The book ‘The Healing Connection” by Miller brings out a new dimension on how relationships impact mental health. The book contradicts the conventional theory of relationships, which holds that mutuality reduces the scope of one’s individual growth. Instead, the book emphasizes the importance of mutuality and the power and synergy that comes with relationships. From a women’s perspective, the book authors analyzed a wide range of their daily interaction and noted that their interactions were biased towards disconnection. The disconnection, individuation, or separation culture among people hinder psychological development. According to the authors, mutuality in a relationship is the best goal of therapy and that to attain the best mental health and best emotional well being, there is a need to create and maintain mutual relationships.
Mutual relationships need to happen or occur at all ages of life as therapy, mental health, and psychological development is not age limited. In an example where a woman is humiliated by her boss at work, and then a co-worker spurned her for being too soft, these situations affect the woman mental health hence the goals of therapy in this case is to create connections that would lead to a mutual empowering and empathic interaction between the woman, the boss and the co-worker. Such a therapy would lead to the patient (woman) experience the true inner self feelings and possibly realize that there is growth through fostering relationships. The patient can also realize that disconnections and individuation do not heal her feelings and state of mental health but rather negatively affect her.
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Empowered and emphatic interactions between a patient and therapy provider are one of the traditional psychotherapy concepts. However, there is a need to change concepts like resistance and transference so as to allow the therapist the freedom to respond to the flow of therapy and patients’ emotional ebb. The therapy may also include empathizing with the disconnection strategies the therapists seek to eliminate. The book's text largely emphasizes patient-doctor relationship during therapy while some part deals with the notion most traditional therapist posit that in order to do therapy, one has to be nice and kind. Mutual interactions provide a better way of conducting therapy by removing the black screen element of traditional psychotherapy.
What Do You Think of This Model?
Relationships are important in the development of interactions that are mutually empowering and emphatic. The interactions become a good source of both mental and psychological health. The new model, therefore, provides a new understanding of how better therapy can be enhanced. The model also offers a possible way to change or transform lives in the community, in the family, at work, and at school by developing positive interactions that enhance mental and psychological wellbeing. Connectedness in interactions and relationships is one of the major sources of positively enhanced mental and psychological health to women and that the model offers an insight on how to attain the optimal mental health out of connectedness.
How Does Connection Lead to Empowerment to Women in the Book ?
In the book, a connection in the form of developing interactions and relations that are mutually empowering and emphatic reduces the difficulty of women psychological growth and wellbeing. Women can grow by fostering connection in interaction and by the use of therapy. From a feminist point of view, power inequality experiences in relationships or at work inhibit women psychological growth and wellbeing. The attainment of optimal mental health among women is constrained by two main disconnection strategies: not entering into intimate relationships and not emotionally engaging with therapists. The emotional distancing is also attributed to some childhood factors, or sources that include deep family secrets that haunt women, inaccessibility to parental emotionally, and other family curcums5tances that “parentify” a woman at a young age. The traditional interpretation of therapy holds that the lack of therapy engagement is resistance, which leads to disconnection. However, disconnection can also be a necessary strategy that can minimize or protect a woman from trauma or vulnerability in her elf sense. Thus through connection, women develop positive relations and interactions that are mutually empowering and emphatic hence improving their mental and psychological growth and wellbeing. The women also actively engage therapy, which also assists them in attaining optimal mental and psychological wellbeing.
Would You Like to Go to A Therapist Who Used This Model ?
Therapists using this model emphasis on the creation and development of positive connections in the form of relationships and interaction that foster mutual empowerment among all people in an institutional setting whether it is in the family, school, or at work. The therapists also emphasis on developing an emotional engagement with therapy and therapy providers to ensure optimal mental and psychological wellbeing. Even though the model was arrived after a critical study of the women perspective of connection, the resultant model is effective for both men and women as mental and psychological development is not limited to gender nor age. Thus, I would proudly like to go to a therapist who used this model.
Why or why not?
The main reason to undertake therapy is to attain optimal mental and psychological wellbeing. The therapists who use the healing connection model of therapy not only focus on an individual’s attainment of better mental and psychological development but also to create interactions or relationships that are mutual empowering and emphatic which in the long run ultimately lead to better and transformed lives.