NeuroTherapy Training - The Future of Therapy Today

Thursday, May 14, 2020

The Problem With Goal Setting

“In the absence of defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.” Heinlein

There are times in all of our lives when we can relate to our lives almost descending into that now iconic image presented by the movie, Ground Hog Day. Each day becomes a repetition of the last, filled with activities that just get us by; by activities that aren’t moving us forward, changing how we feel or fueling our souls. The well-known science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein, was not off base about often feeling enslaved by daily trivia, but a heavy emphasis on goal setting to jumpstart a stalled life or to tackle new and chllenging projects is not the place to start.

Goal Setting, Not Bad But Not The Place To Start
The activity of goal setting as a way of changing our lives has become almost de rigueur in modern society causing people to feel out of fashion unless they engage in the activity. The activity emerged out of the 'behavior modification' era of psychology. It's about planning and practicing a new set of behaviors. If it hasn’t been an activity positive for you, you may be one of those who ‘feels guilty because you don’t’, who ‘feels enslaved by excessive use of it’, or possibly one who ‘feels cynical about it’.

There is nothing intrinsically bad about looking forward into our lives and imagining a direction or activities that we feel may move us in a positive direction. In fact, we all do and have done it, even if not in the classic sense. Think back about to when you became motivated to learn any new activity. You kept taking steps and setting higher challenges for yourself even if they weren't well defined.

Those promoting the concept of classic goal setting as a way of moving forward, though, have become almost arrogant about this activity as “the way” we change and pedantic or very narrow in how it should be done. In doing a Google search of the term 'goal setting' I didn’t even have to click on a site, descriptive sentences from the search list gave three examples of this.

"It is only when a person has a clear thought about their career goals and objectives that they get ultimate satisfaction."

"Make a list of every single task you will need to complete in order to achieve your goal."
"Once a person has a basic list of steps, he should set a time frame for meeting the objective that includes regular milestones and check-ups."

NeuroTherapy Training & Moving Forward
In relation to our, method of change, NeuroTherapy Training, we’ve felt that heavily promoting goal setting as the way to move forward positively in life misses the critical point about what human’s must do for changes to be long term. People must work daily to manage fear in a way that changes their body’s experience of fear, not the way their mind understands it.

In NeuroTherapy Training sessions we teach that satisfaction is a feeling one works to sustain internally that should not be reliant on how things are happening externally. With NeuroTherapy Training the focus is on using mental training daily to live as healthfully and happily as possible despite what is happening externally in life.

Some people’s minds, especially those who use more right hemisphere strategies, do not think in lists and in linear ways of doing things. We certainly can learn and use strategies outside of our normal ways that can be helpful, but the best form of “goal setting” for many may not occur by making lists of tasks. Learning about one’s particular approach to moving forward in life, and controlling fear so as not to feel insecure about your 'different' approach to goal setting are things that happen in NeuroTherapy Training sessions.

It is good to reexamining our progress through life and through projects, but if one doesn’t work regularly to control fear, those setting of milestones and making check-ups, however one goes about it, will be behaviors that won’t happen or won’t last. They will feel like judgments or punishment if one cannot handle the fact that something hasn’t happened or been accomplished as planned.

Some Thoughts More Effective Use of Goals
1.We’ve always suggested in our work not to feel coopted by goals, to not let goals ransom your future.
2.Classic goal setting may not be right for everyone. Just as there are different learning styles there are different styles of activity people will feel comfortable using in the act of focusing on and directing future activities.

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Audio Programs About the NeuroTherapy Training Approach

A Natural Psychoanalytic Effect

Before turning to NeuroTherapy Training, periodically students and clients have experienced analytical methods. Analytical methods of psychotherapy have a theoretical basis of ‘We are as we are largely because of deep seated memories, and inner conflicts". The methods involve bringing to the surface those memories, often using catharsis of emotion as a “releasing factor”.

NeuroTherapy Training is not based on an analytical model. Instead you improve and develop greater self control by stimulating change in the inner working of your brain and body through effective guidance in and regular use of mental training. It certainly doesn’t discount that we are affected and emotionally challenged at times by things that have happened to us. It is not those incidents, however painful, that are considered the problem, though. It is your continued response to those incidents.

NeuroTherapy Training is a powerful method of changing your responses to life and having those changes sustained for the long term. It actually creates a natural psychoanalytic effect as you are more able to “deal” with or “bring up” painful incidents when fear is less of a factor for you.

An important statement from Chapter 15 of The Snyder Michael Method A Neurotherapeutic Approach:
“As emotional strength is built, people commonly experience a natural rise of previously suppressed emotional material. This happens, though, without the negative emotional intensity previously carried with it. It is much more beneficial to help people build emotional strength, whereupon facing the sensitive material will automatically become less of an unsettling experience.”

When Life Is Threatening

I can still see the exhausted faces and bodies of clients, effective in their careers, but who were literally drained - exhausted. At the end of a week they looked beaten down having fought off “Feel guilty”… “Feel afraid”… “Feel inadequate” messages daily and having pushed their brains and bodies through wee hour marathons of work

Negative emotions and their physiology wreck havoc on mental strength and clarity and on the human body. And, the brain and body have limited endurance. These folks needed help managing the effects of the destruction, and destruction isn’t too heavy a word. More critically, they needed to learn how to stay more removed from the emotional assaults, dissipate the effects of the assaults that manage to play out on the body and they needed to learn how to rejuvenate the brain and body. That is the focus of NeuroTherapy Training.

