The Dr. Zwig Show

#60: How to Process a Body Symptom

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 03:00:00 +0000

When you experience a body symptom you most likely attribute it to an underlying physical process. You SHOULD think this way. Check out your symptoms with a medical doctor.

But there’s another, equally, if not more important, level of the human body—the PROCESS BODY. This isn’t a physical body with functions you can see, touch, and quantify but rather an experiential body you can feel and visualize. It encodes and expresses the psychological processes driving your symptoms and illnesses.

To work on your process body, you must use your somatic senses and visualization to explore, unfold, and process your perception of symptoms in order to connect with their meaning and message. The more you’re able to integrate this message into your consciousness, the more you activate a natural healing response in your biochemistry.

Today’s episode guides you through an exercise for processing your physical symptoms. Doing so can lead not only to personal growth and wellbeing but also to improvement in and sometimes healing of your physical issues.

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#59: Solve Your Relationship Conflict by Being a Musical Math Genius!

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 03:00:00 +0000

It’s difficult to be objective about yourself, and when you interact with someone it can be daunting. You get caught up in the relationship process and lose yourself. This happens because a relationship is far more than just two separate human beings communicating by sending and receiving signals and messages.

Together, you and the other person form a system in which the contents of your psyches lose their borders as they interact, merge, morph, conflict, entangle, disentangle, and behave as part of a whole. Your personal history, present consciousness, and future fate intertwine with the other person’s and create a third entity called, the "relationship.”

The way to improve your relationship is to awaken to how your psyche gets entangled with theirs. This involves learning how to identify your own patterns of experience and behavior, and how they relate to the other person’s. To accomplish this, it’s instructive to understand how identifying patterns lies at the heart of both music and mathematics.

This episode includes a discussion of the connection between music, math, and relationships…complete with some loud guitar riffing! Learning how to identify the psychological patterns in your relationships will lead to healing, growth, and wisdom.

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#58: How to Transform a Relationship Problem

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 03:00:00 +0000

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction both are transformed.” – C.G. Jung.

This episode guides you through a practical exercise for working on your relationship. Sit together and make a video discussing a problem you’re having. Watch the video. Then, both of you close your eyes and imagine you’re an old, wise man or woman. You’re clear-headed, objective, calm, and centered. You’re an enlightened elder who sees through peoples’ conflicts and dramas. You have a mature and understanding way of relating to human processes. You see and feel the big picture of life, and are beyond all the little-picture pettiness people get entangled in. You’re loving, free, strong, happy, and in touch with eternity and the true meaning of life and relationships.

To do this, begin by seeing yourself as this wise figure. Take your time and create a really compelling vision. Observe every detail of how you would look as this wise man or woman. Then feel deeply into it. Afterwards, stand up and walk around the room embodying it in your movements. Finally, sit back down and watch the video together again.

As you do this, be the wise figure and study yourself in the relationship. Do it in a loving, supportive, but insightful way. Notice if there’s something that’s hard for you to admit about your own behavior but is nevertheless true. After you’ve done this, have a respectful discussion about what you’ve learned. Doing this exercise will help you improve your relationship and find healing, growth, happiness, and success.

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#57: How Objective Are You About Yourself?

Dr. Zwig — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Being objective about yourself isn’t easy. You need a method to observe and facilitate your inner processes in a neutral, non-ideological way. Conventional psychology and psychiatry fail miserably at this but you can use processing methods to achieve it. drzwig.com - instagram.com/drzwig - youtube.com/drzwig - facebook.com/drzwig

#56: How to Use Your Phone Camera to Work on a Problem

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 03:00:00 +0000

A practical exercise in which you video yourself talking about a problem, tap into a new, more objective perception of your issue, and give yourself some sage advice. drzwig.com - instagram.com/drzwig - youtube.com/drzwig - facebook.com/drzwig

#55: Your Relationship Is a Movie and Band—What Role and Instrument Do You Play?

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 02:00:00 +0000

Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art? Is your life like a movie, or is a movie like your life? Neither! Life and art are the same thing, and they both arise from your process.

Your relationship isn’t "like" a movie—it IS a movie—a dream…and you play a character in it. Your character and that of your partner, create the story, and hopefully, it manifests a lot of goodness. But trouble can lurk in the shadows. One of trouble’s main instigators is when your character role gets cemented, set in stone, fossilized.

For example, you’re the rational one and she’s the irrational one, or you’re the thinker and he’s the feeler, or one of you is responsible and the other is irresponsible. There are many character roles available: Dramatic and calm. Extroverted and introverted. Educated and uneducated. Spiritual and mundane. Pragmatic and idealistic. Leader and follower. Doctor and patient. Innkeeper and drunk!

Relationship conflict arises when people become stuck in one of these roles. Switching them is a powerful, therapeutic change agent. Identifying the roles in your relationships and experimenting with swapping them will bring healing, change, growth, and happiness.

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#54: How to Switch Roles to Change a Relationship Dynamic

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 18 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

There are three levels of a relationship. The first one is what most therapists focus on—the communication level. This has to do with how well people share their feelings and listen to each other. Solutions on this level require you to learn how to communicate better. But oftentimes, this isn’t enough. You can learn all the “right" things to do but still suffer from conflict.

The reason is that the other two levels have enormous influence on what happens. The second one is what today’s exercise focuses on—the internal level. Your partner, friend, boss, etc., aren't just real people out there with whom you communicate; they also represent psychological patterns in the form of inner figures/characters in a story in your own psyche. You don’t only relate to the other person, you also relate to this part of yourself without realizing. The most common inner figure that gets projected onto other people is an internalized parental figure. Change and growth happen when each individual becomes conscious of the other person as a part of their own psyche, and learns how to process it.

The third level is the systems level. This is the level in which an individual refers to him- or herself as “we” instead of “I”—even if their partner isn’t present! The person identifies with the relationship as a system that acts as a being unto itself—one which is greater than the sum of the the two individuals. Transformation happens by working on the said and unsaid agreements that create something bigger than the two individuals.

Everything you experience aims at your personal growth and expansion. If you can use your relationships in this way, it will lead to growth, healing, and wellbeing.

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#53: Solving Relationship Conflicts by Accessing the Subconscious

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Relationships get stuck when one or both people aren’t conscious of their deeper feelings and needs. A powerful method for tapping into your subconscious where these unknown parts of yourselves reside, is visualization.

People typically use visualization to help them get into a certain state of mind, improve their performance at something, clarify goals they want to accomplish, or even to try to heal physical illnesses. But a more effective approach is to visualize what you actually DO feel rather than what you want to feel. Instead of trying to create an experience, expose the one that’s actually there but hasn’t been consciously acknowledged, or at least hasn’t been communicated to the other person.

Tapping into this inner truth will set you free. It might hurt, it could shock, or it may delightfully surprise...you never know. It might also bring out unconscious, knee-jerk reactions in the other person showing you that they may not be up to having a conscious relationship with you. Whatever happens, you will have set yourself on the path to healing, growth, and freedom from half conscious, half-truths about what’s going on in yourself and in your relationship. This will lead to self-actualization, wisdom, freedom, and success.

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#52: How to Use Visualization to Work on a Relationship Conflict

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Relationship conflicts are ubiquitous and difficult. Each person is absolutely convinced they are in the right. This creates a communication knot that feels impossible to undo. Visualization is a method that can help untie the knot.

