My approach to Self-Therapy (caring for yourself) is based on what Tom Rusk called "guided self-change". Rusk is a psychiatrist who stopped practicing psychotherapy in order to be what he calls a "coach of change" and presented guided self-change as a means to"help people learn to solve their own problems and find the courage to change their lives" instead of going to traditional therapy.
Rusk believed that psychological healing did not ever belong in the realm of medicine and he felt as a psychological counselor that all counseling should focus on helping us learn to change our relationships with ourselves and others, and considered the medical model of psychotherapy to be fundamentally mistaken, first for identifying the person with "psychological difficulties" as a patient who is ill or defective, and then also for paying too little attention to the inner self-healing potential of the patient. The way he sees it, we all stand at the boundary of our inner worlds, our human spirits linked to the mystery of life itself, and we are here to learn who we really are, and share our growing knowledge with each other.
Learning and feeling are the only real purposes of this ever-changing life on earth and as we become more accustomed to the process and rewards of change, the work of unveiling the mysterious ways of life becomes easier because we support each other. I am personally on the mission of spreading the call of coming together for common causes and the particular message that there is really no such thing as "clinical depression". There is just a whole lot of us holding ourselves back, simply by not being in touch with our inner hard-core self and owning our lives. Depression is a bell ringing for change, not for meds.
Now, changing may not be easy. There is even a "familiarity principle" which states that we most commonly prefer the comfort of what we know to be normal (even when it is not what we want or need) to the discomfort of change, making resistance to change the most powerful force in human psychology. Rusk reminds us that it all starts with considering the possibilities. If we are willing to give up destructive habits, attitudes and behaviors, for your family, your community, and your own inner spirit, then we will have initiated a true and still rare bravery.
"Fear is not an enemy to be destroyed, but an energy to be transformed and put to good use".
So based on Rusk's work, here are 5 quick guidelines for self-change:
Consider the existence of the possibility of change regarding your feelings and attitudes.
Consider the possibility of becoming someone you respect more and someone who deserves more of your compassion and care.
Identify particular attitudes or feelings you could work on to make you feel more caring, self respecting, and satisfied.
Commit yourself to repeated practice of new attitudes.
Rejoice and reward yourself each time you have been courageous and completed a self-change experiment, regardless of its success or failure.
How we deal with feelings is crucial. Rusk invites us to recognize and transform our own feelings within the frame of four essential values to help us change and grow: respect, understanding, care, and fairness.
We tend to cope with our uncomfortable feelings in ways that are detrimental to ourselves. To improve our life we need to change how we feel as well as how we treat ourselves, cultivating compassion and kindness for our own spirit as well as for others. This is the roots of our Art-Movement-Therapy. It's never too late to learn to cultivate new attitudes, to develop new artistic skills, to look for new ways to care for yourself and the environment around you, and with all the valuable information that is somewhere out there in the internet, free and available for anyone who's searching, there is really no excuse for stagnancy and just coping.
The concept of Self-Therapy embraces the guidelines of Self-Change while aiming to realign your spirit to your own roots, core, and mission, so you can be crystal clear about what you need to achieve what you want. When we become aware of our inner spirit, we can tap into deeper, more authentic feelings, that can lead us to more effective, rapid transformations that could otherwise take years. The real guidance for your unique process of change and transformation comes forth from your own inner master! Thus, avoiding the therapist's cold scientific "objectiveness" or "neutrality", or even the spiritual coach's very own system or technique's subjectivity. No one could ever know more about what who we are and what we need than our own Self.
Here I want to make one last remark. When I am referring to "Self" I don't mean only to identify each own person, but to address to the inner spirit that is inside each one of us and that is linked to all existence. This means that getting in touch with your Self will normally take you far beyond the surface of yourself and into the realm of your human nature, spirit, and the mystery of all that is, and it is in this sense that Self-Therapy not only relates to healing "yourself", but also promotes balance and transformation in your surrounding, your environment, and even the planet. Hence the term you'll be hearing more and more from me: Planet-Therapy, referring to how each one us going through the process of healing inherently contributes to the healing of the planet. More about this coming soon.
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