Squamish Wellness Directory

Energy Psychology, the healing revolution of the Century

By Marlise Witschi, M.Psych., Registered Clinical Counsellor www.internalfreedom.com

Copyright 2009; no part of this article may be reproduced without permission

Energy Psychology is the latest discovery in psychology, combining the science of Chinese Medicine and traditional Psychology. It has been described as one of the most important breakthroughs in the area of psychology in the twentieth century. It represents a new paradigm in the field in that its theory is based on the principles of Quantum Physics, which is energy based. What that means is that our bodies and everything in this universe you can think of is made of the same energy. It is therefore not dense or static; it is an open field with an electrical vibration, which can be changed and transformed.

Energy Psychology states that the cause of all painful and limiting thoughts and emotions is caused by a disruption in the body’s energy system. Any unpleasant or painful feeling corresponds to a blockage in the energy field of the individual. Any fear, anxiety, depression, upset, anger, sadness, physical pain, anything which does not feel good to you, is caused by a blockage in your energy flow, and it can be healed. If you think of it: the possibilities of Energy Psychology are phenomenal! Practice shows that this is true indeed.

How do we treat these energy blockages?  Instead of inserting needles to activate the energy flow as is done in acupuncture, we tap with our fingertips on a few specific acupuncture points, while tuning in to the painful emotions.  The practitioner then speaks specific sentences about the problem they want to heal, and the client repeats these sentences.

How does it work?  It works through a process called Entrainment. In entrainment, a high vibrational energy (created by the tapping), entrains – transforms - the lower vibrational energy (the words spoken about the issue), into higher vibrations. As a result, the blockage has now been dissolved and released back into the energy flow. Consequently, the client’s experience of the problem has changed: Distress has been transformed into a sense of relaxation, openness and freedom, and the person is now unable to feel the distress any longer.  Also, often people gain new understanding and a different perception of the problem addressed.

Are these results permanent? Yes they are. If the problem comes back, that means that there are other aspects to the problem which also need to be addressed with the tapping, before it can be fully released.

What can we treat with Energy Psychology? The more skilled a practitioner is the more complex issues can be healed. There is no limitation on what can be healed, or at least improved with Energy Psychology. Personally, I am using EFT (see below) to treat relationship issues, anxiety, panic attacks, eating disorders, sexual abuse, addictions, depression, low self-esteem, missing-mother syndrome, physical pain, and more. There is no issue we have not been able to at least improve with Energy Psychology. What I ad to the technique of Energy Psychology is to help you find your unconscious motivations to create, re-create or keep an illness, pain, procrastination, or whatever it is that disturbs your inner peace. We then tap on these unconscious beliefs, and the symptoms fall away.

Symptom or cause? As we know, a symptom is what we feel; it is the surface manifestation of underlying, unconscious beliefs, whether that is related to relationship issues, depression, cancer or to a headache. Individuals can learn EFT for themselves and tap on themselves to relieve physical and emotional pain. Also, in order to get to the root cause of your problem, you may want the help of a skilled practitioner. For instance, if you have pains or emotions which leave after you tapped on them, but come back later, then this may indicate that a part of your unconscious mind wants to keep them. A skilled counsellor and Energy Psychology Practitioner can then help you go deeper and heal the root cause of the issue, gently and permanently.

History. In the 1980’s, Psychologist Roger Callahan Ph.D., developed a highly successful ‘tapping therapy’ which he called TFT (Thought Field Therapy). Some of his students modified his approach and created their own technique, the best known being EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) by Gary Craig. It has become a well-known healing approach in many fields of application: physical, mental-emotional and spiritual. It is also very helpful in achieving specific goals, in that we can dissolve all limiting beliefs and fears holding us back from where we want to be, whether that be in your business or personal life.

EFT is the technique that I am using, as it is the simplest one and can be learned in a short time.

Check my website for a free EFT chart as well as EFT - and other transformational workshops. www.internalfreedom.com

Whistler&Squamish office; 604-938-3620

West Vancouver office: 778-828-8773 

Can you benefit from counselling? Are you willing to invest in yourself?

Marlise Witschi, M.Psych., Registered Clinical Counsellor 

Counselling is for individuals who are aware that life is a process of internal growth, and who are open to seek help to transcend the hurdles they are faced with from time to time. In other words, counselling is for people who are interested in personal growth and who have the courage to face their internal obstacles in order to go beyond them, with a professional guide. The following are examples of hurdles we all face in our life, and where counselling can be very helpful:  