The method consists of sitting together silently, meditating on how you feel with each other, making images of your feelings, sharing them with each other, unfolding them in real time, and then respectfully discussing their implications for your relationship.

There’s no goal of harmony or resolution in this method. The goal is simply raise raise awareness in the relationship. The first time you do it, you might just gain a few insights into the dynamics between you and the other person. But even this alone begins to transform the atmosphere you share. Oftentimes, you don’t solve a conflict right away; you plant seeds of insight, and they eventually grow into something transformative.

This exercise is a powerful way to move beyond a stuck situation and can lead to change, healing, growth, and happiness.

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#51: Obstacles Contain the Missing Ingredients for Your Goals (and Your Life!)

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 08:46:00 +0000

There’s so much info on the airwaves these days saying, “Never give up!” “Power through the obstacle!” “Believe and achieve!” “When the going gets tough, the tough get going!”…and all that’s good. But this approach is only a subset of a more important and effective way to deal with the things that block you in your life. To truly understand and transform an obstacle you must unpack the information in it and let it guide you.

It might want you to power through, for example, if the purpose of the obstacle is to push you to connect with your power.

But oftentimes, a problem shows up for a completely different reason. It’s there to redirect you by waking you up to something you haven’t been aware of. It might even want you to change your entire goal. If you just always try to power through you miss this essential information. You might even succeed at your goal but it’s a cost because when you repress or ignore information in your life it has an insidious way of appearing again as a different problem down the road.

The obstacles you encounter are unconscious parts of your story—meaningful, purposeful expressions that occur in order to make you aware of certain changes you need to undertake on your journey toward your goals. Instead of ignoring or just trying to bash through blocks, approach them as guideposts. They show up in order to raise your awareness, expand your mindset, and redirect your actions. Understanding and acting on the inherent message of your difficulties leads to positive change, growth, healing, and wisdom.

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#50: How to Process Your Fears and Resistances

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 08:46:00 +0000

Change is a beast. Oftentimes, for something to be born, something must die. Even our bad habits feel like home; every time we discover something new in ourself we resist it because it means leaving our known, familiar way of being. It’s so much easier to just stay where we are. But this is exactly why we need problems, symptoms, and messed up chaos in our life to wake us up and push us into our process!

A problem is the unconscious expression of a new part of you, a new way of being, reacting, thinking, feeling, relating, and experiencing yourself and life. Symptoms and pain are your unconscious process trying to get your attention. They have an inherent drive to become conscious but get blocked by your conscious or unconscious fears and resistances to change.

This episode guides you though a practical exercise which shows you how to work through these blocks so you can connect with the positive growth trying to come forth in your life. Confronting and processing your fears instead of avoiding them leads to healing, inner strength, and success.

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#49: How to Transform an Obstacle Into an Ally

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 08:46:00 +0000

A painful problem isn’t set in stone. To the contrary, it's the negative manifestation of something in your psyche, which, when made conscious, transforms into a positive expression. This is due to the fact that every human process manifests either positively or negatively, in other words, consciously or unconsciously.

For example, you can use your strength to stand up for your feelings. But you could also use it to abuse someone. So, strength in itself is neither good nor bad—it’s neutral. It all depends on how you use it, meaning, how conscious you are of it in yourself.

You can be emotional to share your true feelings but you could also oppress someone with your emotions. You can be rational to figure out the correct answer to something but you could also be rational as a way to avoid your feelings. You can be intelligent to do good in the world or to do bad in the world. Or say you’re a cautious person; this can protect you from a lot of problems but it could also cut you off from fully experiencing life.

The attribute itself doesn’t determine how it manifests—YOU do. Your problem is the negative expression of a meaningful, positive process, and your job is to hunt for the core quality behind the unconscious, negative expression, and integrate it in a conscious, positive way. Today’s exercise shows you how to do this. You can apply it to depression, anxiety, attention deficit, trauma, and many other problems. This will help move you toward healing, growth, inner strength, and wisdom.

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#48: Personal Transformation Is a Martial Art (But Not in the Way You Think!)

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 08:46:00 +0000

The ancient martial art known as Aikido doesn’t use techniques to battle an opponent but rather employs methods for blending and harmonizing with their energy and movements in order to redirect the force of their aggression. Instead of fighting the enemy, the Akido master observes them carefully, and uses their own actions to transform the situation. It’s a basic process idea which says that a problem contains it’s own solution, and the way to discover it is to integrate, not destroy its energy.

This is a powerful notion when it comes to processing your life issues because what usually happens is that the more you battle them, the more they entangle you. But when you try to ignore them they also get you. It’s like you’re screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t! This exercise will show you a different way to work on what’s bothering you. You can use it to process depression, anxiety, attention deficit, trauma, and many other problems. This will help move you toward healing, growth, wisdom, and wellbeing.

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#47: The Most Effective Way to Heal and Grow Is to Process Your Fears

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 08:45:00 +0000

Change is a beast. For something to be born, something has to die, and this requires letting go of something near and dear. Even your bad habits feel like home. So, if you need to change something in your life—depression, anxiety, trauma, attention deficit, relationship problems, etc.—it can feel like being asked to leave your cozy comfort zone, the known, the familiar, the safe.

It’s so much easier to just stay where you are, and this is exactly why we need problems, symptoms, and messed-up chaos in our life. Without it we’d rot into static beings. We need something to light our fire and push us into our process.

Our fears create a psychological barrier between who we are and who we’re meant to be. Some of our fears are known but are difficult to overcome. Others are unconscious; we automatically resist and block our own growth without even realizing. Fear is one of our most painful experiences but it holds the keys to healing, personal growth, inner strength, and wisdom.

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#46: Get Fixated on Your Process, Not Your Problem

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 08:45:00 +0000

If you only focus on what’s negative in your life you miss the fact that your symptoms, pain, and conflict contain meaningful messages. These messages manifest as problems because they’re blocked from your awareness. They aren’t intrinsically negative but are rather symptomatic expressions of your deeper self trying to come to consciousness.

When your mind can’t accept, is afraid of, isn’t ready yet, or is simply unaware of how you need to change and grow, it forces the basic emotion driving your growth to mutate. Instead of experiencing power, creativity, playfulness or whatever's trying to emerge into your consciousness, this raw, unprocessed emotion manifests as a disturbance, a problem, a “symptom.” The basic process fueling your issue is right, but it manifests in a negative way.

Conventional mental health practice misses the mark by just trying to suppress this disturbing manifestation of your process. Doing so, throws out the baby with the bathwater. Instead, you must learn how to reverse the mutation by uncovering the hidden emotion driving your distress. This leads to liberation and expansion—the true purpose of your issue.

Just trying to get rid of your pain kills your growth. Your problem is your crucible! Don’t dismiss it or just suppress it; keep working on it to connect with its hidden, transformative meaning. Get fixated on your deeper process, not on its momentary negative manifestation. Doing so, helps transform depression, anxiety, trauma, etc. into healing, personal growth, wisdom, and wellbeing.

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#45: How to Discover the Positive Power in Your Negative Issue!

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 08:45:00 +0000

We usually try to suppress or “manage” our depression, anxiety, trauma, etc. But within these issues lies your positive power trying to come forth. In order to discover it, you have to explore and process the “poison” in your problem, not run from it.

