Psychology Has It Backwards

This is the time of year when most of us come up with a list of things we must commit to do in the New Year.  It has become a source of wry humor that most of us compare notes in February and realize we haven't kept up or aren't really committed to our "resolutions."  For some, that's amusing, for others, it sets off negative, judgmental thinking.  Yet, when we understand...

Most of us take for granted that quiet arises from shutting off the outside noise in our lives, turning off the music or the TV, going to a quiet, peaceful space free from traffic noise or busy people talking, settling down without distraction. Finding quietude is much deeper than that; it is turning away from our personal minds and the thinking and analyzing they always produce, and turning towar...

The most fulfilling aspect of living and working from an understanding of the Principles is that it offers infinite deepening of our understanding, and thus our mental well-being. Sydney Banks said "There is no end or limitation, nor are there boundaries, to the human mind." He pointed us to continually remain open to wisdom, the fresh thoughts that arise in a quiet mind directly from th...

(This is a rerun of Episode 2.) Psychology has been treating all the outcomes of insecure, misunderstood thinking as though they were the problems. The one underlying problem is what creates insecurity. Support the show

The usual reason people seek therapy is to solve their problems, or try to fix what's wrong with them.  In this regard, particularly, Principles practitioners are entirely different. We see the goal of therapy as assisting people to reconnect with their innate mental well-being, find their own common sense and peace of mind, and realize they are naturally whole and resilient. No one is broken...

Recognizing stress in ourselves is a matter of awareness of the feeling state we are in and which way we are going. If we are feeling more and more tense, that is a signal that we are taking negative, stressful thinking seriously and trying to analyze it or fight it. The antidote to stress is becoming aware of our changing feeling states and having the intention to turn away from tension and agita...

Most of us are taught that modern life is full of "stressors" and we are bound to get stressed out by things that happen in life — from traffic to trauma. We are told to develop coping mechanisms to help us deal with the stress we have to face. The Principles explain that stress is not thrust upon us by events, but created by the way we think about life events. Everyone responds to the w...

The intellect is our personal library, the collection of all the thoughts, experiences and knowledge we have had. It represents everything we already know. "Intelligence," on the other hand, is wisdom, insight, common sense — new knowledge that arises in response to present moment curiosity. When we "don't know" what to say or do or how to respond, going to the intellect t...

We've all been advised to "set boundaries" with others, or around our own behaviors. But does that mean that others will follow our "rules," or that we'll remember our own boundaries when we get insecure? We explain that boundaries that arise from insecurity are different from wisdom, or common sense insights, that occur to us in the moment and lead us to step away fr...

We frequently talk ourselves out of inspiration by trusting our insecure thinking.  Then we can get caught up in analyzing an infinite number of reasons WHY we're doing what we're doing.  In this episode, we bring it back to simplicity and discuss how learning to quiet down, listen to your wisdom, and trust the thinking that comes to you, helps you to follow through and get the things do...

Most of us have gone through a time in our life when we've had our heart broken or feelings hurt in relationships with friends and lovers. Misunderstanding of why things are happening comes from our own analysis of the events. We feel wronged and sometimes justified in holding onto grudges, feeling hateful, and obsessing about all the negative things that happened, but this only keeps us stuc...

People are told to fix what appears to be wrong with them in order to feel better and end up feeling hopeless, or broken because it doesn't help.  Focusing on the problems we have or trying to change experiences we have already created does not bring us to mental well-being.  "Trying" is a signal you are turned around and attempting to find happiness by managing thought or behavior....

We've all had the experience of variable feelings of our own pain — for example, forgetting about an aching back in the presence of a laughing baby or a playful puppy. The way we experience pain is through thought. What and how much we think about pain determines how it feels to us. As our state of mind falls into insecurity, we tend to focus on what's wrong and it feels much worse. When...

Everyone has stories to tell about "searching" for experts, wise people, gurus, geniuses... anyone perceived as having special, deep understanding of life. Many people search for years, often finding interesting and helpful ideas along the way. But searching does not bring us our own answers, or peace of mind. SEEING, that is gaining our own deep insights from our own wisdom, is the natu...

Most people come to psychologists or counselors with the hope that they can get help dealing with their problems. In traditional psychology, problems are real, and various approaches help people to understand them, address them from a new perspective, re-frame them, re-direct their thinking about them. Three Principles practitioners understand problems as artifacts of our thinking in lower states...

When people hear "spiritual," they often think "oh, religion..." But spirituality, in the context of the Three Principles, refers to the formless energy of creation, the power of life itself, the pure feeling of being alive in the moment, without the intrusion of personal thought. Spirituality is to religion as electricity is to lights; it is the power behind reverence and appr...

Traditional mental health approaches deal with the outcomes of our thinking, and put attention on what we think, why our thinking is making us feel bad, why we think it,  etc.  Three Principles practitioners address the fact that we have the power to think, and we can use a stressful, or any negative state of mind as an internal signal that we are holding onto negative thinking. We draw clients in...

No one can fix anyone else. Yet we have come to believe that if we just find the right advisor, or the right therapist, or the right self-help technique, or the right program, they or it will fix us. Clients even shop Three Principles programs eagerly taking notes and waiting for a magic bullet. Our work is really a roadmap to your own resiliency, insight, wisdom and peace -- the Innate Health tha...

Because traditional psychology is focused on the contents of our thinking and the behaviors that result, there are many, many well-meaning books and articles offering advice about how we should feel in various negative situations. Thus people worry if they can't correctly follow the five stages of grief, or if they don't freak out if they are unfairly blamed for something, or if they rem...

The magic of working in the Principles is seeing how people transform via their own insights into life. The experience of insight awakened all of us to the power of change from within, and when we see it happen to others as we work to them, the experience is joyful and inspiring. No one can fix another person; intellectual insights don't really change people. But true insight, a beam of wisdo...

A crucial element of the Three Principles understanding is the recognition that things look different to people as their states of mind change. People in a low state of mind  experience a lot of negative thinking that affects their perception of everything. If we take to heart what people who are upset say to us, we can be misled, either in our own response to friends or colleagues, or in our list...

Mindfulness is increasingly recognized as a valuable mental health strategy. It moves the field closer to the Principles with a focus on awareness of the present moment, and acceptance of one's feelings and thoughts as they pass. People often ask us if our work is a form of mindfulness. It isn't because we do not ask people to think about their thinking or learn to accept their feelings....

The most popular therapies today are Cognitive/Cognitive Behavioral approaches. They represent a significant movement towards focusing on thought as the primary issue in mental health struggles, rather than dredging up the past or looking for external causes that must be addressed. But they still are looking at an effect of the power of Thought, the thinking people do, rather than the nature of Th...

Increasingly, we've noticed people feeling defined by their diagnosis, even in some cases seeing it as a "reason" for issues that arise in their life. Comments like, "It's my depression kicking in," or "My anxiety is really bothering me this week," or "I'm bipolar and lately I have more lows than highs." The general focus on labels for misunde...

When we see diagnoses as conditions caused by events or people in our lives doing us psychological harm, both therapists and clients get trapped in diagnoses because we can't change the past. So life becomes about treating and coping with our mental health diagnoses, rather than finding peace and true mental well-being and being free of them. It's a matter of perspective; knowing we are...