HAVE YOU EVER TRIED SOARING?

Wait. I’m sorry. What? Yeah, soaring isn’t usually what first comes to mind when thinking about psychotherapy. More like less soaring, more grind. Well, not so when you practice mentalligent psychotherapy.
          Back in my college days, when I had more money and fewer fears, I learned how to fly a glider. As you may know, a glider is a plane without an engine. A glider is also known as a sailplane and gliding is a fun process of soaring with the wind.
          When you are soaring, a tow plane pulls you up to 3000 feet. At that height, you loose the tow cord and bank right, while your tow plane banks left. At that point, it is you and your sailplane, looking for thermal air updrafts. When you find one, your sailplane spirals upward on the draft, increasing your altitude. Find several updrafts sequentially and you can soar upward on a sunlit, blue-sky day for hours. No engine sound. No distractions. Only the wind, the thermals, and you. What a great time. The rules are that, when you run out of thermals and your altitude dips below 1000 feet, you have to begin your landing pattern. While soaring, you never lose visual sight of your designated landing strip. Soaring is as calm and peaceful as life can get.
          With my new therapy paradigm, mentalligent psychotherapy, my goal is to guide patients on their healing journey of upward-spiraling through their lives, finding their thermal updrafts to keep soaring. Any kind of stress or adversity can generate an historic, familiar downward spiral that can lead to patients becoming stuck in their “stuff.” While I help patients look at their stuff and the attending feelings briefly, my time there is only to help them understand a context for their healing. To get unstuck, I help them identify upward spirals in their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and learn to soar.
          Within this new paradigm, the traditional medical model of illness and diagnosis is set aside. I’m not their doctor who will make them well by fixing their problems. I’m their guide on their healing journey to help them process their stuck spots and make positive use of their defined adversity, thereby promoting continual soaring. We have no control over our stuff in life. We have every control over what we do with our stuff and how we can grow from it.
          Traditional psychotherapists are “why” doctors. Answering multiple why questions form the foundation of the medical model. When practicing mentalligent psychotherapy, therapists are “what” doctors. What’s going on right now? Over what do you have control? What outcomes do you want to pursue? These and other what questions come up and shape the path to the good life on our patient’s healing journey.
          Traditional psychotherapists bounce around their patient’s past, looking for their answers to the why questions. With mentalligent psychotherapy, we focus on our patient’s present, that part of their personal timeline over which they have full control.
          As I acquaint my patient with their present, I often ask them to stretch out their arms from their side. Modelling what I want them to do, I sweep my left arm down to its resting point on the arc at my waist.
“The movement of my left arm represents all of your past. Depression frequently grows from our past.” I then ask my patient to make the same sweeping motion with their left arm.
          I then sweep my right arm from horizontal to its resting point on the arc at my waist.
“The movement of my right arm represents all of your future. Anxiety frequently awaits you in your future.” I then ask my patient to make the same sweeping motion with their right arm.
          With the demonstration concluded, I then ask my patient, “Where, on your life timeline does your two hands together at your waist represent?” Your present. “What happens to your depression and anxiety?” It’s at least minimized and perhaps goes away.
          Helping patients embrace their present, using mindfulness to explore their 5-sensory experience in the now, gives them opportunity to find their thermal updrafts and learn to soar.
          As patients bring up or recall their stuff and issues, we guide them on their healing journey to convert stress and adversity into resilience. This is where mentalligent psychotherapists make use of Daniel Seligman’s Positive Psychology. We help patients find their eudaimonia, a Greek word translated “human flourishing.” To the extent that patients can stay in their present and develop eudaimonia, their downward spiraling with stress and adversity corrects and their upward spiraling leads to greater resilience.
          In all of our lives, bad stuff happens, often through no fault of our own. Rather than moan and groan and wallow in it in an Eeyore moment, patients of mentalligent psychotherapists find the blessing in their personal hell of the moment. Meichenbaum’s Cognitive Behavioral Therapy help patients trade in their negative extreme thoughts and feelings. Such extreme words as never, ever, only, should, would, could, and must are challenged as downward spiraling triggers. Learning and growing from the stress and adversity creates upward spiraling moments.
          Mentalligent psychotherapy helps our patients identify and find upward spiraling opportunities. The language of mentalligent psychotherapy eschews the medical model and embraces the healing journey our patients have chosen to take, with us as their guide. The intricate weave of mindfulness, positive psychology, and cognitive behavioral interventions promotes patient responsibility for their own health and well-being. They learn to soar through stuck spots, finding resilience on their path to the good life. Blessings, Jon