Teachings Based on ACIM

Counselling and Psychotherapy

Part 1

Counselling- Purpose, Process and Practice.

Purpose:

The ultimate goal of counselling is to bring about or effect a change in some way, which will allow the counselee to live at a more optimum level.

The job of the counselor is to:

• Help the counselee understand his own personality problems.
• To help clarify attitudes and positions.
• To bring about honesty.
• To point out possibilities.
• To lead the counselee to an acceptance of responsibility for the outcome and conduct of his life.
• To use the possibilities of freedom to make a decision.
• To help the counselee accept 'To thine own self be true And it must follow, as the night the day thou canst not be false to any man'.
• To bring about social integration. To get on with fellow man.
• To release the fears that bring havoc in human relations.
• To trust.
• To transform destructive conflicts into constructive ones. To overcome minor difficulties that might be said to be the normal condition of worldly living or more major difficulties, which may be described as neuroses
• To help make adjustments to the personality in terms of thinking and behaviour.
• To bring the conflict out of the unconscious into the conscious.
• To ease repression (blocked instinctual urges.).
• To maintain and preserve the uniqueness of each person.
• To self-develop- the person is to develop himself into that which he is.
• The function of the counselor is to assist the counselee to find his real self, and then to help to have the courage to be this self.
• To help him/her to accept him/herself, his/her uniqueness.
• It is the counselor's function to assist the counselee to a cheerful acceptance of her social responsibility, to give her courage, which will release her from her compulsion to her inferiority feeling and help her to direct her striving towards socially constructive ends.
• The counselor should not relieve the counselee of suffering, but rather redirect the energy into constructive channels to bring about change.
• The counselor is always to remember God works the cure.

Process:

To bring about a relaxation and trust within the counselee. To put her at ease. It is in the state of relaxation that changes can be made mentally and behaviourally. It is love that releases the personality, not fear. The counselor is a guide and friend.

• The counselor must understand his own personality problems, to make helping more effective.
• Counselling is never argument, rather it is pointing out possibilities.
• The counselor will never meet a counselee in which he will not see himself, at least potentially.
• It is the job of the counselor to question with direction, to guide the direction of the dialogue. Ideally the counselor does about one third of the talking to two thirds for the counselee.
• To bring about greater honesty: the deeper one penetrates into psychological understanding, the more difficult it becomes to lie. Every human being has the tendency to deceive others, because his ego is always striving to raise its own prestige at the expense of others. It is very difficult for the ego to accept a position of inferiority so will resort to running down others to raise itself up.
• To reveal the personality to the person.
• To mirror or reflect back.
• To repeat what has been said. To bring to self-consciousness.
• To summarize effectively what has occurred.
• To discover the motivations in the personality.
• To enable the counselee to see.
• To lay out all the constructive alternatives to the counselee: personality is not transformed by advice.
• To bring understanding.

The counselor wishes to bring out independent decisions on the part of the counselee.

The Therapeutic Encounter:

The four stages of the therapeutic encounter could be described as:

1. Contact.
2. Rapport.
3. Confession. Talking it out honestly.
4. Interpretation.

Practice:

• Telephone.
• Face to face.
• Comfortable quiet room. No distractions.
• Tea, water and tissues.
• Time arrangements.
• Explain payment beforehand.
• Keeping appointments.
• Seats at same height and comfortable distance apart.

Reading character.

The counselor requires great sensitivity to people. The personality pattern shows itself in an individual's every activity including:

• Clothes and appearance.
• Distance in sitting- movement towards or away.
• Crossing re-crossing legs, grasping arms tightly.
• Holding body stiffly.
• Read joy or pain, fear, eyes, laughing, tone of voice, protests too much, doubts about what is being said.
• Honesty in speech usually means directness, watch for the involved roundabout style.
• Forgetfulness- one does not forget by accident. Memory works with a purpose.
• Slips in speech. The Freudian slip!
• Family Constellation: The position in the family and the arrangement of all family members.
• The nature of the present problem. When it started. The events happening around the time of it starting.
• Landmark moments in life, the main events.

Empathy - What is it?