Every human quality expresses itself either positively or negatively, in other words, consciously or unconsciously. For example, you can be emotional to share your true feelings but you could also oppress someone with your emotions. You can be rational to figure out the correct answer to something but you could also be rational as a way to avoid your feelings. You can be intelligent to do good in the world or to do bad in the world.

This dual, yin-yang nature of human qualities means that when you have a negative experience, either within yourself or in relationship to a person or the world, the negative aspect isn’t the most important part. Of course, it hurts and you want to get rid of it but it’s only the negative expression of a human quality. That quality, when made conscious, transforms into a positive expression.

Your pain and dysfunction aren’t meaningless mistakes in your psyche; within their poisonous manifestation lies your potential liberation. You must process your issue! This doesn’t mean just thinking or talking about it but rather hunting for your disavowed / suppressed feelings, thoughts, and behaviors by applying processing methods. Doing so, leads to healing, personal growth, inner strength, and wisdom. Today’s episode is a practical exercise for doing this.

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#44: Psychotherapy and Music Are the Same Thing

Dr. Zwig — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 08:45:00 +0000

Therapy is music and music is therapy. They both help us connect with the deeper feelings and thoughts that reside in us but we aren’t aware of. They bring to the surface what’s hiding in the shadows of our psyche.

You know how a song makes you feel a certain way—uplifted, melancholy, spiritual, fun, etc.? This state of mind and body already exists within you but you don’t have conscious access to it. Music magically opens up the experience in a way you can consciously feel. This is why you’re drawn to certain music. Psychotherapy also delves into the shadowed parts of your psyche and brings their contents to your awareness. In both cases, we embark on a path to potential healing, growth, and wellbeing.

This episode explores the interconnections between problems such as depression, anxiety, attention deficit, trauma, relationship conflict, etc, on the one hand, and psychotherapy, music, physics, and mathematics, on the other.

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#43: How to Steal Your Problem’s Power

Dr. Zwig — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 08:03:00 +0000

A life problem contains a victimizing power. No matter how much you try to avoid, suppress, or change the issue, it persists. To heal it, you must transform the victimizer’s negative energy into your own positive power. To do so, you have to understand the fact that every human quality can be used either positively or negatively, in other words, consciously or unconsciously.

For example, you can use your strength to stand up for your feelings or someone else’s feelings. But you could also use it to abuse someone. So, strength in itself, is neither good nor bad—it’s neutral. It all depends on how conscious you are of it in yourself, and how you use it.

The same is true for every human quality. The quality itself doesn’t determine how it’s expressed; YOU do. And why is knowing this important? The dual, yin-yang nature of human qualities means that your problem—depression, anxiety, attention deficit, trauma, intrusive thoughts, etc.—isn't set in stone. Of course, it hurts and you want to get rid of it, however, it’s only the negative expression of a human quality. That quality, when made conscious, transforms into a positive power. Integrating this power leads to healing, change, growth, and wisdom. Today’s episode leads you through a practical exercise for doing this.

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#42: Don’t Reduce Your Symptoms—Amplify Them!

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 08:44:00 +0000

The notion that life issues are meaningless, evil things that need to be eliminated as fast as possible, is as old as humans. But this viewpoint overlooks the fact that your problems contain meaningful information which is trying to point you in the right direction for your growth. To tap into this information you must amplify and process your symptoms, not just try to vanquish them. Amplifying your problem converts it from a mysterious, painful experience into meaningful conscious, content. Then you can process and transform it.

A problem is like a star in the night sky. We experience its effects— meaning we feel the problem / we see the light emanating from the star—but without amplifying the signals we don’t perceive all the information that’s present. We don’t know the inner workings of the problem or the star. To amplify them we must exaggerate their signals, or amplify our ability to pick up the signals, or both.

To study stars we use powerful telescopes that amplify our visual power. We gather all sort of mind-blowing data about the make-up of the star, it’s distance from the earth, it’s birth and death, and it’s implications for the age of the universe. Suddenly, a little light in the sky reveals its whole story. It’s the same with your problem. Amplifying its core elements reveals its underlying narrative, and points the way not only to healing but to transformation of your whole life. Using your problems for growth in this way is a potent path to wisdom, well being, and success.

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#41: How to Amplify a Problem to Discover Its Message

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 08:44:00 +0000

Despite the fact that there’s never been a scientific study showing that mental distress is an “illness,” psychiatry employs the disease model used in physical medicine. This is why psychiatric treatment’s main focus is on suppressing symptoms. However, this approach misses the whole point of having a life problem. Distress / dysfunction aren’t “diseases”; they’re potent messages of personal change and growth trying to come forth.

In order to discover and act upon this message, you must strategically amplify, not reduce, your symptoms. This brings the contents of your process to consciousness so you can connect with the changes trying to come forth, transform your issue, and change your life for the better.

Therefore, whether you’re depressed, anxious, can’t concentrate, suffer from trauma, have relationship problems, or any other issue, you must learn how to identify your problem’s core elements, and amplify and process them. This will lead to healing, inner strength, wisdom, and well being. Today’s episode guides you through an exercise for doing this.

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#40: The Golden Meaning & Purpose of Distraction (& the Fabrication of "ADHD")

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 08:43:00 +0000

We usually think of distractions as something bad. We value our ability to focus on tasks without interruption. When we can’t concentrate we assume something is “wrong.” Enter the “ADHD” epidemic. ADHD (originally called ADD) was first conceived in the early 1900s but was a rare diagnosis until the 1980s when suddenly everyone seemed to have it. It’s no accident that this happened at exactly the same time that new medications to treat it came to market. More often than you might imagine, medications for so called “mental illnesses” often precede wide spread diagnoses.

ADHD is a fabricated “illness.” The problem is very real and painful, however, the disease entity is a made-up label that simply describes misunderstood behavior. It’s referred to as a “neuro-developmental disorder” despite the fact that there are no neurological studies demonstrating this in a cogent way. It’s a hypothesis, not an established scientific theory. The insurance companies won’t even pay for brain scans for this supposed disorder because they consider it to be a behavioral problem, not a neurological problem. The fact is, an inability to concentrate is a meaningful psychological process that can be worked with and transformed.

Instead of viewing your lack of focus as a pathology, approach it as a growth process. Not being able to concentrate happens due to unidentified, unprocessed problems needing immediate attention. In addition, embedded within your propensity for distraction is unused creative energy that must be consciously integrated. Your mind doesn’t function in a random way; it’s structured by your psychology. Your attention automatically gravitates toward whatever reflects your psychology back to you. The symptoms of “ADHD” don’t constitute a “disease”; they’re trying to bring your attention to your deeper story. They need to be processed and transformed, not suppressed. Doing so leads to healing, personal growth, happiness, and well-being.

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#39: Spontaneous Attractors: How to Use Things That Catch Your Attention for Healing and Growth

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 08:25:00 +0000

Everything you experience aims at making you more aware. Feelings, moods, symptoms, problems, dreams, events, relationships, and trivial things in your environment that irrationally hook your awareness and take your attention, all carry meaning and purpose for you. They’re trying to spark your attention, light a fire under you, take something out of the shadows of your psyche and place it under the spotlight of your awareness.

Your mind functions according to two things—your conscious intentions, and your subconscious processes. The things in your environment that catch or disturb your attention (an event, object, shape, color, person, sound, sign, song, etc.) aren’t random; they’re structured by an internal honing mechanism in your subconscious that seeks to make itself conscious by intruding into your awareness. It continually searches for something that can reflect your process back to you. The world is your mirror.

