Tension

I feel tension in sharing this work on my blog. On one hand I believe there is more to this world than we know, and there are people who can help us see what we are blind to. On the other hand, I am a practical, person who doesn't tend to go to extremes. When I hit send yesterday, I felt a wave of concern about who would read it, what they'd think of me, and whether it would resonate. I guess facing these concerns is the power of shipping . . .

What I'd like to try and explain, though, is that there is value in alternative healing and process work, even if you don’t agree where it is coming from or why it works. I'd like to start breaking down why.

Positive Messages & Reminders Are Helpful

You can see from my first session with Kate that the baseline messages she gave me would be useful for anyone - nurture yourself, trust your instincts, pay attention to what is working in your life. No matter what else resonates, it is valuable to hear these reminders from someone else - especially someone who is caring, attentive and good at being present.

Common Factors

Some in the therapy field believe that the modality of therapy doesn't really matter. What matters is that the therapeutic relationship has what is called Common Factors. The research has found that these factors most impacted therapeutic outcomes to the following percentage:

• goal consensus/collaboration (11.5%)

• empathy (9.0%)

• alliance (7.5%)

• positive regard/affirmation (7.3%)

• congruence/genuineness (5.7%)

• therapist differences (5.0%)

• treatment differences (< 1.0%).

With this lens, the sessions with Kate meet all of the Common Factors, so the work has as much chance of working as traditional therapy.

The Emotional Body

There is a growing interest in studying how the body, not only the brain, are impacted by our experiences. Books such as The Body Keeps the Score and My Grandmother’s Hands explore this field and how we can use somatic methods to heal and help people through challenging times. In fact, some believe that this is the only way to truly heal.

Stories as a Path to Understanding

The description of this recent podcast on Hidden Brain reads "We can’t go back and change the past. We can’t erase trauma and hardship. But what if there was a way to regain control of our personal narratives? In the second part of our series on storytelling, we look at how interpreting the stories of our lives — and rewriting them — can change us forever.". The stories and images Kate gave me are ways for me to explore my past, present and future. Whether they are true or not, the ones that are useful to me stick and the others fall aside. The power for me is in holding onto this new narrative when it provides understanding, growth and a window into spiritual connection.