more creative, meaningful, humanistic, balanced and flourishing life.
In fact, under the umbrella of such a perspective, the purpose of every therapy session is to show one how to become fully aware of one’s inner freedom, and of the ways one may have denied that freedom and unconsciously repeated self-deception, self-defeating habits of thinking and feeling, and self-harming patterns of behaving and interacting with others and one’s milieu.
As one learns to understand the context of one’s situations in life, one is enabled to stop repeating self-defeating behavioral and thought patterns; one learns how to effectively draw on one’s natural strengths and resilience to achieve a creative and productive life.
HOW DOES A PSYCHIATRIC VIEW DIFFER FROM A NATURAL ONE?
Natural psychotherapy does not have the usual psychiatric, pathologizing way of regarding people.
Natural psychotherapy is based on the idea that all of the so-called “mental illnesses” are not “illnesses” at all, but are natural, fully understandable bio-social reactions to suppression of one’s natural and true self. And this therapy makes it possible to overcome the barriers to such self-realization.
Psychologically confused, distressed, emotionally upset persons as well as those who consider themselves or have been labeled as disabled, are thus never considered “mentally ill.” What they are is psychologically perplexed, distressed, and emotionally upset over their lack of power to shape their lives.
Thus, psychological disturbances are seen to result naturally from frustrating, self-defeating, consciously and unconsciously learned reactions to bad situations, situations of deception, oppression and abuse. They are life styles that were learned and that can be unlearned.
From the psychosocial perspective of natural psychotherapy, emotional stresses, conflicts and problems (the so-called “mental illnesses”) are not conceptualized as “psychiatric disorders.” In fact, the many and perpetually changing theories of “psychiatric diseases” are regarded as not only scientifically untenable and clinically ineffective, but as actually dehumanizing and harmful.
Besides making those who are emotionally stressed feel even more helpless and hopeless, current psychiatric practices such as psychiatric drugging, electroshock, and especially laser brain surgery are downright damaging.
And natural therapy achieves it’s goal of enabling each individual to attain self-actualization by fully following a comprehensive psychosocial formulation rather than a reductionist and dehumanizing psychiatric one.
Although numerous studies give the appearance of being in support of a psychiatric model of “mental illness,” these studies are seriously flawed, based on scientifically unacceptable conclusions and are generally sponsored and funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
There is considerable solid evidence, however, that psychological problems and disturbances are problems in psychosocial adaptation and interpersonal relations.
And there is further evidence – accumulated over the past 100 years – that such psychosocial problems and the accompanying emotional upsets are amenable to resolution and healing without drugs. They are, in fact, responsive to a thoroughly natural and creative problem solving approach in terms of each person’s utter uniqueness.
Results are especially promising since the approach is completely natural, straightforward, radically honest and radically gentle and kind at the same time.
In natural psychotherapy persons are never stereotyped and classified by means of psychiatric labels. Human beings and their minds and spirit are much too complex and individualistic for that kind of naive oversimplification. The approach is not narrow or reductive and just biological, but always bio-social, in-depth, and interdisciplinary.
Rather than being psychiatrically diagnosed, labeled, drugged, electro-shocked or undergoing conventional or laser brain surgery, a person in natural psychotherapy is effectively helped with psychosocial means.
Each person is consistently treated with care, with dignity and with respect – encouraged, understood, and enhanced.
The aim always is to comprehend the bio-psycho-social interactions and relations that result in depression, anxiety, anger, frustration and unhappiness. The emphasis is to investigate why and how these interactions are occurring and how they can be changed for the better.
Thus, in natural psychotherapy, people who are psychologically troubled in any way learn how to become more active and constructive in shaping their lives.
People who are emotionally distressed learn how to work out their underlying problems naturally, get free of their psychological distress, and live more satisfying and successful lives.
And most importantly, the natural methods of this therapy are positive: by becoming more aware, more integrated and more focused people learn how to accomplish what is important to them.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN AIMS OF NATURAL PSYCHOTHERAPY?
The main aim of natural psychotherapy is to enable you to develop your ability to achieve self-actualization: the actualization of your freedom, your uniqueness, your strengths, your interests, and the complexities of your true and natural self.
