On psychotherapy and the potential and limits of personal power

I don’t wanna raise the spectre of NLP here, but there could definitely be some poignancy in this hilarious “MadTV Bob Newhart/Mo Collins STOP IT” skit in regards to the relationship between clients and therapists: both sides for their own reasons very often depend on prolonging the journey. The latter for the money to be made and status to be gained from other people’s suffering, and the former from not wanting to give up the ingrained attachments to their mind’s habits.

Of course: it’s not always that easy. There are lots of justified questions marks behind therapeutic approaches like CBT, NLP and the like that are aimed at the behavioural or functional level but don’t attempt to address the underlying root causes for dysfunction. On the other hand, psychotherapies, which do claim to go deep, are often not very successful either, with people spending decades with their therapists without much to show for (and let’s not even talk about drug dependent psychiatry or the unregulated counselling industry).

What I take from this humourous skit is to first learn to become self-aware and to trust oneself with developing ways of relating differently to the world and, even more important, oneself – after all: the world happens in our minds. If the most sincere and disciplined self-directed efforts don’t work, then think of seeing a professional – while remembering though that even in these situations it us who need to do the work. Therapists are facilitators – we are the healers.