Someone asked, can you heal yourself by studying psychology?
I thought about it and didn't answer at the time, but said I wanted to write an article to answer you.
Many counselors do not advocate that clients study psychology on their own because they want to heal their suffering.
The reason is that they think that learning in this situation is easy to be a defense, and many people want to enrich their spiritual world through the study of psychology and give themselves more theoretical weapons, but the really nerve-wracking changes they don't want to do. So you can always keep the banner of "learning" psychology and avoid real changes to yourself.
However, does not the occurrence of this situation illustrate the fact that psychology should not be studied, but that it should not be "not well studied".
As they fear, the taboo of psychology learning is to learn the theory without practicing awareness.
If you study psychology and practice awareness carefully, not just theory, psychology can help you. In the end, you do not heal yourself through "learning", but through learning to improve cognition and awareness - gradually change the "doing" method, and then "heal" yourself.
What is "healing"? There is also a problem with this statement. You assume that you have some problems, do targeted therapy, and call this "cure." This statement is a problem-solving approach.
Because most people do not have mental illness (referring to mental points, mental disorders), if there is only pain and limitation, it is not called "healing", but "through self-growth, with their own experiences and certain cognitions."
This is growth mindset.
From this point of view, it is necessary not only to learn, but also to learn psychology for life.
Let me elaborate.
01
My understanding of the dynamics of studying psychology is a little different
I see the popularity and generalization of psychology today, the very lively need that people approach it, as actually a need of the soul.
Modern people have been alienated by the social production, and since everyone has lost the sense of who I am and cannot find the meaning of life, then it is necessary to get spiritual salvation.
However, people no longer have churches and clan beliefs, there are shopping malls and workshops everywhere, capital ...
When the soul has nowhere to rest, people find the most similar knowledge and insight that can answer the meaning of life and free from troubles, that is, psychology.
Most people today who want to heal themselves by studying psychology are not looking for ordinary psychological theories, but to recognize themselves, human nature, in order to soothe their painful pressures and find the belonging and meaning of life.
What they actually need is spiritualism.
But modern psychology doesn't provide these ultimate answers, it's more like the "mental health science" that keeps you as a normal person with good social functioning.
Since everyone wants to "cure" something through psychology, it is still the mainstream context in which people live their soul lives today. After all, we no longer have Confucius, Zhuangzi, Lao Tzu, and it is difficult to believe in Christ. Sometimes our souls really don't have a crutch to "explain" the confusion of life that we encounter.
In order to integrate more meanings of life, the need for ultimate questions, more schools of cultural psychology developed, more philosophical religions were integrated, such as existential philosophy developed existential psychology, such as meditation mindfulness actually came from the Eastern religious practice.
It is precisely because there is no life education and life education in our education, self-study psychology is the spiritual temple found by modern people.
For modern people, it is a spiritual need, because people can not only make a living as a certain ring under the social division of labor, but also have some "relationships", "emotions", "emotions" and other "human" factors that need to be sorted out.
Psychology can provide some ideas and tools for this purpose.
02
What exactly can psychology do?
Self-knowledge through self-study psychology (learning from the scientific theories of predecessors) to understand human nature. This is the most popular way for modern people to solve problems with expert thinking. So what if you say that psychology can't heal itself?
Learning is definitely the first step. Because, learning, there are two aspects of the role:
1. Enhance cognition.
Your post-birth values, habits, are framed by heredity and the circumstances of your original family. It's like a car with factory settings (mental mode) that you can drive autonomously, entirely through the settings.
This is your unselected life, for example, you don't know why you are so insecure, you just want to firmly control money, and you don't know that this setting is your original family's view of money.
2. Improve awareness.
With some theoretical tools, you increase your awareness.
For example, you can discern that your emotional response is usually a fixed pattern, and when you complain about your spouse, you no longer affirm that "I am not ladylike, but you begin to realize that you are very sensitive to certain points in your relationships."
There are thousands of psychological theories, and there is always a theory that allows you to re-see "an ordinary everyday", it is not everyday, it has its ins and outs. This is the moment of awareness when you identify factory settings.