In this episode, I show you how to use whatever catches or disturbs your attention as your path to healing, change, and personal growth. This will help you begin to transform issues such as depression, anxiety, attention deficit, trauma, relationship problems, and other common troubles.

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#38: Don’t Overcome Obstacles—Integrate Them!

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 08:43:00 +0000

The conventional view of life obstacles is that they serve no purpose other than to irritate and frustrate you. They’re seen as a problem that must simply be eliminated. Therefore, you should do everything you can to immediately overcome them. This is a shallow understanding.

Even though problems are painful, they contain essential information meant to guide you in the right direction. An obstacle is your traffic director; it shows up to illuminate the way. Don’t just kill it. In fact, welcome it. Process it. Sometimes this means pushing through the block to connect with your strength, but other times an obstacle appears in order to push you to change your direction. Always begin by approaching it as meaningful and purposeful, not as meaningless trash in your way.

This is a paradigm shift—from pathology to process. Instead of viewing your life as a fight to overcome your inner and outer demons, approach everything as a process that carries an important message for your growth and development. Always remember that what stops you is there for a reason, and you can tap into it and transform it the issue. This episode focuses on processing your blocks to extract and integrate their inherent wisdom. Doing so leads to inner strength, growth, healing, wellness, and success.

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#37: How to Process Obstacles That Block You From Becoming Your Ideal Self

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 08:42:00 +0000

Somewhere in your psyche you have an image of yourself at your full potential—an intuition of who you could be in your inner life, relationships, work, and spirituality. Your greater self is always present. But there are inner and outer obstacles that prevent you from living it. These obstacles are so pervasive they can block you from even knowing your potential.

Being disconnected from yourself in this way can lead to depression, anxiety, attention deficit, and many other problems. In fact, every life issue is a result of some type of disconnection from an essential part of who you are. Therefore, it’s vitally important to identify and process the things that hold you back. Today’s exercise shows you how to accomplish this. Doing so leads to inner strength, freedom, wisdom, healing, and happiness.

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#36: How Does Your Inner Critic Talk to You? —or—How the Blues Changed the World

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 08:42:00 +0000

An inner critic can cause depression, anxiety, attention deficit, mood swings, and other problems. It isn’t just a negative internal thought process full of nasty content; it’s a part of your psyche that has its own personality. It communicates to you in a specific way by making you the recipient of a particular kind of energy, vibe, and style of communication. This is the HOW instead of the WHAT of your experience.

In psychology, it’s called “process” vs. “content.” We tend to focus solely on the latter but it’s often difficult to transform a problem without working on the process level. Your experience of the critic as powerful, relentless, and cold is a way of being you need to integrate in a positive, transformed way.

To do this, you must identify and describe HOW your critic acts upon you—by being aggressive, bold, strong, etc.—and transform these qualities into a constructive force you claim for yourself. This takes away the critic’s power. Doing this work over time transforms it from an oppressive part of your psyche into an inner strength you can use for healing, growth, inner strength, wisdom, and success.

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#35: How to Take Your Inner Critic’s Power!

Dr. Zwig — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 08:42:00 +0000

An inner critic can lead to many life problems, both inner and outer. If you’re aware of your inner negative thought-voices you’re ahead of the game because you have content you can process directly. Unfortunately, many people have an unconscious / hidden critic that they’re controlled by without realizing.They’re psyche reacts with depression, anxiety, attention deficit, delusions, relationship problems, and many other painful issues.

The first step is to become aware of your negative thought-voices and visualize this inner talker as a character. Then you can process it. The critic has two aspects: One is WHAT it says to you; this is the content of its speech. The other is HOW it talks to you, how it delivers that content; this is its energy and personality. We usually focus on what the critic says and overlook the fact that it has a specific and unique way of delivering its message. This is crucial to become aware of. Why? The way your critic talks to you contains a basic human quality that you actually need! I’m not talking about its negativity but rather a certain hidden power that you must take out of its negative context, claim as your own, and use in a positive, constructive way. This exercise shows you how to do this. Doing it daily will lead to healing, personal growth, wisdom, and success.

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#34: Your Inner Critic Is Your Crucible…or...How the Beatles Ended the Cold War

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 19 May 2021 08:41:00 +0000

Psychology and self help teachings have it wrong by viewing the inner critic as a purely negative feature of the mind, something to try to get rid of by silencing. Since it leads to depression, anxiety, and other problems, it’s seen as a poison of the psyche, a pathology of the soul, a sickness of your psychology. But this misses the fact that the critic’s hurtful words are just its surface manifestation; behind it is something completely different—your guide to growth! The critic is only the seed, the impetus, the painful poke from your subconscious calling you to action—the beginning of a meaningful and purposeful process that’s designed to spark awakening and transformation.

If you simply try to silence the critic, you miss the whole point. You mistake a “symptom” for your growth process. By drowning it with drugs you kill this growth, and by only using mind tricks like positive or rational replies to the critic you spend a lot of time and energy “managing” your problem.

Your critic is your crucible—your painful birth into the positive process of individuation. You must learn how to process your negative thought-voices, not just try to get rid of them. Doing so will lead to healing, growth, inner strength, wisdom, and well-being.

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#33: How to Process Your Inner Critic

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 12 May 2021 08:41:00 +0000

Do you ever criticize yourself? If you don’t you’re a rare breed; most people do it all the time. Conventional mental health practice aims to “silence the critic,” and to this end teaches people methods for rationalizing and ignoring it. Not only is this ineffective much of the time, it misses the whole point of having an inner critic—growth. To connect with this growth you must process, not “silence” your critic.

But why process this hurtful inner voice or thought pattern? Why give negativity any attention at all. Wont’ that make it worse? Why not just try to ignore it, or think positive thoughts, or go to the gym and sweat it out, or smoke pot, drink a beer, watch a movie, take a Xanax, surf the internet, eat cake, work, talk, sleep...?

These distractions can help you in the moment but they won’t transform this part of your mind, and they won’t help you discover the hidden gold in this negative experience. Processing the self-critical part of your mind means engaging with it in a way that uncovers its true message and purpose; this begins the process of transmuting it from an attacker to an ally.

Your inner critic is your crucible, your calling to transformation and expansion. It’s not a meaningless, negative thought pattern that must simply zapped away. It’s a raw, unprocessed voice from your subconscious that’s part of a larger story, and it’s calling you to process it as a meaningful expression of your growth. Instead avoiding your critic or just trying to think positive thoughts, you can engage with it in a way that not only transforms it but changes your whole sense of self, as well. This will further your personal growth and lead to healing, inner strength, and wisdom. Today’s episode guides you through an exercise to begin doing this.

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#32: Life Problems Are Doorways to Personal Transformation

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 05 May 2021 08:41:00 +0000

What’s the first thing you think of when you feel affected by depression, anxiety, attention deficit, loneliness, trauma conflict, etc? If you’re like most people, it’s, “I wish I could just rid of it.” But this reaction is all wrong. It’s based on a false assumption about why we have problems. It assumes your life issues are personal ordeals with no purpose other than to make you miserable. The origins of this way of thinking come from the age-old belief that pleasure and freedom from stress are good, and difficulties are bad or evil. It’s an instinctive, unconscious way of interpreting experience, and most people still live with this mindset.

