Psychotherapy must remain the obstinate attempt of two people to arrive at a recovery of the wholeness of being human through the relationship between them
R.D.Laing
Interviews and Presentations
ATT Mind Podcast with James W. Jesso
Unity Spiritual Community: Blessed Are the Pure of Heart
East Lake Church: Suffering and Forgiveness
East Lake Church: The Crisis and the Miracle (Talk about COVID crisis)
Conference in Calgary: Why Is It So Hard to Love Myself?
Psychologically and emotionally most of us learned to live a life that has more to do with proving that we are loveable, worthy, and that we matter. The self we attach to is one that needs to justify and prove itself, rather than simply express itself. This is what I call the trauma self or performative self – we perform our life rather than live it in the hope that somebody will finally see us, love us, bless us and delight in us. By the time we’re adults this performance has worn us out. Life can start to feel hopeless and empty. We feel helpless.
Living one’s own life requires courage and practice. Without realizing it, most of us live somebody else’s life. This life could be the life that the church, the nation, the corporation, or our parents wanted us to live. Powerful people are working diligently to get us to go along with an agenda that is theirs, not ours. Our economic system is driven by generating desires in us, the consumers, that have very little to do with being human. Worldviews, belief systems, religious and secular (like materialistic philosophy) capture our minds from an early age and which, unless they are deconstructed, determine our values and behaviours. Increasingly our democratic process is being hijacked by unelected humans whose interests are clearly financial. We are living through a time when traditional liberal values such as free speech are being eroded by a so-called “liberal” agenda that increasingly is more about catching “wrong think” than open dialogue. We have been taught to live in fear of being an individual.
The psychotherapeutic relationship is a place of rest, where you can let down and stop trying so hard. In that space of not trying so hard, you discover the intrinsic value and worth that you brought with you into this world. It is a place to grieve the suffering of not being loved, of being hurt by those who were supposed to take care of you, of not living your own life. In a supportive relationship that resources you for life’s challenges, you learn that these old beliefs – I am nobody, I don’t matter, I don’t belong, I am unloveable, life is too much – were formed by failures of love. They aren’t true and as you let go of them and learn to practice compassion toward yourself, your own life comes back on line.
It is a practice of setting aside time and coming into a relationship that allows you to see things are they are, not as you wish it to be. All of that wasted energy of attaching to illusions becomes available to live the life that you choose, grounded in the truth of your experience. This letting go of illusions involves grieving the world our ego created to keep us safe. Ultimately the therapeutic relationship is an awakening to the truth, your truth, and from this sacred place curating a life that is your own.