92 Awakening and Psychotherapy? Free?

Psychotherapy is not awakening but it can help release places inside that are blocking Awakening.  Carl Jung, Ramana, and Carl Rogers and spiritual bypasses are discussed.  For those who feel that therapy could be useful different ways of access are discussed including free methods of co-counseling not limited to Reevaluation Counseling, Co-counseling international, al anon, adult children of Alcoholics, psychotherapeutically assisted psychedelics, Enneagram, etc.  All designed to give everyone options based on need and usefulness to themselves. Finally, remember local spiritual groups for support as well. Great place to meet others and to support you on your path. 

These podcasts are here to support your personal path of awakening whatever that might be. I feel they are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. Though they, also, all stand on their own. If anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All my podcasts and website are free. Enjoy!

Though I am a psychotherapist, and these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful, they are not psychotherapy. If psychotherapy is ever needed, please reach out to a psychotherapist.

www.williamecooper.wordpress.com for more support. You may, especially, enjoy the short contemplations and the resource page which gives you some supportive material.

Transcript

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Hello, this is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. I trust you're doing well. In the last podcast, I mentioned that I would do a podcast for those that were interested in therapy to talk about various options, including low-cost or no-cost options. I do realize, of course, that therapy is not awakening. It's only a tool that can be helpful towards your awakening. Carl Jung went to India and many people told him about Ramana Maharishi. He did not visit Ramana and now speculation is that the reason why he didn't was as brilliant as he was in psychoanalysis and Jungian psychology. At some level, he was afraid to meet Ramana because he felt it would go way beyond what he was familiar with and in some sense threatened his writings and his viewpoints as deep as Carl Jung was. Is this really why Carl Jung didn't meet Ramana? I don't know. I wasn't there. You can Google Carl Jung and Ramana if you want to read lots of different opinions and accounts, but I'm just passing on that many people acknowledge, including myself, that awakening is far different and deeper than therapy. I want to start out with that and be very clear. Carl Jung himself did write about Ramana that he was the whitest spot on a white background. So he recognized the profundity of Ramana. Hopefully you've listened to a lot of my past podcasts and you have a pretty good understanding now about the difference between awakening and anything of the mind. Yet, as we've talked about in prior podcasts, we do use the mind. We do use our emotions. It's how we get through our day in our world. It's how we show up in creation. So our psychology, our personality, even though it is not us, it's what we use to express ourselves. Our being flows through it and is expressed by our personality. Often I say it's good not to confuse driving a car with being a car. Our personality is more like the car we're driving, but it's not us, but we want to have a nice drive through life. So we don't want to drive with a personality that's broken, just like we wouldn't want to drive down the road in a car with a flat tire. We change the tire, we fix the tire and we have a smooth ride. I often talk about how I experience myself as a rainbow. On one end is the infinite, beyond creation, beyond existence. On the other end, my feet are firmly planted in this creation. In between is my personality. So I work on my personality. I am a psychotherapist. So I definitely see the importance of psychotherapy and a well-functioning personality. Perhaps you've heard the term spiritual bypass, and that's when a person tries to avoid working with their pain and their suffering and instead employs spiritual methods to sidestep it. They avoid dealing with psychological issues, dealing with behaviors, habits, emotional upsets and suffering and developmental issues simply by choosing a spiritual process instead. Perhaps meditating or doing mantras all their life or so many other things they do. Some people might just employ a western version, such as jogging. I'm not going to deal with my problems. I'll go for a jog instead. Or don't think about them. They'll just drag you down. So I don't think about them or take my mind off of them or think about something else. We have many strategies to bypass the work that we have before us. My shorthand way of looking at it is if I'm doing anything to not be present with something along the rainbow that I am, then I know I'm avoiding and that's going to block my awakening because awakening is being fully present with all of me. That which is beyond creation and that which is in creation, including my personality. So if you feel that you are getting stuck or things aren't resolving, even