FOR PATIENTS: So who should I go to for help?
I’ve been thinking about this issue for some time now. It brings too much reflection to fit the framework that the form of a blog gives. I’ve even gone through a brief history of setting up psychotherapy online to explain this issue in a simple way. Giving it the form of a joke, I have already reached an example from the old movie Reaper of the Mind and understood that something goes wrong when I look for basic assumptions.
But let’s try.
The soul is included in the very name “psychology”, “psychotherapy”. After reaching the aforementioned Mind Reaper, I decided that we must be misinterpreting it! Maybe it is not knowledge or treatment of the soul (Psychotherapy – > healing of the soul, Psychology – > knowledge about the soul). This is where you can get bogged down, so let’s approach it, looking for another starting point. Maybe it’s healing with the Soul (and they know about it), not healing the soul. Or the knowledge resulting from the assumption of having the Psyche, and not the knowledge of the Psyche itself. In the end, it may come out the same way, but it’s about trying to understand it in a simpler way. Maybe this construct called Psyche has already been proven in the Laboratory of Psychophysiology and it is not worth worrying about it for a long time?
Instead of looking for the soul in online psychotherapy or psychology, let’s look for healing factors, because these disciplines, by definition, should contain the Soul/Psyche and knowledge about it.
So what are the healing factors?
There is an assumption that talking can help. What does this mean? It can help reduce tensions, restoring balance to the nervous system, ultimately physiological system, etc., after some time, by naming knowledge about oneself and getting to know oneself. So it’s like you’re healing, because you’re starting to understand yourself.
Is getting to know yourself and understanding yourself also the way to know the truth? It may be so. We don’t know exactly, here too it is possible to get bogged down between subjective and universal truth, and the framework is given by people who rely on the law (referring to justice, logic, ethics, consequences of action), not always bringing the right answers, because the law also changes, probably referring to statistics and the common and individual good.
It sounds philosophical, but it’s very simple. A psychotherapist has techniques based on knowledge primarily from studies in nature, biology, humanities, medical studies focused on humans and their environment (psychology combines these disciplines more or less) and knowledge-based training in the field of examples of psychopathology symptoms (that is why it is so important to go to a psychotherapist after appropriate training that provides preparation for working with specific disorders or deficits).
A psychotherapist should understand his patient as comprehensively as possible. The risk of having to redirect someone means that the problem is hidden elsewhere, and the specialization of that particular psychotherapist may not be enough.
For example, if the issue of addiction arises, you should first of all look for an addiction psychotherapist and/or a sexologist (addictions are different) or if you know as a patient that you have a serious problem with self-destruction and feel bad, then a psychoanalyst, psychodynamic psychotherapist or CBT psychotherapist can be helpful.
However, you should always rule out the problem of addiction or even maniacal thinking about an issue, e.g. sexual. As long as it is a limitation, there is no way to deal with the suffering of an individual who finds it difficult to coexist with others. There is no way to deal with the Soul (of course, from the perspective of physiology, this is rather untrue. An introduction is needed, let’s remove the tensions caused by addiction or self-destruction. Where there is development, there is already Psyche.).
During psychotherapy, attempts are made to understand suffering, tame it and teach the patient how to avoid it.
And this is how new possibilities arise – if the pain of life/existence appears, you lose its meaning, this is where psychodynamic-humanistic, existential, psychoanalysis, analytical, psychodynamic or gestalt psychotherapies will help.
If you don’t feel yourself, you don’t understand emotions, you don’t understand the body, relationships, closing such figures (which can be emotions, relationships, ego, etc.), Gestalt or psychodynamic psychotherapy will help here.
So what does systemic psychotherapy do?
