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  January 21, 2002

No Right and Wrong

Often people are anxious in session because they are afraid of doing therapy wrong. They want to "do it right" and are afraid of making a mistake or being a "bad client."

Two questions come to mind:

1) You might do it right or wrong according to whose judgment?

2) Who has the authority to make that judgment?

Most of our "right or wrong" thought patterns come from a childhood struggle to make ourselves fit the judgments and expectations of parents, teachers, and other authority figures. They are someone else's words - "This is right. That is wrong. Do this. Don't do that." This is the type of coercion that twisted us from what is and sent us on the wild ghost chase for what should be.

We are what we are. We feel what we feel. There is no right or wrong about it. Within a supportive environment (like a primal integration session) it is safe to express whatever we are feeling - or not feeling. It's okay. If a river turns this way or that, dries up or overflows its banks, we do not ask whether it is "doing it right." Like the river, the wind, and the trees, we are living forces of nature.

We can replace the question "right or wrong?" with another simpler, more truthful question - "what is happening"? This question does not require a belief system or ideology. It only requires a willingness to check out what is - what is actually happening in thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions.

To judge our life process (our primal process) by rights and wrongs is to put ourselves in the same critical box that made us sick in the first place. "Right and wrong" are the bars of the prison. Hear them. Feel them. Release them. It is your birthright to be free.



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