In this natural therapy a solution-oriented, humanistic, practical approach that integrates a variety of empirically-based techniques is used so that one can learn how to:
(1) minimize self-defeating ways of life – especially ways of thinking (cognitions) that almost guarantee suffering and failure
(2) resolve inner conflicts, especially as related to self-assertion and the exercise of one’s freedom and power as a human being
(3) eliminate unconscious emotional fears and cognitive barriers to being one’s natural self and attaining one’s goals and
(4) use one’s feelings, fantasies and dreams (no matter how strange, negative or unusual) as guides to understanding one’s true self as it interacts with others. Thus the aim always is to become aware of and maximally lessen, harmful outer influences as well as harmful and self-defeating patterns within oneself.
And then, as these goals are chosen and being met, one can choose to introduce balance into one’s life and significantly improve one’s mental, spiritual and physical well-being.
HOW DOES NATURAL PSYCHOTHERAPY WORK?
Natural psychotherapy is a collaborative process. It involves joint, natural conversation – a collaborative search by means of creative, fully honest and open dialogue to understand what really is and has been going on in your life.
One of the many reasons such conversation has to be collaborative is that you are the only one who really knows – even though you may not be fully in touch with that knowledge – what your conscious and unconscious perspectives and assumptions about life are, what your basic goals are, what is important to you and what you really want out of life. And the natural psychotherapist is the one with the know-how to help you become fully aware of that knowledge and use it constructively.
In short, you work together creatively, patiently and gently in the search for new perspectives and philosophies of life that can lead to a more self-determined life that is in harmony with your natural self, with others and with the natural world.
Although you learn how to communicate your feelings and attitudes about others in clear and calm ways, the focus is on self-change, on developing and improving your natural creativity and strengths, rather than a focus on changing others, finding fault with others or blame of others.
You are encouraged not to become discouraged by the difficulties of such collaboration and the emotional fears and barriers we may all develop when faced with change. And you are further encouraged to persist and prevail despite the therapist’s and your perplexities, confusions or lack of clear communication that generally accompany such a joint creative and difficult search for constructive change.
For the natural therapy conversations to really succeed, both need to be committed to invest the time and effort, the caring, and the willingness to practice, to practice and to practice in order to make sure the new ways really work, and are truly mastered.
Learning to live well and productively is a skill like other skills, only more complex. That is why it is so important to persist and prevail in the open, totally honest therapeutic and natural conversations despite the time and the effort they may take.
Your emotional concerns, upsets, and any psychological disabilities you may have developed in the past, as well as the despair you may have felt are seen as transitional.
They are all considered as experiences that can help you understand yourself better.
They are always regarded as opportunities not only for greater self-understanding but also for positive reorganization of yourself and your relationships.
And you gradually learn how not to complicate your life but to understand your conscious and unconscious feelings, desires, motivations and thoughts, and then balance them in new and creative ways despite their seeming complexities.
HOW ARE MEDICAL PROBLEMS ADDRESSED?
A person, of course, may have a specific medical disease, impairments or illnesses that require medical diagnosis and treatment.
Therefore, if any concerns about physical illness exist at the time one starts or is in the process of natural psychotherapy, one should always have a physical checkup by one’s regular personal or family physician, and preferably also by a specialist in holistic and integrative internal medicine.
HOW ARE CHEMICAL IMBALANCES REGARDED IN RELATION TO LIFE PROBLEMS?
Do people develop chemical imbalances when they get upset? The answer is a resounding yes. One’s psychological problems in living can cause chemical imbalances, as well as musculoskeletal and other physical disturbances.
Thus it is important to remember that there is overwhelming research and clinical evidence that psychological experience causes changes in body chemistry and physiology.
All chemical, neurotransmitter, and other physiological changes can always be found to be profoundly and naturally influenced and caused by disturbing and often very damaging social situations, environments and problems in living.
Chemical imbalances should therefore not be “treated” with psychiatric drugs since all that may do is make a person feel temporarily somewhat better; however, it does not eliminate the psychological reasons that caused the chemical imbalance in the first place.
