When you participate in talk therapy to discuss your “issues,” the psychologist or counselor will work with you to uncover “what’s really going on.” The idea is that understanding yourself and the origins of your problem enables you to pinpoint the source of negative thought patterns and experiences that continue to repeat themselves. Upon this realization, you should then be able to take corrective measures and set yourself free from unhealthy thinking or behaviors.
However, if this is the case, why do so many people remain in talk therapy for years without seeing any change or finding any relief?
Why the “why” gets in the way
True, there may be some benefit to understanding the origins of your current thinking and expectations. However, uncovering your own “story” may actually impede your forward progress. Continuing to mentally and verbally repeat an account of your lived experience traps you into the belief that this story is an unchangeable Truth. In your process of personal development, hauling out and examining a negative, emotionally-charged narrative doesn’t help you move forward. In fact, accepting any characterization as fixed truth is problematic because the actual truth is always a matter of a single interpretation: your own.
Where is your energy going?
One of the tenets of Energy Think, as well as the universe in which we all live, is that energy is the source of all manifestation. So, when you focus intently on talking about your “problem” from every angle, you are unwittingly creating and re-creating it, thus ingraining its charge into your manifested reality. While this may satisfy the part of your mind that abhors a mystery and loves to puzzle-solve, continuing to repeat your problem—especially through the immensely creative power of your spoken word—does nothing to correct things. In fact, it keeps you stuck in the same place.
You have the ability to influence your reality
Many people struggle to accept the idea that reality is a malleable concept and is being created in every moment by the thoughts you think, the things you say and the experience you expect. It’s understandable: if something isn’t going great in your life, it’s easy to deliberately avoid recognizing the relationship between where you’re directing your energy and what you’re experiencing as a result. When talking about manifestation, I hear people say, “I’m so happy I manifested this thing in my life…but I certainly didn’t manifest that thing.” In reality, you’re manifesting everything in your experience at all times. If you’re not deliberately creating what you want, you’re being carried along by the energetic flow of your social environment or expectations based on your own past experience.
Your life is a manifestation of the combined energetic charge of your own thoughts, belief systems and thought forms. Behavior patterns are made from this cognitive wiring, causing your life to unfold in a way that is uniquely yours. Therefore, if there is something specific that you want—that is, if you want your life to look a certain way or desire something different than you’re currently experiencing—achieving it is 100% possible. It’s simply a matter of being able to successfully direct your own energy toward that thing in a positive way.
Why am I not getting what I want?
One of the main difficulties in freeing yourself from the past and supercharging your own personal development boils down to efficiency. Since the laws of physics tell us that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, energy from all your positive expectation (and your corresponding fears and anxieties) must go somewhere. You end up spending valuable energy engaging in behaviors and thought processes that are antithetical to the very thing you’re trying to manifest.
Therefore, by expending so much energy/thought/emotion discussing the problem with your therapist (or family or friends), you may think that you’re working to solve the situation but you’re actually continuing to feed the problem by funneling more energy directly to it.
The good news is that eliminating the problem and its lingering effects on your life isn’t that difficult. But it’s important to remember that it is impossible to enact change from a place of victimhood. The key is to root out your limiting belief only for the purpose of re-framing it, then begin to do just that. It is only by exposing the underpinnings of your conscious understanding of the world that you can re-frame your perspective and begin to build a new experience from a place of empowerment. This is how you permanently move energy.
Talk therapy can be a valuable tool in uncovering the core beliefs and expectations that are influencing your current manifested life experience. Many people do experience a sense of relief and feeling of empowerment from therapy. However, by immersing yourself in repetitive retelling that continues to dredge up old feelings of hurt, anger and victimhood—along with accompanying energetic power—talk therapy can fall short in supporting your power to free yourself from the grip of the past once and for all.
