Youve got gestalt, existential, schema, Jungian, interpersonal, Rogerian, humanistic, regression, psychoanalysis, and, of course, everybodys preferred, family treatment.
With so lots of approaches to treatment, a couple of years earlier, researchers appropriately ended up being curious about which therapies were the most reliable, which ones worked. On the whole, simply the fact youre doing treatment has way, way, way more effect than the type you pick to do.
The value of treatment isnt the therapy. Therapy does this by some thoughtful person welcoming us to express our feelings and ideas.
The psychological health advantages of journaling likely mirror the advantages of talk treatment– there is something inexplicably powerful about verbalizing your thoughts and feelings; it somehow causes them to lose their power over you.
Lets go one layer deeper. Why does verbalizing our feelings and ideas in some way make them have less of a grip on us? If youve read my shit for a long time now, you most likely currently know what Im going to say:.
Ive got a theory.
Meditation.
Why does Sitting on the Floor and Counting our Breaths Make Us Feel Better?
I keep in mind the very first time I meditated, it was this kooky “eastern spiritual” thing that a person of my high school instructors believed would be cool to reveal us. It was the late 90s and back then, meditation was still an unique novelty, a weird thing reserved for mystics and hippies. Nobody I understood took it seriously.
Twenty years later, meditation has gone mainstream. Its something you kinda brag to people about the method individuals utilized to brag about going to the gym.
So far weve covered that therapy works because you are verbalizing your ideas and sensations (for that reason loosening their grip on you) and receiving non-judgmental feedback from another person. Journaling works in a comparable method– it permits you to verbalize your sensations and thoughts to yourself and then react to them nonjudgmentally.
I would argue that meditation is efficient because it does the precise very same thing, it simply skips the verbalizing.
Note: This was initially written for my weekly newsletter. You can register for it here..
Invite to another Mindf * ck Monday, the only weekly newsletter where the concepts are as excellent as the jokes are bad. Weekly, I send you three potentially life-changing concepts to help you be a slightly less horrible human being. Today, were talking three popular ways to “improve”– 1) treatment, 2) journaling, and 3) meditation– and why I believe theyre all really kinda the very same thing.
Lets enter into it.
Treatment.
Why does Talking to Someone About Our Problems Make Us Feel Better?.
Treatment, as a whole, has a dependable and excellent track record as a tool to help individuals. Many individuals who stick with therapy for more than a couple of months, reliably increase wellness and reveal fewer symptoms of anxiety/depression. The research is overwhelmingly in treatments favor.
However … heres the plot twist: we still dont really understand why it works..
Psychology has produced as numerous forms of therapy as Adam Sandler has cheesy rom-com motion pictures. The field is an alphabet soup of methods. Youve got CBT, AEDP, DBT, IPT, ACT, CPP, SFBT and REBT. Youve got gestalt, existential, schema, Jungian, social, Rogerian, humanistic, regression, psychoanalysis, and, obviously, everyones favorite, family therapy.
Each of these methods offers a distinct framework and its own viewpoint. Each one constructs a distinct view of the human mind and develops its own method to assaulting pathology and psychological disease.
With numerous techniques to therapy, a few decades back, researchers appropriately ended up being curious about which therapies were the most reliable, which ones worked. They ran hundreds of experiments to measure which treatments produced the best outcomes. And the answer will most likely amaze you.
All of them did.
All of them work, to some extent. Practically every technique produces, on average, fairly comparable outcomes. All of them work decently however not completely. Some might work a little much better for particular issues than others (i.e., CBT seems to be partially much better for stress and anxiety). But on the whole, simply the truth youre doing treatment has way, method, way more effect than the type you select to do.
This is type of sensational. Since it recommends that for all of the thinking and frameworking over the last 150 years, from Sigmund Freud to Dr. Phil, the content of the treatment itself isnt that essential. In fact, dozens of studies have struggled to discover much measurable benefit to the therapists training or credentials. Many research studies reveal that individuals benefit talking to novices simply as much as they do specialists. So, not only does the modality seem to not matter, but the therapists qualifications do not even seem to matter that much either.
Whats essential is just getting an individual in a room regularly to talk about their problems to another human being who is thoughtful and listens well. The worth of therapy isnt the therapy. Whatever else– the expensive acronyms and degrees and frameworks– seems to merely be a reason to get you into that space and into that social context.
Journaling.
Why does Writing Down All Our Crazy Thoughts Make United States Feel Better?
So, if most of the value of therapy is simply entering into a room and seriously discussing your own ideas, concepts, and feelings, could not we reproduce that in other methods? Couldnt you just call a trusted pal and do that?
Sure, lots of people do. Theres another method that perhaps isnt so obvious.
Journaling.
For the majority of human history, journaling was not something you did for psychological health or self-care, it was merely something any educated individual did to help themselves believe. Benjamin Franklin, Charles Darwin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Marie Curie, and Winston Churchill were just a few of historys passionate journalers.
It wasnt until the 1960s and 70s that psychologists considered the idea that journaling may offer healing advantages. Numerous started to explore the practice with their clients. The research study captured up and revealed that indeed, journaling is really efficient at promoting psychological health and wellness. Today, numerous therapists and counselors actively encourage their clients to journal as a supplement to their sessions.
The theorist Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that consciousness consists of 2 parts: the subject and the item. Think about the topic as “the seer” and the item as “the seen.” Both elements are required in awareness– there is constantly something being “seen” and constantly something doing the “seeing.”.
Normally, we are the topic of our awareness and some external thing is the object. The food I will have for dinner tonight is the item of my consciousness.
As long as * I * am the subject and some external thing is the object, then all of my thoughts, desires, feelings, and impulses are wrapped into some intangible subjectivity understood as “I” that is not analyzed or thought about. This unexamined subject is frequently referred to as “ego.”.
Its only when we turn our focus on ourselves and make our thoughts and feelings the object of our awareness that we are able to differentiate them and put them into viewpoint.
What was when subject (my feeling sad) is now the things of my consciousness, and is hence separated from me. This practice of turning ones subject-base consciousness into the object of ones awareness is how self-awareness is formed.
What do treatment, journaling, and meditation all have in typical?
All 3 are strategies to assist us transform what is usually the subject of our consciousness into the things of our consciousness.
Thats it.
Therapy does this by some thoughtful person inviting us to express our ideas and feelings. Meditation does this by teaching us to observe our ideas and sensations as though they are separate from ourselves.
This is how to improve. To turn the subject into things. To transmute the implicit into the explicit. To move the internal into external. To move from subjective to goal.
And then, once our impulses, ideas, and sensations are separated from our “I”– from our ego– we can select whether we desire to keep them and reintegrate them or to merely let them go.