And furthermore, the crude “treatments” by means of psychiatric drugs that too often have the most serious and damaging side-effects, also tend to impair the mind’s and body’s natural reparative responses to stress.
Let us always remember that the exquisite chemical and homeostatic balances that have evolved over thousands of years of evolution must be approached very carefully, and only if one fully understands the full complex mechanisms and the risks and dangers of the introduction of chemicals and foreign substances into the body.
Unless demonstrated otherwise by laboratory and other physical diagnostic findings, any chemical imbalances and physical disturbances one may be told one has, must be seen as results of and not as causes of one’s problems in living.
Thus if one is told by a psychologist, psychiatric social worker, psychiatrist, or medical professional that one has a “chemical imbalance” or a “hormonal or neurotransmitter imbalance” that is not caused by ones psychosocial problems, one should always ask what specific laboratory tests one can take to determine exactly and clearly what the imbalance is. Then, of course, one must carefully evaluate the findings (which one should always get in writing with the actual laboratory figures).
And after carefully and critically analyzing the findings one must think through which approach is best, in terms of both the possible positive results and the possible negative results and harmful side-effects. Obviously these choices should never be made by the professional alone, but always in collaboration with the person who is seeking help.
HOW DOES NATURAL PSYCHOTHERAPY VIEW MIND-ALTERING DRUGS?
One of the long-term aims of natural psychotherapy is to overcome dependence on and addiction to mind-altering drugs, whether these are prescription drugs or street drugs.
Nevertheless, one can benefit from starting natural psychotherapy while still using alcohol or drugs, whether one uses them out of habit, because one is in the process of weaning oneself off them, or because one is committed to their use for recreational, tranquilizing or analgesic purposes.
While it is accepted that psychoactive drugs can have temporary tranquilizing, stimulating and other mind-altering effects, it is equally accepted in a naturalistic approach that they tend to mask important psychosocial problems underlying one’s emotional upsets.
This actually makes them anti-therapeutic and quite often actually harmful. They are therefore avoided if that is possible.
Psychiatric drugs and other biological “treatments” (such as electroshock) are also generally avoided because of the serious side effects – both physiological and psychological – many of them have.
And of course, when a natural approach works well, it makes no sense to take harmful drugs or undergo potentially very damaging electro-shock administration since both can produce irreversible damage to a variety of bodily organs. And besides, drugs generally give superficial and very temporary symptom relief and have so far not been scientifically proven to cure the underlying bio-psycho-social causes of a person’s mental and emotional anguish.
In natural psychotherapy one focuses on natural ways of healing and gradually learns how to make use of the hormones and chemicals naturally produced by one’s own body; these can always be relied on to help one feel good. And they are completely harmless.
WHAT IF ONE HAS BECOME HABITUATED TO MIND-ALTERING DRUGS?
In the event one has become habituated to street drugs, psychiatric drugs, or toxic levels of alcohol, it is not advisable to stop impulsively or abruptly since some people have very serious physical and psychological reactions if they do so.
If one decides to stop taking prescription or non-prescription drugs, it is important to wean oneself off carefully, slowly, and always with the help, the planning and the guidance of caring, responsible, knowledgeable, and experienced professional clinical support.
WHAT ARE SOME SPECIFIC BENEFITS OF A NATURAL THERAPY?
Natural psychotherapy is a therapy in the old sense of the word (from the Greek therapein, to attend to, to heal, to make whole): it teaches you how to attend to and respect yourself and others, how to heal your psychological wounds and become whole.
You are enabled to accomplish this by learning how to consider yourself comprehensively: how to become more aware of and pay more attention to your natural creativity and your untapped inner strengths.
Through consistent commitment to self-empowerment and to the practice of a more loving and constructive life style, harmful nutritional, physical, psychological, and social patterns are gradually replaced by self-enhancing ones, and damaging social and environmental influences are minimized as much as possible.
Ways of self-deception and self-harming hidden habits and agendas one has learned are gradually brought to consciousness and unlearned. One acquires the skill of being realistic – to see things as they are. One becomes able not to be a victim of the emotional highs and lows which result from undue optimism or pessimism.
