This black bear is “taking out the garbage” in a small town in northern Ontario.
This humorous image stirs to mind a metaphor that I use in my psychotherapy practice. People often wish they could “get rid of” parts of themselves that they don’t like. If they could drop off these unwanted parts at the curb for the sanitation department to pick up and dispose of, they would jump at the chance.
But we are 100% recyclable.
Past trauma, injury, humiliation, neglect or abuse may be blocking or interfering with our energy, emotions and physical body functions. Often we aren’t even aware that we are operating at less than full capacity, energetically and emotionally. In fact, we need our energy and emotional flow in order to live a full, vital life. We don’t recognize that much of our energy is going into holding down and keeping away from uncomfortable feelings, sensations and emotions. This condition can become chronic over a very long time throughout life, worsening as we age.
The truth is we often don’t know what we’re missing or what our options are or that we can change how we think, feel and live.
We end up in a state where we don’t like parts of ourselves and deny or split away from those parts of ourselves. We ‘disown’ the parts we don’t like. Our life can then feel fractured, full of contradiction, plagued by a sense of confusion. We are not sure who we, or what direction we ought to take next. We feel lost and without clear purpose.
We may be overly critical of ourselves for being the way we are. We may feel angry with ourselves and others … even those who have done nothing to harm us. We struggle to hold it all together but too often turn against ourselves with negative, judgmental thoughts. We may experience periods of deep shame, guilt or anger.
We need help to resolve these inner conflicts in order to feel better… maybe feel whole for the first time in our lives.
Through psychotherapy we replace old, negative ways of thinking and self-destructive behaviors with healthier thoughts and actions. We gain an understanding as to why we feel the way we do and release ourselves from the grip of our negative thoughts.
Then, there is no garbage to take out, just as there are no bad parts to us, only parts that are stuck and in need of help.
Psychotherapy, which embraces the body as well as the intellect discovers the reasons for our behaviors and offers understanding and a path out of suffering towards healing. Together, we can map out the territory and use tools and techniques which help you get on the road to making better choices, which then leads to feeling better.
Using a combination of psychotherapy, mindfulness and bioenergetics you can feel better and not have to live with a sense of growing anxiety, fear and depression. Working together we will find and offer assistance to the parts of you that are most on need of help.
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