though you have been doing your spiritual practices, perhaps, especially if it seems to be emotional or mental issues, you might consider contacting a therapist. And that's what this podcast is about. How to access various therapies and for some people to do it in an inexpensive way so that you're not kept out of psychotherapy due to cost. Okay, let's talk about psychotherapy a bit. I have my undergraduate degree in psychology. And after that degree, I got my master's and became a psychotherapist. I worked with a lot of groups and individuals and totaled seeing somewhere around 25 to 30,000 people in my career. I still see people, but very lightly. As many people do, when I first started studying psychology, I was very interested in all types of theories and techniques. I remember in one of my undergraduate courses, I was fascinated by a series of films that we watched of various psychotherapists working with a client named Gloria. We could see each of these founders of various schools of psychological thought use their techniques to help Gloria. And we can contrast the various ways that they worked with Gloria. The psychotherapist that I found least compelling and interesting was a psychotherapist named Carl Rogers. He didn't appear to have much technique to me. He simply focused very fully on Gloria and just let her talk about her problems. When she would say something, I have a problem with this, or I have a problem with that. He would just look at her very intently and say, so you have a problem with this and you have a problem with that. He would just repeat back to her what she said. Now he was so connected to Gloria that he, his shirt became soaked with sweat. He was actively listening, very deeply connecting to Gloria, but he simply repeated back whatever she said and he never offered any solution, any guidance. He just reflected back to her what she was saying and in essence, let her talk and feel very, very connected to and listened to. It seemed like a very simple process and one that didn't require much training to me as a young student. Later in my career, I began to consider him as one of the most profound psychotherapists that I'd ever seen. And I'll tell you why. A study came out where they compared the effectiveness of various psychotherapies on clients. And what they found was that pretty much any psychotherapy that you use with a client has about the same rate of effectiveness. People do get better with psychotherapy, but they get better at the same rate and the same depth pretty much with any therapy that they use. I talked about connection in a prior podcast for awakening, that awakening can happen when you connect to somebody or your world fully. I think that's what was going on with Gloria and Carl Rogers. Deep connection can be very, very healing. It can help dissolve things that are troubling you and bring them to the surface. Awareness is curative. If you'd like to see any of these videos of various psychotherapists working with Gloria, just google Carl Rogers, Gloria, and you'll get that one. And it will probably lead you to all the other therapists as well. It might be quite interesting if that's something that you're interested in. Now, why do I bring all this up? I bring it up so that you don't fret about what kind of therapy you get. As with most things, if you're being troubled emotionally or mentally, and you feel like therapy might help you, just start somewhere. And I'm going to give you some ideas of various places that you could start. I'm of the opinion as a psychotherapist that anywhere that you start will be a good place. And that place might lead to another place when you need something else, and then to another place, and then to another place. But the important thing is that you're resolving that part of your rainbow that could use the tool of psychotherapy to help cleanse it most effectively. I would view psychotherapy as the same way I would view any spiritual tool that you're using. Mantras, yoga, they all have different purposes. They're all slightly different tools, and they get at things a little differently. Therapy is one of these kind of tools. Often it's overlooked by spiritual teachers in the East because they don't have much background in it, and they themselves often have a lot of unresolved issues that you'll read about in the newspapers or online from time to time. And that's why they just do not have the background and perhaps inadvertently utilize a spiritual bypass for their issues. And that's not across the board. There are many fully awakened gurus that are very balanced emotionally, but there are some that are not. There's one other thing I'd like to say that really nothing is fixed. Sometimes you'll work on an issue with therapy, then you'll take a pause and you'll work with a more spiritual quote unquote method, meditation, yoga, mantras, breathing. Often you'll put the two together. They support each other very well. Your inner heart is the guide. The key is stay aware of yourself and start to notice what you need and then do that. Because I think the whole process of awakening is letting go all of the crusts, all of the