Your Life-Story, Part 1: It’s Subjective and Biased

In Life Therapy, you and your therapist view the present life, review the past, and preview the future of your life-story. 

You view, review, and preview your life-story as you are now, from where you are now in your life-story. Your point-of-view is subjective and biased. So, is the point-of-view of your therapist. 

It’s subjective because you are the subject viewing your own life-story. Your life-story is the object you’re viewing.

You aren’t outside your life-story looking at it as if you’re a disembodied spectator. You’re in your story. You’re the main character. You are the story.

You are your life-story.

The only point-of-view you have is yours. Your point-of-view of your life-story is biased because it’s yours. It’s skewed by your subjectivity. No one else has your point-of-view because no one else is you living your life-story.

Your Life Therapist is now a character in your story too. Your therapist’s point-of-view is subjective and biased for the same reasons as yours.

There is no objective, unbiased point-of-view from which to view the present, review the past, and preview the future of your life.

Life Therapy Sessions

In Life Therapy, appointments are collaboration sessions rather than treatments. You and your therapist collaborate in attending to, serving, and taking good care of your life. 

You bring your Life Therapist into your life. Your Life Therapist becomes a supportive, influential character in the story of your life. Your sessions are not appointments to check off your “to do” list for the day. They are part of the story of your life.

You collaborate with your Life Therapist to co-create the narrative of your life.

Together you look at the condition of your life right now. How’s your spirit? What’s going well? What needs to go better? 

What is your life-story so far? What has harmed you? What have you overcome? What are you proud of?

If you live seventy-five years, how many more do you have? What do you want to make of your life in the time you have left? What must you do before you die?

Your spirit is what makes you alive. How’s your spirit right now? How alive are you? 

What are the life-affirming desires of your heart? Where are you in realizing them?

What is Therapy in Life Therapy, Part 3: Life Therapy is Different

Life Therapy is not a series of treatments ordered by your physician and approved by your insurance company. It’s not a mechanical transaction done to you.

Life Therapy is a human interaction between you and your Life Therapist. It’s about your life.You are the expert of your life. Not your therapist.

As an adult, you are the author of your life. You are the authority able to respond for your life. That’s what it means to be responsible for your life. 

You are in control. You choose to engage in Life Therapy. You are actively involved rather than passive. You do the work. Your Life Therapist attends to, serves, and helps take care of you.

Therapy in Life Therapy, Part 2: Core Problem with Treatments

Core Problem with Therapy-as-Treatment

The core problem with therapy-as-treatment is a combination of three false assumptions: 

1. Humans are machines

    2. They can be mechanically repaired when broken

    3. Those who fix them are rightly well-paid 

These false assumptions have influenced Western medicine since the Enlightenment period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They are obviously false to us today, and yet they’re still at the heart of modern Western health care.

Western health care is an industry based on the factory assembly line. The product on the line is patient visits. Therapists are assembly line workers with a quota of patients to work on each day. As a patient, you are one item on the assembly line. There is no time to waste on human interactions.

There is only time, an average of 7 minutes, to examine the problem, order diagnostic tests, make a diagnosis based on what’s most common, order treatments based on what works most of the time, and schedule a follow up visit, if needed.

Therapy-as-treatment is a mechanical transaction. It treats you like an it-object on a factory assembly line. But you’re not a mechanical it-object. You’re a living human being, living your complicated human life.

You are not a machine. You are a living human being.

Therapy is not rightly a mechanical transaction that fixes your broken parts. It is the process of attending to, serving, and taking good care of you as a human being. 

 It is immoral to-

1.    Turn health care into an industry that functions like a factory assembly line

2.    Treat ill and injured humans like it-objects on an assembly line

3.    Treat health care providers like assembly line workers with daily quotas

4.    Extract enormous financial gains from ill and injured humans that fill the bank accounts of the factory owners and share holders

These false assumptions form Western health care practices today. 

When you’re ready to heal your hurts, use your strengths,

make your way to a better place in life, and

fulfill your unique life-affirming desires,

contact meat mark.w.neville@gmail.com

For secure and confidential online therapyconnect with mehere.

To stay in touch, connect with me on—

FaceBook:www.facebook.com/MarkWNevilleMDiv

LinkedIn: Mark W Neville

To purchase my book, Re-Visioning Spirit: A Brief Introduction, from Amazon, click here.

To purchase it from Barnes and Noble, click here.

What is Therapy in Life Therapy? Part 1

In Life Therapy, therapy does not mean treatment. I don’t give treatments. Let me explain.

