Therapist as Shaman

Shamanism appears to be the earliest form of healing that we are aware of to date.  It has existed throughout the world from Russia to Australia, from China to the Americas.  Although there is no one explanation as to how shamanism spread throughout the world, the two that are most popular today is that either shamanism began in Siberia and spread, or that it sprang up spontaneously throughout the world.  There are common aspects of shamanism found throughout the world.  They are findings of teeth, bones, feathers, bird feet, helmets with streamers, skirts with skins, mirrors, crystals, horns, drums, antlers, and statues with toungs that allow researchers to determine whether shamanism existed within a particular society.

            The shaman believes that evil spirits cause illness for the body.  They believe that they can create magic with their words and ritual actions that can drive the evil spirits from the body.  To do this, they must first protect themselves from these spirits, then enter into an altered state of consciousness characterized by a state of ecstasy.  They believe they are able to visit three worlds of reality:  The Under World that represents terror and power, The Middle World in which they see the spirits of this world among us, and The Upper World that is the world of deities.  When Someone claims that they are able to perceive those three worlds, they are having a shamanistic experience. 

                What distinguishes a shaman from a professional priest or healer, is that he is a part-time practitioner.  The training passes down individually from teacher to student.  There are no large schools which train people to become a shaman.  There are two principal ways for a person to become a shaman.  The first way is to be born into a shaman lineage and follow in the footsteps of the ancestors.  The second, and most common way, is to experience a calling for the position.  A calling is perceived by a series of events recognized by the tribe and the individual.  Such events involve:  separation, communication with other beings, ecstatic experiences, a sense they are going to be a shaman and the seeking out of a shaman to train with.

            Psychotherapists can learn much from the shaman.  The Shaman represents a multi-dimensional view of reality.  He believes that reality is a creation of the unconscious.  As therapists, we too would do well to learn how to embrace a multi-dimensional view of reality.  By understanding that there is a conscious and unconscious, as well as the different levels of the unconscious:  the world unconscious, personal unconscious, and collective unconscious, we may gain a better insight into the issues of our clients.  I have often seen a client's material world appear to match his/her personal outlook on life.  By understanding this process, which the shaman seems to know so well, we may be able to help our clients pull themselves out of undesirable real world experiences. 

            The shaman expands what is and what can be through their and their clients' belief in magic.  There are times when therapists encounter patients who are only able to see the world through a lens of black and white.  Often, a client may feel that there is no way he will ever be able to change his life.  By assisting our clients to view the possibilities of change as the shaman does with his clients, we may be able to help the client break the chains of status quo that binds him to the old and possibly self-destructive ways.

            The shaman acknowledges that she is not the one who is creating the change for the client.  She is aware that it is a greater force that she can not control, but only influence.  We too, must recognize that we are not able to change the client, but can only influence him/her with new out looks and ideas.  It is up to the client to accept what is given to her and use it in her life.  As therapists, we have no control over the client's unconscious mind.  This is a great force over which we have no control.  We may be able to assist with some influence, but we must always be as cognizant, as the shaman, that we cannot control it.

                 The shaman lives in the real world.  She holds employment outside the shaministic activities.  She does not allow her activities as a shaman to fill her with false pride, or allow her to look down on others with a sense of being superior.  It might be easy for some psychotherapists to become filled with a sense of self-importance as they watch their clients improving.  These therapists could easily become arrogant and loose touch with empathy for the client.  The shaman never forgets that she is a human being and is not above or below the client, but is able to stay in touch with the humanness of herself and the client's.  The Shaman works together with the client, as does a psychotherapist.  The shaman does not blame herself if a cure does not come forth.  The same should hold true for a therapist.  If a therapist believes too strongly that she alone is responsible for change in her clients' lives, then she may be setting him or herself up for over-involvement in a client's life and lose her objectivity.

