The Nonlinear Library LW - rapid psychological growth by Chipmonk
Jun 6, 2024
09:49
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: rapid psychological growth, published by Chipmonk on June 6, 2024 on LessWrong.
After a one-hour session with an exceptional counselor, I never suffered over that romantic incident again. Although, that's inaccurate, I also had 2x half-hour relapses in following month.
After a few more sessions, I stopped doing depression.
I brought the rest of my anxieties to that counselor over the following year, and…
Radically effective and rapid psychological growth is possible with the right combination of counselor and method. But this is rare in 2024!
Introspection that actually works
It was while working with that counselor that, for the first time I could remember, I was able to actually do introspection.
Before, whenever I had problems that seemed to be caused by my psychology, I would do the obvious thing and ask myself, "Why am I doing ? Why am I not doing ?"
But that almost never worked. Usually I would get a response back like, "Because it's hard, I'm lazy, and it's just a bad habit." The same problems would come back again and again.
Meditation didn't help me much either.
But, for me, this counselor did. I would come to a session suffering from something, he would prompt me into feeling into my body about the issue - which is important because the body represents the unconscious - and then in the following Socratic conversation I would be able to make rapid and dramatic progress on my problem. Big anxieties gone in an hour.
(For context, most of my problems then could be reduced to either "I feel anxious about X social situation." and/or "I am disliking myself and I'm suffering about that.")
Learning to facilitate
Later, I trained with that counselor and learned his method. As part of my training I facilitated for four volunteers, and they seemed to have similar results that I had: rapid and dramatic resolution of the issue they came with in one hour. (Caveat: I never spoke to these volunteers again, so I don't know if the effect lasted.)
But the sixth time I facilitated for someone was different. I experimented: I let the conversation run as long as it needed to, and I proactively tried to target the deepest roots of his emotional insecurity using the full force of my psychological research.
After our three-hour conversation, he said,
This session was significantly more productive than the last 6 months of professional CBT and talk therapy I did combined.
(For context, he was a CFAR alumni and also very experienced with Focusing.)
We didn't do any other sessions, but I followed up after six months to ask how he was doing:
I can't stress how much I appreciated that dialogue, it really made me feel better, and I think I have already expressed much of what it made me feel. […] The effectiveness of your presence defeated my incredulity, and then some.
This seems not to be a fluke, either. I've facilitated for seven other people since then and four have had similarly large shifts, eg,
Your communication style made it easy to identify and release limiting beliefs. I felt noticeably more secure after just a few hours.
That said, the other three people I facilitated seemed to have smaller effects, though each claims it was positive.
More information about my emotional security tune-ups is available on chrislakin.com/now
Radically effective and rapid psychological growth is possible with the right combination of counselor and method!
What does a session look like?
Here's the closest example I could find of what rapid psychological growth looks like in practice.
(Note: I don't completely agree with their method, and also I wonder if the client's progress could've been even quicker.)
Bolding is mine. Coherence Therapy for Panic Attacks, 2007 Bruce Ecker & Laurel Hulley:
Carmen, a stylish freelance writer, was 35 and happily married, but she experie...
After a one-hour session with an exceptional counselor, I never suffered over that romantic incident again. Although, that's inaccurate, I also had 2x half-hour relapses in following month.
After a few more sessions, I stopped doing depression.
I brought the rest of my anxieties to that counselor over the following year, and…
Radically effective and rapid psychological growth is possible with the right combination of counselor and method. But this is rare in 2024!
Introspection that actually works
It was while working with that counselor that, for the first time I could remember, I was able to actually do introspection.
Before, whenever I had problems that seemed to be caused by my psychology, I would do the obvious thing and ask myself, "Why am I doing ? Why am I not doing ?"
But that almost never worked. Usually I would get a response back like, "Because it's hard, I'm lazy, and it's just a bad habit." The same problems would come back again and again.
Meditation didn't help me much either.
But, for me, this counselor did. I would come to a session suffering from something, he would prompt me into feeling into my body about the issue - which is important because the body represents the unconscious - and then in the following Socratic conversation I would be able to make rapid and dramatic progress on my problem. Big anxieties gone in an hour.
(For context, most of my problems then could be reduced to either "I feel anxious about X social situation." and/or "I am disliking myself and I'm suffering about that.")
Learning to facilitate
Later, I trained with that counselor and learned his method. As part of my training I facilitated for four volunteers, and they seemed to have similar results that I had: rapid and dramatic resolution of the issue they came with in one hour. (Caveat: I never spoke to these volunteers again, so I don't know if the effect lasted.)
But the sixth time I facilitated for someone was different. I experimented: I let the conversation run as long as it needed to, and I proactively tried to target the deepest roots of his emotional insecurity using the full force of my psychological research.
After our three-hour conversation, he said,
This session was significantly more productive than the last 6 months of professional CBT and talk therapy I did combined.
(For context, he was a CFAR alumni and also very experienced with Focusing.)
We didn't do any other sessions, but I followed up after six months to ask how he was doing:
I can't stress how much I appreciated that dialogue, it really made me feel better, and I think I have already expressed much of what it made me feel. […] The effectiveness of your presence defeated my incredulity, and then some.
This seems not to be a fluke, either. I've facilitated for seven other people since then and four have had similarly large shifts, eg,
Your communication style made it easy to identify and release limiting beliefs. I felt noticeably more secure after just a few hours.
That said, the other three people I facilitated seemed to have smaller effects, though each claims it was positive.
More information about my emotional security tune-ups is available on chrislakin.com/now
Radically effective and rapid psychological growth is possible with the right combination of counselor and method!
What does a session look like?
Here's the closest example I could find of what rapid psychological growth looks like in practice.
(Note: I don't completely agree with their method, and also I wonder if the client's progress could've been even quicker.)
Bolding is mine. Coherence Therapy for Panic Attacks, 2007 Bruce Ecker & Laurel Hulley:
Carmen, a stylish freelance writer, was 35 and happily married, but she experie...