“Energy psychotherapy” is a broad term that refers to a range of tools and techniques that can be woven into whatever psychotherapeutic style a therapist is already practicing. It does reflect the premise that you have an energetic system (as does all of life), and that if you’re experiencing a “symptom” — whether it’s emotional, psychological, or physical — it means that there is a disruption in the flow of your energy somewhere.
The tools and techniques of energy psychotherapy correct that energetic disruption and get your energy moving again. When it does, you feel better.
So the short answer is that energy psychotherapy isn’t actually different from traditional psychotherapy in the sense that many traditionally trained “talk therapists” weave it into their therapy. It’s just another tool to use.
But at another level, it can reflect a fundamental difference in how we view trauma, change, and healing. I started exploring it 20 years ago as I got more and more frustrated with traditional talk therapy, and its limitations in facilitating healing. I worked with so many people — and experienced this for myself — who understood intellectually and insightfully why they felt the way they did, why they behaved the way they did, but still were in pain, were still stuck in their patterns, feeling helpless to actually change their lives.
Insight Is Not Enough!
Insight alone is not enough. By itself, your mind cannot change your trauma patterns or your physiological responses — just see what happens when you tell a person having a panic attack to “just relax.” (Note: don’t do that.)
Everything is connected to everything else in your system, but it’s the energy holding a particular pattern together that drives your behavior.
Our system is perfectly wired to metabolize and digest experiences, taking from them what is useful, discarding the rest. Most of our experiences aren’t remarkable, but the ones we do remember are the ones that have an “emotional charge” component to them. We have an emotional charge with experiences that we interpret as being connected to our survival.
The survival risk can be physical, emotional, psychological, or a combination. “Jason” grew up in a household where his single mom felt overworked and overwhelmed. Whenever she found him sitting in the living room reading a book, watching TV, or doing anything she perceived as “not working,” she would fly into a rage. Not surprisingly, as an adult, Jason has had a lot of trouble letting himself relax. He tenses when someone “catches” him doing something he imagines isn’t productive enough. His whole body reacts as if he’s about to be attacked, remembering every other time it happened, because his survival is at stake and our psyches take survival very seriously.
Energy psych techniques work to clear the energetic charge keeping that pattern of reactivity going. It clears the energy layer by layer — it’s a very interesting and different experience as the strong emotional response of the experience begins to evaporate. Other parts of the experience — buried under the strongest initial response — emerge. More adaptive responses spring up spontaneously. And all of this can take place within minutes. I’ve been using these techniques for over 20 years, and every single day I am awed by their power to facilitate healing of the most intractable problems.
With Jason, we used the energy techniques to clear the original experiences that created the pattern. We didn’t have to go through all of them – our brains organize experiences into groups, which can be cleared as groups too. We cleared enough of those experiences so that there literally wasn’t enough energy left to maintain those reactivity patterns. It didn’t take a long time – maybe a few sessions.
So what can be different is that change happens more quickly. Emotional baggage that you might have gotten quite used to, even identified with and gotten quite attached to, can be considerably lightened by the end of the hour. Would you be ready for that?
In practice, I’m looking for charged emotional patterns, so I don’t need to start with a long, exhaustive history of your life. I tend to want a basic idea of what’s going on, what it is you want, how you see things as being connected, and then I just jump in and start somewhere. You and your process will guide the rest. What comes up from the EFT tapping or the Spinal Release back pounding will tell us what other experiences are relevant.
So using energy psych techniques as part of the therapeutic process makes it incredibly efficient. A lot — a lot — can happen in an hour.
Which makes it much more fun. Who wants to tell the same painful story over and over again? Seriously, after a while, we can bore even ourselves with them. But even with stories that we’re invested in perpetuating, targeting the “not wanting to give that story up” is useful and interesting.
What is it about that experience that makes it so important to you? Let that voice be heard. Energy psych lets you start with where you are, and go from there. Anything can be a useful and productive way in. Just follow the energy!
Hugs,
Martha