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09/2021

 Therapy: a guided solution-oriented brainstorming / thought order?

Ther­a­py is a word that is main­ly used in the med­ical field and still has wide­spread neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions. The word is off-putting for many, equat­ed with ill­ness and there­fore avoid­ed. Affect­ed peo­ple often mis­judge their own symp­toms or think that a dis­cus­sion with friends will suf­fice because they do not attach any par­tic­u­lar rel­e­vance to the sup­pos­ed­ly small problem.

But this small prob­lem, if not cor­rect­ly clas­si­fied, can become an unnec­es­sary big­ger one and bring fur­ther neg­a­tive bur­dens for the body and soul.

So what exact­ly is behind the process of a ther­a­py ses­sion? How do they work and what does it mean to talk to a pro­fes­sion­al about your con­cerns and problems?

First of all, it is impor­tant to dis­tin­guish between actu­al seri­ous men­tal ill­ness­es and men­tal prob­lems or chal­lenges. Then a fur­ther dis­tinc­tion is need­ed between genet­ic and bio­log­i­cal ill­ness­es and those that have arisen as a result of the envi­ron­ment and sub­jec­tive­ly expe­ri­enced trau­mas. Here it should be not­ed and remarked that genet­i­cal­ly and bio­log­i­cal­ly caused dis­eases often can­not be pre­vent­ed in their devel­op­ment (but one can be atten­tive and take pre­ven­tive mea­sures to pre­vent them) and process expe­ri­enced trau­mas with the help of men­tal hygiene.

Men­tal hygiene (or pre­ven­tion) should be giv­en the same impor­tance as phys­i­cal hygiene or the annu­al check-up at the den­tist. In order to avoid major dam­age and inter­ven­tions, every­one goes to have their teeth cleaned once or twice a year. And that is a good thing! Because that saves mon­ey, pain and fur­ther prob­lems, such as caries or root canal treatments.

The aim of treat­ment is to pre­vent poten­tial prob­lems or to remove or solve exist­ing ones.

So why don’t peo­ple also prac­tice men­tal hygiene on a reg­u­lar basis?

In our dai­ly lives we are con­front­ed with all kinds of chal­lenges and bur­dens, we have to cope with shocks and suf­fer­ing. This also leaves traces — traces that can also become notice­able phys­i­cal­ly. For exam­ple, depressed peo­ple not only feel sad, but often also phys­i­cal­ly tired and list­less, and are more sus­cep­ti­ble to pain. This in turn affects their envi­ron­ment, their job and their own expe­ri­ence of life. A pro­fes­sion­al (ther­a­pist) can help here and solve exist­ing prob­lems or pre­vent worse devel­op­ments. The process or path there is not only inter­est­ing and impor­tant, but also an impor­tant step towards a solu­tion. Like a detec­tive, the ther­a­pist col­lects the ver­bal and emo­tion­al clues you pro­vide in order to find the solu­tion togeth­er with you through your men­tal labyrinth.

How does the ther­a­pist do this?

There are dif­fer­ent tech­niques, but in sim­ple terms he walks with you through your men­tal labyrinth, ask­ing ques­tions at places where there is a dead end and find­ing a new path or open­ing the dead end and recon­nect­ing it with anoth­er path. In this way you come to under­stand your prob­lems and at the same time find the solu­tion. Only in this way can you fight and process your trau­mas. The ther­a­pist knows ways, can sort, cat­e­gorise and organ­ise infor­ma­tion with you so that it becomes more under­stand­able for you and order comes into a pos­si­ble con­fu­sion of feel­ings, thoughts and experiences.

Of course, this can be uncom­fort­able because not all thoughts and emo­tions that one has had or is hav­ing want to be felt by us — but that is part of it and an impor­tant aspect of deal­ing with the prob­lems in order to final­ly clar­i­fy them. But as with phys­i­cal pain, this “chaos” is an indi­ca­tion that some­thing is wrong.

But why is it not enough to talk about it with your own friends or family?

Let’s stay with the exam­ple of the den­tist. You are giv­en a few ways to take care of your teeth, such as floss­ing, brush­ing, tooth­paste, inter­den­tal brush­es, etc. But this does not always pre­vent cav­i­ties. How­ev­er, these do not always pre­vent tooth decay and, most impor­tant­ly, can­not remove it. The den­tist, on the oth­er hand, has the right and appro­pri­ate instru­ments not only to find the weak spot, but also to remove the pos­si­ble caries in a tar­get­ed and effi­cient way. If one does not do this, the caries spreads and the con­di­tion of the tooth worsens.

One is not embar­rassed to seek med­ical advice for small and also large phys­i­cal com­plaints and cer­tain­ly not would any­one think that one could treat this one­self at least as well as a doc­tor. So why should it be so with a small men­tal prob­lem or thought and emo­tion­al knots?

This exam­ple can be applied well to one’s own friends and to deal­ing with men­tal prob­lems. Dis­cussing it with friends or even sup­press­ing the prob­lems and trau­mas may help in the short term, but it is not a sus­tain­able solution.

One has to deal with one’s own men­tal chaos, find the ori­gin and under­stand it in order to final­ly untie the knot. This is rarely (depend­ing on how long ago the prob­lem occurred, i.e. how big the knot is) if ever pos­si­ble with­out pro­fes­sion­al help. In addi­tion, with friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers there is usu­al­ly an emo­tion­al bond on a per­son­al lev­el, which gen­er­al­ly makes it dif­fi­cult or even impos­si­ble to main­tain the pro­fes­sion­al dis­tance and neu­tral­i­ty nec­es­sary for therapy.

See­ing a pro­fes­sion­al ther­a­pist means get­ting an out­sider’s view to bring order to the chaos. Some­one who can help you under­stand your own thoughts and emo­tions, untie the knots and thus quick­ly find your way out of a neg­a­tive situation.

Let us help you to sort out your thoughts, emo­tions and knots. Feel and see the dif­fer­ence this makes in your dai­ly life. Your well-being, your joy, the every­day ease, the feel­ing of hap­pi­ness and the enjoy­ment of life — this is an invest­ment you will cer­tain­ly not regret!

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