Exploration of Types of Therapies and Nondual Parts Psychotherapy

Coherence Therapy is a stand alone therapy that uses thoughts and awareness of the physical body to generate positive permanent psychological changes, known as “transformational change.”  “Transformational change” here means that the particular psychological issue you are targeting remains permanently transformed.  You don’t have to use any more coping techniques to decrease anger, anxiety, depression, etc.  The problems permanently are permanently alleviated, and the process tends to transform former suffering into new strengths and insights.  This is especially true where parts therapy is concerned such as Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Comprehensive Resource Modeling (CRM) (see below for more information).

Coherence Therapy is a type of “experiential therapy” in that it seeks to invoke experiences in the form of emotional, psychological, and physiological activation in order to initiate positive permanent transformation in the mind.  It literally rewires the brain in the limbic and executive functioning parts of the brain, which then fundamentally transforms problematic assumptions that we have about who we are, the world, the future, present or past, and the people around us. In a nutshell this is called “Memory Reconsolidation.”

Coherence Therapy is not the only therapy that has been found to generate positive transformational change.  Bruce Ecker, the founder of Coherence Therapy, found that there is a range of experiential therapies proven to generate transformational change through Memory Reconsolidation.  Bruce Ecker and the therapists at his Coherence Psychology Institute have used transcripts to catalog a long list of popular therapies known to produce Memory Reconsolidation, including “parts therapies” like IFS, Gestalt Therapy, Jungian Psychotherapy. 

For further information, see here: https://coherencetherapy.org/

For scientific article on Memory Reconsolidation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4588064/?report=reader

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

Internal Family Systems, otherwise known as IFS, is an evidence-based attachment-oriented therapy that can address a wide range of psychological and life issues.  IFS has discovered that an individual is not one overall personality, but many sub-personalities known as “parts” that make up a larger whole. 

Parts are like computer programs.  Like computer programs with storage, function, interface, and interactions with other programs, parts have jobs, memories, personalities, and relationships with other parts.  Like computer programs, parts are stored in the “hardware” of the body’s nervous system.  These parts take on suffering that we have experienced throughout our lives, and become “burdened,” causing them to generate guilt, shame, anxiety, difficulty accomplishing things, depression, low self-confidence, avoidance, etc.   Surprisingly, these parts also can either contribute to or generate migraines and physical pain.  Another way put, parts can develop malware. IFS and other parts therapies, assist the client in removing the malware from whatever program is causing difficulty in the client’s life. Therapists do this by guiding the client through a process of first contacting and communicating with parts one by one, developing a healthy relationship with them, and then assisting the client to free their parts of their stored tension and pain. When the client is able to help the part free itself, the place where that part was relaxes, and the brain enters the Memory Reconsolidation process.  The malware is erased from the system, and the problem symptom does not return.  No coping techniques are needed anymore. 

Basic Parts Guided Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MmZff1Q-go&ab_channel=JamesHoward

For a sample of an IFS session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPPWD7t6V88

For scientific articles: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%22internal+family+systems+therapy%22

Additionally there is a spiritual component to IFS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwNxK01BfHM&t=1s

Comprehensive Resource Modeling (CRM)

Comprehensive Resource Modeling includes parts work, but it also seeks to speed up the process and make it more comfortable through a scaffold of resources that the client develops during sessions.  The layers to the resources include establishing a securely attached relationship with the therapist and then various breathing techniques.  The breathing techniques help clients to develop concrete tools to ground, relax, integrate experiences, develop compassion, and calm big emotions.  They also help trauma processing become more manageable and less painful.  Another layer of the resource scaffold is what is called “Sacred Place.”  This may sound a bit new-agey, which for some could be a turn off, but this is actually an important visualization practice that has a lot of benefits.  It helps the mind simultaneously develop executive functioning in the brain and intuition.  It also helps clients simultaneously develop internal and external boundaries while at the same time helping them become accustomed to healthy attachment in a safe and comfortable way.  so that they can have.  As a result, clients tend to notice an increase in impulse control, healthier internal and external relationships, self-care, self-love, and self-confidence.  CRM is also unique in that it the resources allow clients to target the symptoms they want to work on rather than working with whatever is showing up in session, as is the case with IFS. To go back to our computer metaphor, CRM is very effective at efficiently and comfortably ridding the system of the malware causing suffering.  

