How do we live now?

Things are heating up - it’s time to step out of the saucepan.

I’ve never liked labels or name calling. Labels create illness - I made a video already on the nocebo effect. Name calling in my house is not allowed. However, it still happens on a regular basis because it’s so easy to fall into name calling and everyone is doing it without thinking about what they’re doing. Labels and name calling is very harmful, energetically.

Colluding with delusions to make someone happy - I don’t do that either. I’m a psychotherapist by training and we don’t collude. We also did not come to this place to be happy, we came to grow. So being happy is not the goal of life. But people don’t like that idea. They won’t put the work in to be responsible for themselves because it’s difficult. This explains a lot.

Psychotherapists listen and try to understand. We offer compassion and empathy, and a safe space for the other person to explore their feelings. Unless someone is at risk of harming themselves or someone else. Then we must call it out. It’s also imperative that psychotherapists show their clients where they may be seeing things from a forced perspective, where they are not giving others the benefit of the doubt. Because we tend to believe the stories we tell ourselves over the truth, even if the stories we tell ourselves are harmful.

If clients are in an abusive situation then we encourage them to become empowered so they can decide what to do for themselves. But ultimately we cannot give advice, we cannot tell someone what to do. This makes life as a psychotherapist difficult at the best of times - it’s a vocation for sure.

Knowing right from wrong is vital. Giving someone space to decide for themselves is also vital. But we do not ever need to compromise our own beliefs for someone else’s. Let me say that again. Nobody has the right to enforce their thinking upon you and make you collude with their story. And you don’t have the right to do that to anybody else either.

When a client won’t take responsibility for themselves and projects this responsibility out to the other, we, as psychotherapists must see it and catch it and gently push it back to them and show them what they are doing, without taking on that responsibility ourselves. This can be so subtle that as compassionate beings we can be like the frog in the saucepan, taking it on little by little without realising it until we are embroiled. That’s where the training comes in useful - it helps us see it quicker and put a stop to it.

So. In a world where people are encouraged to live a deluded life, where the systems of education and law are promoting a deluded life, where delusion seems to be seeping into the very fabric of our society, how does a person like me hold themselves?

With integrity. With authenticity. And with grace. Anger is inevitable but we must learn to manage our anger and not fall into name calling and labelling people. And we must live congruently - as above, so below. For me this is the core essence of who I am and I am not ever going to change this because of someone else’s need to be happy. And I would never expect you to twist yourself out of your alignment to make me happy either. This is where two responsible adults can agree to disagree.

Lecture over. Is there anything else you’d like to add? Or do you see a fundamental error in my debate? Let me know. I’m open to listening and changing my mind. Unusual qualities I think? Yes?