Post by Admin on Aug 10, 2021 17:27:50 GMT
ACCEPTING ALTERNATIVE REALITIES
rufusmay.com/2010/10/23/new-paper-i-have-written-on-unusual-beliefs/
Reflecting on my own experience of alternative realities as well as my experience as a psychologist helping others, I will consider how we best assist people experiencing other worlds of reality we find hard to relate to. I will first consider the philosophy of assisting people with unusual beliefs and ways of incorporating self help approaches into daily living to promote healing. This will be followed by looking at:
1) How to help people live more freely with their unusual beliefs.
2) The importance of increasing social connectedness and creating safety.
3) Reducing anxiety related to unusual beliefs.
4) Understanding the social and emotional meanings that the unusual beliefs represent. In the examples I will discuss the ways psychotherapeutic work can be helpful in understanding and addressing unusual beliefs.
The two most common ‘symptom types’ in psychosis are firstly ‘auditory hallucinations’ and secondly ‘delusions’. Over the last twenty years the Hearing Voices Movement has helped challenge conventional approaches to “auditory hallucinations” by reframing them as “voice-hearing experiences”. The Hearing Voices Movement has demonstrated the broad range of ways to integrate voice hearing into one’s life. Due to this there has been great progress in developing research on the experience of voice hearing and self-help networks. This has lead to innovations in both psychotherapeutic and self help knowledge for voice hearing (see Romme et al. 2009).
Delusions (or perhaps more respectful terms such as alternative realities or unusual beliefs), the second major group of psychotic experiences, have not had as much energy devoted to them in terms of self help initiatives as voice hearing. Cognitive behavioural therapy has focused on the problem of ‘delusional thinking’, and has sought to change it to more rational thinking, through teaching people to test out their theories against empirical evidence. However this therapy movement has been largely unable to translate this into collaborations with self help groups and has limitations when working with people who value their belief systems and who are not motivated to challenge them.
rufusmay.com/2010/10/23/new-paper-i-have-written-on-unusual-beliefs/
Reflecting on my own experience of alternative realities as well as my experience as a psychologist helping others, I will consider how we best assist people experiencing other worlds of reality we find hard to relate to. I will first consider the philosophy of assisting people with unusual beliefs and ways of incorporating self help approaches into daily living to promote healing. This will be followed by looking at:
1) How to help people live more freely with their unusual beliefs.
2) The importance of increasing social connectedness and creating safety.
3) Reducing anxiety related to unusual beliefs.
4) Understanding the social and emotional meanings that the unusual beliefs represent. In the examples I will discuss the ways psychotherapeutic work can be helpful in understanding and addressing unusual beliefs.
The two most common ‘symptom types’ in psychosis are firstly ‘auditory hallucinations’ and secondly ‘delusions’. Over the last twenty years the Hearing Voices Movement has helped challenge conventional approaches to “auditory hallucinations” by reframing them as “voice-hearing experiences”. The Hearing Voices Movement has demonstrated the broad range of ways to integrate voice hearing into one’s life. Due to this there has been great progress in developing research on the experience of voice hearing and self-help networks. This has lead to innovations in both psychotherapeutic and self help knowledge for voice hearing (see Romme et al. 2009).
Delusions (or perhaps more respectful terms such as alternative realities or unusual beliefs), the second major group of psychotic experiences, have not had as much energy devoted to them in terms of self help initiatives as voice hearing. Cognitive behavioural therapy has focused on the problem of ‘delusional thinking’, and has sought to change it to more rational thinking, through teaching people to test out their theories against empirical evidence. However this therapy movement has been largely unable to translate this into collaborations with self help groups and has limitations when working with people who value their belief systems and who are not motivated to challenge them.