After using psychological theories to understand some of your own patterns, at this time, such as when you complain about your other half, you will have some moments of sudden "consciousness" to something - do I see these as "facts"? At this point, you no longer believe in everything about "autonomous driving".
Once you become aware, your life comes in a light, like a dark room lit up, not driven by darkness in a blind box.
Slowly from "cognitive awakening" to "subconscious awakening", this is the intermediate step from learning psychology to practical psychology.
03
Why is "learning" psychology useful and useless?
Most educated people are more suitable for going from reason to reflection, from self-reflection to awareness, to practicing a theory, and this transformation is also self-growth.
However, educated people are also vulnerable to self-imprisonment, because education itself is an obstacle. This also makes many people's cognitive awakening into a monster - "logic monster".
Uneducated people learn psychology this way: through understanding, they learn from life. This is why many people with low education may also live a thorough life, although he has experienced not many things, but he can understand, so he can give an example. He was able to grasp himself, his humanity, and his life.
But many people with a lot of education have a "barrier to knowledge", that is, it is difficult to identify their own psychological defenses. Because he is good at reason, analysis, logic, and reason, so he uses these to make a high firewall, he thinks that he has changed, but in fact, he uses psychology to achieve a new sense of theoretical superiority. They are shorter than enlightenment and do not do it.
It's like you like to listen to books and feel that you have "gained" knowledge, but that knowledge is not what you seek, so it can only be used as a talking point, not a part of your life.
Any true knowledge must grow into a part of you, a natural way for you to act.
Many people say that psychology cannot cure because awareness is difficult, and theory is a summary, and the words of summary are describing a systematic experience and way of life, not the experience itself.
So when you study psychology, you have to be very careful, learning a set of ways of thinking, or a sentence.
To put it bluntly, studying psychology is sometimes about "finding feelings" rather than understanding reason. And the most addictive thing about studying psychology is that it is easy to have a trap that I have understood and I have penetrated, and it is easy for you to feel that you are different from before, with so many theories added to your body, standing on top of countless excellent theories.
One way to test such a person is that after learning so much, life is still full of troubles.
For example, people who have studied psychology for many years often let you fall into the shadow of childhood because of a word from your parents, because the emotional buttons that are installed on us and the emotional switch are not in the rational brain area.
In other words, if you can learn the essence of the theory into the subconscious brain area, you can really learn. That depends on doing, and doing is anchoring the subconscious.
The so-called learning without thinking is reckless, and thinking without learning is slack. Only when you do it is it really learned.
04
Expand the extension of the so-called "psychology of learning"
The science of psychology is characterized by its practicality, and it is indirect. It is a description of the human psyche, not the psychology itself.
Study animals, animal physiological response is the physiological response of animals, there are data. And most psychology, with the exception of some quantifiable experiments in brain science, psychology is a description of the black box of the human soul. So it is very indirect, and it requires each individual to transcode, and there are individual differences in the person who translates.
For example, what is happiness and happiness, everyone understands it very differently. We need to find the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of the individual from some common psychological descriptions. So this is the same as a process of getting back to the experience and yourself. This is the practicality of psychology.
Is there truth in psychology? A lot of times not. In fact, many theories and methods of psychological treatment are only a theoretical construction and cannot be regarded as truth. It can neither be falsified nor confirmed. However, the strange thing is that you believe before you improve.
However, it doesn't matter, "as long as it works for you, it's good psychology." This is why there are so many schools of psychology. Eight thousand methods, as long as one of them touches your heart, it is useful to you, and you don't need to learn all of them, and you don't need to prove that this is the truth, what you believe is the truth that can be clinically effective.
So don't be swayed by the name "psychology".
Psychology is an artificially divided scientific discipline. His modernization has done a lot of scientific and quantitative development, in order to integrate into the vocabulary of science. But in fact, its real outer edge is the spiritual science I mentioned earlier. But it's evolving, not complete enough.
You can use it as a tool. Learning psychology is just a way for you to know your soul, you can learn theory, you can experience one-on-one psychological counseling, you can also experience groups, in short, there are many ways to learn, these learning itself contains experience, with experience can be perceived, with awareness it is possible to transition to different practices.