            The shaman also protects himself before practicing his trade.  So should a therapist.  Often therapists neglect to protect themselves from a client's emotional and mental states.  Depression and anxiety are two especially contagious emotions.  There are times when a therapist comes home from the office, only to find that he is experiencing similar emotions of the client, or they just feel especially drained from a particular patient.  Shamans do not feel drained from their work.  They do not take on any of the emotional states of the client.  Shamans enjoy their work.  As therapists, we too need to protect ourselves so we may continue to enjoy our work and recognize the boundary between ourselves and our work, and ourselves and our clients.

            As part-item healers, shamans are able to keep their egos separate from the work.  Professional therapists have a difficult time keeping their egos out of their work.  The part time status of the shaman allows them to deal with the real world.  This is the world from where their clients come.  It also allows them to perceive themselves as a part of the society and an understanding of the people for whom they perform their work. 

               Therapists would do well to work part time, or at least have outside hobbies and activities that involve them out side of their careers.  By doing so, their chances of defining themselves by their careers and losing perspective life would diminish greatly.  They would then be able to maintain and enhance themselves as useful assistants to their clients.

            Both shaman and therapists provide their clients with a conceptual framework with which to work.  The clients of both come to them often with chaotic and vague distress.  Shamans explain to their clients why the client is having the experience, and what they can expect of an outcome.  Just knowing these simple "answers" can help a client begin a healing process.  As therapists, we too can assist our clients in understanding why something is going on for them and what they can expect.  It will help them to conceptualize their distress and give them hope that maybe something can relieve their discomfort.  This arouses a hope for cure.  Without a hope for cure, the client will probably not want to bother with working on their issues. 

            In order to arouse this hope for a cure the shaman creates an air of authority through the belief that she is in touch with powerful forces and fosters the belief that she will struggle with the client against the forces that cause her malaise.  As psychotherapists, we create our authority through our education and licenses.  Knowledge and experience may be viewed as powerful forces that psychotherapists are in touch with.  If psychotherapists take an approach similar to the shaman's with their clients, by fostering the belief that they will struggle with the client for change, then maybe that would encourage a closer relationship with the client allowing for depth work to take place.

            The shaman elicits vivid emotions in the client.  From the shaman's point of view, these emotions are very helpful in the healing process.  We can learn from the shaman to remember the important aspect of assisting our clients in experiencing emotions.  Psychotherapists assist their clients by leading them into the pain and exploring it.  As psychotherapists, we understand the importance of allowing our clients to experience their emotions.

             The work of the shaman should serve as a teaching guide to psychotherapists.  The shaman reminds us that the work of the mind is as much as an art as a science.  It is the art of our work that keeps us in touch with the client.  It is the art that sparks our creativity and puts us in touch with our humanity.  Like the shaman, we experience a calling that draws us to this profession from somewhere deep in our souls, beyond our physical world at the point where we are aware of our connection to all that exists.  If we take nothing else from the shaman, let us take his wisdom that we interconnect with all that exists; and we must work within its laws.  Science gives us the tools and knowledge; but art, the art of the shaman, gives us the creativity and understanding to use those tools in a way that can benefit mankind to the depths of his soul.

For more information on Dr. Jim's self-help audios with free samples, log onto www.TheDrWaltonSeries.com.  For more information on Dr. Jim, and to obtain free audio affirmations, log onto his website at LAtherapist.com. 

Recovering from a Break Up

Men pride themselves on feeling powerful, competent and effective in their world. They receive a sense of fulfillment in feeling successful and doing well. Men take great pride in being independent and self-sufficient.

Then, they fall in love. They allow themselves to be vulnerable to another, they get close and sometimes they end up getting hurt and their hearts get broken.

Surprisingly, men generally are the first to fall in love and the last to fall out of it. Men have more difficulty handling their emotions than women. Simply because men have been trained to be more independent so they have developed fewer skills at handling their emotions. They become emotionally overwhelmed more easily and demonstrate it by shutting off emotionally and withdrawing, going into denial or becoming workaholics. All of this is a bid to cut themselves off from those overwhelming feelings of hurt and pain.

