How Psychotherapy Helps You to Become More Self Reflective

In a prior article, Discovering That Your Feelings Aren't Facts, I discussed that many clients begin psychotherapy with an inability to distinguish between their feelings and objective reality.  It's as if they're looking through a distorted lens based on their own feelings.

How Psychotherapy Helps You to Become More Self Reflective

I also discussed that psychotherapy provides an opportunity to become more self reflective, objective and emotionally aware, which often leads to a more fulfilling life.  In this article, I'm going into more detail about how clients in therapy can learn to develop these skills.

The Observing Ego, Clinical Hypnosis and Hypnoprojectives
In psychotherapy there's a term called the "observing ego," which is the ability to stand both inside your experience as well as outside your experience at the same time.

It's as if there were two of you--one that feels your internal experience and one that stands just a little behind and above you that can experience your internal experience, see yourself and observe the external circumstances of your situation.

As a hypnotherapist, there is a hypnoprojective exercise that I sometimes use when I use clinical hypnosis with clients that helps them to enhance their observing ego and ability to self reflect.

I ask the client to imagine herself seated in a movie theatre.

The client arrives just before the movie starts and finds a comfort seat as she waits for the movie to begin.  Everything else--the temperature in the movie theatre and the general atmosphere--are comfortable.

As the movie begins, she realizes that it's about a character who is similar to her in many ways and who has the same presenting problem that brought the client into therapy.

The Observing Ego, Clinical Hypnosis and Hypnoprojectives

At the same time that the client is seated and watching the movie, there is another part of her that is in the projection booth who is observing the part of her that's seated.  The part in the projection booth also has a view of the entire theatre and she is watching the movie.

The benefit of using a hypnoprojective is the client often develops insight into her problem by externalizing the problem to the movie screen and making it concrete.  By making the movie about someone else, the client has an opportunity to be more objective.

Also, the relaxed state of hypnosis allows the client access to unconscious information that she normally wouldn't have access to in a fully awakened state.

With regard to our discussion about an ability to self reflect and developing the observing ego, the part of the client who is in the projection booth is an observing ego.

This part has the unique perspective of having both the internal and external experiences and has a full view of everything.  The part in the projection booth is also watching the part seated in the theatre and often develops insight into that part of herself.

During the debriefing after the hypnoprojective hypnotic exercise, clients will often say that they're surprised that they were able to see their problem and the solution with much more clarity (see my article: The Unconscious Mind: The "Symptom" Contains the Solution).

Mindfulness Meditation
I often recommend that clients practice mindfulness meditation as another way to become more self reflective and develop an observing ego (see my article: Psychotherapy and the Mindful Self).

Mindfulness Meditation As a Way to Become More Self Reflective and Develop an Observing Ego

For beginners, it's often easier to follow a mindfulness recording, like the recordings developed by mindfulness expert Jon Kabat Zinn, as a way to start.

Aside from helping you with emotional regulation, mindfulness meditation also helps you to develop and improve your self awareness.

With regular practice, mindfulness meditation can help you to reduce stress, improve your autoimmune system, improve concentration and memory, and increase emotional intelligence.

The Observing Ego: The Ability to Remain Rooted in Your Experience At the Same Time As You Stand Just Outside Your Experience
Hypnoprojectives and mindfulness meditation are two ways to develop an observing ego.

Aside from these powerful tools, being open to your therapist's observations can also give you a new perspective beyond your subjective experience.  It allows you to consider an alternative to your subjective state at the same time that you're rooted in your own experience.

This is one of the benefits of being in therapy (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy).

Consider the Following Fictionalized Scenario About the Observing Ego in a Psychotherapy Session:
Ella comes to therapy in a bad mood.  She tells her therapist that she's feeling pessimistic about a new relationship because the man she's dating seemed preoccupied and distracted when they spoke last night.

Based on her pessimistic feelings about the relationship, Ella's thoughts are off the races:  She just knows that he's going to break up with her, and if he breaks up with her, she won't meet anyone else as nice as he is, and then she'll be alone for the rest of her life.

How Psychotherapy Helps You to Become More Self Reflective

Her therapist recognizes this as one of Ella's recurring patterns that creates problems in her life: Ella  assumes that her feelings are facts.

So, her therapist asks Ella a series of questions to help Ella to develop a more observing ego:  Did anything negative happen between her and her boyfriend?  Did he say that he didn't want to date her anymore?  What other evidence is there to support Ella's feelings?  What makes Ella assume that her feelings are facts?