• One person so feels himself into the other as to temporarily lose his own identity.
• Identification with someone without which no real understanding takes place.
• It is the fundamental process in love.

The counselor has to go out of herself almost completely. The experience of this frees the consular from his own problems but at the end may feel quite fatigued.
Note: The consular does not say that happened to me to gain empathy, and then re-count his own story. Each experience is unique.

Influence:

Works chiefly in the unconscious, and results from empathy.

1 .Influence of ideas.
2. Influence of personality. Put counselee in a given mood. The consular exerts the influence of thought. Be the best you can be.

Exercise.

1. Find a specific situation where conflict has occurred.
2. See it from your personal perspective.
3. See it from the other person's perspective- step into their shoes.
4. See it from someone outside the situation's point of view.

Part 2

Psychotherapy: Purpose Process and Practice.

What is it?

• The analysis of the subjective mind. It is a scientific method for the erasure of false beliefs. It is often the forgiveness of sins done in a scientific manner. E.H.
• The dispelling of illusions (false perceptions) is forgiveness.
• Psychotherapy is the only real form of therapy there is. Only the mind is in need of healing.
• Psychotherapy is necessary so that an individual can begin to question reality.
• It is the way in which a patient can be helped to change his mind about the 'reality' of illusions.
• It is the undoing of the ego. We are all psychotherapists and patients.

Purpose:

• To remove the blocks to truth.
• To teach forgiveness and help the patient to accept it. And in his healing is the therapist forgiven with him.
• To restore to the patient the awareness that his thought projections are producing effects on him.
• To restore the ability of the patient to make new decisions based on this awareness.
• It saves time.
• It prepares additional teachers for His Work.

Process:

• Psychotherapy is a process that changes the view of the self.
• To make way for reality.
• To help the patient deal with one fundamental error - the belief that anger brings him something he wants. By justifying attack he believes he is protecting himself. To see this error is to be saved.
• The process teaches forgiveness rather than condemnation.
• The patient and therapist must have agreed that healing is of the mind.
• Retrogression is temporary. Always the overall direction is one of progress.
• Psychotherapy is a series of holy encounters in which brothers meet each other and receive the peace of God.
• A therapist learns through teaching. The more advanced he is the more he teaches and the more he learns.
• Whatever stage he is at there are patients who need him that way. They cannot take more than he can give.
• Psychotherapy is experience.
• No one who learns to forgive can fail to remember God. (Truth.)
• God is known- belief in God is not a meaningful concept.
• The process is the return to sanity.
• If two are joined-there I am.
• There is no universal approach- listen to each one, and let him formulate his own curriculum, not the curriculum's goal but how he can best reach the aim it sets for him.
• Healing comes from God.
• Each one must share one goal with someone else, and in so doing lose all sense of separate interests.
• Communion is impossible alone. No one who stands apart can receive Christ's Vision.
• Let him be still and recognise his brothers need is his own.
• The psychotherapist walks slightly ahead of the patient and helps him avoid pitfalls along the road, however the psychotherapist is always following the guidance from the One.
• Healing is limited by the limitations of the psychotherapist as it is limited by those of the patient. The aim of the process is to transcend these limits. Neither can do this alone.

The formula for salvation:

1. One asks for help,
2. Another hears,
3. And tries to answer in the form of help.

Illness:

• All illness is mental illness. It is a judgement on the Son of God and judgement is a mental activity. Judgement is a decision made again and again against creation and its Creator.
• Illness is an expression of sorrow and guilt.
• Once God's Son is seen as guilty, illness becomes inevitable. Healing is correction of this error.
• Illness of any kind may be defined as the result of a view of the self as weak, vulnerable, evil and endangered and thus in need of constant defence. If error is accepted as real it will be dealt with by illusions.
• There are no degrees of sickness to the psychotherapist.
• The Psychotherapist may be seen as the one who is attacking the patient's most cherished possession: his picture of himself. He must meet attack without attack and therefore without defence.
• Relieve the mind of the insane burden of guilt it carries so wearily and healing is accomplished. The body is not cured. It is merely recognised as what it is. What is the need for sickness then?

