121 - Is Therapy Tearing Us Apart?

Click here to read the episode highlights.    The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected].    Be sure to subscribe to Dr Chip Dodd’s new Substack. He will be sharing two to three articles a week. The topics focus on healthy relationship, personal growth, and leadership. Dr. Dodd shares content two to three times a week. To subscribe, use the link above or go to chipdodd.com.   Purpose of Therapy Therapy is about healing; restoration; and returning to normal interaction in a society that finds genuine fulfillment in participation, appreciation, and contribution.  Those who develop the healing and “heart” of wholeness or identify themselves as an improving “work in progress” have tolerance for difficulties, ability to work communally, and desire to contribute.   Disruptive Therapy   Healthy therapy loses its focus on healing and restoration when it loses the wisdom of consideration.    The wisdom of consideration is the process in which a “client,” for example, does healing work around family of origin wounds and identifies the need to restore the true self.   To restore the true self is to be able to know one’s own feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope without toxic shame or self-doubt. Toxic shame and self-doubt are diminished through community with non-shaming people.   Therapy disrupts the healthy process when boundaries become walls and feelings become weapons— If the therapist and client do not go beyond “what happened” and move into the consideration for the people who through ignorance, denial, or incapability were part of the loss of self, boundaries become walls instead of fences and division is increased. Walls create isolation. Fences create respect. If the therapist helps the client turn feelings into rights rather than the tools that help a person make decisions, they are helping client’s get “stuck” in a victim status, rather than choice making response-ability.   The true self is not the right to not have to feel and make choices. It is the ability to know yourself and become responsible for your own actions that never give up on love and restoration—though a person may have to grieve deeply that the ones they hoped to be in relationship with do not seek restoration, too.    Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.