In the process, those feelings lie dormant and are actually never healed. When we don’t heal those feelings, we don’t allow ourselves to fall in love again and we miss out on one of the most rewarding, healing and satisfying experiences in our lives that of falling in love again.

The secret that women use for handling their feelings, that men generally don’t, is that women are able to think and feel at the same time. Men, on the other hand, are either in thinking mode or feeling mode. When men are in pain from a break up, they go right into feeling mode and become overwhelmed by those feelings resulting in shut down, paralysis, withdraw or angry bitterness. Men cannot make good decisions for themselves or anyone else under those conditions.

That we fall in love we will inevitably experience having our hearts broken. However, the pain we experience from the loss of a love can have meaning for us and actually enrich our experience in life. Out of the pain of loss, we can observe the true depth of our ability to love another. Without loss, we may never really know the depth of our ability to love.

Suffering is communication from the depths of our soul. Without it, our soul is dead; for suffering deepens and expands our experience in life and we are changed as we give meaning to the experience.

If you have recently gone through a break up, acknowledge that you are going through a crisis and become more compassionate and gentle with yourself. Remove any blame you may be putting on yourself for anything you may or may not have done or for trusting another or having been vulnerable. It’s important to know that we are able to trust and experience vulnerability. Those are important parts of being in a relationship.

Talk about your hurt with people who are willing to listen. You might even want to seek out a licensed therapist to help you through this time.

It’s important to let yourself know that you can and will make it through this time.

Stick to your daily routines. Continue to eat, sleep and exercise at the same times you always have. Meditation can be an excellent way to relax the mind and heal the heart.  If you don’t exercise, now could be a good time to start. Always consult with your doctor first before starting any exercise routine. Exercise causes our bodies to release endorphins that serve to help us feel better.

Don’t seek revenge. It’s OK to fantasize about it, but it’s not OK to act it out. Angry behavior only leads to amping up the drive to act out more angry behavior. Don’t do it.

Don’t follow, spy on, or call the other person. This can keep you attached in a very unhealthy way and makes it much more difficult to let go of your hurt and angry feelings. Resist the urge to try to make them understand your hurt feelings or try to get them to see your point of view. This will only lead to more frustration and feelings of betrayal. Of course, don’t harm yourself. Doing so never gets them to come back.

Throw yourself into an activity or project that you love doing. As men, we’re doers. While we’re doing the activity we love we’re also processing our painful feelings and this can contribute greatly to our healing of those feelings.

Keep in mind that relationships are about growth, they’re not about happiness.

We, ourselves, are responsible for our own happiness. It’s our thoughts and how we choose to interpret them that affect how we feel about ourselves and the world around us. What we think affects how we feel.

When our heart’s broken by someone, we may feel that we’ll never love again. We may feel we were foolish in having trusted that individual. We may have felt that they were the “right” one for us and there will never be another. None of those thoughts is true. There’s not just one person out there for us; there are many right people out there for us. If someone is ultimately not with us, then they were definitely not the right person.

The only thing true about that relationship experience is that you probably learned something about yourself. Search yourself to find out how you’re different now from having known the other person. Have you changed what you want out of a relationship?

It’s our thoughts that determine our happiness, not the person we are with. When we experience a break up, we have a tendency to let go of the bad times and hold onto the good memories. This doesn’t serve us, especially when our heart’s broken and we’re in pain over the loss of the relationship. It may be a good idea to remember the bad times. Keep in mind the difficulties of this relationship and how your needs weren’t met.

For more information on healing from a break up, and to listen to free samples of Dr. Walton’s latest album, log onto “After Breaking Up: Healing the Heart and Finding Happiness.” For more information on Dr. Walton, log onto LAtherapist.com. Watch the Video on "Healing from A Break Up."