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Tap the Volcano

7/31/2020

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     When a client enters your office, they’ll tell a story.  The story they’re relating is not real; it’s what they believe is real.  If the therapist spends the session addressing the false narrative, the therapist is enabling the myth and wasting time.  However, just beneath the story, a volcano of emotions is churning ready to be released.  The therapist must tap these emotions and allow them to surface.  When these emotions are released, the hidden issue lurking behind the false story will also emerge; healing can now begin. The first thing a therapist must do is to identify what the client is doing to hide the emotions. Secondly, the therapist must aide in their release.
 
                                          Spotting Suppressed Emotions
 
1) Look for the 4d’s: denial, discounting, distraction, and defense.  The 4d’s always indicate the presence of fear.  When the client is in any one of them, they’re hiding fear.  When you spot either denial, discounting, distraction or defense, stop, challenge it, and allow the client time to pause and go inward; there they must feel the fear, not run from it.  Practice spotting and identifying the 4d’s, your success as a therapist requires it.
 
2)  If you notice a client glancing upward in an attempt to think through a response or elevating the pitch or their voice, they’re attempting to escape the emotion; they’re going up into their head.  When in fear or distress, animals “go to ground.” When humans are in fear or distress, they often go upward to their thinking.  Spot this behavior immediately and get them to focus downward.
 
3)  A client who comes to a session happy, bright, and sunny, often possesses a darker emotion just beneath the bubbly surface.  Life may genuinely be beautiful and flowing for the client, but there will always be an opposite reaction to this positive change.  The client tends to race forward in an attempt to out-distance the fear; this is a distraction.  They’ll need time to pause and allow their resistance and fear to catch-up.
 
4)  If a client keeps moving to a different subject, again, this is a distraction; they’re in fear. Slow them down to allow the fear to catch up.  Before going off to another topic, pause and address the fear.
 
                                                 Tapping the Volcano.
 
1)  When you spot a client showing any of the above signs of fear, you must pause and not proceed further.  Gently ask the client to close his or her eyes and become still and silent.  In that stillness and silence, ask them to allow whatever emotion(s) that comes up to come up.  It will not be long before a darker feeling appears.  Encourage the client to feel this emotion at whatever depth they’re comfortable.
 
2)  When your client races upward to their head and thoughts, ask them to pause a moment and bring their attention downward to their navel.  Ask them to lower their head.  By keeping their focus downward, the negative emotion will have a better chance to felt. The navel, the third chakra, is the seat of emotions.
 
3)  Now and then, ask the client to pause and check-in with their younger selves to see how they’re feeling.  Pausing to check-in allows these younger selves participation in the process; it gives them an opportunity for emotional expression.
 
     Don’t race forward during your sessions.  Now and then pause and check-in with how the client is feeling; as all life ebbs and flows, each session, likewise, ebbs and flows.  By allowing this rhythm to be a part of your work, you’ll lay the groundwork for more opportunity for healing.  
     Remember, the story the client brings to the session is not what’s important; what’s up for healing is.  By pausing to allow the feelings to surface, you can undertake the work that’s required.  Listen to the story; don’t be seduced by it.  Listen to the story, but listen more to what needs feeling.  Tap the volcano to release its pressure.
 
 


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The Work of the ASAT C.O.R.E. Counselor

7/22/2020

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     The work of the ASAT C.O.R.E. Counselor is not limited to the time spent working with clients, or the time spent taking classes, developing marketing strategies, or anything else for that matter.  Many ASAT counselors do not work with clients directly; they do not have offices, signs in front of the door, or a fancy marketing plan.  Yet, they're ASAT C.O.R.E. Counselors.
     "Counselor" was the title given to you upon completion of a course of study. You've completed the course, you've earned the title.  But the title is just a word; nothing more. "ASAT C.O.R.E. Counselor" doesn't mean anything until you give it meaning and value in yourself.  No, it doesn't mean you're required to be an active participant in a distinct profession, but it does mean you're an individual with a different calling. You were called once to the game of healing, and you are again.  You don't have to get into the game; you are the game.
     You were drawn to this C.O.R.E. perspective, whether you make it a profession or not.  You were brought to this unique calling of healing, whether you answer the call or not.  But beyond the call to become a healer, to enter a profession, you were asked to challenge yourself, to surpass, and to supersede yourself.  Are you?
     It doesn't matter why you answered the call, why you took the class, all that matters is that you were called; not everybody is.  This "answering" in no way makes you special or better than; it just says you're unique, whether your focus is on a particular profession, or on helping others through your day to day interaction with them, or changing the world by your being in it. You're an ASAT C.O.R.E. Counselor because you're a magician, a map-maker, a healer.  And what is the work of a magician?  A magician's work is to love, to dream, to heal, and to work magic.  Are you?
     No, doing the work of an ASAT C.O.R.E. Counselor is not limited to a fifty-minute session, setting appointments, or bantering about words like conscious, own, release, and engage. It's not limited by anything you do or say. It's shown in the workings of your life, it's reflected in your dreams, love, healing of self and others, and in the magic you craft, and in the magic you allow, and it shines in the brightness, or dimness, of what you're allowing your life to become.  You are the healing game you play in, and you are the one who chooses to win or lose at the playing of it.
     You're being called once again, this time by a world desperately in need of love, desperately in need of dreams, desperately in need of healing and desperately in need of magic.  Are you going to answer the call?  Are you going to step up and stand out?  Are you going to get into the game you were once called to play?  Are you?
     No, you're not being asked to work with clients.  No, you're not being asked to save the world; there's nothing from which the world needs saving. You're being asked to love, to heal, to dream new dreams of futures yet to come, and to work a little magic now and again. You're being called to do the work of the ASAT C.O.R.E. counselor, the real work of the ASAT C.O.R.E. counselor. You're being called to counsel yourself: your younger, less developed selves. It's your younger selves, and your dark counselors, who call out to you amidst the frenzy, turmoil, and chaos of the changing times we're in. It's in the callings of their desperate fear that, to you, their lives don't matter. It's in their calls from the quarantine you've forced them in that they seek release and freedom to grow and prosper; it's through their raging shouts, and it's by their destructive frenzy to pull down your iron monuments to past memories and faded glories that they seek to get your attention. And it's in the calls from their isolation that they ask to be discovered.  
     Go within, find them, respond to them, and dream dreams with them, work your healing magic with them, and love them.  ASAT C.O.R.E. Counselors only have one client in life, themselves. Remember, always, "Nothing changes until you do."  Are you?
 
                            Now is the time to see what you're made of.


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    More Posts Coming Soon. Stay Tuned!

    Dr. Martin Hart

    President: American Society of Alternative Therapist (ASAT™)

    Teacher: Architect and principle instructor of ASAT™ C.O.R.E. Counseling

    Author: The C.O.R.E. Principles, The Scented Flowers  of Sinjin-Ka, The Magic of the Scented Flowers, and The Best Meditations on the Planet  (with co-author, Skye Alexander)

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