Thinking and Feeling

Very small children learn without thinking or self-reflection. For them learning is not a thinking process, but a feeling process. If something scares them, they learn to avoid it, unable to consider whether it is really dangerous or harmful. If they like something they go after it, unable to consider whether it might be bad for them. They learn how to live in their world reflexively, like a puppy, reacting automatically. This helps the small child fit into the situation he lives in, and lays down the basic patterns of one's personality. These patterns tend to repeat themselves endlessly, often without us even realizing it. This can present a problem though. As the child grows up, his situation changes. The adult may find himself automatically reacting in ways that may have fit when he was little, but don't fit present situation. Adult may find himself afraid of things he knows shouldn't scare him, or hurt by things that shouldn't hurt him. He may make bad decisions again and again and wonder, why don't I ever learn not to do this? If these things bother him enough, he may seek psychotherapy. Does psychotherapy help? That depends on what we call "psychotherapy." There is no generally accepted definition of what psychotherapy is. Some people think of psychotherapy as a process of figuring why we do what we do. But many of us already know that analyzing why we do things doesn't do much to help us change. For psychotherapy to work it has to affect a lot more than just what we think, it has to affect us in our feelings. That's because in order to change these things we learned as small children, things we learned by the feeling process, we need to relearn by the same feeling process. We need "Corrective Emotional Experiences," experiences that affect what happens in the body, physiologically. When it works, things that shouldn't scare us no longer scare us, and things that hurt us but shouldn't, stop hurting us.

Here at the Institute we teach a form of psychotherapy focused on Corrective Emotional Experiences, experiences that affect feelings-not just thinking. Not all psychotherapists' work this way. Many people who practice psychotherapy have not had enough training. It's very hard to find. Generally speaking, universities offer little or no training in how to actually do psychotherapy, and those who seek post-graduate training often can't find what they need. Here at the Institute for Individual and Group Psychotherapy, we are dedicated to doing what we can to properly train psychotherapists.