Awareness Brings Positive Change

The core of positive change is understanding and accepting what is, including difficult patterns of thought, feelings, behaviours.  It also includes increasing awareness of the higher truth of your Being and its expression in your life.

Awareness of mental contents

Talk therapy, within a safe, accepting therapeutic relationship, helps you to become aware of patterns of thoughts and behaviours that no longer serve you and how these may hold a difficult experience in place.  In therapy you can gain new perspectives and find new and more peaceful ways to be.  Raising awareness of negative patterns and how they may have started as a wise coping mechanism is a key part of therapy.  This is the “aha” moment, “once you see something, you can’t unsee it”.  And then positive changes often naturally begin. 

“You do what you know, and when you know better, you do better.”​ – Maya Angelou

Unconscious mind is extremely important in determining our experience and behaviour.  It is the home of positive emotion, creativity, as well as repressed pain; and is not time-bound, rational, does not judge.  It is quite different from the verbal egoic, logical mind that we are usually aware of.  Freud founded the field of psychology by demonstrating the importance of unconscious mind in determining our feelings and behaviours.  For patients with unusual, inexplicable and persistent physical and emotional pains, he showed that they held in unconscious mind childhood memories that explained the current pain, and that positive changes happened when they became aware of these. 

This demonstrated the existence and importance of a subconscious mind, and also the transformative power of bringing unconscious memories to awareness. The importance of becoming aware of what was previously unconscious has been included in many other schools of psychotherapy (apart from behaviourism), including Gestalt therapy, mindfulness. 

Body awareness ​

Somatic methods work directly with the body to release physical or emotional pain. The awareness of the body sensations, as well as the thoughts, and naming the emotion is a key part of the effectiveness of these somatic methods.  Placing attention on body sensations allows energy within the body to start releasing discomfort. Gendlin’s focusing technique and Somatic Experiencing specifically bring awareness to sensation and allow a natural positive shift in feeling. 

​Somatic methods such as Emotional Freedom Techniques tapping or EMDR begin with focusing on a discomfort and noticing body sensations and thoughts and naming the emotion. 

Then a specific technique that helps intensity release is used.  In the case of EFT, this is tapping on specific acupressure points related to the energy pathways of traditional Chinese medicine.  The same tapping points (or eye movements in the case of EMDR) are used regardless of the target discomfort and it is where the focus of attention is placed that determines what will be addressed and where positive change will occur.  ​

Spiritual awareness​​

Spiritual teachers tell us that as well as our personality self, we each have a Higher Self, a Soul, and a Divine Self, and that we exist as an energetic being in an energy and spiritual world. Beyond the individual body and mind, we are connected to the energy of the world around us, and to higher dimensions. Carl Jung identified the deeper level of the collective unconscious and connection to Spirit.  And over time we can increase awareness and acceptance of these levels of our Being and increasingly function from that higher level. 

Affirmations and particularly the affirmative prayer process use the power of thought and intention to make changes. These are particularly effective in making positive changes along with becoming aware of and releasing negative and limiting thoughts and beliefs. ​​​

Transpersonal hypnotherapy goes beyond exploring the personal unconscious mind. Whether you resonate with a spirit, source, God or Goddess, Angels, Ascended masters, the wisdom of the universe, your beliefs will be validated and can be integrated into the therapy journey. Using hypnosis, we can explore and improve energetic connections between you and family or others in your life.  Hypnotherapy can be used to increase your connection to higher spiritual resources, and to clear any negative energetic influence.

Making the unconscious conscious is a key part of living the life you were meant to live.