Science and technology have improved our lives by applying the scientific method to the idea that problems are purely negative and should just be eliminated. Yet in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and self-help, this demonization of our difficulties makes us impotent to really understand and transform them. It misses what they actually are: Unrecognized personal growth and change trying to happen.

A problem is a meaningful and purposeful process designed specifically to make you develop as a person. This isn’t something arbitrary where you get to decide which of your troubles relate to personal growth and which don’t. Everything you struggle with is meant to force the evolution of your consciousness, expand your identity, and increase your self-awareness. Each issue you encounter aims at a specific change you need to make, a transformation of your awareness in a highly targeted area of your life. The details of your difficulty contain information that’s trying to point you toward a new way of being.

A life issue has a goal, and despite the fact that pain is awful, suffering isn’t its goal at all. Pain and suffering are alarm signals calling you to yourself, bringing your attention to the hidden directions trying to happen in your life. Just wanting to get rid of what bothers you without getting its message, is understandable; nobody wants to suffer. But it’s an attitude rooted in a simplistic understanding of life — and it’s ineffective.

Your troubles are signposts pointing to essential changes you need to make. When you avoid, suppress, or just try to get rid of your distress without getting its message you throw away vital information. What feels bad and wrong actually contains an intrinsic wisdom aimed at positive change and growth. In fact, the very issue you wish you could just zap away contains the holy grail of your life in this moment! Learning how to process it instead of suppress it leads to profound healing, change, and growth.

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#31: Music Is Psychotherapy!

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 08:40:00 +0000

Why is music so popular? Why is it that practically everywhere you go in some countries you hear it being broadcast? Music bypasses the mundane in us, it circumvents consensus reality and touches directly into our hearts and souls. Music is magic. It can change your mood in an instant or amplify your emotions to give you better contact with them. The latter is why sad people tend to listen to sad music; it’s therapeutic because it exaggerates and supports the feelings one needs to experience and process.

Music opens up your feelings and thoughts in ways everyday life usually doesn’t. So does psychotherapy (if it’s done well). In fact, music and therapy are really the same thing. They both tap into the unsaid, unfelt, unintegrated parts of your psyche. The artists and songs you’re drawn to are those that help you access feelings and ways of experiencing life that are already in you but aren’t fully conscious.

Today’s episode explores how music is therapy and therapy is music. If you experience issues such as depression, anxiety, attention deficit, trauma, phobia, relationship conflict, etc., you can benefit from learning how the music you like and dislike reflects your inner process. It’s a mirror you can use to reflect back to yourself what’s happening in your psyche.

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#30: How to Use Songs that Pop into Your Mind for Healing and Growth!

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 08:40:00 +0000

Music is emotional flow, and there’s literally an emotional flow state trying to happen in you in every moment. If it’s consciously perceived, it manifests as authentic feelings of joy, creativity, love, personal power, spirit, a sense of freedom, etc. If it’s not in your awareness, it manifests as a problem (depression, anxiety, addiction, etc.) that disturbs you in order to force a process of change that can connect you with your deeper self.

One way we instinctively try to access this flow state is through music. Your favorite songs bypass your mind’s conflicts, blocks, walls, and habits and touch into the marginalized parts of your psyche—those that hold the keys to personal change and growth. If you can do this, even for a minute, you’ve done psychotherapy on yourself, and you’ll experience a sense of healing, growth, and wisdom.

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#29: Your Hero / Heroine is a Projection of Your Unrealized Personal Power!

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 08:39:00 +0000

Your subconscious continually tries to alert and awaken you to your deeper process. It does this by creating intractable problems, dreaming up fateful events, and sending you seemingly random thoughts, feelings, visions, and…musical communications.

Songs that pop into your mind aren’t random or meaningless. They don’t suddenly appear just because you heard them recently. Like any thought, feeling, or mood that shows up “unannounced,” they’re spontaneous expressions of your subconscious communicating a meaningful message. The messages they convey can be tapped into and used for healing and personal growth.

This episode leads you through an exercise that uses songs to help you connect with the part of yourself that contains solutions and directions for your life. Music isn’t only joyous, it’s also a useful methodology for generating self-awareness, healing, success, and well-being.

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#28: How to Use Your Hero / Heroine to Help You Transform a Problem

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:39:00 +0000

Feeling stuck in your life doesn’t mean you’re bad or weak; it means you have a powerful process of growth trying to happen—a heroic calling toward your greater self. The more stuck you feel, the more challenging and numinous the change that’s trying to come forth. But how can you change something that seems impossible? Enter your hero / heroine.

Think of a problem you’ve had trouble making progress on, for example, depression, anxiety, attention deficit, relationship conflict, trauma, etc. Take a minute to review your experience of it. Don’t work on it and don’t try to solve anything. Just review the situation and what you’ve been feeling. Take a look at the whole issue and acknowledge it for what it is. Be as honest as you can about where you’re at with it right now.

Then, ask yourself, “Who could deal with this problem effectively?” Think of one of your heroes or heroines, someone you greatly admire, someone with powers beyond yours, a person or even a fantasy figure who would know exactly what to do, and could do it. Today’s episode leads you through a potent exercise that uses your hero’s / heroine’s qualities to help you begin to change a difficult issue.

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#27: We’re All ‘Mad' in Our Own Beautiful Way!

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 08:39:00 +0000

In today’s episode, I discuss one of my clients, Jeremy (his pseudonym), a twenty-year-old man whom everyone thought was crazy because he had stopped speaking. Three psychiatrists had given him three different mental health diagnoses.

I didn’t approach him as someone with a “mental illness” because I don’t believe this pseudoscientific paradigm is useful. I saw him as a young man with a meaningful and purposeful process trying to come to his awareness. Over several months I was able to help him totally transform his problem.

Jeremy went through a powerful personal growth process in which his muteness and isolation transformed into inner strength, wisdom, and success in his life. He’s a great example of how we’re all beautifully ‘mad’ in our own way!

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#26: Why People Believe Falsehoods About the Brain and Mental Health

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 08:48:00 +0000

Each year billions of drug company dollars are spent on media campaigns that exploit the fact that most people don’t know how science works. These campaigns have been astonishingly successful at conveying a distorted picture of the relationship between the brain and mental health.

The public consumes these ideas without being able to vet them and they become accepted, commonplace ways of thinking. This is the definition of an urban myth; a falsehood is repeated enough times that it becomes perceived as a self-evident fact.

The focus of the mental health field should be on developing and teaching methods for processing and transforming painful states of mind, not just on prescribing drugs and teaching coping skills. There’s way too much emphasis on “managing disease,” and too little on empowering people by giving them tools to hack into their own states of mind in order to make real change. The latter can transform common problems such as depression, anxiety, attention deficit, etc.

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#25: Even Your Worst Enemy is a Projection of Your Inner Psychology!

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 08:38:00 +0000

Everyone in your life plays a role in your psychological narrative. Your story already exists as a set of internal dynamics, some of which you’re conscious of, and others which hide deep in the shadows of your psyche. Your process unfolds fate in a way to bring you exactly who you need in your life to reflect your story back to you. It’s a powerful process of unconsciously manifesting your psyche’s internal dynamics in your relationships and the greater world.