Nothing is holier than helping one who asks for help.

• A brother seeking aid can bring us gifts beyond the heights perceived in any dream.
• Hear a brother call for help and answer him.
• The unforgiving are sick; believing they are unforgiving.
• Healing occurs as the patient begins to hear the dirge he sings: and question its validity. (It is to change ones tune).
• Unforgiveness seen undisguised is intolerable.
• When an unforgiveness is not recognised it seems to take the form of something else.

The Therapist is both patient and therapist. Physician heal thyself.
Each patient offers the therapist a chance to heal himself.

Think carefully teacher and therapist for whom you pray and who is in need of healing.

Therapy is prayer and healing is its aim.
What is prayer except the joining of minds in a relationship that Christ can enter.

The therapist in his heart tells the patient that all his sins have been forgiven him, along with his own.

Only Christ forgives, knowing his sinlessness. His Vision heals perception and sickness disappears.

The unhealed healer confuses himself with God. If he thinks he is in charge of the therapeutic process and was therefore responsible for its outcome. Who could experience the end of guilt if he feels responsible for his brother in the role of guide for him.

The advanced therapist in no way can ever doubt the power in him nor does he doubt its Source. All power in earth and Heaven belongs to him because of who he is.

When two brothers join the room becomes a temple.

Let your patient in for he has come to you from God.

I am here to be truly helpful,
I am here to represent Him who sent me,
I will not worry what to do or what to say,
For He who sent me will direct me,
I am content to be wherever He wishes me, knowing He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal.

Practice:

Everyone who is sent to you is a patient of yours. No-one comes to you by mistake.

What do you offer?

Something in the patient will tell you if you listen. Listen, do not demand, do not decide, do not sacrifice- listen.

The patient does not have to be physically present. A name a thought a picture an idea or just a feeling of reaching out to someone somewhere.

The Professional Psychotherapist:

Those who devote themselves to healing as their chief function. A large number turn to them for help. The professional is in an excellent position to demonstrate there is no order of difficulty in healing.
Something good must come from every meeting of patient and therapist. It is in the instant that the psychotherapist forgets to judge the patient, that healing occurs. When judgement ceases.
The professional psychotherapist realises that minds are joined. Many holy instants can be his along the way. He is to save time. To learn the equality of patient and therapist.

Payment:

No one can pay for therapy as such, for healing is of God and He asks nothing. Therapist has earthly needs while he is here. Money will be given him, not in payment for healing, but to help better serve the plan. Money is not evil. It is nothing. But no one can live with no illusions. While he stays he will be given all he needs to stay. Whatever one needs is given by the other; whatever one lacks the other supplies. The therapist repays the patient in gratitude as does the patient repay him. No one should be turned away because he cannot pay. No one is sent by accident. Relationships are always purposeful. In sharing everyone must gain a blessing without cost.

Many will come to you for the gift of healing if you so elect. He will give you endless opportunities to open your door to your salvation for such is his function. Whoever He sends you will reach you, holding out his hand to His Friend. Let the Christ in you bid him welcome, for that same Christ is in him as well. Do not forget how very simple are the ways of God. You were lost in the darkness of the world until you asked for light. And then God sent His Son to give it to you.

Further notes. (Urtext on therapy p.89.)

1. Must involve the recognition rather than the denial of the importance of thought.
2. The exact equality of everyone who is involved. This includes J.C.
3. No one is either therapist or patient. Teacher or pupil. Everyone is both.
4. Above all everyone involved must want to give up everything that is NOT true.

Therapy is exactly the same as all the other forms of miracle working. It has no separate laws of its own. Unless therapy proceeds from miracle mindedness, it cannot heal. The therapist (hopefully) does have the role of being a better perceiver. It does not follow that he is a better knower. Temporarily the therapist or teacher can help in straightening out twisted perceptions, which is also the only role that I would ever contribute myself. All therapy should try to place everyone involved in the right frame of mind to help one another. Any form of mental illness can truthfully be described as an expression of viciousness. The Psychotherapist needs appreciate the power of mind. Never depreciate it.