blocks that separate us from ourselves. And the key is to use whatever works. So I'm including therapy as one of the things that I found very helpful that work. Okay, what if you decide that therapy could be helpful to you in your awakening process? What to do? Well, if you don't have much money, let me give you a few options that I know of, and then we'll work our way up the scale. There are a number of worldwide organizations that utilize something that's called co-counseling. And what that is, is you trade your counseling time for being counseled by another. You receive some training and then you have a partner. And when your partner needs counseling, you give them counseling. And when you need counseling, they give you counseling. This is very effective for many people. Remember what I said about Carl Rogers and his client centered counseling? Well, in co-counseling, it can be very helpful for another person to hear you talk, to just let you tell your story, just unburden yourself and talk to another person. That's quite different than if you'd simply talk to yourself in the backyard and feel like that's how I'm burdening yourself. Yes, maybe so a bit, but in the presence of another safe person, it can be very, very powerful. So these organizations have been built to give you a process to do that. And generally this counseling is free. I'll give you a couple of examples. There's re-evaluation counseling, often abbreviated RC. I've had a number of friends go through this counseling. It's a co-counseling where you counsel each other. You can go through online training and receive books and study material, all for under $200. If you join with somebody else, you can share the online training and each of you buy your own set of books. I think the books end up being about$80 per person. And the online training might be $120 or so. And you would just split the $120 for the online training and each pay for your own books. After that, it's all free once you've gotten your training. So I would highly recommend re-evaluation counseling. How does it work? I've never done it myself, but I can tell you what little I know. So take whatever I say with a grain of salt. From what I understand, once trained, you get with your partner and like with Carl Rogers in client-centered therapy, you just start talking and they let you talk. This is your session. You can say whatever you want. They listen intently. And at some point after you've emoted, perhaps shook a little bit to release any tension that's been held in your body, somatic releasing. At some point after all of that, you realize that this was a horrible thing that you went through, or at least a troubling thing. It was a real thing. It's been acknowledged by your partner. And today is different. That thing no longer exists today. So as bad as it was, and now you've expressed yourself, you just let it go. I am sure they have all sorts of processes of how to do that. And as I said, I am not trained in re-evaluation counseling, but I'm giving you just a quick sketch of what I believe it to be. Anyway, you'll find out if you do it and you get trained in it. There's another kind of counseling called co-counseling international. I believe the website for it is cci.org. And the website for re-evaluation counseling is something like rc.org or reevaluationcounseling.org. Just Google re-evaluation counseling or co-counseling international. Co-counseling international is an offshoot of re-evaluation counseling. So I imagine there are similarities, but again, I don't know the details, just that it might be a free way to utilize counseling in your life. You check all that out. That'll be your job. On the internet, as I Googled some of these things, I did notice for re-evaluation counseling. Anyway, there was some people that said that on some levels, maybe the upper levels that had developed into a cult. You know, I think almost with any religious or spiritual thing, if you Google, you'll find out somebody says it's a cult. So I don't put a lot of stock in that, but just awareness is curative. You're just going for counseling. Don't sign up for anything else, okay? Just in case. You check it out for yourself. I trust that you're balanced enough and sharp enough to figure out what's going on, but it should be pretty straightforward, pretty clean, and within a day or so, you should know if it's good for you or not. If it is, do it. If it's not, do something else. And as long as you're looking things up, if you just Google co-counseling, just that, co-counseling, you'll pull up lots of different options in co-counseling, just like there is reevaluation counseling and there's co-counseling international. There are other ones too. So look at them, choose one. These are very low cost or free options for anybody that wants therapy. And they're generally all around the world. So you should find something near you. Also, I believe you can do counseling online. You can have co-counselors online that you've never met in person. So if you're in a very remote location, they probably have figured out a way to do that as well online through a video chat. So you can get