Why talking therapy fails

Why does talking often therapy fail?

At a fundamental level, your brain is first and foremost focused on survival.

You have inbuilt, automatic ‘danger detectors’, developed and installed through hundreds and thousands of years of evolution.

These innate danger detectors run at a below conscious level.

They do not give your conscious mind any chance to get involved. Threats to survival cannot afford ‘thinking’ to get involved.

Emotions are involuntary, fast acting responses which orchestrate a number of physiological changes to prepare the organism (you) for action.

But as human beings we have an ‘open system’. 

We can learn new threats.

We have those pre-programmed threats that come along with being human, like a fear of unexpected loud noises. But most of our other fears are learned.

Any threatening or overwhelming experience is recorded, catalogued and stored.

It’s added to the database and any time something similar or even symbolic of that threat is identified (at a below conscious level), it is deemed an automatic threat to survival.

An involuntary trigger is created which will initiate a cascade of chemical responses, most commonly the ‘freeze’ response or the ‘flight’ response.

These stored triggers last as long as the data is stored in the database.

And so trying to think your way out of these situations can be impossibly hard.

Talking therapy, most commonly ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapy’ or CBT, puts the cognitive element first.

That is, it assists us to apply our thinking capacities to manage, mitigate and try to overcome our negative emotional states.

Which for certain challenges, which are not deemed by our mind as threats to survival, can be very helpful.

But for those emotionally overwhelming events, many of which probably happened during childhood, this approach is forever an uphill battle.

And I believe it’s this mismatch, attempting to use the cognitive system to try and manage the emotional one, which means therapy can sometimes take years and still never really solve the problem.

I believe it is only when we work directly with the data stored in the database. When we work with the below conscious information, we realise transitioning through emotional overwhelm isn’t as hard, arduous and scary as you might think.

And in fact, going through that process not only helps you to clear that database of those learned fears, but it helps you to realise just how powerful and fascinating you really are. Which leads to increased confidence and empowerment.

If you’d like an experience of how you can clear your database, send me a DM today.