Well, it integrates several additional fields in order to first understand and initially name the psychopathologies of an individual by making hypotheses (elements of the psychodynamic approach), to understand how a given person or a given family structure copes with emotions and how they react to situations (elements of gestalt). He asks the question whether it is possible to help more within the tasks by focusing on specific solutions (elements of CBT), gives understanding, using other areas that for some reason occupy the psychotherapist, but above all, CHECKS THE PATIENT’S REALITY AND THEN NAMES IT, that is:
– what affects him,
– what relationships are important to this person,
– what they can do to change their situation,
– what can he realistically do in the situation he is in,
– diagnoses the patient’s situation,
– gives hypotheses, which may affect the persistence of psychopathology or difficulties that the patient reports individually or as a couple or family,
– what are the real possibilities of a patient who comes to psychotherapy at a given moment in his or her life and what are his or her weak and strong points, i.e. what can start to germinate towards change at a given moment,
– The patient is treated here as an expert to a certain extent, because so far he has survived in the structures that surround him and which he co-created.
Therefore, patients often feel that they are in chaos before they begin to sense and name the contours of themselves and relationships. They begin to understand that they can have a big influence on their decisions and for what they really take responsibility for.
The question of roles and division of responsibilities is a fundamental question in systemic psychotherapy of the couple and the family, while the patient’s influences and burdens due to the role performed are individually diagnosed.
The influence of other systems on a given person (i.e. environments) is also sought, but pathologizing the patient’s behaviour is avoided in order to find space to go beyond the usual pattern of behaviour. Strong boundaries are also set here if there is too much of something.
Who is systemic psychotherapy in the field of individual psychotherapy in my office for:
For people who, often as a result of pathology or family dysfunction, cannot realize themselves and are looking for boundaries as adults. They want to learn how not to have conflicts when making decisions, because they are already aware and responsible enough to do so. They also try to leave the system that fails and keeps them suffering. Often these are people who cannot fulfill themselves.
Their Psyche suffers, because in order to survive the heartlessness of the system, they had to dissociate and react with anxiety disorders. Such people can suffer from PTSD at a young age. They may not have children because there is not enough space for them. They are creative and solution-oriented, they try not to be afraid of aggression, because they learn to fight the violence they have experienced thanks to it. They want to be assertive.
Interventions in this form of assistance are not crisis interventions (then you have to call the ICC, the police, or go to the hospital if the reactions threaten suicide, decompensation, etc.). Of course, these are interventions in general, but they will not alleviate suffering immediately. Rather, it is an attempt to name and understand from the perspective of a third person trying to capture the patient’s world as seen through his eyes, that is, what I hear when I listen to you, what I understand and what I don’t know.
A potential patient may be a victim of the functioning of a given system to some extent (e.g. a victim of war), but they may not agree to be that victim. The psyche of such a person is looking for strategies to survive the violence.
In such psychotherapy, you can find your own, healthy defense strategies that go beyond psychopathology. Therefore, in this form of help, it is difficult to work with typical cases diagnosed as personality disorders (psychodynamic psychotherapy or psychoanalysis will help here). They are also people who are looking for understanding and knowledge about the culture in which they find themselves, so for refugees, immigrants or emigrants, because this method also uses psychoeducation, if necessary. The same applies to cases of people who are unaware of being victims of new religious movements or new emerging systems (such as subcultures, peer groups, etc.).
Often, during systemic psychotherapy, we create genograms, which we, as psychotherapists, treat as confrontations. Because the genogram is graphically depicted, but with time and the process of psychotherapy, its nature and patterns change. Therefore, this form of psychotherapy is very useful, as it is focused on change in relationships and environment. It also strengthens the patient so that he is not afraid of loneliness and that he consciously chooses people close to him, avoiding family or other patterns that co-created his psychopathology (feedback).
That is why I invite people who have undergone trauma as part of Interventional Systemic and Cultural Psychotherapy, who are not afraid of the psychotherapist changing the level of activity and methods of work, which can, above all, be tailored to the given moment of life in which the patient reports.
Yes, the system method understood in this way, including the IPSK method, works online.
I cordially invite you!
Paulina Kubś, MA
The song is as usual because of the lyrics, I’m not responsible for the music video and I DON’T WORK WITH IT!!
Lose Your Soul – YouTube
