Let’s talk about deconstructing

Deconstructing is a widely talked about phenomenon occurring in the current religious and political climate. For those not familiar with this term, it’s the process of examining your beliefs, the origination of those beliefs, and the way your beliefs inform the way you live your life. Deconstruction seeks to ask, “why do I do the things I do?”, and “what am I living my life toward?”, and “is that what I actually want?” Those who are deconstructing wish to examine how they are living, why they have been living that way, and whether or not they still believe the things they say and agree with the things they do. They are seeking to understand if they are living an examined life or if they are motivated by unexamined habit, expectation, tradition, or group-think.

As I’ve begun to work with clients, I’ve come to see how this term applies to the healing work my clients are engaged in. The work of therapy is a kind of deconstructing of the false self that many of us have constructed in order to be safe and survive. And while we can’t undo our past, we can seek to understand it, learn from it, and find healing so it no longer controls us. My work with clients often involves the deconstruction of survival strategies, negative thinking, and behavior patterns that may have once served to protect them and keep them safe, but are now no longer needed. In the process, we bless those strategies, and the reasons they were needed, and then work to reconstruct new ways of being and relating that are more true to who they are, who they were created to be, and who they are becoming.

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If you’d like to explore deconstructing some of your own ways of being in the world, reach out for free consultation.