Ella reflects upon her therapist's questions, and she becomes aware that she is projecting her own anxiety and negativity onto her boyfriend.  She realizes that she has no objective reason to believe that her boyfriend will break up with her.

Later that day, Ella's boyfriend calls her and apologizes for being distracted on the phone the night before.  He tells her that he was worried about a work problem, but that problem has since been resolved and he is feeling better.  When they see each other later that night, her boyfriend is his usual affectionate, attentive self.

How Psychotherapy Helps You to Become More Self Reflective

When Ella returns to her next therapy session, she tells her therapist that she realizes that she fell back into her recurring pattern of believing that her feelings were facts.  She feels frustrated that she continues to regress into this old pattern from time to time.

But, at the same time, Ella also recognizes that she doesn't fall back into this old pattern nearly as much as she used to before she came to therapy, so she is aware that she has made progress in therapy.

Ella made a commitment to her therapist to increase her mindfulness meditation practice and to also practice stepping outside her experience when she's tempted to project her negative feelings again.

Conclusion
The ability to self reflect is essential to being a self aware adult.  Without the ability to self reflect, you're more likely to look at yourself and others through the distorted lens of your own perceptions.

One of the benefits of psychotherapy is that it helps you to develop the ability to self reflect by developing an observing ego.  This is often a one-step-forward-two steps-back process as you develop this skill (see my article: Setbacks Are a Normal Part of Psychotherapy Along the Road to Healing).

The more you practice developing an observing ego, the better you'll get at using it.

Getting Help in Therapy
We all have our blind spots (see my article: Overcoming Your Emotional Blind Spots).

Often, we don't realize that we have a particular blind spot until we're able to stand outside our experience and reflect on it.

Psychotherapy provides a unique intersubjective experience where an attuned therapist can help you to overcome your blind spots, negative projections and your confusion about your feelings being facts (see my article:  The Psychotherapy Session: A Unique Intersubjective Experience).

Rather than struggling on your own, you can get the help you need with a skilled psychotherapist (see my article: The Psychotherapist's Empathic Attunement Can Be Emotionally Reparative For the Client).

Psychotherapy can help you to free yourself from recurring negative patterns that are keeping you stuck.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many clients to lead more meaningful lives.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Discovering That Your Thoughts and Feelings Aren't Facts

There are many clients who begin psychotherapy believing that their feelings are facts--whether it's their feelings about themselves or others.  For those clients, psychotherapy offers an opportunity to develop an ability to self reflect so they can stop confusing their feelings with facts and develop emotional intelligence.

See my articles:  

Developing Emotional Intelligence

Creating Time For Self Reflection

Gaining a New Perspective in Psychotherapy About Yourself and Others

The Benefits of Psychotherapy

Discovering that Your Thoughts and Feelings Aren't Facts

Intuition and gut feelings are certainly important, and this isn't what I'm referring to when I say that feelings aren't facts.

I'm referring to believing that distorted feelings and thoughts are facts and the need to develop an ability to take a step back from your feelings to question whether what you feel is objectively true.

When you don't self reflect and question whether you're being objective, you run the risk of attributing meanings to yourself and others that are false, which can create problems in your life.

Examples of Feelings Not Being Facts:

• Tom noticed that his supervisor had an angry look on his face when he looked in Tom's direction.  As a result, Tom assumed that his supervisor was angry with him, and he avoided his supervisor for the rest of the week.  At the end of the week, Tom's supervisor told him that he realized that Tom was avoiding him and he wanted to talk to him about it.  During that same conversation, his supervisor told Tom that he was angry because their director was making unreasonable demands of him.  At that point, Tom realized that his supervisor's angry look had nothing to do with Tom and that Tom's original feeling about the situation was inaccurate.

• Lynn had a feeling that the new woman, Jane, in her book club was arrogant and standoffish.  One day one of the other women in the group invited Lynn and Jane for coffee.  During their conversation, Jane mentioned that she tended to be shy and quiet, especially around people that she didn't know well, and this often caused people to think that she was standoffish.  Jane said she welcomed the opportunity to join them for coffee to get to know them better.  After that, Jane was much more friendly in the group, and Lynn realized that she misinterpreted Jane's quiet demeanor for arrogance.  She realized that her original feelings about Jane weren't true.

• After her boyfriend ended their relationship, Rena had a strong feeling that she would never be in another relationship.  She assumed that she would be alone for the rest of her life because no one else would want to be with her.  This made her feel lonely, sad and hopeless.  But a few months later, Rena met a man at her friend's party and they began dating.  As their relationship developed, Rena realized that, even though her feelings had been strong that she would never meet anyone else and that she would be alone for the rest of her life, these feelings weren't objectively true because she was now in a new and wonderful relationship.

