December 2, 2016

Teachings for Life

The Center for Change & Healing’s Approach

What is a Depth Psychology Frame Work?

All CCH clinicians are trained in multiple modalities and theories of therapy. These theories are listed on the individual bios of each clinician. CCH is brought together through its use of a Depth Psychology frame work. Below is a brief overview of this frame work.

What is psychology?

Psychology means the study of the psyche. Psyche is the Latin word for soul. Therefore, psychology is the study of the soul. In Depth Psychology, the soul is not a religious term. The soul is your natural way of being in the world, your aliveness.


Human beings are born with a soul and a natural way of being in the world.  Their conditioning and early life experiences mix with their natural being and create strengths, weaknesses, and neurotic issues.  As an adult, they must sort through what is their way of being and build the ability to live one’s natural being.


Self is the ability to live one’s soul. The self is the strength of character, the ability to detach and not react, and to discern what is truth and reality. Self is different from one’s ego. The ego is the part which understands reality of the society one is in, community norms, mores and rules and boundaries. The ego processes and organizes the information to find best solutions.

Self & Soul = Psychological Core

The psychological core is needed in order to create and live a meaningful, fulfilling life. One needs to recognize what is needed for the soul and the self is needed to enact that in the world.

Heathy Functioning Overview

~A human being has gifts and must develop their gifts and bring them to the world.

~There must be purposeful, meaningful work leading towards making the world a better place.

~A human being needs social connections at minimum and ideally a community.

~There needs to be a well-functioning, but not overly relied on, executive ego functioning ability or there is too much anxiety for a person to live meaningfully.

~Everyone has the similar feelings, thoughts, and experiences. People align themselves with certain aspects of themselves and believe that to be all of them self. If a person is to be healthy, there needs to be the ability to see one’s own multiple thoughts, feelings, understandings.

~Our patterning and condition from our family of origin, our environments (i.e. schools, community, cities, culture, and country) is incredibly strong, powerful, and will be present throughout the lifetime but does not have to run the show. This is especially important if that conditioning is significantly contributing to pathology or neurotic issues. The qualities and work needed for this family work are outlined by Virginia Satir in Family Systems and Salvador Minuchin’s Structural Family Therapy.

~There must be the trust and faith and an understanding that there is something larger than the individual, or a person becomes narcissistic (feeling they should be able to control themselves, their environments, and how others act and feeling) and/or incredibly overwhelmed. The something larger is different for each person. A few examples of what is larger than the individual include but is not limited to: a town, a country, a cause, a spiritual higher power, an organization or religion, a vocational field.

~People must be able to truly experience and have successful stories of the development stages they have gone through in order to not feel like a failure or have anxiety/depression.  This includes healthy psychological stages of development such as but not limited to, Kohlberg, Erickson, Piaget, Adler, Theodore Lidz, and Jungian/Archetypal Psychology’s Puer, Fool, Hero, Warrior, Lover, Green Man or Green Woman, Scholar, King or Queen, and Sage.

~ We work with people to find a balance of Masculine and Feminine qualities within their psyche. These are the qualities outlined in Depth Psychology by theorists such as Marion Woodman, Marie-Louis von Franz, and Edward Whitmont.