However, individual therapy may not be the best option for me.
<and later> Attempts in the past to drag out and examine upsetting and traumatic events in my past have always made me much worse, not better.
I know what you mean. For me, there is something so very empowering about taking responsibility for your own goals. Therapists work very well for many people, but, especially given its expense, I tend to lean toward self work. I always love reading your posts, so I'm glad you do, too.
Regarding dragging out the past, I am of the opinion that reviewing the past can be very helpful, but that once you've done it a couple times you've gotten all that you will get from it and it is time to start taking more of a present based approach and start thinking about where your energy goes on a day to day basis.
I think this is because there is a part of my mind that actually likes to make me suffer and keeps this stuff alive.
Or perhaps, as Dr. Sarno says, it is trying to
protect you.
IFS emphasizes a similar idea, that various parts of our personality, such as an "inner terrorist" as
Alan Gordon might call it, are just trying to protect us from things that scare us by worrying. I think that that was definitely the case for me.
The thing really different about the spiritual therapy was that the therapist, instead of taking it for granted that something was wrong with me, that he/she would try help me correct, told me right upfront that "there was absolutely nothing wrong with me, I only thought there was and we would work together to help me drop that which did not serve me well". This put the therapy on a completely different footing and I made substantial progress. Guy Finley's material is in the same vein.
I wish a similar experience for everyone as I think that there is so much wisdom in there. I suspect that a big part of the reason why self-led exploration has been more helpful for me than psychotherapy is that I knew enough about psychology that
the meandering Rogerian style of the therapists I worked with suggested to me that there was something deeply repressed to discover. This made me feel bad about myself, but after years of therapy we never found anything that I remember. Now I just feel that my brain learned anxiety from an early age because I knew that my mother would die. This created my own inner terrorist that I find is best treated with present based approaches like the ones I think you are using. Basically, I try to avoid the mental chatter that reinforces makes me feel bad. It's just the basic "be kind to yourself" approach that Alan Gordon recommends. Similar examples could be found based on my inner critic from a critical father (and no living mother to balance him out) and fear and self-criticism thoughts based on my ADHD. For all of these things, I find that a present-based approach of just monitoring where my energy is going and having compassion for myself seems to work best. I'm not actually a big fan of
psychoarchaeology.
There are some great success-story videos on YouTube about agoraphobia. They might be a good source as well. If you find any that are helpful, please post them here so that they will get into our search engine for future forum members.
