The perennial philosophy, which contains the essence of all religions, affirms that we are all one and the same, and that we are Love. All the great Masters convey this same message. In the bottom of our hearts, we are told, we all have an unbreakable connection to the great Source of Love. Some of us call Him God, some Source, some The Creator; the name doesn’t matter. What matters is that this is the truth.
If we are Love in essence, why do we have problems and suffer? The answer is: because we do not believe that we are Love. We believe that we are separate and guilty individuals. In our unconscious mind we hide negative beliefs about ourselves, which we then project onto other people and events. Many of these beliefs are actually childhood beliefs that were created by our egocentric thinking “back then”, and they are all based on the child’s interpretations, in other words, they are not true. Remember when we were afraid of the closet monster? There was never a monster in our closet, but there were terrifying thoughts inside our mind, which we then projected onto the world.
In my 20 years as a psychologist and clinical counselor, I have observed in my clients and myself a universal unconscious desire to punish ourselves, our parents or other important people in our lives through suffering, by not being fully joyful and peaceful. . This toxic desire is often subtle; no one would even suspect it. However, it is very present and erodes our joy and vitality. It can take many different forms: not wanting to have sex with our partner, physical illness, physical and emotional pain, patterns of self-sabotage, depression, financial problems, compulsions and addictions, obsessions with the body, low self-esteem, lack of joy, or whatever something else that doesn’t feel right. It can even take the form of not pursuing in life what we would really love to do, but choosing to do work that does not satisfy us.
When I was younger, I had been in psychotherapy for countless years, hoping to get help for my eating disorder. I had this vision of myself being so loving and pure that the people I came into contact with felt encouraged. I told my psychologist that I wanted to ‘become a spirit’. Obviously, he didn’t understand, and for years we were tempted to find out what my parents did and didn’t do to me when I was little. Nothing helped; my symptoms remained. I learned more and more about psychological language and the theories that my various therapists adhered to. Later I became a psychologist, as I thought that if no one could help me, I would have to do it myself. In my quest for self-healing, I heard a quote that someone read on a night of meditation. It said: What you think, so you become. Instant flashes of insight lit up my mind: I saw myself in therapy, telling old stories that had passed a long time, and the more I did, the more I felt traumatized and suffered. From that moment on, my understanding of my life changed and I was shown a different way of doing therapy. It gradually became a combination of what I learned over all these years, namely psychoanalysis, spiritual teachings, and energy psychology. I call it the Internal Freedom Process (TM). Gradually I realized that I had maintained my eating disorder for so long because I wanted to show my parents how angry I was with them and how guilty I thought they were for being lousy parents. I had really believed that it was because of them that I had an eating disorder, and that is what I seemed to hear from my therapists as well. My suffering then, in my mind, served to show the world that I was an innocent victim of bad parents, that I was not responsible for my suffering.
Let’s now look at an example from one of my clients: James (not his name), has had tremendous financial difficulties. Until well into his forties, he has struggled to earn enough money to earn a decent living. After exploring this pattern, we discovered that he unconsciously wanted to show his parents that they had hurt him, that they had treated him unfairly as a child, and that his financial problems were their fault. By not growing up and taking care of himself, James wanted to show that he was not responsible for himself, that he was an innocent victim of his parents’ abuse, and that it was his responsibility to solve his problems. So he spent his life ‘sitting idle’, hoping to get what he believed was his due: loving treatment towards his parents, so that later he would feel capable of growing up and ‘being a man’. Having such unconscious beliefs, it’s no wonder she couldn’t move forward in her life! But once these beliefs were recognized and cleared from his mind, he immediately felt better and lighter. Shortly after this, he was willing to take a few steps that later helped him earn more money and earn a living.
In my work, I find that the discovery and release of such unconscious beliefs can create sometimes massive and sometimes more subtle changes, depending on the situation. The most impressive change was with a client I had for only two sessions, who wrote to me afterwards that he didn’t need to see me again, because his 14-year-old eating disorder had been completely cured. In this case, we had found an unconscious desire to be loyal to her father, who had kept a ‘dirty secret’ of having a lover for 14 years, and my client had kept a ‘dirty secret’ of bingeing and purging for 14 years. Once my client realized this and we clarified it, he was released from any obsession or compulsion to overeat. And of course this doesn’t happen every day … I think such extreme examples can serve as an illustration of the validity of clarifying certain key unconscious beliefs.
Consciously, most of us would agree that we are responsible for our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Regardless of what happened to us when we were young, now that we are adults it is up to us to deal with our thoughts and any negative beliefs we may have. It is those beliefs, most of which are unconscious, and not the situations themselves that create our experience, including our suffering, our problems, and our inability to move on and be happy.
This may be puzzling news for some readers, and yet it is actually good news. Why? Because even though we can’t change the past or the other people in our lives, we can change our mind about what happened in the past. And that is the true source of healing. Once we become aware of our harmful and false beliefs, we can release them and choose to experience our ability to feel free, joyful, and light.
How I help people break free from anger, pain, hurt, resentment, rage, and other painful emotions.
As we said, emotions come from beliefs and painful emotions come from painful beliefs. I help the person return to a specific childhood event where they are still emotionally charged. Then I help her find unconscious beliefs that she created in that situation; beliefs that invariably refer to her (the child) being guilty, bad, unlovable, etc. It is the egocentric way of thinking of the children that gave rise to these painful feelings, not the event itself. Then we recognize that these beliefs were a misunderstanding of the situation on the part of the child and we clarify them with Energy Psychology procedures. The other part of this healing process is the client’s recognition that whatever their parents did or did not do, their core essence of love and peace, has not been touched at all. It has not been altered, tarnished or diminished in any way; she is still perfect light and love.
Recognizing this fact, the client feels a deep relief, a new sense of self that he did not have before. And from this new sense of self arise new desires, new motivations to lead a happier life. Thus, the person becomes willing and able to take steps to implement external changes if necessary, and often the person simply experiences his previous life with a new understanding and lightness; because the better we feel about ourselves, the happier we are and the more loving we can be with others.
Marlise Witschi, M.Psych., Is the founder of the Internal Freedom ProcessTM, a psychospiritual process that helps people heal themselves, their relationships, their businesses, and their lives.
Warning: disclaimer
The purpose of this article is to educate and entertain. The author does not guarantee that anyone who follows these techniques will be successful. The author will have no responsibility to anyone with respect to any loss or damage caused, or allegedly caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained in this article.
Copyright © 2009 Marlise Witschi, M.Psych. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced mechanically, electronically or by any other means, including photocopies, without the written permission of the author.
Marlise Witschi, M.Psych., Registered Clinical Counselor.
