Helping yourself
“And we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love.”
~ William Blake, Songs of Innocence
What Therapy is: Over one hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud, in an attempt to understand the emotional suffering of his patients, introduced psychotherapy to the world. It was based on the premise that relationally, our body of knowledge is like an iceberg. We operate with about 10% of our conscious experience – what’s above the water – while the 90% below the water is subconscious and unseen. And the “unseen” part of the iceberg is what sinks the ship, right? Therapy is about making the unconscious conscious – discovering the unknown information that keeps us making the same mistakes over and over.
The Heart and Soul of Change: Time and again, psychotherapy has been scientifically demonstrated to be of benefit to most people in most situations. Change will sometimes be easy and swift, but more often it will be slow, frustrating, and non-linear (“Two steps forward, one step back.”). Ultimately, the majority of people who commit to the therapeutic process end up feeling better.
But how, exactly, do people change? Since psychotherapy began, countless studies have evaluated different methods of therapy, and found that none is consistently more effective than another. From this, we can conclude that it is the therapeutic relationship that heals, rather than a specific “technique.” Therapy involves a big commitment of time, money, and energy, so you should be very careful about the therapist you select. Your therapist should project empathy, confidence, trust – and, most importantly – hope.
Helping A Loved One
“For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.” ~ H. L. Mencken
Watching a family member ruining their life with alcohol, drugs or other process addictions is excruciating. Threatening, cajoling, hectoring and manipulating the addict is like teaching a frog to sing: It wastes a lot of time, and it just pisses off the frog.
No addict has ever woken up in the morning and said, “Oh, no. I’m in the middle stages of addictive illness. I better call Jeff Anglin!” Addicts only enter treatment when the pain of using outweighs the benefits, but they can be motivated by external factors. The things that get addicts into treatment are the Four L’s: Their Liver, Their Lover, Their Lifestyle or The Law.
Helping an addict see the relationship between substance use and the chaos and unmanageability it has wrought requires the intervention of a skilled professional. Most of the time, the process isn’t as complicated and dramatic as the stereotypic “Intervention” shown on television.
There are more loving, more sophisticated, more effective ways of helping the addict begin the process of change. I can help direct this process.
Find help for an addiction by calling Jeff Anglin at (941) 586-0929.