We're offering mental health professionals a fresh look at the fundamental cause of stress and distress, and the fundamental source of cure. It's simpler than it has seemed, and the result is sustained mental well-being. Psychology has had it backwards.
Who are we, and why are we so passionate about our work? We are mental health professionals and we have seen results for more than 30 years.Support the show
10/9/20 • 16:29
Psychology has been treating all the outcomes of insecure, misunderstood thinking as though they were the problems. The one underlying problem is what creates insecurity.Support the show
10/16/20 • 17:02
We see resiliency and mental health as our "starter kit," the essence of our being that cannot be lost, only obscured. We see our misunderstood use of thought as the way we obscure it.Support the show
10/23/20 • 17:51
The essential capacities of mental health practitioners are the ability to listen, not for our checklist of symptoms but for the heart of our clients, and then to have no fear of speaking from our own insights and pointing out our clients' insights.Support the show
10/30/20 • 19:40
When people understand their power to think, and their capacity to allow thoughts to come and go, they get in touch with the Innate Health that is their essence, and they discover the wisdom that arises through their own uncluttered thinking.Support the show
11/6/20 • 20:10
We've been referring to Principles underlying our work. Here's a deeper description of the three Universal Principles of Mind, Consciousness and Thought.Support the show
11/13/20 • 19:21
When we feel mental distress, we seek help, just as we do when we feel physical distress. We get a diagnosis of our presenting problem. Is that diagnosis a long-term label, or just an observation about a temporary, misunderstood state of thinking? What if diagnoses are descriptions of the many ways we thinkers can get distressed and insecure and, without meaning to, start to use our thinking against ourselves?Support the show
11/20/20 • 19:20
Many people think experiencing trauma dooms us to long-standing psychological pain. No doubt, trauma results in horrible memories that are distressing when they come to mind. But with an understanding of how the mind works and what the past really is, we can allow those thoughts to come and go, and move on with life.Support the show
11/27/20 • 21:05
Anxiety is a frequent mental health complaint that escalates in difficult times. It always looks like something "out there" is causing it and anxiety is the only and inevitable response. We address the question whether anxiety is a natural response to external events, or an outcome of the way we think about external events. Is it possible not to be anxious, no matter what is going on? We say yes.Support the show
12/4/20 • 20:47
Many people consider a diagnosis of depression a sort of "character trait," a lifelong problem. But depression is a product of negative thinking taken seriously over time, and it passes. Like all misunderstood thinking, it's temporary.Support the show
12/11/20 • 20:10
It's easy to get worked up, or bummed out at times when life isn't going the way we want it to. It's tempting to listen to bad news and predictions of suffering and take them to heart and lose our bearings. But it's not necessary. We have the innate resilience to make the most of anything, and find our way through change and challenge.Support the show
12/18/20 • 19:34
There are many diagnoses that are treated like inescapable conditions. Depression and Anxiety, for example. Once we understand Innate Health, we realize that nothing can break the human spirit. Our spiritual nature is untouched by the habitual thinking that we sometimes fall into that makes us feel hopeless or broken. Mental well-being is always at hand. Support the show
12/25/20 • 26:01
Addictions are a symptom of unrecognized, habitual, insecure thinking. When we think a lot about troubling things, we seek relief from the pressure and negativity of our own thinking. We become "addicted" to whatever we found that gave us relief — substances, food, sex, work, exercise — anything. When we catch on to our own thinking and the power of thought, we can let addictions go.Support the show
1/1/21 • 21:22
As we see the way we hold and use our own thoughts more and more clearly, we recognize addicted thinking sooner and sooner in the process. We find we have the power to let thoughts pass and the "need" to do something or use something to get relief from them disappears. We see that urges are just signals that we're starting to feel insecure. We're always just one thought away from dropping insecurity.Support the show
1/8/21 • 21:14
Our thoughts always appear real and right to us, even when they are contaminated by an insecure state of mind. If we act on thoughts we have without any understanding of our state of mind or how Thought works, we are "innocent" because they looked like our best choice at the time. We can forgive people, and still not forgive deeds. That leads to accountability without suffering and blame.Support the show
1/15/21 • 21:55
With an understanding of the Principles, we can find forgiveness for ourself and others, and still maintain accountability. When we see psychological innocence, we see how people get trapped in insecure dysfunctional thinking that makes sense to them at that time. Once we understand that cycle, and learn to take such thoughts as warnings to slow down, forgiveness makes sense.Support the show
1/22/21 • 24:23
Analysis is an overuse of personal thinking, and keeps us stuck with what we already think and know. Reflection is the opening for wisdom and insight, and allows us to rise above our past thinking and circumstances and create anew. Unfortunately, most of us have learned we need to analyze our problems to fix them, and we innocently hold them in place. Reflection brings answers and a change in direction. Support the show
1/29/21 • 22:28
Looking at "fixing" the past, or behaviors, or outcomes to help people find happiness is really like suggesting to a sad dog that he just wag his tail and he'll feel much better. The Principles suggest a new direction; solve the underlying misunderstanding of how Thought works and how we function psychologically, and we don't need to fix anything. We see how to operate from understanding and leave the past behind to create from each moment.Support the show
2/5/21 • 21:45
