My Tweets on Psychotherapy and Mental Health

Having adversities in life is reality.

We need to vigorously change our thinking,

emotions and behaviours positively while coping with life.

Public still associate someone that has
hallucination and delusion with demonic possession.

Psychoeducation on Schizophrenia is essential.

Struggle with suicidal thoughts during and/or after
a divorce can happened to both female and male clients.

Need to stay neutral while discussing religious faith with client.

Having knowledge on comparative religion is important.

Motivation for change must come from within oneself –

not merely to please someone else

Some people are confused about detachment and apathy.

Practicing detachment will not lack a sense of meaning or purpose in life.

Therapy needs a haven but do not expect

the process has no discomfort and it is painless.

If you do, you are probably at the wrong place.

Seeking therapy is not shameful but not doing so may end up in regret.

When general public is unable to differentiate

between pseudoscience and genuine treatment,

we will have a long way to go and plenty of work to do.

Nothing is more rewarding than client is able to walk out of the misery,

regained confidence and have the courage to move on.

Instil change in client is an objective.

And to achieve that,

therapist must not lose the focus on therapeutic relationship.

The less fortunate should not be deprived from therapy,

we should reach out to them whenever possible.

It is a crucial moment of their lives.

Counselling is not about promoting false sense of hope,

It is about reality check and

yes it may cause discomfort to client.

Do it with empathy.

It is not the responsibility of the therapist to change the client's faith.
This is deemed as unethical & unprofessional practice.

True empathy does not come from role-play, supervision
and academic qualification but with scars from life experience.

Sense of hopelessness:
when there is no means to live & no meaning to live for.
Frankl explored meaning of life & Yalom explored about death.

Expecting life to be always hassle-free and without adversities,
people holding such belief is contributing to one's cognitive distortions.

Rational Thoughts:
Failed relationship does not foreshadow future failed relationships and

it may not reflect one's character or overall worth.

Every attempt to suicide,

it carries a message to be heard.

It is seeking HELP.

A Therapist who is overly empathic,

unable to refute the toxic beliefs is causing harm

to client because this will cloud reasoning ability.

Turning therapy into a romantic/sexual relationship harms clients and

robs them from psychological help that they are seeking for treatment.

Clients may be seeking companion/looking for affection.

But it is not for therapist to fulfill that role.

It is an abuse of power.

Psychotherapy is primarily a unique relationship between

two people unlike family, friends or lovers.

Assuming it as anything is detrimental.

Psychotherapy cannot remove painful past experience.

But it provides compassion and support for

clients to accept the past without embitterment.

I leave 3 things outside the therapy room namely;

obsession with mood check, 
overly empathetic and unrealistic positivism.

The Art of Psychotherapy

Carl G Jung

Source: The Wisdom of Carl Jung

A person entrusted with the care of souls ought to have 

a certain wisdom of life which does not consist of words only, 
but chiefly of experience.

The greatest mistake an analyst can make is to assume that
his patient has a psychology similar to his own.

We cannot demand of our patients a faith which
they do reject because they do not understand it, 
or which does not suit them 
even though we may hold it ourselves.

First of all, one has to accept and to take seriously into account
the existence of the shadow.

Anybody whose calling it is to guide souls 
should have his own soul guided first,
so that he knows what it means to deal with the human soul.

It is of course, 
essential for the psychotherapist to have 
a fair knowledge of himself,
for anyone who does not understand himself 
cannot understand others and
can never be psychotherapeutically effective unless 
he has first treated himself with the same medicine.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for
dealing with the darkness of the other people.

For psychotherapy to be effective, 
a close rapport is needed,
so close that the doctor cannot shut his eyes
to the heights and depths of human suffering.

When I am treating a man,
I must be exceedingly careful not to knock
him down with my views or my personality,
because he has to fight his lonely fight through life and
he must be able to trust in his very incomplete armor and
in his own perhaps very imperfect aim.