Further engaging their intellects in examining the “issues”of their lives is a less effective approach, their intellects are engaged to their limits. The methods of psychotherapy designed to help people understand their lives better in order to respond better; or to help people to reframe how they perceive things or communicate more effectively are dealing with a flawed machine. *

We have specialized for years with people facing life threatening illnesses. It has always been clear to us that these people “do not have the luxury of time” to work through the issues of their lives in a traditional therapeutic sense. They cannot afford to have emotions such as fear (which looms larger than ever) weaken immune responses and sap limited energy. They cannot afford to expend as many of the body’s resources meeting the demands of daily life. They need to be helped to dramatically and quickly change how they respond to life and be able to sustain those healthier responses.

Over time, we came to see an irony. The ways in which many people respond to the pressures of modern daily life is “life threatening”.Though not facing the specter of a disease they, also, do not have the luxury of time to work through the issues of their lives in the traditional sense.

We are living in exceptional times. Knowledge about mind body interaction has given us powerful insights into better ways of helping people manage the destruction their interactions with the modern world brings about. We took those insights and developed an amazing therapeutic process that helps people make major changes in how they respond to life, make those changes in a timely manner and learn how to sustain those changes.

You can learn more about NeuroTherapy Training through the Article Index and the newsletter archive in the blog heading, and through our website www.TherapyoftheFuture.com

*The practicing psychotherapeutic professionals and life coaches who’ve taken our professional training have greatly enhanced the effectiveness of their work by being able to offer training that improves the “mind-body mechanism”. When the brain and body are less assaulted, when people have the ability to regularly dissipate the physiology of fear and other limiting emotions, they can then truly engage in and benefit from more cognitively based programs of improvement.

Are You Moving Fluidly Through Life?

You can learn more about NeuroTherapy Training through the Article Index and the newsletter archive in the blog heading, and through our website www.TherapyoftheFuture.com

Are You Demanding Too Much Of Your Brain?

In our busy, highly intellectual world, taking time out to rest and clear the brain, to shift into a mental state different than required for intellectual thought, to basically reboot the brain quieting the nervous systems, is not a task rated highly.

To say there are many functions our brains perform is an understatement. For a moment, think of the brain like a computer, as I type this document the process is similar to the thoughts that appear to me as I go through a day. There is a whole lot going on under the surface of this computer to allow these words to appear in a coherent manner on this nice virtual page in front of me.

I have a nephew who is a computer engineer. He understands all the inner workings of this computer in the manner a neurologist or neurosurgeon might understand the inner workings of my brain that allow coherent thoughts to emerge. They certainly aren’t as far along with understanding the connection between minute brain functions and the emergence of coherent thoughts, but it’s critical for us to consider the mechanism behind our thoughts and our states of mind.

An important message of NeuroTherapy Training is that we must think of ourselves as caretakers of our brains like we are caretakers of our computers and other machines. When we are tired, when we have not ‘fueled” our brains and bodies appropriately, when we are expecting our brains to multitask continuously, the mechanism can let us down. Just like with our computers, though, instead of responding to the brain’s needs, many of us get very frustrated when our brains don’t work as efficiently as we want them to. What have we done, though, to enable the brain to perform its functions flawlessly?

Making a form of daily mental training primary in your life is just common sense. NeuroTherapy Training does just that. And, with the addition of SUBVERBAL SHIFTING as part of that brain training, you are truly getting that ‘reboot’ at regular intervals so critical for an effectively functioning brain.

We're Shaped By How Our Brains And Bodies Work Not Just By What We Understand

Neurodiversity is a relatively new term but something we have understood, taught clients about and honored for many years. My husband has lived with extreme dyslexia and dysarthria (mispronouncing of words) paired with an extremely high IQ, some clear signs of his more right hemisphere dominance. This made us aware personally of neurological differences and that they weren’t necessarily just negative but were part of how a person processes their world. In my husband’s case that 'processing' was often interesting and very enlightened and sometimes humorous. Some of the unique aspects of NeuroTherapy Training came out of his looking at the world and the field of psychology in nontraditional ways. Our emphasis on examining neurological dominance and getting people thinking about how their lives are shaped by the inner working of their brains and bodies began very early in our work.

We are shaped by how our brains and bodies work not just by what our minds understand. That is a lot of what NeuroTherapy Training is about. Teaching people to better understand and honor their ‘neurodiversity’ and to enable the brain and body to work at optimum efficiency to meet the demands of the world most effectively in ways that come natural to them.

I just finished an excellent book, The Power of Neurodiversity Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired Brain By Thomas Armstrong. It takes a fascinating look at different neurological ways of functioning, ADD/ADHD, Asperberger’s Sydrome/Autuism, Dyslexia, Mood Disorders (Depression), Anxiety Disorders (OCD, Panic attacks, etc.) and the Intellectually Challenged. It views them through a different lens. Some things it examines are:

1.Their potential positive function in evolution of the species,
2.Their benefits
3.Ways of constructing life to help a person be more comfortable and effective functioning differently in a world with, sometimes narrow, values and demands for thinking and acting in certain ways.

Understanding and celebrating neurodiversity is a topic so close to our hearts and our work. I am going to talk more about the topic and the book in the primary article of the next newsletter, so stay tuned. If you aren’t subscribed yet, here is a link to the current newsletter. NeuroTherapy Newsletter: The Challenge of Change

Note about the term Neurotherapy

The term Neurotherapy has come to be widely used to refer to numerous methods of helping people, often methods that use biofeedback hardware sometimes called Neurofeedback. The method, NeuroTherapy Training, that is discussed here, differs from any method relying on biofeedback hardware.

NeuroTherapy Training, is a powerful mental training method that teaches people how to use natural mental training to diminish and better manage the eruptions of emotions throughout the brain and body. It is a full psychotherapeutic method with important benefits for improving physical health.

Our website: www.therapyofthefuture.com is currently under a reconstruction.

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