THERAPY

Once you have decided that something is lacking in your life and that you cannot replace it by any other means, you may consider the idea of self-development through personal therapy.

Often your first contact with therapy is in a time of crisis, when what you most need is the concerned involvement of another human being in your pain. This will most usefully be a trained therapist.

This supportive contact is then developed into a way of allowing you safely to examine the processes by which you arrived at crisis and the ways in which you can best deal with it. If the crisis is acute, you need to work with a professional therapist who can offer you experienced guidance and understanding.

But increasingly, people are able to identify a need in their life before they reach crisis point. To them, and to those who have overcome the first hurdle with help and are now looking to improve their options and extend their repertoire of techniques, this site offers a useful source of information.

The problem might be, and most usually is, one of loss. It may be loss of a beloved person, parent, child, partner or friend. It may be loss of youth, of health, of a limb, of a job, of a home, of a dream, of a future. It may simply be loss of direction. But almost always it involves a basic loss of confidence in oneself, in one's ability to cope efficiently, to respond appropriately, to discern accurately, to control a situation or to respect oneself.

In one word - a loss of self-esteem.

When we are born, we have two entirely separate brains, the left brain, usually dealing with practicalities, orderly and analytical, and the right brain, seat of creativity and intuition. Communication between the two, via the bridge of the corpus callosum, is not fully established until the end of the first year of life.

From then on, in our society, the rational mind is encouraged and developed as the most efficient and acceptable manifestation of a mature human being. Certainly, it is the most controllable. The mystical, spiritual, illogical, intuitive and emotional self is increasingly devalued and repressed. Then we wonder why we feel there is something missing.

This site will introduce you to various techniques that help you to make contact with your repressed selves. By explaining feelings, hidden strategies and unsuspected resources within yourself and with examples from various case studies, you will be encouraged to trust those parts of yourself with which you are least familiar, but which can offer you such high rewards in terms of self-fulfilment. At the same time, what may seem a fanciful approach is soundly based on a firm foundation of up-to-date research into social and scientific truth.

You will examine the various ways in which low self-esteem is induced. You will learn how to recognise the symptoms and how to repair the damage. Techniques include affirmations, mantras, visualisation, transactional analysis, being your own best friend, psycho-synthesis, psychodrama, reclamation and restatement, life-scripts, dreams, drawing, contracts, goals, rewards, asking for what you want, saying what you mean, admitting what you feel and writing letters and statements of intent. Guidance is offered on recognising and avoiding various traps, such as escaping the double-bind, learning to say "no", giving up on perfection, daring to fall short of expectations, learning to play, short-circuiting the loser ploy, identifying the problem, decision-making, accepting yourself and others and admitting your own strengths.

You may encounter many different approaches. Some you will find attractive and be able to incorporate immediately in your work towards self-esteem. Others you may find threatening or distasteful, but there is something for everyone. It is useful to remember, as you progress, that ideas you could not appreciate in the beginning may become easier to accept later on. Eventually, those areas that were originally most unacceptable may be the very ones where you can make the most useful discoveries. But no-one is suggesting you should do anything at all, unless it is what you want to do....... ......more.......