Like IFS, CRM also assists clients in unburdening their parts using healthy internal communication and relationships.  Because this therapy was designed for clients with extremely intense levels of trauma and attachment trauma, it introduces a class of “healthy attachment parts” early on in the process.  These healthy parts are like anti-malware programs that are paired with their burdened counterparts through stimulating secure attachment centers in the brain.  Clients feel their nervous systems and difficult emotions relax when these “healthy attachment parts” are introduced.  Not only do these healthy parts make the process of unburdening more efficient and comfortable, but they also furnish the client with strengths, insights, guidance, and confidence.  They are permanent internal resources that clients can access long after the therapeutic process has ended.

The last resource scaffold is the “Core Self.” This is described as a “Be-ing state” that is not a part.  This is a resource that requires a lot of discussion.  I am somewhat unique in that I assist clients in accessing and developing this resource through what I call Nondual Parts Psychotherapy, which you can read about below.  

For Clinical Research Paper discussing efficacy of CRM:  https://sophia.stkate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1826&context=msw_papers

For scientific articles list on the neuroscience behind CRM: https://comprehensiveresourcemodel.com/articles/

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) 

Although thought evaluations employed by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy are directly inimical to the level of acceptance required to generate Memory Reconsolidation, I find that for people with ADHD and Sensory Processing Sensitivity (people known as “Highly Sensitive Persons” or HSPs), some of the CBT techniques are helpful in supporting parts that have been burdened by the difficulties natural to the ADHD brain and the HSP nervous system.   For example, many people with ADHD have anxiety about doing things, and tend to avoid doing difficult boring things.  From a parts perspective, an anxiety part developed in order to pick up the slack for the weakened executive functioning.  So it is important to strengthen and increase the number of tools a person has with ADHD so that the anxiety part is able to relax enough to unburden.  For an HSP, avoidance and other problems can develop in order to compensate for the impacts on the nervous generated through what neurotypical people would think would be normal levels of stimulus. For trauma and attachment trauma, the client may need to learn relaxation techniques, emotional monitoring, boundaries, and assertive communication to express their emotions in safe ways.  In these scenarios, the behavioral techniques of CBT, and a few specific trauma-informed acceptance-based cognitive techniques can be useful. 

Nondual Parts Psychotherapy

Nondual Parts Psychotherapy is the marriage of Nondual Psychology and therapies that focus on parts like IFS and CRM. 

Nondual psychology seeks to assist clients in experiencing positive transformation through experiencing the “Nondual dimension of mind.”  What is this mysterious “nondual dimension of the mind?”

Going back further than Buddhism, meditators have mapped the mind.  They discovered that meditation allowed them to zoom into their mind like an electron microscope zooms into concrete material form to reveal the subatomic universe underneath. Just like a wooden table is matter, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, assumptions, etc are material; they act like matter.  They have a felt body sensation associated with them; they have concrete ripple effects throughout the body and the mind. In fact, this is how quantum physics defines matter at the quantum level: something that affects other materials. 

For further information see the Casimir Effect: https://youtu.be/X5rAGfjPSWE?t=504

So the process of meditation is much more like the magnification process of an electron microscope.  Just as an electron microscope can see virtual particles spontaneously popping up in vacuous space out of a seeming nowhere, the meditator can “see” or experience energy pulses of potential thought popping up out of a seeming empty space.  In this Nondual dimension of mind, they found that there is no “I,” no solid sense of Self.  There is only what CRM calls the “Core Self” or Be-ing.  It is easy to understand, after I just remarked that there is no solid sense of Self in this dimension, why saying that there is a “Core Self” is rather confusing.  This is why I opt to use Nondual methods to assist clients in touching into this place because the language is less confusing, which then makes it easier to understand and access the resource.  As a result, there tends to be less doubt, and an easier access to the resource.

Originally this “Nondual dimension of mind” was thought to only be available to the most advanced meditators, but in fact there are brief techniques that allow clients to touch into and rest into this “Nondual dimension of mind.”  The more they do this, the more the innate wisdom characteristics of this dimension infuse themselves into the different material or forms of the system (ie the system of parts).  Space and unconditioned form begins to mix into the parts like a drop of dye mixing into water.  As a result, the burdens (or the malware) in their parts release much faster.  Additionally, clients notice that parts magically begin transforming into strengths and new abilities.  This process and transformation delivers them the confidence, intuition, insight, self-awareness, and competent creative ability to accomplish their dreams.  It allows them to paint their own narrative onto the world rather than the world painting its narrative onto them.   What was once dull and numb–a never ending rat race–becomes alive and magical.

For scientific articles on Nondual Psychology:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8500298/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7243377/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6626690/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6443831/