What determines your like, dislike, love, or hate of someone is the role they play in your story. Where this gets complicated is the extent to which they really are unaware and odious in some way vs. you just projecting your psychology onto them. It’s almost always a combination of the two, and making the distinction is vitally important, especially when dealing with relationship conflict.

Even someone who obviously treats you badly reflects a process in your own psyche—not literally but symbolically. Which part of your psychology does this awful person represent? It’s essential to explore and process this question. Learning how to process your negative experiences of people as parts of your inner life will boost your personal growth and increase your well-being. Today’s episode takes a deep dive into this topic.

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#24: How to Process What You Dislike About Someone

Dr. Zwig — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 08:18:00 +0000

The people that come into your life do so, in part, to awaken you, make you more self-aware, and help you evolve. These peoples’ personalities and actions reflect something in your psyche—not literally, but symbolically. The quality you dislike in them is a quality in yourself you need to embrace more! What!? Yup, you need to become more like them—(again, not literally, especially if they’re mean, abusive, racist, etc.)–but in a conscious, positive way.

For example, being irritated at someone’s selfishness means you need to be more “selfish” by following your own needs—not in an insensitive way like the other person may being doing it, but in an aware, constructive way. Or, say you dislike someone who uses their power to oppress and hurt people. Their behavior is awful but the question is, how can you use your own power in a positive way?

This episode shows you how to process what bothers you about people by using it for your personal growth. I guide you through an exercise in which you identify something you dislike in someone, find it’s positive version, and integrate it into your life. This will help you connect with your inner healing, wisdom, and happiness.

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#23: Envy Is a Projection of Your Unlived Awesomeness!

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:38:00 +0000

Envy is a painful process that isn’t easily solved. You can suppress it and focus on a higher power, rationalize it, judge and ban it from your mind, give it negative labels, etc, but all you’re doing is transferring it to your subconscious. Then it stews and figures out how to give you other problems to compensate for being suppressed.

Being envious of someone is the process of projecting your own unrecognized, unlived inner awesomeness onto them, and then feeling bad that they possess these great qualities instead of you. It’s such an unconscious process that you have no idea that what you’re jealous of is actually something within yourself you haven’t yet become conscious of.

Envy contains an important message for your life. It’s your guide, your teacher helping you see the positive parts of yourself you don’t identify with. It's the spark that can light the fire of your personal growth and transformation.

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#22: How to Transform Envy Into Personal Growth

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 08:44:00 +0000

Everyday there’s another famous Instagram model, popular YouTuber, viral Tik-Tokker, or public figure who seems to have it all. If you didn’t already have a complex that you’re not good enough, well, now you do : ) The constant barrage of images of success and perfection can make you feel depressed and resentful that you don’t possess what these lucky folks seem to have. But what if your envy of these people isn’t just a negative, painful feeling you have to deal with? What if it’s actually a meaningful process that can show you the path to enlightenment?

In today’s episode, I guide you through an exercise in which you embody the ideals you project onto someone, and use them for your personal growth. In fact, you’re going to discover how the person you’re envious of is actually you!

You don’t need a million dollars or a thin body to experience what you’re after. I mean, become a skinny millionaire if you want but it’s not the point. The point is that you can use your envy of people to expand your self-awareness and develop your personal power. You can use it to help you begin living these awesome parts of yourself. This will not only improve your life, it will spark your personal growth and help you begin to transform problems such as depression and anxiety.

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#21: Conventional Psychiatry and Psychology Are Pseudoscience

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 08:37:00 +0000

The current paradigm in psychology and psychiatry is deeply flawed. A few years ago an international review study in which 270 researchers on five continents, including the U.S., examined a hundred research reports in the most prestigious psychology journals, and what they discovered was shocking: Only 36% percent of the findings held up when the experiments were redone.

If you ask researchers anywhere in the world whether they have a problem reproducing experiments in biology, chemistry, or physics, they’ll tell you, no. So, what’s up with psychology?

Unlike all other fields of science, psychology is unique in that the human mind is both subject and object. In other words, the object being studied—the mind—is the same thing as that which is studying it—the mind. The mind is studying itself. The result is that objectivity in psychology is subjective! In order to solve this dilemma we need a process paradigm that focuses on personal growth and transformation instead of psychopathology and symptom management.

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#20: Inner Freedom! What Is It? How Can You Feel It?

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 08:36:00 +0000

Attaining a sense of inner freedom is one of our core needs but we’re often blocked from having such an experience. This can lead to problems like addiction, depression, and anxiety.

There are two ways to make your inner freedom conscious: The first is to process the negative altered states of mind your problems induce (depression, anxiety, etc); the second is to process the positive altered states of mind you unconsciously seek through drugs, alcohol, sex, exercise, work, success, play, love, eating, sleeping, dreaming, meditation, medication, incantation, ritual, prayer, music, and so on.

This episode presents a far-reaching discussion of how your life issues are really just expressions of your process, and if you use them in an intentional, proactive way, they can become your guide to inner freedom, healing, well-being, and wisdom.

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#19: How to Access Your Inner Freedom and Use It to Process a Difficult Issue

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 08:36:00 +0000

In your core self you’re a free spirit. Your subconscious contains a version of who you are that’s unencumbered by problems and blocks, and it can be tapped into and used to transform your life issues. It has an emotional and intellectual perspective that can help you change stuckness into freedom and flow.

Today’s episode guides you through a practical exercise for connecting with your inner freedom and using it to process a difficult problem. You’ll choose an issue to work on and mindfully focus on it. Then you’ll ask yourself, “If I was totally free—a completely free spirit, able to be any way I want—what would I do in this situation?” I will guide you in exploring the question, applying the answers to your life, and processing the obstacles to integration.

Doing this kind of exercise can help you begin to make change with issues such as depression, anxiety, attention deficit, relationship conflict, loneliness, anger, frustration, etc. It can help you move from pain to purpose and success.

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#18: Desire Is The Fuel of Your Process

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 08:36:00 +0000

What you desire contains your roadmap for healing and personal growth. This doesn’t mean you should act on every desire. It means that you should acknowledge each one, and determine whether it’s conscious or unconscious. If it’s conscious, for example, the desire to transform a problem, it will feel like a goal to push toward. If it’s unconscious, for example, the drive toward an addiction, it will feel like being pulled into seeking relief from something no matter what the cost.

A conscious desire is the need to express your true ideas, feelings, creativity, compassion, power, joy, etc. An unconscious one is a need that makes you feel hungry in an oppressive way—oftentimes, manifesting as a physical urge you have have little control over and can’t ever satisfy. For example, I’ve had lots of clients with addictions in which healing involved connecting with the underlying states of mind they actually sought. In some people, the urge to get stoned was actually a drive for a spiritual experience. Other folks were yearning to feel loved or to experience peace.

Conscious desires lead to expansive growth whereas unconscious ones lead to pain, addiction, depression, destructive behavior, etc.. This episode guides you through an exercise to identify your conscious and unconscious desires, and apply what you learn to your life and problems. This will help you move toward healing, growth, and wisdom.

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#17: How to Use What You Yearn for in Life to Transform a Problem

Dr. Zwig — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 08:55:00 +0000

If you’re like most people, you get so caught up in your daily routine, you lose contact with what you really need, what you truly yearn for. This is amplified by constant media messages telling you that life is about success, money, appearance, etc.. Many folks spend their lives trying to fulfill these ideals but never quite feel happy and content, or they succeed at them but still feel a subtle sense of loss, a mysterious vacancy at their cores.