The process is also one of gaining the knowledge and skill to communicate without deceiving oneself or others.
Gradually one becomes able to acquire the ability to become one’s own therapist.
And also gradually, one discovers how to refuse to be a victim and how to assume responsibility for one’s physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.
As a result of being less frustrated and less angry, one always develops less of an impulse to victimize or mistreat others.
Above all, one gives up looking for a non-existing “quick-fix.”
Self-enhancing, long-term positive and realistic attitudes and concepts that have not yet become part of one’s habitual ways, are gradually acquired.
One finds out how to care for and find joy and fulfillment in oneself, in others, and in the natural world.
NATURAL THERAPY: BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL DEFINITIONS, CONCEPTS AND CLARIFICATIONS
ADDICTIONS, ALCOHOLISM, ETC.
Addictions are not diseases but choices. One chooses – mostly unconsciously, but quite often consciously – to escape into the fantasy that the addicted state is a good one.
One generally denies the harmful effects of the addictive substance, situation, or behavior. The serious harm to oneself is denied, as is the serious harm to others, especially the emotional pain and actual damage to those one claims to love. Addictions are thus active and perpetual states of denial.
Also, while in an addicted state, many addicts are convinced that they cannot stop the addicted behavior, and in fact, are convinced that without the addictive behavior life would become drab, unbearably boring and too painful to be continued. They just can’t imagine what it would be like to be free of the addiction. And mostly, they stubbornly refuse to even try to imagine this.
In nicotine addiction for example, it is essentially smoking without thinking, in alcoholism, drinking without thinking, and so forth for all the behaviors one feels compelled to continue.
Though many addicts (e.g. heroin and crack addicts) are often conscious of the harmful effects, they see only worse suffering as the price for stopping the addiction. But most of them just actively insist on not thinking in calm, reflective and critical ways of the physical, psychological and spiritual damage to themselves and others.
Most persons choose an addictive substance because it helps them not face painful, harmful, frightening or dangerous conditions in their lives. The addiction thus is an escape, an analgesic condition that temporarily alleviates suffering but in the long run compounds that suffering. What in reality is necessary – active recognition and resolution of one’s persistent problems in living – is avoided.
For many who have become habitualized to addictive substances, the addictive habits seem to be one’s only option but generally become an escape that leads nowhere except possible failed personal relationships, work impairment, general psychological or physical deterioration, and even death, of oneself or others.
Once that harsh reality is critically, responsibly and gently thought about, the door is open for natural psychotherapy to be of help in making one’s life free and considerably happier.
And often with a serious addiction, natural therapy involves concomitant participation in group support, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, or a rehabilitation center with a holistic orientation.
ANGER
When angry, most people desire to hurt someone they feel has wronged them, insulted them or hurt them.
If they just act out their desire for revenge, they may become violent and destructive, belligerent, relentlessly fault-finding, wrathful or bitter.
If they suppress or deny the natural reaction of anger to their feelings of having been wronged, the anger can simmer and wreak havoc with their psychological and physical well being.
On the other hand, if they use their natural feeling of anger, not for retaliation, but as a signal for the need to evaluate in a thorough and calm manner the context and nature of the relations that caused the anger, they can plan what action would be in their best short-term and long-term interest.
Analysis of the causes of one’s anger can be complicated because people often displace their anger from those who may have actually harmed or wronged them, to others who are innocent and whom they use as scapegoats. And often, people misconstrue that others have wronged them, when actually they may not have. And often also, people misconstrue the behavior of others as being good, when in actuality it is quite bad since they are being wronged, hurt and harmed by those others. Anger thus is a powerful emotion that can be one’s best friend or worst enemy.
One, often forgotten, source of anger may be a desire to avoid facing problems which one can solve in one’s current life by generating anger about other situations – ones one cannot do anything about.
This kind of diversion to situations other than the ones that need to be improved, occurs if one indulges in focusing on past suffering or on current issues one cannot change. Such diversion also occurs if one does what is very common in our society – one expects instant and perfect performance in situations in which learning over time is realistically necessary to do well.
Anger is also often generated by frustration in relationships – feelings of helplessness, deprivation, hopelessness, humiliation, shame, or fear.