Learning everything can open up your cognitive limitations, increase your awareness, and touch your soul. Including understanding some of the sources of psychology, philosophy, religious literature, etc., if you are talking about "healing yourself", then you should live the life of the soul as soon as possible.
05
Learn about psychology and the eastern traditions of self-cultivation
Let's talk about the difference between East and West.
If you think about it, psychology comes from the West, and the Chinese ancients did not have troubles? Yes. Nine times out of ten people are not satisfied with life and death. And how did the ancients liberate themselves? They don't have psychology but they can have other methods.
For example, their Taoist thought of the unity of heaven and man has the principle of filial piety.
If there are troubles, the reader can achieve leisurely by reading books and being reasonable, and then cultivating oneself and being a gentleman.
People who do not read can also get rid of their troubles by following etiquette, or believing in religion, and by adding a mature system of thought.
Behind this there is a method of soul placement, and their lives themselves contain the system of the soul.
But then again, reading and understanding is a very test of personal character and understanding.
Readers also have pedantic readings, that is not to blame the sages, only to burrow into the book but can not come out of the book, can not blame the book itself can not be used through the world, can not add your character.
And even if you have enlightenment, all the saints and gentlemen have the painful thinking process of cognitive upgrading, Zeng Guofan, Wang Yangming, etc., there is no other way but to be diligent and courageous.
This is a high threshold spiritual adventure activity.
The ideal of moral perfection, which we Chinese is not like the West, is to confess to the priest one-on-one in a confessional room (the prototype of psychological counseling). Our Chinese is to carry out individualized self-cultivation through Wen Si Xiu.
Today's China has lost some cultural self-confidence, believing that Western psychology is spiritual science.
We need to realize that what we are looking for is still the same thing as the ancients, is peace of mind, through understanding ourselves, understanding life, and becoming better. Then what we have to cultivate is actually our own heart and nature. Why can't we reach a more peaceful place by learning the science of life that touches the soul?
The self-cultivation of the ancient Chinese people is the process of integrating the body and mind, the inner saint and the outer king, which is not a matter of believing in experts and believing in disciplines, and taking academic examination certificates.
Just because this is an era of admiration for mind and seniority, you have lost your imagination, but only if you go out of the name of psychology and know that you are looking for answers for life, you will see psychology as one of the tools.
You will know that the subject is you, and psychology will help you get more experience and awareness under your creative use, under your quest.
At this time, psychology is not only psychology, but the mirror of your soul, the same "mirror" and philosophy, religion, literature, poetry, music and art, and all other things that touch the soul, which mean the same thing as learning psychology.
Including life itself, all that makes you understand pain and self is worth learning, the way of thinking of happy people around you, a little thing that inspires... Learning about the soul is everywhere.
Write at the end:
Psychological counseling, in fact, is also occasionally "healed", always comforting, but the so-called comfort of psychological counselors is actually brought by positive attention and companionship, which can bring you the power of self-growth by acting on your vitality, your self-love. So it doesn't mean you don't need companionship and comfort.
There is "pain" that requires counseling, but objectively, how long can you do one-on-one counseling? A year and a half?
In the end, you still have to rely on yourself to repair.
This is not a problem of whether you can learn psychology to cure yourself, it is that counseling is too expensive, long-term counseling is unrealistic, and it is a problem that you can only find the "antidote" in an individual and life way. What if you don't help yourself?
Most of the time, people have to learn to be self-accompanied, relying on a kind of self-healing of the mind.
Like I said above, you need a life oriented towards the soul, not just psychology. You need more knowledge of the mind to know yourself, not to be superstitious about a discipline.
Well, I finally explained once and for all how a person should learn psychology to help themselves, this is what I have always wanted to say, and it is also my own journey along the way, I am getting better and better, you can too!
Author: Miss Mushroom Aunt, Promoter of Situational Healing Writing, Founder of Mushroom Psychological Self-Study Room. National second-level psychological counselor, a number of media psychological column signed authors, a deeply rooted writer, has published the book "While Anxiety, While Growing" This article is reproduced from the public account Miss Mushroom Aunt and has been authorized.
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