Your deepest yearnings represent your most fundamental needs. But oftentimes these yearnings are unconscious and manifest through issues such as addictions, illness, depression, anxiety, phobias, relationship conflicts, etc.. Consciously connecting with these core drives and desires can help you change what’s bothering you. In this episode, I guide you through a simple exercise to tap into your deepest longings and use them to transform a problem.

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#16: Processing Your Inner Critic Transforms Your Depression!

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 08:35:00 +0000

Conventional psychologists and psychiatrists diagnose depression by asking leading questions about things like apathy, hopelessness, loss of interest or pleasure in things, sleep problems, appetite and weight changes, lack of concentration, social isolation, and repeatedly going over thoughts. It’s a way to gather general information that could mean anything but is useful for concocting a diagnosis.

When my client, 39-year-old Bob (his pseudonym), told me he was depressed despite the fact that nothing particularly depressing had occurred in his life, I asked him an unusual question: “What would you have to say to someone to make them feel like you do?" He asked me what I meant, and I replied, “Imagine you could say something to me that makes me feel like you feel. What would you say?” His response was that of a severe critic who unleashed a plethora of personal attacks.

This was the beginning of a dialogue (between Bob and his inner critic) that led to the total transformation of is depression. He went from spending his days in a deep, dark funk to being happy and realizing success in life. Depression isn’t an “illness” to manage but rather a meaningful and purposeful personal growth process trying to happen.

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#15: Processing Depression vs Masking It With Antidepressants

Dr. Zwig — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 08:34:00 +0000

Traditional mental health practice has it all wrong. Depression isn’t an “illness”—it’s your calling. Even severe depression is a meaningful and purposeful process that's trying to awaken you to deep change. Solely suppressing your symptoms misses the whole point.

Your life is an unfolding process, and everything you experience—the good, the bad, and the ugly--aims at positive transformation. The key is to learn to tap into the hidden intelligence, the mysterious music, the message in life’s mess.

Join me today for a wide ranging discussion of how the pharmaceutical industry has fed the public false information about depression, brain chemistry, and medication. Depression is a symptom of a powerful personal growth process trying to happen, not an “illness.” To truly heal it you must process it!

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#14: Wisdom is a Process, Not a State of Mind

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 08:34:00 +0000

Wisdom is not a state of consciousness as some spiritual teachings make it sound. It’s an attribute of enlightenment, and neither enlightenment nor wisdom happen through a balanced, unchanging, static state of mind; they happen through your process. A process consists of changing and evolving states of mind, not just one way of being. It’s a growth trajectory, not a fixed condition.

If you really want to heal, grow, and develop wisdom, don’t try to achieve a permanent, supposedly wise state of mind. This approach is a misguided Western interpretation of Eastern philosophy. You’re always in process. Everything happening in your life is meaningful information meant to awaken you to something new. Each problem you encounter is a new riddle, a challenge designed to spur you on to the next level of consciousness. What messes up your life is the seed of your wisdom. Use your depression, anxiety, attention deficit, bipolar, relationship problems, etc. as the raw material for your growth. This will lead to true healing, change, and success.

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#13: How to Access Your Inner Wisdom and Use It to Change a Problem

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 08:34:00 +0000

You have a deep wisdom in your psyche but you may not be in contact with it. This part of yourself can help you heal your problems and boost your personal growth. Imagine you’re a wise elder or spiritual teacher. Alternately, you could imagine that you’re 99 years old, happy and content, finished with life, and ready to leave the world. Visualize, feel, and embody this character.

Stay with this frame of mind and body, and look back at your everyday self with your problem. With this high awareness, life experience, and intelligence, give yourself some sage advice. What does your inner wise person or 99 year-old self have to say about your issue ? What kind of advice does your inner sage offer? What kind of mature wisdom does it bring to bear on your limited perspective

Today’s episode guides you through a simple exercise for connecting with your inner wisdom and using it to change difficult issues like depression, anxiety, relationship problems, and many other common problems.

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#12: Joy, Pleasure, and Quantum Physics

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 08:03:00 +0000

Not only do we experience extreme variation in our highs and lows in life, we can re-access and re-experience them—as if they always exist somewhere within us. While you are in the depths of depression there’s an ecstatic, free, happy version of yourself just at the fringe of your awareness, and you can tap into it.

The notion that we have many different potential states of being within us at all times isn’t only a basic element of psychological reality, it’s also a central feature of physical reality.

In this episode, I show how the branch of physics known as quantum mechanics reveals a universe made of intangible, fluid processes, not fixed, solid “things, and how this process paradigm helps us understand that your happy, healthy, aware self is always present within you waiting to be experienced.

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#11: Use Joy to Transform Pain

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 08:29:00 +0000

Today’s episode guides you through an exercise to begin to transform problems like depression and anxiety by re-accessing a joyful, empowering experience from the past and using it to solve a current issue.

Choose a problem to work on. Reflect on it, then put it aside and think of a time in your life when you were incredibly ecstatic. You felt high, on top of the world, in the flow. Everything was going right and coming together. You felt exuberant, content, and happy. Maybe it was just for a brief minute; maybe it was for a whole day; or maybe it was for longer than that.

Go back in time to that experience and use all your senses to re-access it. From this positive frame of mind and heart ask yourself how you would you deal with your current issue. Look at your problem from this uplifting state of being and give yourself advice on what to do. How does your happy, ecstatic self relate to your current situation? How does it see the issue? How does it feel about it? What does it want you to do with it?

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#10: How One Song Healed a Year of Sadness

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 08:06:00 +0000

Sandy, a 46 year-old receptionist, had been depressed ever since her divorce a year earlier, and despite doing her best to get on with life she couldn’t seem to break out of her sadness. I asked her to describe her feelings in detail and she said, “I feel lost and sad and empty but I try not to focus on it. It’s such a struggle.”

I suggested she focus directly on these feelings but she shook her head. “Aren’t you going to help me get rid of this? I don’t want to focus on it.”

“I understand, it’s painful, but by exploring it we may learn something,” I replied. “Let’s go further into it and see where it goes. In fact, feel it even more. Get even more lost, sad, and empty.”

She shrugged her shoulders as if to say, “This doesn’t makes sense to me but I’ll try anything at this point.”

She closed her eyes and I encouraged her to feel lost, sad, and empty, and even exaggerate the feelings. After a while she opened her eyes and said, “Sorry, I’m having trouble because I’m hearing a song in my head. As soon as I go all the way into my sadness and really feel it this song comes in and distracts me.”

Instead of considering the song a “distraction,” I helped her focus directly on it and process her experience. It transformed her life by giving her the state of mind and heart she needed for getting free of her depression. Following your process closely can heal an intractable problem and bring you wisdom, personal growth, and well-being.

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#9: Your Psyche Is a Wild Animal; Train it!

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 08:06:00 +0000

Your awareness is a wild animal. If you let it do whatever it wants it will run amok and control you. Many life problems are reactions to this. The most important part of personal growth is training your awareness so you can use it in a conscious, controlled manner. This involves learning the art of neutral, non-judgmental, objective self-observation and the directing of your focus.