Insecurity is a thought-created state of mind that creates feelings of self-doubt, suspicion, anxiety, alienation from others, discomfort... all kinds of negative feelings. It dissipates and resolves into increasing levels of security as our awareness of the role of thought increases. We all live in up and down feelings of security and insecurity, but as our understanding deepens, insecurity passes more quickly without engaging us.Support the show
2/12/21 • 23:44
This is an expression that describes where we are in our recognition that our experience of life events is created by our own thinking about them. As our level of consciousness rises, circumstances have less and less power to affect us. We know that we can look away from our personal, often insecure thinking about them, and quiet our minds to allow our wisdom to surface. As we come to count on wisdom, we gain confidence that we "know" how to handle our lives.Support the show
2/19/21 • 22:45
Many people in the mental health profession (and others, too) complain about "burnout" -- the feeling of exhaustion, frustration and hopelessness in the face of their work. As people come to realize that we can't "fix" problems after our thinking has made them real to us, people are stymied. With an understanding of the Principles, of the fact that we are creating reality, burnout disappears because the solutions to "problems" are always available from inner wisdom.Support the show
2/26/21 • 23:36
There's a "harder, harder, faster, faster" mentality that keeps people stressed and preoccupied trying to "figure out" everything in life. The faster our thinking goes, the more complicated everything looks. When we begin to recognize the power of leaving our frantic thinking alone and quieting down, the pace of life slows and we become more responsive than reactive. A quieter mind opens the door to wisdom, insight, common sense, and good feelings.Support the show
3/5/21 • 24:30
We use terms like self-image, self-esteem, ego easily when we are thinking about ourselves. With an understanding of the power of our own thinking, we can see that none of them has any reality outside of our own moment-to-moment thoughts. We generate all kinds of ideas about who and what we are or should be. When we realize that our thinking is constantly changing and our ideas vary depending on our state of mind, we realize we are making all of it up. It is all an illusion. Our "true" nature is our shared human ability to create ideas and take them more or less seriously.Support the show
3/12/21 • 24:08
Often, we feel like we are prisoners of our moods. We think our moods control our thinking, so we use a bad mood as an excuse for what we're doing or saying: "Don't mind me, I'm in a bad mood today." That is an innocent misunderstanding of how our own thinking generates our moods, and how we keep ourselves stuck in them by not realizing we are still thinking the low mood thoughts. Our moods are the barometer of our thinking. As our heads fill with upsetting thoughts, we feel increasingly upset. The answer to an unpleasant mood is letting thoughts pass and quieting our minds.Support the show
3/19/21 • 22:44
Moods are like our personal, ever-changing weather. When we're gray and cloudy, others can feel the gloom. When we're stormy, people avoid us, or react defensively. When we're sunny, we brighten every interaction. Once we understand that feelings are the atmosphere in which people relate to each other, regardless of the words spoken, we see when to remain quiet until a mood passes, when not to take others' statements personally, and when we can talk about anything from a space of love and understanding. Awakening to our own and others' variable states of mind is the secret to keeping all relationships on track. We gain compassion for ourselves and others during the storms.Support the show
3/26/21 • 23:47
People like the title of our podcast, but we want you to know we really mean it. The Principles represent a radical turnaround in the way we look at the assumptions underlying mental health treatment. The "mental health" field has been a "mental illness" field, devoted to identifying and treating the results of the innocent misuse of our power to think. The Three Principles describe the nature of thought, and the spiritual power we have as the thinkers to create any thought. That is our innate mental health; The Principles lead us to awaken to it and use it wisely. Support the show
4/2/21 • 24:57
The more time we spend thinking about our problems, the more our spirits drop and the more "alive" our problems seem to us. With an understanding of how thought works, we recognize that spending time going over and over past distress or future worry is a surefire way to stay stuck in "mental illness." Principles practitioners get in touch with the innate mental health, always present in all people, and allow people to see how to put their minds to rest, come into the present moment, and find their natural wisdom.Support the show
4/9/21 • 23:50
Grief is a natural immediate response to loss or tragedy. But grief is really more about us than about the loss we grieve. When someone or something dear or important to us is suddenly gone from us, we feel the emptiness of a space no longer filled in our life. The natural remedy for grief is allowing our own wisdom to show us new paths for ourselves, and allowing our minds to come to peace so that we can enjoy our memories without suffering. Suffering arises from thinking we "should" be sad for a certain length of time, or that we "ought to" show respect by staying in grief.Support the show
4/16/21 • 25:54
Thought as a Principle refers to the universal power all beings have to create forms from the formless energy of life. It offers us unlimited potential to think, create, imagine, envision anything. It is the power that allows us to redirect our lives. When we talk about the Principle of Thought, we are not referring to the content of our thinking, but the gift we have to think whatever we want to think and change our minds. Thought is constant and the same for all.Support the show
4/23/21 • 22:11
Personal thought is the use we make, individually, of the Power to think. It is the content we create for ourselves, then experience as our separate realities. It is unique to each person, and has no life beyond our own attention to it. When thoughts pass through our minds, the attention we give them determines how vivid or important they seem to us. As we recognize ourselves as the thinkers of our own thoughts, we can let go of the unpleasant, unhelpful thoughts.Support the show
4/30/21 • 22:53
