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I am doing a lot of reading on various forms of mental health therapy these days. Everything from Gestalt to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to Existential Theory/Therapy. Lord knows I haven’t read it all (nor will ever have time for everything I want to read in life), but here is my very high-level, summary view of the common theme between all forms of therapy.

Therapy appears to essentially help people discover and completely accept who they actually are, without judgment, and help them do the work to build a life that is based on and supports that person. In Gestalt Therapy, that becomes about experiencing the Here and Now as a path to connecting to the reality of who we are. In Existential Theory/Therapy, its about finding meaning, accepting the freedom of being alive, and our responsibilities in self-fulfillment. In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, it means choosing new ways to look at the same problems to find solutions or pick another path forward. 

But before any of that work can really be done, we have to feel safe and supported enough to explore self-awareness without judgment. We have to have hope that things will work out in our favor if we take a risk and try to change. We have to see ourselves without judgment, we have to be ready and willing to love ourselves unconditionally. And most importantly, we have to have faith that no matter our flaws or poor choices or mistakes, we are worthy of love, Good, God’s grace, opportunity, prosperity, or abundance. And I don’t think any of us can get there without faith. 

Unfortunately, I think part of the reason that there is so much resistance in therapy, so much denial, so many sessions and often slow progress is because of all the work that has to be done just for people to believe they are worthy of better or different. What happens if we choose faith first? What happens if we decide to believe we might be worthy, then start doing the work? 

I guess this writing is an exercise in that… I’ve tried therapy a lot in my life. I believe in it and I think it has a very important, often unfairly maligned role in our culture. But I have to say I’m making what feels like bigger, better, faster progress because I have allowed myself to believe in God or Good now. I feel loved beyond my mistakes or sins or maybe even because of them. I feel allowed to be myself. I feel loved for my uniqueness. I feel excited about the future. I feel thrilled by my potential and all the opportunities in front of me. I feel forgiven even before I make a mistake.

I don’t know, it’s wild that it’s easy enough to decide we believe in Good (or God) no matter what, rather than working or striving to get there through our own good works, self-flagellation, karma mining, or error correction. We can take a risk and decide we are worthy of Good just because we want to try it out, and the experiment alone lifts our baseline and clears a path forward for feeling better, doing better, making better choices, and feeling ready to do the work.

This action or choice is not so pristine or ritualized as being baptized or born again. That’s not it. No church or pastor has to give this to us, we can decide it for ourselves, which can be very empowering and eventually feels immutable, because it is ours. It also can feel like the start of really important things, and that everything is finally different, even though we haven’t changed. We’re just re-setting the baseline by deciding we, too, are allowed to believe in Good.