If one is radically honest about the real roots of one’s anger, one can often find infuriating frustration behind the anger. This is the point at which one can finally free oneself from the pervasive anger or rage. One can learn how to make intelligent decisions and choices.
And it is at this point that natural psychotherapy can be of definite help. It can help one decide whether the situation can be dealt with realistically and constructively, or not.
If not, then one can learn how to let go of it, move on, and not focus on it. If, on the other hand, one can deal with the anger arousing issues realistically, then one can focus on what one can actually do and what the situation realistically calls for.
Sometimes this may require dialogue, sometimes self-assertion, sometimes actual force or aggressive action and sometimes avoidance of or escape from the situation.
Interestingly, once one has enacted these choices realistically and constructively, it is almost impossible to stay angry. Then, the impulse to anger will remain just that – an impulse – and the otherwise devastating effects of intense or lingering anger will disappear, over time.
Natural psychotherapy thus focuses on the importance of using anger constructively.
For example, if the anger is not just an escape and has to do with a relationship, this means something very specific.
It means using the feeling of anger as a signal to talk constructively – and absolutely without blame.
In such conversation to the person that makes us angry about what it was that made us angry, one can discover and feel the feelings (deprivation, disappointment, helplessness, fear, etc.) behind the anger.
This may not be possible in a situation in which the other person doesn’t care at all about what we may or may not like, and may in fact be glad that we are angry or that we suffer.
However, in a good relationship, whether friendship, work relationship, marital interaction, couple relation or any loving interaction, anger can be used as a signal to assert oneself, to start constructive, problem-solving dialogue.
In authentic, constructive relationships of good will one can avoid using anger destructively: expressing it by attempts to hurt the other psychologically or physically, temper outbursts, blaming, name-calling.
fault-finding, withdrawal, letting it simmer, leaving the relationship, compulsive complaining, etc. But using anger and rage constructively as a signal to think, to calmly evaluate, to talk is very difficult for most, and probably one of the hardest things to attain for some, until they actually learn how to do it. And interestingly, they find out in natural psychotherapy, often for the first time, that this is a skill that can be acquired through natural learning processes.
ANXIETY
Anxiety is simply a warning that something in one’s life has gone – or is about to go – amiss. It is a signal that a problem has gone unattended, often suppressed from conscious awareness or just denied.
While anxiety is unpleasant, and severe anxiety most unpleasant, anxiety always represents an opportunity to examine those elements of one’s psychological life that have been left un-addressed.
Anxiety is thus a call to pay attention, to become aware, to become conscious of problems one needs to deal with constructively.
AUTOMATICITY
Some are dominated by their impulses and others by ideas as to what they “should” and “should not” do, or even think or feel.
An Automatic “should” can so dominate one’s life that all can appear bleak, boring and depressing. What “should” I do? is the question a person dominated by the “Tyranny of the Shoulds” asks automatically. And then many a person will repeat a learned automatic command, or will automatically obey and carry out whatever he or she has been taught.
Such automatic responses are quite different from a creative response to a more thoughtful question: What do I really deeply desire and want? Here one has to step back before answering; one has to think, evaluate, deliberate and then choose what one wishes and what one thinks and judges to be in one’s best interest.
It is important to keep in mind that a person dominated by impulses and automatic stereotyped responses in situations that require judgment and evaluation will eventually experience life in general as bleak, boring, depressing.
BIPOLAR DISORDER
So-called bipolar disorders are characterized by pervasive and intense moodiness, going to extremes of optimism and pessimism.
Often the constraints of one’s social world, of real limits, and consideration of what is prudent are ignored when one has become habituated to such ups and downs in mood.
Furthermore, the person feels powerless to resist not only the intense feelings of depression or elation but also the urge to act on these experiences of overpowering emotions.
At such times, calm and firm limit setting in an atmosphere of empathy, care and love can have therapeutic effects. In some cases (as in insistent suicidal, homicidal or mutilating behaviors) tranquilizing drugs may be necessary to achieve initial calming of the intense feelings and urges to act out.
