One of the most fundamental causes of personal suffering is that people are imprisoned by their limiting organizing principles.
The most primary activity of the human mind is that of interpreting and organizing our life experience. It’s crucial to understand that most of this organizing activity takes place unconsciously.
As children, we unconsciously organized our early relational experiences in a distinct way that resulted in the formation of our fundamental “organizing principles” or emotional convictions. Our organizing principles are the templates that determine the way we experience the world. Our limiting organizing principles are therefore the primary cause of our self-defeating behaviors and loss of vitality. For example, if our parents consistently ignored our feelings, we may have developed an organizing principle such as, “My feelings don’t matter to people.” The result of this organizing principle might be a profound sense of loneliness and isolation. If we grew up with constant criticism, we may have formulated an organizing principle such as, “To survive, I must hurt others first before they hurt me.” As an adult, such a person might develop a pattern of being nasty or argumentative. Since these organizing principles are unconscious, we may feel stuck and don’t know why.
What makes things even more challenging is when our life experience consistently seems to confirm the truth of our limiting organizing principles. When this happens, we are likely to conclude that our organizing principles are absolute facts and determine our destiny. In this state of mind, the possibility of change seems remote, perhaps even, impossible, but with time, positive change can still take place.
My goal as a therapist is to help you identify and bring your organizing principles out of the unconscious and into conscious focus so that you can examine and understand them. The wonderful result of this reflective process is that new, more flexible, and empowering organizing principles can form and then become integrated into the fabric of our psyche. This results in significant improvements in our attitude and behavior. Above all, we will be freed from our emotional prisons and will feel more alive and in control of our destinies.