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Tuesday, July 26, 2016

7-26-16 Post: I feel stuck. 

Question/Comment: I’ve been working for years on making some changes to my personality and it seems I’m getting nowhere. I’ve spent thousands of dollars and countless hours seeing psychotherapists, workshops and self-help venues. I feel that I have nothing to show for it. Is it hopeless? Am I hopeless?

Response: In most talk psychotherapy techniques, it is the conscious mind that is addressed. However, most maladaptive behavior rests in the subconscious mind. It is very difficult to make meaningful lasting change to the subconscious mind by addressing the conscious mind.

Techniques that use hypnosis are more effective but can still be more of a shot gun approach and still somewhat hit or miss. There is a technique called PSYCH-K that uses several levels of consciousness, uses techniques from hypnosis and establishes direct communication with the body as a mode of communication with the subconscious mind.

The resulting change is established much more quickly and produces more lasting results. Because the subconscious mind is usually out of our conscious awareness and operates automatically we have to approach it on it’s level. It also is the storehouse for every belief, every experience, every awareness we have ever had. 

People in general, especially children draw conclusions about our selves, others, life in general and our experiences of life based on our own emotional reactions and beliefs taught to us by others. All of these conclusions live in the subconscious mind unquestioned and determine the nature and circumstances of our lives. It is a bit like riding in a taxi cab with an unknown, unseen driver that we never communicate with. 

The driver doesn’t know where we want to go and doesn’t care. The driver goes where s/he knows best and ignores our wishes. The driver does attempt to communicate with us but not only do we not speak the same language, we do not use the same method for communication. We use verbal language; the driver uses sensations and reactions in physical form.

The driver takes us where ever s/he believes we should go and tells us when to get out all based on preprogrammed beliefs s/he has. Imagine standing outside the taxi, looking around, not knowing where you are or even how you got there because you were not aware of the whole process or what the decisions along the way were based on. You are still not where you wanted to go and have to try again to get there. 

What ever you were intending to do is repeatedly thwarted and you get unwanted results because each time you get in the taxi the same thing happens. That is really what it is like when our subconscious mind is in control and behaves according to beliefs that we either were taught, absorbed or formed in a nearly totally unknown process or in long forgotten perceptions.  Most people can with effort remember a time when something happened in their lives and they formed a belief that has been running their lives ever since. The conclusion reached and belief it formed may have even been useful at the time but may have long ago stopped being useful.

Just as an example, what if a child fell off of her bicycle and broke her arm when some of the other children were jealous of her new bike and began pushing her trying to knock her down. The child might draw the conclusion that if she has new, pretty things, others will hate her and hurt her on purpose. She might go through life never allowing herself to have new things or pretty things so others won’t hurt her. 

She might go through life buying second hand items, keeping things until they fall apart before replacing them and so on. The initial event might be long forgotten and even if it is remembered, the conclusion she drew from it may be forgotten or no longer associated with the event in her conscious awareness. It is still in the subconscious mind and is still determining her behavior.

This is an imaginary up example, but it can help explain the process of how we create beliefs for ourselves that then run as programs and control us for the rest of our lives unless we intervene and change them. The good news, though is that we can change these hidden beliefs once we have identified them. PSYCH-K is a very useful process for changing beliefs. It is not the same thing as psychotherapy; it is a whole different way of approaching self-change.

For anyone interested, learning more about PSYCH-K or finding a PSYCH-K practitioner the international website is: https://www.psych-k.com/private-sessions-2/