counseling if you want to. You may have to do a little bit of work to focus and find out what works for you the best, but I don't think it's rocket science. I think you'll find it easily enough. What are some other options? Well, all over the world, you have Al-Anon. That's a branch of Alcoholics Anonymous. And you can go into a room and it's generally with people who are not alcoholics, who are not addicted, yet they might be in a relationship or have been raised by somebody who is an addict and they have issues with codependency, which pretty much includes all of us. And what is codependency? It's when I give up my autonomy, my independence, in order to please you. In a way, I make you more important than me. I put myself on the back burner way too much. So these groups are good for exploring that. They're free. They're by donation. Generally, people just put in a dollar or do whatever they want, or you don't even have to put in anything. So this is another very low cost way to say what's on your mind. And generally in these meetings, you can say pretty much whatever's on your mind and you have a whole group of people listening to you quietly. And then the next person will say something. And then the next person, each of the people don't comment about what you said. They just listen. This may not seem like a big deal, but it's basically what Carl Rogers did in many ways. And it can be very effective for people. It's more or less free and all over the world. Another offshoot of all of this is Adult Children of Alcoholics, ACOA, also all over the world. They have their own book, just like Al-Anon does. And it's built around a similar process. You're in a group, you share what's on your mind, everybody listens. But there's quite detailed information on how your personality might have developed, bringing awareness to it, when you have been injured in an emotional way. You feel hurt, you feel abandonment, you feel fear, you feel anger. It talks about ways of looking at that, and it can be very deeply therapeutic in its own way and method. So it's also free or by donation, very low donation, and it's all over the world. It can be very profound and very specific to you. So if any of this fits for you on your rainbow, you're clouded by any of these issues, you're hurting, you feel abandoned, or any of these strong emotional issues that just stay with you, or you have to push under the surface to get through your life, maybe Adult Children's of Alcoholics is a good group for you. Alternatively, many of you have insurance, where you can see therapists. In the United States, we have insurance, and that insurance often covers psychotherapy, and we pay a co-pay. The co-pay might be $20. So we get our therapy essentially for $20 because we already have insurance. Often, if you visit your therapist using Zoom or online options, you don't even pay the co-pay. It's just totally free to you. So that's another way to have therapy for a very low cost to you. Also, sometimes psychotherapists work with people on a sliding scale. And if you either don't have insurance or the cost is too much for you, just ask your psychotherapist about their sliding scale and see what's available. Possibly instead of paying $150 for a session, you might only be charged $50. It will vary from psychotherapist to psychotherapist. In extreme cases, I've known people to only pay $25 for a session. So that's something else to consider. If you live in another country, often your health care is provided in your social program, and you don't have any out-of-pocket charge for your therapy, perhaps. So you can access psychotherapy that way when you live in another country under another system. Use what works. But the free methods I said just a little earlier, those are all over the world. So if somehow your options are limited, check out some of the co-counseling or al-anon or adult children of alcoholics. You don't have to be an alcoholic or a child of an actual alcoholic to participate in any of these. Basically, all of us are addicted in some way. We're addicted to thoughts. We're addicted to cigarettes. We're addicted to emotions. We're addicted to alcohol. We're addicted to drugs. We're addicted to something. So you likely have an adult, you're an adult child of some kind of addict, just like you yourself are some kind of addict. It's the human condition. And as we've explored in the past podcasts, really, it's about letting those addictions dissolve so that we're not lost in our thoughts, not addicted to our thoughts or addicted to our emotions. And then we can let them go and instead experience the truth of our being. So the whole awakening process is one of letting go of addictions. So you qualify. Don't worry about, do I have to have a parent that was an alcoholic or a drug addict? Or do I have to be in a relationship with somebody that takes drugs or alcohol? No, you don't. And a good number of people in these groups do not have parents that are alcoholics or drug addicts. And they also are not in a relationship with alcoholics or drug addicts. Some of them are, but a lot are not. So you'll be welcome. It'll be fine. Despite