Therapy-as-Treatment

Some therapists give you treatments: physical therapists, respiratory therapists, radiation therapists, etc. They treat specific physical symptoms. So, do physicians and nurses. They treat your symptoms with medications and surgeries. 

Therapists who give treatments are licensed experts with special knowledge and training you don’t have. They’re expensive.

Treatments as Orders to Follow

Treatments must first be ordered by your physician and pre-approved by your health insurance company. Then you schedule an appointment.

You arrive at the time of your appointment, sign in, pay, fill out forms, and wait until your name is called. Then you go to the treatment room and passively receive the treatment. 

You are not in control. The therapist tells you what to do during the treatment. You comply and follow directions.

Sometimes treatments help you. Sometimes they don’t.

Treatment protocols are based on tests that determine what works for most people. When you don’t fit in the box of “most people,” the problem is the treatment, not you.

What is Life? The Fourth and Final Part

Life is a condition, time period, and narrative. It is also a natural force. It is the natural force that gives you life. You have life in you. In other words, you have spirit.

Your spirit gives you life. As long as you have spirit, you live. When you expire, spirit-out, your spirit leaves and you die. Your life ends.

What happens after you die? You disintegrate. Your spirit dissipates into the wind, your body decays into the earth, your psyche departs from your body to the otherworld, and your relationships change. 

Since your psyche is no longer spirited, it stops aging and learning. Since it still exists with all of its memories and abilities, your relationships remain, especially your bonds of love. Since it exists disembodied, your relationships with those still embodied are indirect at best. 

Your spirit is the agent of your life. It makes you alive rather than not. Its instincts compel you to remain alive. Its emotional responses inspire your mental and physical responses. Its moods color the days of your life-story, and its characteristics inform your identity.

Because your spirit is essential to your life, it is of central concern in Life Therapy.

What is Life? Part Three

Life is a condition. You either have it or you don’t. Right now, you have it.

Life is a time period. It’s the time between your first and last breaths. It’s temporary.

Life is also a story. It’s your life-story, the narrative of what you actually do between your first and last breaths.

You make up your story as you live it. You improvise it breath by breath, moment by moment, one action after another.

You think you know what you’re going to do next, but you don’t. Not really. You could die before you finish reading this sentence.

If you are still alive and reading, what is the condition of your life? How is your life?

Is it what you want it to be? If not, what must you do the rest of your life? 

What is Life, Part Two?

Life is a time period. It’s the time period from the day you were born until the day you die.It is represented by the "-" (dash) between your birthday and deathday. 

Some believe it begins before you are born, maybe even before you are conceived in your mother’s womb. 

Some believe you have lived many lives and could live many more.

Maybe so. Maybe not. What works for you?

For this blog, your life is the time period between your first and last breaths in this world.

You take between 17,000 and 23,000 breaths per day. Split the difference and say 20,000. If you live 75 years, how many breaths do you have left? Go ahead. Crunch the numbers.

I have 14 years, 5110 days, and about 102 million breaths left.

How many days of breathing do you have left?

What do you want to do with those breaths and days?

What must you do before your last breath? Are you doing that?

Yes, life is a condition, the condition of being alive. It’s a temporary condition.

What is Life? Part One

Life is a condition. It’s the condition of being alive rather than not.

It’s an observable condition. You see the difference between a tree that is alive and one that is dead.

You are experiencing the condition of life first hand. You are experiencing it now as you read these words. Otherwise, you would not be reading these words.

It’s a condition that wonders you when you pause to consider it. Take a breath. Pause. Consider this...

You. Are. Alive.

Wonder of wonders! Why? How? What for?

Being alive inspires admiration, awe, and curiosity all at the same time. How wonder-full being alive is! And how terrifying!

Why are you alive? Why you?

How did it happen that you are alive? What's it about?

What do you do now? 

The Purpose of This Blog

The purpose of this blog is to blog my way to the book: Life Therapy: An Introduction.

If you follow along, not only do you get to witness the gestation and birth of the book, you also get to comment along the way.

You have the opportunity to influence the formation of the book and more. You get to influence the formation of Life Therapy itself.

I do hope you will jump in, take full advantage of this opportunity, and transform it from a monolog to a conversation. 

Life Therapy is about You and Your Life

Life Therapy is about you and your life. It’s about the mere fact that you are alive rather than not. Let that fact sink in. Feel wonder in response to this mystery: You are alive.

In Life Therapy we attend to, serve, and take care of your life together.

We attend to your life because it’s worth attending to. It’s a here and gone, once and done occurrence. That makes it of inestimable worth.

We serve you and your life because it’s worth serving.

And we take good care of your life, especially when you feel so overwhelmed and discouraged that you’re ready to give up. We take good of your life because it is so valuable.