SELF-LEADERSHIP/INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS

Self-leadership therapy is one of the fastest growing approaches to psychotherapy. It has developed over the past twenty years. It believes in a non pathologizing approach to healing. Self-leadership helps people heal themselves by tapping into their inner resources and inner wisdom that is inherent in all. We have been trained to look at the outside world for satisfaction. We are afraid to look inside of us.

All of us are multifaceted, as we have different aspects to our personality. You may also refer to these aspects as sides, parts, or facets. They serve different functions for us. For example, a lonely person becomes a workaholic. Being workaholic is his way of coping with something that is very painful. If this client is treated for workaholism and his loneliness is not taken care of, he would then figure out some other ways to suppress his feelings of loneliness. Treating the workaholism only will offer a band-aid approach. In the field of mental health, we focus too much on the “symptom”. We try to attack the symptom leaving the root cause of the problem untapped. If you kill a weed by cutting it off, what will happen? It will grow back. So we need to get to the root of the weed, dig deep into the ground, and then pull it out. Continued...