TRANSPERSONAL
THERAPY

Even when trying your best, personal evolution can feel confusing or lonely

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• Is personal growth central to who you are? Are you drawn to abstract psychological concepts, such as transcendence and the ''shadow self?'' Do you function well overall, but struggle with internal challenges that feel like part of life, rather than issues you can ''get past?   

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• Are you functioning well despite trauma history, and feeling able to shift your suffering into a growth mindset?                                                                                                                                         

• Are you progressing spiritually, but also dealing with related challenges that others in your life don’t seem to understand? Are you experiencing a crisis of faith, period of questioning, or feeling of overwhelm or isolation as your beliefs shift or feel tested?

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• Are you doing well in addiction recovery, but looking for a therapist who understands the nuances of your 12 Step or other spirituality-based approach? Are you open to 12 Step, but struggling to identify exactly what ''Higher Power'' means to you? Do you value aspects of the 12 Step model, but struggle with religious interpretations, or ways it doesn't align with the chronic disease model of addiction?

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Contrary to the stereotype lingering from Freudian-era psychoanalysis (lying on a couch with a ''shrink'' digging at the recesses of your mind), most modern counseling typically focuses on developing practical solutions to readily identified problems, such as developing coping skills. However, you may actually be looking for that more classic, deeper view of psychology. You may be motivated to better understand the hazier recesses of your mind, or fascinated by it.  You may be accustomed to periodic angst or melancholy about purpose and meaning, or you may want to understand why you end up in self-sabotage when consciously trying to do better. 

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You may feel connected to what is beyond the routine and the tangible, even despite great hardship, but struggle to find the right outlet to discuss your perspective or translate your intentions into change. 

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You may have an introspective nature that has always made you feel out of place even if you have adequate social skills, like a square peg in a round hole. Or, you might have easily related to others until you developed a new belief system, either gradually or abruptly due to crisis or another catalyst. This type of experience can be liberating and inspirational, but it can also include confusing phases that feel like tests or regression. It may also cause a painful sense of alienation from others, even as you value coming into a more authentic sense of self.

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If you're in addiction recovery, you may be frustrated by limited views about what ''spirituality'' means, or by judgment about your treatment approach. Whether others have any experience with addiction or not, they tend to have polarized views about how recovery should be approached, adding stress to a disease that’s already extremely hard to manage. 

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What is transpersonal therapy?

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Transpersonal therapy emphasizes the role of your spirituality in wellness, recognizing the need for a center of guidance outside the ego-driven personality. Transpersonal work is equally valuable whether your center of guidance is faith-based, perceived as a higher version of self, or a combination of both. While childhood ego development is essential to our ability to function as social beings, over time we become limited by social conditioning, and by experiences that cause ego fractures and defenses. If we're willing to put a spotlight on these and work toward wholeness--the integration of conscious and unconscious personality aspects--we become less preoccupied with personal dramas and better positioned to self-actualize, or give back to the world in some way.

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Transpersonal psychology is a broad field, but the approach can be tailored to the specific problems you're facing, whether ones of personality integration and identity, meaning and purpose, belief and faith, or science ''versus'' spirituality.

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Our culture doesn't emphasize the internal experience

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Generally speaking, Western society is very outwardly focused--America in particular likes parades, loud concerts, packed sporting events, and action movies that draw the senses outward. While there's nothing wrong with any of these things, if you have an introspective nature, collectively they can suggest that your orientation has less value. Additionally, although it's evolving, traditionally America has normalized concepts such as dogma and rugged individualism, which also may contradict your instincts or leave you with unanswered questions. These values can certainly be respected in historical context, and for what they represent to so many. Even transpersonal psychology pioneer, Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung, encouraged the lifetime process of individuation, which sounds a lot like individualism.  

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However, Jung proposed that individuation, or the process of realizing one's unique purpose beyond  identification with the material and validation from others, actually involves integration of the collective unconscious with the personal psyche. His recognition of archetypes, or symbols that have proven meaningful to humans across faith systems and eras, reflects belief in a universal level of consciousness that connects us all. Jung noted the similarities of this viewpoint with Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, but was the son of a pastor himself, and his integration of psychology and spirituality has been regarded as important by many Christian theologians since he lived. Additionally, while the value of developing inward discernment between ego/self and Self/Spirit is reflected not only in Eastern philosophies, but in certain gospels of Jesus and early forms of Christianity, this concept has largely been lost in the West.  (An exception is the realm of addiction recovery, which is only legitimate to many once the transpersonal work of 12 Step has been done!)

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As a result, what feels exceptionally real and important as you look inward, perhaps unable to separate your psychological and spiritual experience (or unable to accept the intangibility of belief over what you observe), may be subject to judgment or dismissal from many around you. You're not alone, although it may feel that way. Jung said,'' Loneliness does not come from having no people around, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.''

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Deep approaches create new perspective 

 

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a metaphorical framework for cognitive patterns and behaviors that shape our identity, the unresolved emotions held in the limbic system, and the mindful, somatic center between then we can access for balance and self-parenting. The somatic center is also the higher ''Self'' that holds our potential. The IFS model appears to be a modernization and simplification of Psychosynthesis, an approach developed by an Italian psychoanalyst (Roberto Assagioli) who was a contemporary of Jung's. It built upon Jungian ideas of the transpersonal ''Self'' by encouraging empathetic integration of different ''subpersonalities,'' that serve different functions for us, which IFS more commonly refers to as Protectors and Exiles, or ''parts.''  

 

IFS is a psychotherapeutic approach often applied to psychedelic treatment, as these substances tend to naturally loosen the conceit that our egos are cohesive or accurately reflect reality--in turn making it easier to work with parts.  The Center for HBH offers IFS and Jungian-based Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy through Wellward Medical. 

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I would be honored to hear your story and facilitate your change.

 

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