And a brief moment for psychobabble

[omorka]

I've had a vague interest in psychotherapy theory ever since working for a therapists' office for that one summer. In particular, I've been amused/disgusted by the overwhelming stranglehold that neoFreudianism still has on the practice, if not the movement, and intrigued by cognitive therapy, which has weird echoes of behaviorism, but acknowledges the being inside the black box.

So that was how I wandered across an article describing a form of third-wave therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy. Mostly I'm finding it just interesting, until I stumble across a quote . . .

"You are asking, 'Can I live a valued life, even with my pain?' Let me ask you a different question. What if you can't have the second without the first? What if to care the way you do care, means you will hurt. But not the heavy, stinky, evaluated, categorized, and predicted hurt that has crushed you. Rather the open, clear, knife-through-butter pain that comes from a mortal being who eventually will lose all and yet who cares.

Imagine a universe in which your feelings, thoughts, and memories are not your enemy. They are your history brought into the current context, and your own history is not your enemy."

. . .

. . .

. . . Smash the world's shell!

We'll see if future research lives up to the hype, but if it does,it'll be a cool revolution to watch.

Comments

[bassfingers.livejournal.com]

I was telling memeslayer this just last week (or the one before... I lose track...) If a pain has no balm that will soothe it, your remaining choices are bitching about how much it hurts, or acceptance. Recognition of the pain is OK and normal. Obsession really doesn't help things. The anecdote I used was my collapsed lung of 1987. The EMTs that showed up at PVA as first responders didn't have a thing they could do to help me, and I was shocked into the realization that these grown men on their shiny fire truck could do nothing more than hold my hand while I screamed. So I stopped screaming. Not because the pain had gone away, but because all the attention I could possibly bring to myself wouldn't make me feel better.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

I cannot imagine any OTHER way of interating with the world than the way described by that paragraph. Life is pain. I don't have a problem with that.

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

A good point, but I think there's a difference between accepting that life will bring you pain and clinging to that pain for all time.