• Feeling stuck in old patterns of thinking and acting; you can’t seem to be able to change, to move on. You may be suffering from compulsive eating, drinking, attracting always the same type of partners, or other self-defeating patterns.
• A life transition, where you don’t know any longer where you are and what you’d like to do with your life.
• A crisis situation in your relationship, in your career, an accident, the death of a loved one, or any other sudden life-change.
• Feeling overwhelmed by anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, depression, anger, grief….these emotions can be understood and healed by discovering and releasing emotional charges you are still holding from the past.
• Low self-esteem: you feel uncomfortable with yourself and others. You don’t dare to go for what you really love in life.
• Suffering from an addiction: alcohol, food, sex, internet, work, relationship, shopping, or anything else you may be using in an out-of-control manner, causing you to feel bad afterwards.
• Spiritual crisis. You want to investigate your spiritual beliefs and experiences.
• Trauma: you have experienced sexual or other abuse in your life and you still experience emotional consequences from it. Any experience you had in life where you shut down as a consequence can be understood as traumatic, because a part of you stopped growing from that point on. Trauma can be healed with Energy Psychology, gently and permanently.
• Using medication for anxiety (Ativan) or sleeping pills, both of which may be addictive, counselling can help you find and heal emotional causes of anxiety and sleeping problems and release you from them.
• Physical pains and problems where your physiotherapy or chiropractic treatments don’t seem to help more than for a few days; this may be a sign that a part of your unconscious mind does not want to be free from pain for specific reasons. These reasons can be discovered and released in counselling.

Alternative Counselling can address all the above issues successfully and many more. It is a holistic form of traditional counselling combined with the practice of Energy Psychology. In alternative counselling we acknowledge that all our problems are created by the unconscious mind and have unconscious associations with our past, including our childhood.

In my practice of Alternative counselling I help clients find their unconscious beliefs and emotions at the cause of their presenting problem (any of the above or anything else; including physical problems), and then we heal these beliefs and feelings with Energy Psychology. (For a description of Energy Psychology you may go to my website and read the free article: www.internalfreedom.com).  

Let me give you an illustration: Sue (not her name), one of my clients, had chronic problems making a living. She had troubles in every job she had and ended up not even finding a job any more. We discovered that she was still very angry at her parents for what she had experienced in her childhood. She discovered that she still felt hurt and believed her parents had treated her unfairly, and so she wanted to punish them by not making a living. Unconsciously she hoped they would “pay” for her what she thought they owed her emotionally. Once we found these were her beliefs, we used EFT, one of the techniques of Energy Psychology to release this blockage and her pattern of financial lack and scarcity changed very fast: She found a job she actually liked and started to make a good living with it. 

For more information and lots of testimonials you may visit my website at www.internalfreedom.com.

Whistler&Squamish practice: 604-938-3620

West Vancouver practice: 778-828-8773.

Why we are fighting with our loved ones

By Marlise Witschi, M.Psych., copyright 2009 www.internalfreedom.com

It seems that human consciousness is rising, and this causes our shadow, our negative unconscious beliefs and conditioning, to come to the forefront so that it can be looked at and be dispersed into the light. The definition of healing is to bring darkness to the light, and that’s what we are asked to do now, more than ever before: To bring our self-hatred into our awareness, so we can catch it there and disperse it, before we slam it to another person, and attack it there. In your relationship struggles you may feel that often it’s your partner who is attacking you and who makes your life so difficult. I know you know that this is only seemingly so. Our partners are our mirrors, and I mean that literally. What we unconsciously dislike and hate in ourselves we see it in our partners and fight it there. The worse we feel about ourselves, the more reasons we find to criticize our partners. Isn’t’ that interesting! The mechanism at work here is called projection: What we don’t want to acknowledge in ourselves we will find “out there”, in other people, close and far, including the terrorists. That’s why it is so important to become aware of our negative thoughts and feelings. It is the only way to not project them out and fight them in others, with the consequence that we attack other people each time we actually feel bad about ourselves!! It sounds so terribly unfair – and that’s exactly what we all do so often.

A couple is watching TV at home, both are very tired from work, they go to bed, not saying much, falling asleep. They wake up, and at the breakfast table the woman explodes: ‘We never do anything fun together, you don’t talk, this is so boring’ and off she goes. He takes it all personal, believing she means to say that he is not good enough, that he is boring, that he does everything wrong, so he explodes back and yells, ‘What’s wrong with you, you’re never happy, whatever I do is not enough, what about last Monday when we had fun…’ and both partners feel unhappy, empty, unfairly treated and angry.

• We are attacking someone because we feel bad about ourselves.
• Your partner is your mirror.

The Law of Attraction and your Power to Heal Yourself

Marlise Witschi, M.Psych., Registered Clinical Counsellor

604-938-3620   www.internalfreedom.com

 

Many people these days have watched the movie “The Secret”, which teaches about the law of attraction. It seems we are entering now an era of becoming more aware of our power, which is the power of our mind.

The law of attraction is a universal law which states that whatever we think about

with great emotions will manifest into our lives.

 

 In this movie, the Universe is compared to the Gene, which fulfills all our desires, saying “Your wish is my command”. In The Secret it is described how whatever we wish, we can have, be or do. Different speakers suggest slightly different techniques to go about affirming what we want, but the common aspects which you may already be familiar with, is the following: