True Insight

Definition: "It's not the fall that hurts, it's that sudden stop at the end."

Sorry. Couldn't resist

By: Dr. Suzanne LaCombe,  July 12, 2008.
Reviewed by: Coquitlam Psychologist Dr. Carole Gaato
Updated: September 13, 2008; January 27, 2009.

When you become familiar with MyShrink, you'll soon realize that I'm a strong advocate for counseling. Yet, not everyone feels the same way which leads me to the one thing that really bugs me...and that's the way folks talk about counseling and the idea of insight.

For instance, I've heard this type of statement many times in one form or another, and it still gets me riled up:

"Oh, therapy is just talking about the past. It basically gives people an excuse for not taking action in their lives."

Misunderstandings like this cast a bad light on therapy.

What are they referring to?

As clients begin their healing in therapy they start to understand how, when and where problem feelings and behaviours were first learned.¹ They might say something like this:

"My mother was anxious about her own weight issues and that's why I have a hard time with mine."

or,

"My dad never played with me so I never know what to say to my son when we go to the park."

These folks have discovered a left-brain reason for why they adopted the problem behaviour. Now, they don't feel quite so puzzled by their own state of mind and often feel free to stop blaming themselves.

This type of knowledge can also help them prepare for change. It's a good beginnning but...

True insight requires more than rational understanding

While it can certainly feel good to know you weren't born with that problem behaviour, unless you actually experience the roots of it in the present, you haven't arrived at true insight.

True insight includes a body-felt awareness of the original "why" for the problem behaviour. It's a deep sense of knowingness. No one needs to tell you, you feel it in every cell of your body.

And, that's true insight.

"...if intellectually knowing what to do or knowing what the causes of one's problems are {that} led to change, most people would not need therapists. They would simply tell themselves what to do, and do it."

Hubble, Duncan & Miller¹

The "why" of your behaviour is not insight per se.

Insight into the "why" of a behaviour, without the deeper emotional sense of how events in the past affected us, is helpful only to a degree.

In actual fact, true insight is embodied - it goes to the core of who you are. When we change, when change is integrated, we have both cognitive and emotional insight. This is what I refer to as true insight.

In my practice, when clients arrive at true insight, I feel it too. It's an unmistakable shift in shared awareness. It flashes across their face in an instant.

True insight emerges after we change.

You may find this hard to believe but true insight actually arrives only after the brain has changed. Once your body "gets it", you become aware of it, now you have an internal sense or insight about why you behaved as you did.

You feel free and are better able to adopt a new way of being. You're no longer held back by your history.

Ture insight changes you from the inside out.

The work of changing those automatic internal emotional reactions requires a deeper experience than any self-help book can give you. And, that is what you get when you work with a therapist - you have experiences. Your brain has experiences.

And, you have a much greater chance of realizing true insight.

A final reflection...

Insight can happen in an instant. What folks often don't quite get is that the receptivity for this possibility builds up over time. We literally are works in progress!

...and sometimes we're the last to know.

Notes

¹ I'll chat more about the process of learning in later articles because it's such an important issue for understanding how change occurs in the brain. Most people think of "learning" as a purely cognitive or "thinking" undertaking. In actual fact, we learn in many ways only one of which is through our left "thinking" brain.

One way we learn as infants and children is by seeing someone model a behaviour especially our parents and peers. However, most folks are unaware of another type of learning that's just as important - when we learn by  sensing someone's energy and/or the way they non-verbally respond. This type of learning occurs mostly through the right brain via the implicit memory system.

And...for those working through their stuff in therapy (in case you missed this before), you'll discover that many of your issues are rooted in implicit memories laid down in the right brain.

Related Topic

"Aha" Moment

Watch for updates in MyShrink UpDates for more on this subject, the essence of which is captured by that well-known trauma expert, Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk:

Sometimes understanding why you're messed up has little to do

with getting better!

Bessel Van der Kolk

I'd love to post your story of moments of true insight. Submit it below.

External Resource

Scientists Explain "Aha" Moments

Reference

Hubble, Mark A., Duncan, Barry L., & Miller, Scott D. (1999). The Heart and Soul of Change: What works in therapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, p. 113.

Van der Kolk, Bessel (2007) Trauma and Memory. 1st Annual Somatic Experiencing Conference. San Francisco.

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