Therapy can get bogged down when preoccupation occurs with small details and the bigger picture gets lost. My clients have often thanked me the most for providing and explaining how to use big concepts developed by major psychological theorists. The biggest Kahuna of them all is Freud’s concept of the unconscious the place where memories of experiences, beliefs, biases, emotions, urges, and aversions get stored and from which they operate invisibly to mold conscious behavior. Just knowing there is an unconscious that can be explored helps clients who are mystified by and struggling to change behaviors that don’t resonate with their perceived identity or with the self they aspire to be. The related concepts of meaning and purpose are also key. When the client’s life has become disconnected from meaning and she feels purposeless, she is one small step away from discouragement, nihilistic despair, and depression. Use of therapy to restore meaning and purpose create positive feelings of wholeness, of being on the right track, and of being connected to self, others, and world.
Internal vs. external locus of control is another huge concept that helps clients discern where they attribute power over their lives. While an external locus makes clients feel powerless to alter what they perceive as fate, bad luck, ancestral trauma or genes, an internal locus empowers them to increase self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. Boundaries are a very important concept. Many clients enter therapy with poor boundaries and little to no awareness of what boundaries are, how they function, and how they can be used for self-protection and self-determination by the client or abused by others who invade and dominate the client. Self-care and self-compassion are essential too. Perfectionistic, workaholic, people-pleasing, and codependent clients sacrifice self-care on the altar of over-extending themselves. Clients with a harsh inner critic who are way too hard on themselves and unable to forgive themselves for mistakes and failures can benefit greatly by learning self-compassion. Therapies like IFS help clients apply self-compassion to heal their wounded inner child with great effectiveness.
The related concepts of attention and presence are vital in therapy. It has been rightly said that the history of one’s life is the history of where she has put her attention. The road to chronic depression involves over-focusing on one’s imperfections, flaws, and mistakes, while the road to euthymic mood involves paying attention to one’s positive qualities, achievements, and relationships and experiencing gratitude. Presence has to do with sustained non-judgmental awareness. When clients are truly present to and attuned with others, they can form bonds of friendship and love. When they are present with Nature they can experience uplift, inspiration, and awe. When they are present with their own emotions, they can learn to comfort and soothe themselves instead of being angry or needing a numbing agent such as alcohol, drugs or dissociation.
