The Power of Stories

 

Stories provide a moral model of the world. They teach how things work or could work. The question is what does the audience make of the story? What does it tell them about the kind of person they are, other people are, and the world they are living in?

Does the story enlighten and uplift or deflate and demoralize?

Stories are the basis of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is about the client's story or the couple's story or the family's story, or the community's story, or the society's story.

The significant point here is that stories matter. Tell stories with care.

What is the goal of psychotherapy?

Along with this idea is the one that the presenting complaint is not the real complaint. The presenting complaint is just the ticket of admission. The presenting complaint is what the client thinks they are supposed to say, based on their socialization, which makes them an appropriate candidate for psychotherapeutic service.

If you ask most people “What makes you tick?” They become perplexed, annoyed, and defensive. It is in this question that psychotherapy begins.

Psychotherapy is not the same thing as “counseling” and “life coaching” and “emotional management skill training.” Psychotherapy is a much more significant, challenging, and revealing journey into the self.

On this journey what will one eventually find? Our Transcendent Source. The basis of our Divinity.