the title. Okay. I hope this has been helpful and it does fit in the overall package of you awakening and letting go of things. Let's use the right tools for the right problems. A hammer isn't good for driving a screw into the wall and a screwdriver isn't good for driving a nail into the wall. Use the right tools for the right problem. Therapy is a very good tool for the personality, for the emotional mental complex and for our developmental issues, as well as relational issues. One caveat is that I would not get lost in therapy. I wouldn't do it forever. I would do it as you need it and then back off and get back to your spiritual practice. Don't even give up your spiritual practice while you're going through therapy. They support each other, but don't get lost in therapy. And you know, as I say that, let me say a couple more things that come to mind right now. There are new developments in therapy that I don't have much experience in, but statistically they've been very powerful and that is, and this will sound very strange, we've talked about it in a prior podcast, psychotherapeutically assisted psychedelics. It has shown to be effective for many people with depression, when other things don't work, many people with PTSD, many people with relational issues, many people with alcoholism and addictions, when other things just haven't worked. My guess is it opens the mind, it helps you relax and then deal with stuff that you couldn't deal with on your own. Let me give you a rough idea of statistics. Now I'm just going by memory, but you can Google it and look it up. But say for PTSD, using traditional psychotherapy after one year, about 35% of the participants still feel good. When you use psychotherapeutic assisted psychedelics, it's something like 70 or 80% of the people still feel better after one year. So that's pretty significant. You have other very significant results with all these other issues that I stated and some others. So just Google it, you'll get more information if you're interested. In the United States, it is going under a lot of clinical trials right now and probably will be widely available in about three or four years. But in certain states, it's available, like in Oregon, it's available. They're voting on it right now in Colorado. And ketamine is available in every state with the supervision of a physician or with a prescription. You can order it online and take it in lozenge form. Ketamine can be helpful on a number of things, including depression. This is not my root. It's not my process. So I don't know much about it either, but I know that it can be very powerful and statistics have borne it out. I've been through some continuing education for my license this year on this particular subject. So I'm kind of up to date on it. And if you're looking for something different that can really make some headway in different ways, it's something to consider. You can probably find ways to do this all over the world. For instance, in Brazil, you have ayahuasca churches. I suppose in Brazil, you have psychotherapeutically assisted ayahuasca journeys, or you can do it with a shaman. You know, I can't endorse every possible thing or know every hazard or benefit, but it's something to look into because the results have been so strong for so many. One other thing that can be helpful, and I did a podcast on it in the past, and that's the Enneagram. That's a Sufi system that helps explore your personality and bring it to light with the idea that awareness is curative. Your personality will fit generally in one of nine categories, three based on abandonment, three based on fear, and three based on anger. And that can be very helpful as a starting stone for Sun. You might listen to my podcast on it. It's very basic. You can just Google the Enneagram. Again, the problem with ayahuasca or psychotherapeutically assisted psychedelics is sometimes people get lost in all of this stuff, and they don't let it go. I went down to Brazil, and I had a friend of a friend of mine, and she goes to ayahuasca churches every week, and I don't know that she's getting a whole lot better. She might be a little bit better. These things are designed to use very briefly to get some insights, some breakthroughs, and then let it go. Same with the Enneagram, in my opinion. I wouldn't get lost in the Enneagram. Others spend their a lifetime in the Enneagram. So Awakening, as you listen to the other podcasts that I've done, is really about letting everything go, including the Enneagram, including psychedelics, including anything you're using as a training wheel. Let it go, but use these tools and methods as long as they're helpful, and that's including gurus or podcasts or even meditation. Let it go until you are meditation itself. So these are helpful tools, but I'm emphasizing and saying it very deeply. Don't get lost in them because they're often the cultural norm, and so many people do get lost in them, but they can be very, very helpful to clear up a certain spot on your rainbow in your personality. Okay, I've enjoyed talking with you. I look forward to talking to you again next week. Take care. Bye.