Therapy 4-H Club: PEOPLE ARE NOT FLOCKING TO JOIN THIS CLUB

The following excerpt is from the self help
psychology book, Be Your Own Therapist.

People do avoid the first three H's of this mythical Therapy 4-H club: (1)Hatred, (2)Hurt and (3)Hopelessness. These are, nevertheless, core feelings within our trauma knots.* Feel them (and the fourth H) and the trauma knot will generally be no more. Resist them and the trauma knot will often stay forever. There have been few therapies that attempted to face these feelings directly, Primal Scream Therapy being the most notable example. (Note- real 4-H clubs do superb work with youth and farming/ animals - their four H's are Hands, Head, Heart, and Health.)

Most therapies have attempted to help clients more gently with little or no emphasis on hatred, hurt and hopelessness. The difficulty with total avoidance of these painful feelings is that client issues all too frequently never get resolved. They just get managed. For therapists who avoid these H's, cure often becomes a dirty four-letter word because such therapist avoidance makes resolution of client issues problematical. The societal benefits would be great if we were all able to face and feel our own H's. But this likely will never happen, for people just will not sign up for the first three H's.

An important healing truth is that the body reacts virtually the same way to an imagined (or pretended) experience as it does to a real experience.

On the other hand, they will sign up for the fourth, Healing. Inner child therapy (i.e., healing the unexpressed words and unfelt feelings of childhood) focuses on Healing, healing the wounded traumatized inner child. In attempting to heal the inner child, the H's of hurt and hopelessness are often faced and felt appropriately. However, it seems to me that the H of Hatred is regularly omitted and overlooked by some of those using inner-child methods with the result that many traumas often do not get resolved.

This chapter will focus upon the four H's: (1)how to recognize them, (2)how to face them, (3)how to feel them and (4)how to get beyond them. While it is theoretically possible for you, the reader, to do this on your own, success is unlikely without some outside help. Also, it may no longer be either necessary or desirable to concentrate on the four H's, for there is a newer therapeutic method that has started revolutionizing trauma work, namely EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprogramming). The old facing-trauma process could be likened to dentistry without painkillers. Using EMDR, the process is typically eased, smoothed and completed in a much shorter time. If trauma work seems indicated, I highly recommend trying EMDR. It is one of the few methods that produce resolution consistently. It is also far less painful than the old-style trauma-facing methods.

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More Excerpts This Chapter
   Therapy 4-H Club: PEOPLE ARE NOT FLOCKING TO JOIN THIS CLUB
   BLAMING IS VALUABLE - BLAMING IS USELESS
   HATRED
   HURT
   HOPELESSNESS
   HEALING
   THE FUTURE

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