About Psyche in Systemic Psychotherapy, also according to my Systemic-Cultural Intervention Psychotherapy Method and more

FOR PATIENTS: Who should I go to for help?

I’ve been thinking about this issue for some time. It brings too many reflections to fit into the framework of a blog post. I’ve even gone through a brief history of the development of online psychotherapy to explain this issue in a simple way. Making it a joke, I’ve reached the example of the old movie “The Soul Reaper” and realized that something is going wrong when I’m looking for basic assumptions.

But let’s try.

The soul is contained in the very name “psychology,” “psychotherapy.” After reaching the aforementioned Soul Reaper, I thought that maybe we are translating it wrong! Maybe it’s not about the knowledge or treatment of the soul (Psychotherapy -> healing of the soul, Psychology -> knowledge of the soul). Let’s approach it differently, looking for another starting point. Maybe it’s healing by the Soul (and knowledge about it), not healing of the soul. Or knowledge based on the assumption of having Psyche, not knowledge about Psyche itself. In the end, it may come out the same, but it’s about trying to understand it in a simpler way. Maybe the Laboratory of Psychophysiology has already proven this construct called Psyche, and it’s not worth breaking our heads over it for too long?

Instead of looking for the soul in online psychotherapy or psychology, maybe we should look for healing factors, because these disciplines by definition should contain the Soul/Psyche and knowledge about it.

What are the healing factors then?

There is an assumption that conversation can help. What does this mean? It can help reduce tension, restoring balance to the nervous system, and ultimately to the physiological system, etc., by naming knowledge about oneself and understanding oneself. So it’s like you heal yourself because you start to understand yourself.

Is knowing and understanding oneself also a path to knowing the truth? It might be. We don’t know exactly, here too we can get stuck between subjective and universal truth, and the framework is still set by people who rely on 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 common and individual good.

It sounds philosophical, but it’s very simple. The psychotherapist has techniques based mainly on knowledge from natural sciences, biology, humanities, medical sciences focused on humans and their environment (psychology combines these disciplines more or less), and training based on knowledge of examples of psychopathological symptoms (that’s why it’s so important to get to a psychotherapist with proper training, which prepares for work with specific disorders or deficits).

The psychotherapist should understand his patient as comprehensively as possible. The risk of needing to refer someone means that the problem is hidden elsewhere, and the specialization of that particular psychotherapist may be insufficient.

For example, if addiction arises, you should primarily look for an addiction therapist or/and sexologist (there are different types of addiction) or if you know as a patient that you have a serious problem with self-destruction and you feel bad, then a psychoanalyst, psychodynamic therapist or CBT therapist may be helpful.

However, you should always rule out trouble with addiction or even maniacal thinking about a certain issue, e.g. sexual. As long as there is a limitation, there is no way to address 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 a physiological perspective, this is probably not true. An introduction is needed, let’s remove tensions caused by addiction or self-destruction. Where there is development, there is already Psyche.).

During psychotherapy, one tries to understand suffering, familiarize with it, and teach the patient how to avoid it.

And so new possibilities arise – if you feel the pain of life/existence, lose its meaning, here psychodynamic-humanistic, existential, analytical, psychodynamic, or gestalt therapies will help.

If you don’t feel yourself, don’t understand emotions, don’t understand the body, relationships, closing such figures (which can be emotions, relationships, ego, etc.), Gestalt or psychodynamic psychotherapy will help.

And what does systemic psychotherapy do?

Well, it integrates several additional disciplines to first understand and preliminarily name the psychopathologies of the individual by making hypotheses (elements of the psychodynamic approach), understand how a given person or family structure copes with emotions and reacts to situations (elements of gestalt). It asks if tasks can help more by focusing on specific solutions (elements of CBT), gives understanding, using the remaining disciplines, which for some reason occupy the psychotherapist, but above all, CHECKS THE REALITY OF THE PATIENT, AND THEN NAMES IT, i.e.:

• what influences the patient,
• what relationships are important for this person,
• what the patient can do to change one’s situation,
• what the patient can realistically do in the situation one’s is in,
• diagnoses the situation of the patient,
• gives hypotheses on what may be maintaining the psychopathology or difficulties with which the patient presents individually or as a couple or family,
• what are the real possibilities of the patient who is currently seeking psychotherapy and what are his or the given structure’s weak and strong points, i.e. what can start to germinate towards change at the given moment,
• the patient is treated as an expert to some extent because he has survived so far in the structures that surround him and which he co-created.

That’s why patients often feel like they are in chaos before they start to sense and name the contours of themselves and relationships. They begin to understand that they can have a big impact on their decisions and what they are really responsible for.

The question of roles and division of duties is a basic question in systemic therapy for couples and families, while individually the influences of the patient and the burdens due to the performed role are diagnosed.

It also looks for influences of other systems on the given person (i.e. environments), but avoids pathologizing the patient’s behavior, to find space to step out of the usual pattern of behavior. Strong boundaries are also set here if there is too much of something.

For who is systemic psychotherapy for in the scope of individual psychotherapy in my office:

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 aware and responsible enough to do so. They also try to leave the system that is faltering and keeping them in suffering. Often these are people who cannot realize themselves.

Their Psyche suffers because to survive the soullessness of the system they had to dissociate and react with anxiety disorders. Such people may suffer from PTSD at a young age. They may not have children because there is no space for them. They are creative and solution-oriented, try not to fear aggression because they learn to fight it thanks to the violence they have experienced. They want to be assertive.

Interventions in this form of help are not crisis interventions (then you have to call CIC, the police, or go to the hospital if reactions threaten suicide, decompensation, etc.). Of course, these are interventions in general, but they will not immediately alleviate suffering. It is rather an attempt to name and understand from the perspective of a third person trying to grasp the world of the patient seen through his eyes, i.e., what I hear when I listen to you, what I then understand and what I don’t know.

The potential patient may be to some extent a victim of the functioning of a given system (e.g. a war victim), but does not agree to be this victim. The Psyche of such a person is looking for strategies to survive violence.

In such psychotherapy, one can find one’s own, healthy defensive strategies that go beyond psychopathology. Therefore, it is difficult to work with typical cases diagnosed as personality disorders in this form of help (here psychodynamic psychotherapy or psychoanalysis will help). These are also people seeking understanding and knowledge of the culture they find themselves in, so for refugees, immigrants, or emigrants, because this method also uses psychoeducation if necessary. Similarly with cases of people who are unaware of being victims of new religious movements or new forming systems (like subcultures, peer groups, etc.).

Often during systemic psychotherapy, we create genograms, which as psychotherapists we treat as confrontations. Because the genogram is graphically illustrated, but over time and the process of psychotherapy, its nature and patterns change. Therefore, this form of psychotherapy is very useful because it is focused on change in relationships and environment. It also strengthens the patient enough not to fear loneliness and to consciously choose people close to them, avoiding family patterns or others that co-created their psychopathology (feedback).

Therefore, I invite in the framework of Systemic-Cultural Emergency Psychotherapy people after traumas, who are not afraid of the changing level of activity and methods of the psychotherapist’s work, which may be, above all, adapted to the specific moment of life in which the patient presents.

Yes, the systemic method understood in this way, also the IPSK method, works online.

Warmly inviting you!

Paulina Kubś

The song as usual because of the text, I am not responsible for the video clip and I DO NOT WORK WITH IT!!!

Lose Your Soul – YouTube