What is real anyway?

You may often hear it said 'it's all in the mind'. This presupposes that there is a reality beyond the mind, where somehow things are more, shall we say, 'concrete' in nature. A reality which is beyond argument or speculation. Rubbish! The thing we call reality is no more than our interpretation of it, commonly called a worldview. Don't believe me?

Consider this: A man says he only believes what he sees. First he sees Paul Daniels make a card disappear. Generally he doesn't accept it has 'really' disappeared, rather than he has been cleverly deceived. Or a woman sees a ghost, but she doesn't believe in ghosts so the unfortunate apparition becomes a trick of the light or an hallucination or whatever.....
So the statement I only believe what I see actually depends upon an interpretation of what we see. Truth my friends is not an absolute; it is merely a statement that is in agreement with the worldview that produced it!

So what has this to do with therapy. Well, everything. Unless you understand the clients worldview you have little hope of a successful intervention. Attempting to get them to subscribe to a version of reality that is 'real', which is at best a consensus reality in that many people agree to it, or at worst the therapists worldview of reality is futile. The intervention has to be framed from the worldview of the client OR has to be aimed at getting the client to modify their worldview in order to reframe the problem so that it is no longer a problem.

Look at the image below:

 

What do you see?

 

If a client told you it was an angry tree spirit out to get them because they had been cursed, what would you do? Tell them it wasn't - good luck with that. How about accepting for a moment that in their reality that is exactly what it was and go from there; the subconscious just loves drama and would respond very well to a curse being lifted.

 

So, my tip for the week 'stop trying to force people to see the world from a narrow point of view and work with the world as they see it'. It really is much more rewarding.