REACHING OUR HARD TO REACH PLACES

Let me share with you one of my core values as a clinical psychologist:  The reason psychotherapy works is that it reaches “places” inside us that are otherwise difficult or impossible to access. 

Physically, these places are housed in an incomprehensibly complex network of brain cells, but they are best visualized as rooms in a large house that is our personality.  Some rooms are well known, well lighted, and easily found and entered.  We are conscious of these.  However, other rooms are seldom thought of, perhaps even forgotten, hidden away behind locked or stuck doors, dark and strange inside, maybe even scary.  These are unconscious.

What are these “places?”  They are our identity and our self-esteem.  They are our memories of our past, our beliefs about ourselves in the present, and our aspirations for our future.  They are the courage that empowers us and the fears that shackle us.  They are the faith that can connect us to the infinite.  They are our free will.  They are our skills.

When Americans today feel emotional distress, many think first that the solution is psychiatric medicine.  Blessedly, we live in age of brain science when the neurochemical pathways involved with emotions like sadness, mania, and anxiety are fairly well known and understood, and we have medicines that can actually impact these pathways for the good.  Millions of people have improved lives thanks to these medications. 

However, the vital insight that I offer you today is that psychiatric medicine is at best a partial fix, because medicine does not reach the places described above.  Every time we grow to the threshold of our next stage in life, we are faced with the three-fold challenge of (a) processing the pleasant and unpleasant emotions of this transition, (b) learning new skills never before required of us, and (c) putting in the necessary real time, effort, and practice.   There are so many skills to learn in life, I contend it would take 700 years to learn them all.  Growing as a person is about continually learning more skills, lifelong. 

No pill teaches life skills.  Skills are only learned the hard way, the old-fashioned way, through effort and practice.  Likewise, no pill teaches insight, judgment, assertiveness, compassion, creativity, or courage.  These are only learned the hard way, the old-fashioned way, through mindful conversation (read “psychotherapy”), practice, and receiving feedback from others.   

So, I ask you, are you using the keys available to you to reach the places inside you that medicine cannot reach?   To grow to our full potential, we must look inside, deeply inside.  Your psychotherapist can be your guide.

What do you think about this?