| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| All1Spirit |
Posted - 03/09/2013 : 14:13:20
“The only wholly true thought we can hold about the past is that it is not here.”
There is no redeeming value to remembering difficult past times. There are no powerful forces lurking in the past creating who you are today. Who you are right now is a product of your past but only by the fact that you are choosing certain beliefs, behaviors and thoughts based on previous experiences.
Going back and sorting through this painful memories only conditions the brain to be more upset. The real work is being totally present and mindful of how you think and behave right now, and being willing to challenge all your beliefs and assumptions.
You are a product of these beliefs and not your past. There are reasons why regressive therapy never worked, it focused backwards when we need to learn how to look deeply into the present moment. If you are sick, miserable, anxious or unhappy it is because of who and how you are right now, and how you were yesterday and last week.
Through the use of fMRI’s and SPECT scans and very long term patient research of over 45,000 respondents we are now assured that regressive or psychodynamic therapy may create more negative-neuroplasticity and does not show positive patient outcomes.
In as little as 5 years ago psychotherapy techniques were taught based on assumptions that could not be proven. Today we have the ability to track millions of patient outcomes and utilize a variety of biobehavioral and scientific tools to design new ways to treat patients.
The new frontiers of treatment will not be about talk therapy or a therapist assisting the patient in “remembering” but in a teaching role instructing the patient in how to train the brain for health, peace and maximal productivity.
Dr. Resa Robinson
Department of Behavioral Sciences
Stanford University School of Medicine
"Around and Around the Circle We Go....
The Answer Sits In The Middle and Knows..." |
| 3 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Dr James Alexander |
Posted - 03/10/2013 : 04:24:29
Resa Robinson is making a pretty big statement which would be hard to reconcile with the observed facts of psychotherapy outcome studies. Presumably, what s/he is calling 'regressive therapies' are those that look at the past and attempt to deal with that. I am not a psychoanalyst (of either brief or slow varieties), nor do i want to spend my career defending it- however, there is substantial evidence in its favour. Contemporary psychoanalysts also cite neuroscience evidence in their favour. In fact, 40+ years of psychotherapy research has resulted in the 'dodo conclusion', ie. there is about as much evidence to support the efficacy of all psychotherapies (Alice in Wonderland- 'everyone is a winner and all deserve a prize'). Research shows that around 80% of psychotherapy clients become better off than those who have the same problems and dont receive therapy- and all approaches are pretty well equal in producing this outcome, including psychoanalytic or other 'regressive' approaches.
Sounds to me that Resa Robinson is a partisan advocate of a particular approach, ie. non regressive, current focused cognitive approach. Happily for him/her, there is as much evidence to support that this is useful as there is to support regressive approaches. S/he would perhaps include EMDR in this 'regressive' group as it is an approach best suited to working with and resolving past traumas. There is an abundance of evidence that this works extremely well, contrary to Robinson's statements. Also, most of Sarno's patients who didnt get better with just the provision of information improved when they underwent the brief psychoanalytic therapy offered at his clinic.
'Going back and sorting through these painful memories only conditions the brain to experience more upset'. Is this correct? Read my post under the Dumping Sarno? discussion (probably belongs more here than there). No doubt, going over and over past upsets and traumas can lead to a negative neuroplasticity (as can many other normal life experiences), but regressive approaches are not confined to those that just keep rehashing the past. The most innovative ones do take people back to the past, and then do something very different with it, e.g EMDR, Coherence Therapy, some Gestalt practices, some NLP (and no doubt many others that i dont know about- Bruce Ecker (in Unlocking the Emotional Brain) includes Emotion Focused Therapy, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, and Interpersonal Neurobiology as transformative psychotherapies which actively engage the reconsolidation process in order to take the emotional sting out of autobiographic memory- these might all be called 'regressive' by Robinson, but manage to initiate a reconsolidation process which results, not in a further neurological 'cementing' of distress pathways, but an actual disassembling of these neurological pathways).
James |
| balto |
Posted - 03/09/2013 : 15:27:26
If the past can cause tms/anxiety all by itself people in India, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, most of Africa and all those third world countries would be cripple by back pain.
blame your thought, your belief. Don't blame your past for your pain.
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No, I don't know everything. I'm just here to share my experience. |
| pspa123 |
Posted - 03/09/2013 : 15:23:48
The many successful practitioners of psychodynamic theray doubtless would vehemently disagree as would their patients. |
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