Pathfinder - Navigating New Paths:
The Role of Psychotherapy
in Exploring Uncharted and Familiar Territories of the Mind
Pathfinder:
The Envision Yourself
It’s Your Time Now Series
Dr. Matthew G. Mandelbaum, PhD
Licensed Psychologist
The path of personal development in psychotherapy is a journey combining the known and the unknown.
It is a journey discovering the ways and means in which your past, your present, and your hopes for the future can fit together.
In a coordinated effort with a psychologist, you can learn how to make improvements regarding who you are, what you do, and how your wisdom can strengthen to improve the former two.
The path involves learning to evaluate and seek familiarity and novelty to enhance your interests, desires, and capacities, while improving your availability to be in the present.
The past has value in the service of understanding.
The past also needs to be placed back in time so that you have the freedom to live in the moment and create viable possibilities moving forward.
Being a pathfinder is to be willing to risk failure and still go on.
- Gail Sheehy
Fear of failure, perfectionism, procrastination all have a similar story: Being afraid of that which may happen to me as outside evaluators react to my doing and being. The internal noise of such stories further complicates a person’s capacity to live and be free.
Consider this:
An empty canvas for a painter or a blank page for a writer is highly daunting. The possibilities are endless and the artists must manifest something from a void. Hearing the noises of others or negative inner noises compounds the difficulties and reduces capacity to begin. Notwithstanding fear, the artists courageously make the first mark or write the first word. So they begin their enagement with their art. With increased energy, mark after mark and word after word join together to drive the artists’ interaction with the media.
It is understandable that the psychotherapeutic process may seem similarly daunting at the beginning. Fear of the unknown and risk of failure may be related. Reflect on your right to feel unsettled and your right to ask for something new. These inklings may be some of the reasons you seek out therapy.
Psychotherapy can help train us to use our intuition and our wisdom to guide us to the revelations that come from within and the recognition of what comes in our environment. As we harness the value of internal and external forces, we learn to utilize grounded intrepidity and thoughtful prudence to mindfully move towards our goals.
As pathfinders in psychotherapy, I offer you high praise and extreme respect for taking on the journey.
Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything.
If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path.
- Henry Winkler
The inner voice can be cultivated to usher in awareness of how we can be successful.
We deserve to acknowledge this wisdom and actively train ourselves to grow this wisdom to attain happiness and joy. Pathfinding may mean turning off behaviors that no longer suit us, including negative self talk.
Compare the value of you about your inner wisdom versus the value of negative self talk. The latter is less useful. Don’t you deserve to learn how to turn down the negative noise and enhance the audio of your inner wisdom?
The practice effects that come from your courage to utilize your inner wisdom are two fold:
1) Your wisdom capacity increases.
2) The grip of the inner negativity reduces.
The path from dreams to success does exist.
May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get on to it, and the perseverance to follow it.
- Kalpana Chawla
How many times have you heard from your own negative self-voice or from other people that what you have to offer and who you are doesn’t matter? Have you heard it needs to be 100% for it to count and anything less is worthless? What are the impact of such statements? What abou doubts, second-guessing thoughts and discredited feelings? Have you used behaviors chosen for other people’s needs not yours? If any of these have happened, I am sorry. Those types of experiences are terribly desatisfying.
You deserve more. You deserve to dream and to turn dreams into reality. You deserve to be able to self-regulate so when those experiences happen, you know what to do. Psychotherapy can help.
If you’re scared about pursuing your dreams, I understand. If you’re troubled by listening to your inner wisdom, I get it. Think about this: What is the present day value of not doing so? Which behaviors are more expensive to keep, the ones that are inneffective and familiar or the ones that are sustainable and effective? Did you learn to use negating behaviors for self-protection? Are those behavior scripts still relevant today?
If you are considering your answers to these questions, we can talk about it more.
As pathfinders in psychotherapy, we can use courage, wisdom, and fortitude to find what we are into. We can nourish our ideas and translate them into action plans that can be implemented so that our dreams can be manifested into our realities. It may be time to lay down the negative, high-cost patterns to prepare for the next stage of your journey.
What Will Happen In Therapy?
Thoughtful, patient, loving inquiry about the self and the world takes care and bravery. One reason is because it takes care to offer kindness from you to you.
That type of kindness may seem easier to direct to someone else. You might be more practiced at giving kindness to others than to yourself. You have the right and the responsibility to engage in such inquiry and skill building in the service of your sustained personal development.
The grace of self-kindness may allow you to make a better impact in the world, reduce personal pain, and increase personal harmony and satisfaction.
Some have asked me what exactly will happen to me in psychotherapy? How exactly will I change?
My answer is this: I can’t tell you exactly who you will become in psychotherapy. It is indeterminant. I know you can be different than you are now. The difference can be positive, meaningful, and sustainable.
Psychotherapy can help you become gain increased interest and investment in yourself and the world.
You can have improved knowledge, skills, and abilities to make good things happen.
You can learn to manifest your potential to improve your life.
I would be happy to talk to you further.
Clients who work with me have found that psychotherapy can be fun, relieving, and empowering. They have enjoyed learning and apply skills to multiple areas of their lives. I know that journey is yours. The experiences and tools belong to you. I seek to help you on the journey of self-discovery in order that you can improve your agency and your impact.
My aim is to improve your capacities as a sensitive, intelligent person, to fortify your capability to build your sense of self, to help you make meaning of your experience, to grow your wisdom, and to give you tools so that you can function in many aspects of the world.
Want to talk more?
Please join me for a complimentary 20-minute phone consultation.
Warm regards,
Dr. Matthew G. Mandelbaum, PhD
Licensed Psychologist