As in the examples above, feelings--even strong feelings--are often disproved by life's circumstances.  But a change in circumstances doesn't always occur, and people who believe that their feelings are facts remain convinced.

Discovering That Your Thoughts and Feelings Aren't Facts

When people have strong feelings and beliefs that make them unhappy, they often come to therapy to deal with their unhappiness.

One of the goals of therapy is to help clients to step back from their feelings, reassess their feelings objectively and develop insight.  By developing the ability to step back to self reflect and stand outside of personal feelings and beliefs, clients in psychotherapy can develop emotional intelligence.

This can be very challenging for clients when their beliefs that feelings are facts has been longstanding.  They might have learned to identify with their feelings so strongly that it becomes difficult to see beyond these feelings.

Conclusion
It's easy to confuse feelings with facts, especially when you have strong feelings about yourself or others.

Rather than being swept up by feelings and taking action based solely on your feelings, you can learn to become more self reflective.  By being more self reflective, you have an opportunity to be more objective.  And by being more objective, you can see yourself and others in a more accurate way.

Developing this ability on your own can be difficult, especially if you've been in the habit of believing that your feelings are always objectively true.

A skilled psychotherapist can help clients to become more aware of their feelings and beliefs so that they become more self reflective and objective.

Getting Help in Therapy
Most people come to therapy because they feel stuck in some way.

People who believe that their feelings are objectively true have an opportunity in therapy to develop more insight into how they think and how their feelings and thoughts are affecting them.

If you feel stuck in your life, you owe it to yourself to get help in therapy with a skilled psychotherapist who can help you to overcome the obstacles that are getting in the way of your having a fulfilling life.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many clients to develop insight into their thoughts and feelings so they can change their lives.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Adults Who Were Traumatized As Children Often Fear Their Emotions

Many people, especially people who were traumatized as children, are afraid to feel the full range of their feelings, especially feelings they're uncomfortable with.   If they feel sad, angry, fearful, hurt, or ashamed, they often want to do whatever they can to suppress and avoid sensing these feelings.  

Adults Who Were Traumatized as Children Often Fear Their Emotions

Being willing to feel all their feelings, and not just the ones they feel comfortable with, isn't easy.  Of course, it's understandable that most of us would rather experience happy feelings, but it's not humanly possible to always feel happy.  So, it's important to develop the capacity to feel, tolerate and accept all feelings rather than pushing them down.

Since this is such a big topic for one blog, this is Part 1, and I'll continue to discuss this topic in future blog posts.

Adults Who Were Traumatized As Children Often Fear Their Emotions
Many adults, who were traumatized as children, have vivid memories of feeling completely overwhelmed by a traumatic event in their lives.

In many cases, there was no one to help them, as children, to get through the trauma, so they were left on their own to deal with overwhelming events.  Or, even if there were adults around, the adults might have been overwhelmed themselves by the event (or events) and didn't have the capacity to help.

Young children, who are traumatized without anyone to help them, have limited capacity to deal with their overwhelming feelings.  In order to survive emotionally and, sometimes, physically, these children learned to suppress their overwhelming feelings to protect themselves.  At that point in their lives, it might have been the only thing they could do.  And, at the time, it was an adaptive thing to do, given the limited options.

The problem is that, when these same children grow up and they're adults, what was adaptive when they were children is no longer adaptive.  As adults, suppressing feelings can cause a variety of physical, emotional and interpersonal problems, which I will discuss in a future blog post.

What these adults often don't realize is that now that they are adults, they can develop more of an emotional capacity to deal with trauma, especially if they work with a therapist who has expertise in working with trauma.

Getting Help in Therapy
One of my specialties is working with trauma.  

I have worked with many traumatized adults who have suppressed uncomfortable feelings for most of their lives.  They often come to see me for therapy when they've discovered that continuing to suppress feelings causes problems on many levels for them.  Even though they wanted to change, they didn't know how before they came to therapy, especially after they spent so many years pushing their feelings down.

Over the years, I have learned and developed many different ways of working with trauma so that I can tailor each treatment to the needs of each client.  Aside from talk therapy, I have found mind-body oriented psychotherapy, like EMDR, Somatic Experiencing and clinical hypnosis to be effective in helping clients to overcome trauma, even clients who have tried to overcome these problems in therapy for many years.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Adults Who Were Traumatized As Children Are Often Afraid to Feel All Their Feelings - Part 2