IN THE FACE OF CLIENT PROCRASTINATION, ARE YOU TEACHING EFFECTIVELY?
Basic information about the mind body connection is critical for any therapeutic professional to understand. If you offer CBT, life coaching, even physical therapy, offering clients a process for better managing the chemistry of emotion and the physiology of stress WILL enhance the effects of any other improvement method. Professionals do not have to become neuroscientists or feel intimidated to learn basics about the mind body connection, but doing such, and increasing your client’s knowledge of that aspect of their problems, will powerfully strengthen what you offer.
Underlying any problem or issue a client brings are emotions. At their most basic, emotions are made up of physical and chemical reactions in the brain and body. How directly do the methods you offer address the physical and chemical eruption of emotion? This is the reason so many professionals are turning to mindfullness and other meditation focused techniques. Many, though, are instructing clients in ways of meditating or quieting their minds but are not clearly or effectively helping clients understand how this truly helps address the problems that brought them for help. The professionals are not effectively answering the UNSTATED QUESTION “How does doing this help me to gain self-control over my problem?”
Clients are concerned about marriage and family problems, financial issues, effects of physical problems or disease. They are focused on specifics. Therapeutic professionals are stepping back and focused on thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that precipitate the problems. The effects of using reframing techniques for ineffective thinking, modification techniques for ineffective behaviors or working with clients to help them develop more effective life strategies will be weakened of their vulnerability to emotions underlying those thoughts, behaviors or ineffective strategies remain.
A critical fact that all therapists must keep in mind is at their most basic, emotions are physical and chemical eruptions in the brain and body. Even if a meditative technique is taught, is it being taught effectively…is a strong link being made between doing the process and better management of their concerns?…is the client given a basic picture of what is at its most basic level?…is their ongoing discussion and reeducation of the role of the meditative technique in gaining self-control over their concern?
If clients are procrastinating or dropping the use of meditative techniques offered, the focus should not be on their lack of self-control but on more effectively teaching and integrating the technique into the therapeutic process.
A CUTTING-EDGE SPECIALTY
NeuroTherapy Training is a cutting-edge specialty in the field of Psychology. Evidence of this is reflected in the numbers of folks with traditional psychotherapy practices or who are pursuing psychology degrees at established universities who inquire about and choose this training. I often hear laments that they don’t have practical tools or aren’t being given professional training in methods that reflect the “neurological” or the “mind-body” aspect of psychological health. We hear from them because they astutely search for a professional program of training that reflects a clinical perspective that will fit within the framework of tools they are using or learning. They “get it” when they read about NeuroTherapy Training. They see it isn’t a biofeedback (more currently called neurofeedback) method requiring costly and, as we show, unnecessary machinery. They like the idea it is client-based, actively engaging the client in the change process. And it offers a way of addressing the “chemical basis” of emotion without, in most cases, having to turn to neurochemistry (the prescribing of medication so commonly a part of psychotherapy today). People have referred to it as the “baseline” or “missing link” in the therapeutic process.
The tools these professionals were trained in and use are based in models that focus on memory, behavior or perception (things the brain does). NeuroTherapy Training is based on a neurological model composed of tools that help people make changes in the inner working of their brains and bodies (the mechanism of memory, behavior and perception). It can stand alone, as it has been developed and practiced for many years because when the “mechanism” of emotion and behavior changes and improves, the emotion and behavior change and improve.
This mind-body knowledge, reflected by NeuroTherapy Training, has been around for numerous decades. For a long time, it existed only in metaphysical or more spiritually based practices because “the science wasn’t there” to explain certain effects. That is no longer true. Many metaphysical practitioners are drawn to this training because “they get it” that is reflects the wisdom of the ages. Mindfulness techniques, popular today, are a reflection of mind-body knowledge.
NeuroTherapy Training can be seen as a bridge between the neurological sciences and practical psychology. It brings in information such as ‘emotion is a physiology’, that “mental issues have at their basis physical and chemical aspects as well” that “unhealthy behavior has it’s roots in vulnerability to unhealthy emotions”.
Professional, university- based, training in psychology needs to evolve, but curriculums and the paradigms of knowledge upon which they are based change slowly There is a new and exciting paradigm about why we are as we are that has emerged from the neurological sciences. That is the knowledge base from which NeuroTherapy Training emerged. It is a powerful therapy standing on its own (without the use of analytical, behavioral or cognitive tools) but, important to those trained in those psychological methods, it is a dynamic compliment to traditional therapeutic tools.