Thereafter, natural healing, resulting from an understanding of the reasons for the very intense emotions, can take place. And mostly does. (see also DEPRESSION)
BRAIN SURGERY
Brain surgery should obviously never be performed as a substitute for psychotherapy. Such procedures should only be used if medically called for to treat otherwise untreatable organic disturbances of the brain, such as tumors, abscesses, hematomas, certain head trauma, etc.
CARE AND LOVE
What every human being wants and needs to give and to receive on a regular basis. When people don’t give or receive care and love they become angry, sad, suspicious and often violent.
CHEMICAL IMBALANCES
The professional and popular literature is replete with references to chemical imbalances. Empirical research does not support the popular idea that chemical imbalances precede and cause psychological disturbance or disorders.
The facts are that psychological problems and imbalances generally cause chemical imbalances and problems.
COGNITIVE THERAPY
COMPULSIONS
Habits which one feels that one is compelled to do and repeat. Actually these habits are unconsciously chosen to distract one from solving serious problems one has. Compulsions are often metaphors in some way of one’s un-faced and unsolved problem.
CREATIVE IMAGINATION
The imagination is creative when one lets it be free, playful, original, inventive, and yet at the same time expressive of, and guided by truth.
CRITICAL REALISM
CRYPTIC SYMBOLIZATION AND COMMUNICATION
A symbol’s meaning can be clear and understood, or the meaning can be hidden and cryptic. The same with communication: a person can communicate clearly by means of words and concepts those around her understand, or communicate with symbols that are cryptic and that need to be interpreted.
DELUSIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS
In natural psychotherapy, delusions and hallucinations are regarded as natural adaptational responses and not, as they have been mainly regarded throughout history, expressions of psychiatric diseases or of the “devil” or gods.
Delusions and hallucinations are seen as adaptive responses that can be either expressive and constructive, or just expressive. Delusions are considered as the cognitive, and hallucinations as the perceptive responses to overwhelming stress.
Both are adaptive expressive responses when, like weeping, temper outbursts or grief, they express the emotions that are overwhelming but that are relieved by the emotional release.
They are adaptively expressive and constructive when they ameliorate overwhelming feelings and counteract the painful responses in the manner that the emotions aroused by humor, music, drama or religion do: by evoking good and comforting feelings while clarifying the very painful problems from which one suffers.
The cognitive aspects of delusions and the perceptual ones of hallucinations are always based on some realistic features of reality and on some illusory ones.
In natural psychotherapy, both the negative and positive aspects are explored in terms of their psychosocial effects on oneself and on others.
They are also explored in terms of temporal factors – whether they are immediate and current responses to overwhelming stress, or whether they have become habitual and automatic over time. (to be continued)
DEPRESSION
Depression is a natural and expected normal reaction to depressing situations.
Depression is always a signal that one should respect and attend to. This means putting as much effort as necessary into exploring which factors in one’s life underlie feeling down, sad, helpless or hopeless, rather than hiding what is going on from oneself by seeking the false quick fixes offered by drugs, alcohol or false hopes.
The evidence now is overwhelming that depression is not a physical disease or illness. The lie that it is, is based on the bad science and illogical thought mixed with the arrogance and greed of the psychiatric community and pharmaceutical industry.
In mild depression one feels down in the dumps, lethargic and blue. In severe depression there is an all-consuming feeling of loss, of lack, of dark despair, regret and guilt that one has done something “wrong.” One is convinced that one has reached a dead end, has run out of options, is physically sick, and deteriorating.
In the throes of a stormy depression or one of total passivity and withdrawal, there is mostly no awareness of the anger and rage that is being suppressed, denied, and turned back onto oneself, often in the form of relentless self-blame and guilt. This is done quite automatically and one has no awareness of the unconscious destructive agendas at work.
Further, if instead of acting constructively one stays passive and unaware of the very real and serious relationship and situational issues behind the depression, then generally one compounds the already utterly overwhelming conviction of guilt, paralysis and hopelessness.
The current conventional view is that with severe depression medication is absolutely necessary if one does not want the depression to get worse. However, according to many researchers and clinicians, and as so clearly expressed by Antonuccio who has done extensive research on depression, the overwhelming evidence indicates that “there is no stronger medicine than psychotherapy in the treatment of depression, even if severe.”
