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Rating:  Summary: For professional and lay readers Review: After listening to her clients mention and then discount the positive events and memories they had experienced, Barbara Holstein realized that psychotherapy as it is commonly practiced today focuses almost exclusively on client "pathology". Her conclusion is that clients cannot feel complete until their strengths, rather than their problems, become the fulcrum for therapy . She outlines and details her thoughts on the matter in The Enchanted Self, describing a new therapy designed for both therapists and therapy clients seeking to promote positive change based on a core of psychological and life-experience based health and strength. Also available in hardcover (90-5702-502-7, $56) The Enchanted Self is highly recommended reading for professional and lay readers, especially those whose previous experiences with psychotherapy techniques and traditional approaches have fallen short desired outcomes.
Rating:  Summary: The Enchanted Self, A Positive Therapy Review: I am not a therapist but I think that this book is an excellent text and I have learned a great deal about my own "Enchanted Self".The process in this book delves deep into the experiences that control and make up our lives, and clearly points out that our state of well-being has an effect on how we can learn to cope. The Enchanted Self teaches you how to grow as a person and deal with problems and situations more clearly. It also teaches you how to identify the negative messages that you are carrying that make it harder to maintain your "Enchanted Self", and how positive traits can help you achieve your goals. It was refreshing to read about a process that reinforces the fact that we must concentrate on the positive (not negative) situations that we encounter. I also enjoyed reading about the experiences of other women like myself.
Rating:  Summary: The Enchanted Self, A Positive Therapy Review: I am not a therapist but I think that this book is an excellent text and I have learned a great deal about my own "Enchanted Self". The process in this book delves deep into the experiences that control and make up our lives, and clearly points out that our state of well-being has an effect on how we can learn to cope. The Enchanted Self teaches you how to grow as a person and deal with problems and situations more clearly. It also teaches you how to identify the negative messages that you are carrying that make it harder to maintain your "Enchanted Self", and how positive traits can help you achieve your goals. It was refreshing to read about a process that reinforces the fact that we must concentrate on the positive (not negative) situations that we encounter. I also enjoyed reading about the experiences of other women like myself.
Rating:  Summary: The Enchanted Self: A Positive Therapy Review: The Enchanted Self: A Positive Therapy is a book one cannot resist. In her book Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein, a positive psychologist and a happiness coach in Ocean, New Jersey, emphasises the fact that people are unhappy because they simply cannot remember being happy and not due to past hurts and present disappointments. Meant mainly for mainly for mental health professionals, The Enchanted Self is written in an easy, graceful style that makes it easily accessible. Dr. Holstein shares her own story and clients' stories, and uses them to illustrate her theory of the enchanted self.
What is "the enchanted self"? According to Dr. Holstein, it is the "capacity to reclaim, reintegrate, or adapt positive states of being from previous times in our lives into present-day workable, pleasurable, growth-promoting, joyful states of being." It is a perfect combination of older happy memories with the present experience evolving a joyful feeling on experiencing "enchanted moments". Dr. Holstein further explains: "Enchanted memories are different from everyday memories because they have a rich layered quality, derived from a variety of positive memories, sensory images, and present-day attitudes about the experiences themselves." In other words, enchanted moments are those times when we are in touch with a self that is whole, happy, and creative-the enchanted self.
But reclaiming the enchanted self is not an easy, and certainly not a painless, task. Holstein's enchanted self emerged through a long therapeutic process, "unpeeling as an onion is unpeeled," she says, "layer by layer," as she began to discover more and more of her own past and present happiness, buried beneath past hurts and feelings of violation. Having learned for herself some ways to get in touch with that core of happy contentment, she began sharing her insights with clients, asking them to tell her about the times when they had felt most whole, centered, balanced, joyful-to tell her their happiest stories, in other words. Retrieving those moments, reliving them, she says, is a first step toward reclaiming wholeness and balance in the present life.
On reading Dr. Holstein's book, realised that her ideas are related to our need to tell our stories, and especially our stories of joyful discovery, self-realization, achievement and fulfillment-our gifts, graces, and glories. The pursuit of joy consists of recalling past positive moments and putting them into writing (or translating them into your favorite medium-painting, textiles, dance, song, etc.). This definitely does not mean burying or denying our past hurts; but viewing our traumas in the light of our strengths or to "reframe" it in Dr. Holstein's term.
In her newsletter, The Enchanted Self, Holstein offers two exercises that are also story-telling exercises (reprinted with her permission). Try them, and see if they help you come closer to that part of you that is your enchanted self.
Exercise 1. This exercise involves making positive deposits into your memory bank. Over the next few days, stay alert to when you are in a good mood. Try to use all of your senses to experience the present more fully, especially when you become aware of a "potential deposit." When the moment is right, ask yourself the following questions. What is going on? Does it remind you of other good times in your life? Can you list several of these earlier events? What were the best parts of these earlier experiences? Take the time to describe them, perhaps writing them down or dictating them into a tape recorder. Now gradually refocus your mind on the present. What are you seeing? What are the smells? What are the sounds? How do these sensations make you feel? Try to be aware of the details, taking the time to savor them as you deposit them into your memory bank. If writing or dictating a narrative does not come easily to you, try drawing a picture, writing a poem, or composing a tune. Just do something to capture the moment in a way that is most meaningful to you. Your abilities as an artist, writer, or composer are less important than your desire to relish life.
Exercise 2. This exercise is about withdrawing positive memories from your memory bank. No matter how dysfunctional one's life is, each of us has experienced moments that were good and possibly inspirational. To fully appreciate these memories, we sometimes need the courage to let go of their dysfunctional aspects, revising them to emphasize positive elements. Scan your memory bank for a memory. Let go of any negative feelings around it, focusing on its inherent beauty and the good things that may have come about afterwards. Relish the part of the memory that has some enchantment. Use your senses. How did your body feel? What were the sounds and smells? What did you see? Remember that the pain is a part of the distant past. Enjoy what is best about this memory before you let it go.
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