Transforming your problems requires you to identify your perception of their subtle details, and to direct your focus to these elements so you can process them. In this episode, I lead you through an exercise that trains your awareness by doing a body scan. You’ll learn essential tools required for tapping into the underlying processes driving life issues such as depression, anxiety, attention deficit, post-traumatic stress, delusions, relationship conflict, and many other common issues.

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#8: Your Body Symptoms Are Expressions of Your Psychological Process

Dr. Zwig — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 08:06:00 +0000

New research in physics reveals that your psychology doesn’t only manifest through your mind; it expresses itself through your physiology, as well. The notion of mind and body as distinct entities is a misnomer since at the deepest level they’re inseparable. Your biochemistry isn’t only governed by physical interactions but also by unconscious mental and emotional processes. Psychology and self-help shouldn’t only focus on your thoughts and feelings; they should also employ tools for processing your body experiences—symptoms, illness, and whatever else you experience physically The dualistic mind-body paradigm at the heart of the biomedical model helps you stay healthy but at the same time encourages you to dissociate from your physical experiences, which, in turn, makes you sick. A better model is to think of yourself as a process that expresses itself through various channels. In this model, it doesn’t matter what form a problem presents itself in—mental, emotional, or physical; it’s all relevant information you can use to heal your whole self and further your personal growth.

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#7: Tap Into the Process Driving Your Problem

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 08:05:00 +0000

Understanding your problems is important, however, it’s not enough. In fact, it can take you off track without you knowing since it's difficult to verify whether your ideas about yourself are right or wrong. It can also promote the false notion that merely understanding your issue will solve it. Sometimes it does but oftentimes it doesn’t. Instead of just trying to think your way through your problems, it’s essential to learn how to tap into the deeper process that’s driving them. Then, answers, solutions, and directions happen organically rather than you trying to superimpose ideas and interpretations onto yourself. In today's episode, I lead you through a simple exercise that shows you how to direct your awareness to your sensory channels—visual, auditory, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic—and observe what you experience. Learning how to do this gives you the basic tool for processing your problems. It enables you to go beyond theorizing about and interpreting your issues so you can connect with an authentic experiential process of change. This not only heals your problems but leads to happiness, wellbeing, and success, as well.

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#6: Psychiatric Brain Science Has It Wrong About You

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 08:21:00 +0000

The key to personal growth is learning how to use your awareness in a way that intervenes in and transforms your problems. You have the power to do this. You’re not a victim of a “chemical imbalance.” The problem with neuroscience is that it has given us knowledge of neurons, neural circuits, neurotransmitters, and brain lesions but it's completely in the dark about awareness itself and how we achieve agency through the mysterious source called, “I” (which can’t be found in the brain).

Your brain doesn’t cause your problems since it doesn’t generate the contents of the mind. Your brain is a filter that processes the information of your psyche. Psych meds don’t target and fix and “brain disorder”; they induce an altered state that simply masks symptoms. If you want to heal your problems at their roots, you must go beyond suppressing your symptoms and learn how to process your distress. This will take you from the low-level goal of just “functioning” to total transformation of yourself where you experience healing, happiness, and wisdom.

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#5: How to Process Your Problems

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 08:04:00 +0000

To process and transform your problems you can’t just think and talk about them. You must learn how to use your senses--seeing, hearing, feeling, and moving--to engage with your perceptions in real time. This involves far more than just observing what’s going on in yourself, as, for example, one does in mindfulness meditation (although mindfulness is a foundational tool of the work). It requires interacting with your thoughts, feelings, and inner parts by dialoguing, playacting, visualizing, and expressing yourself physically. This leads to a visceral experience of your authentic being instead of just trying to figure yourself out.

As you work on your process in this experiential way, your problem will begin to morph and change. It will lose its original form and become merely a springboard for your personal growth. What seems like a meaningless, fixed condition that you wish would just go away becomes a meaningful, fluid process--an unfolding story that informs and transforms your consciousness. What appears to be a pathology in your life turns out to be the doorway to inner strength, healing, freedom, and success.

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#4: Mindfulness Won’t Solve Your Problems-You Have to Process Them

Dr. Zwig — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 06:58:00 +0000

Mindfulness meditation is a personal growth method for developing neutral, non-judgmental self-awareness. While practicing this method, instead of just thinking or feeling something, you simultaneously observe yourself having this thought or feeling, and you’re able to comment on it in an objective manner: “Oh, look at how this person triggered me,” or “There’s my inner critic again.” You’re in the experience and simultaneously outside it. This is different from your usual state of awareness in which you’re lost in the flow of your experience without much self-observation.

Practicing mindfulness meditation can help you get a handle on your stress and make you feel more calm and centered. Doing so can give you more choices in how you respond to life. However, it’s not a method for healing your problems. In fact, it’s often used as a way to avoid one’s problems by detaching, blissing out, etc. Mindfulness is an essential self-awareness tool but it’s only the first step in working on yourself. To truly transform issues like depression, anxiety, attention deficit, post-traumatic stress, bipolar, etc., you must learn how to process them.

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#3: Her “Bipolar” Behavior Was Her Unprocessed Power

Dr. Zwig — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 11:24:00 +0000

“Bipolar Disorder” is a conceptual invention with no basis in science. It was created in a small plebiscite of psychiatrists who voted on the idea rather than using peer-reviewed studies. A person experiencing severe mood swings does not have a “disorder” or a “mental illness” but rather a meaningful and purposeful process of change and growth trying to come forth.

“Bipolar” refers to alternations between deep depression and manic highs. It’s the same as depression except that the person periodically breaks out of their oppressive funk by entering into a high manic state. They’re blocked from their ecstatic joy so the only way they can access it is through an unconscious “flip-the-switch” function. Processing the person’s problem removes both the depression and the mania.

In this episode, I discuss the case of a young woman diagnosed with “Bipolar Disorder” who came to me for help. During the session, she imagined her depression as a “thousand pound gorilla” sitting on her, and I helped her use this image to transform her problem and her life.

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#2: Mental Distress Isn't an illness—It’s Your Personal Growth Trying to Happen

Dr. Zwig — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 07:23:00 +0000

Mainstream psychology and psychiatry have it all wrong—painful states of mind like depression, anxiety, attention deficit, bipolar, post-traumatic stress, etc., aren’t “diseases”; they’re symptoms of personal growth and change trying to happen.

Everything in your life, including your worst agony, aims, ultimately, at helping you grow. Managing your difficulties and healing your wounds are important things to do but there’s something much deeper and profound going on when a problem enters your life. It’s your calling—your sign that transformation is trying to happen. The problem itself is just the seed, the impetus, the agitating force to get you onto the path of growth and self-awareness.

Your distress isn’t a meaningless mistake; it’s a meaningful catalyst for becoming your whole true self. Use it to transform your life.

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#1: Your Problems Are Your Personal Growth Trying to Happen

Dr. Zwig — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 06:22:00 +0000

Having a life problem is painful but it’s not a pathology to simply suppress. It’s a meaningful and purposeful process designed to wake you up about something, increase your self-awareness, and expand who you are. It’s your personal growth trying to happen.

Each of your issues has an inherent purpose, and even though it messes up your life, that’s not its purpose. Its aim is to push you to become aware of an aspect of yourself you don’t yet see, hear, and feel. To do this, you must learn how to process your problem to uncover its underlying message.

Connecting with the hidden story driving your difficulty activates your growth and leads to healing, change, and wisdom.

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