The chapter on depression in my forthcoming, “Natural Psychotherapy – What It Is and Why It Works,” reviews the accumulated evidence. In the meantime, if you are interested in some of the evidence, I suggest the article by Antonuccio, Danton and DeNelsky that appeared in The American Psychologist, the official journal of the American Psychological Association, in 1995(see reference on the Readings page), entitled: “Psychotherapy Versus Medication for Depression: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom With Data.”
There is another research finding that indicates why one should not be using medication, especially for severe depression. Research has shown that antidepressants are the most common agents used in suicide by poison. They also account for over half of the serious overdoses in adults. Medication, touted as “treatment” may, as Antonuccio, et.al. point out, actually “become the agent of death.”
Self-empowerment and unlearning learned helplessness in a consistently loving atmosphere of deep caring and utmost respect are of utmost importance in overcoming the unconscious resentments underlying depression. Since natural therapy focuses on self-empowerment, it is especially effective in helping one get rid of feelings of depression and hopelessness.
Natural therapy is also effective because it does not further damage the depressed person with the serious and damaging physical and psychological side effects of antidepressant drugs. And at the same time, it helps restore one’s natural strengths and resilience to cope constructively with the psychological exploitations, conflicts, dilemmas and faulty assumptions fueling the depression.
GENETICS AND INHERITANCE
Genetics is the science and study of the mechanisms of hereditary transmission and variation of biological characteristics. In genetics, to inherit means to come into possession of biological, physical characteristic from an ancestor. It is important to recognize that what is actually inherited is always a physical characteristic, not ever a psychological trait or characteristic. Thus a person may have “high intelligence” if the kinds of brain cells, their structure and capacity for physiological function are of one type, and may have “low intelligence” if of another type. The psychological trait is not inherited, but the underlying anatomic and physiological characteristics are inherited, and of course, continuously modified and influenced in their manifestations by the environment. This is elementary, but often forgotten.
When biological psychiatrists speak of schizophrenia, or depression or any of the so called “psychiatric diseases” as being inherited they make the mistake of confusing the physical and biological with a way of life and the psychological. The first, could be inherited and it would then have to be investigated to what degree; the second, a way of life, cannot be inherited.
GRIEF
HOLISM, HOLISTIC
HUMANISTIC
MIXED MESSAGES
NATURAL
NEUROBABBLE
OBFUSCATION
PANIC ATTACK
Either a crie du coeur (cry from one’s heart) about one’s life situation or an indication that one is making significant progress toward becoming truly free and independent. Or, as is the case with really severe panic attacks, both at the same time: one realizes one must change, but one is in a state of fear about “dire consequences” if one actually undertakes the positive changes.
But in either case panic attacks are very emotional signals that one either is not, or actually is, fearfully facing and fearfully becoming aware of those aspects of one’s life one needs to become aware of and address constructively.
This crie du coeur is characterized by an experience of severe fear and intense emotions. These emotions often are so intense that they result in powerful and very frightening physical reactions such as fainting, difficulty in breathing, crying, sweating, palpitations etc. And these physical reaction then result in new fears that one has something actually going wrong physically. But in actuality, of course, the physical reactions are simply temporary products of one’s panic.
As with general anxiety, panic is a call (though more insistent and frightening) to pay attention, to become aware, to become conscious of problems one needs to deal with constructively.
In natural therapy, panic attacks become less intense and less frequent as one gets to understand what the panic is all about and as soon as the underlying causes are identified and one starts and then continues to deal with them in a straightforward, self-caring and gentle manner.
But in all situations, it is not advisable to rush or be impatient. It takes time to fully understand the truth in its fearful complexity. And secondly, once one is in touch with what factors may be behind one’s panic attacks, it also takes time to develop a new perspective. And it takes time to practice a more constructive way of life. But if one takes the time and focuses on the practice of new and more constructive ways one can be assured that one’s panic attacks will evaporate and disappear. And in sharp contrast to the short-lived quick fixes of psychiatric or street drugs, the panic attacks are gone forever from one’s life.