Psychology Has It Backwards

Clients normally seek mental health help when they are facing "problems" they feel they can't resolve. A question others ask us is, "If you're not paying attention to their problems and helping them to solve them, then why do they keep coming to you?" Some people are concerned that we "brush off" problems and don't listen to our clients. Grounding in the Principles makes it natural

When people become curious about the Three Principles, they often think of our work as a tool to add to their tool kit. So sometimes it seems confusing when we make a point about not "mixing" the 3P with other approaches. The reason is that, although there are well-established approaches that do help people, the assumptions of other approaches are that people are affected by circum

There are many expressions that are used when people are sharing the Principles that are easily grasped and interpreted by our intellect, but do not mean what people commonly think they mean. Our intellect, the repository of everything we have learned or know so far, is quick to jump in and give us easy answers. That is why we tell people to listen for the feeling, or listen beyond

When we decide we want to change or we feel we need to change, we often work at it. We try really hard to change. We come up with strategies; we seek advice; we read self-help books; we go to courses, thinking we'll find a technique, or a means to fix ourselves. Too often, that leads to hopelessness and discouragement. Too often we monitor ourselves and force ourselves and get ours

This is the first installment of occasional podcasts we are going to make with Hawaii Counseling and Education Center (HCEC) intern, Spirit, to track his journey from traditional psychological training into becoming a counselor whose work is grounded in the Principles. Chris started HCEC 40 years ago, the very first clinic in the US founded on the Principles, and has sent many inte

A listener of this podcast asked us to explain what we mean when we tell people to "reflect." When we're trying to understand ourselves and life, we tend to ask ourselves "why" questions. Why is this happening to me? Why can't I come up with an answer? Why did so-and-so do this to me? The list is endless. "Why?" takes us in the wrong direction because it gets our personal thinking

We are all "lifelong learners" but we are taught early on to "figure things out." Everyone can remember being told as a child, "Think about it. You'll figure it out." As we move through life, we spend more and more time going over and over life situations in our minds, trying to come up with answers, or asking other people for answers and then trying to figure out how to follow the

We are very dependent on our intellect (everything we already know that is stored in our brain) for a lot in life. It allows us to remember how to run things, where we put things, what we've learned, how to find our friends' houses, how to do our jobs, phone numbers, people's names, etc. Sometimes people hear us talking about looking to live from original thought, wisdom, and commo

We might awaken from nightmares frightened or sad, but as soon as we wake up we realize it was just a dream. Even if we find our dreams disturbing, we know they are dreams. Yet when we fall into low mood thinking or get stuck on troubled memories or entertain fears during the day, we don't call them "daymares." We don't realize we can "wake up" and put those thoughts behind us. We'

Low mood thinking is always compelling because it generates strong feelings and it arises from insecurity. So it looks like we have to do something about it. It is habitual thinking that comes to mind from our memories with a familiar feeling, which gives it more weight. People complain about being "plagued" or "haunted" or "frequently visited by" negative thoughts, and the need to