What's the difference?

A basic objective for those who provide treatment is to see behavior change in the people with whom they work. If a provider can facilitate a change from mal-adaptive, harmful, destructive behavior to a behavior pattern that is in line with the values and expectations of the community in which we live, then that is a good change and a worthy goal, right? The short answer is, "yes, that is correct." But there is a more fundamental and more nuanced answer that involves asking another question-what is the impetus of the behavior change? Has the change merely come from a place of compliance and obeisance? Or does it come from a deeper, more special and authentic place inside? Is the behavior change a fear response to avoid unpleasant consequence and negative judgement? Or does it flow, as a natural byproduct, from self-knowing? As something in accord with the TRUTH of our nature?

At Watercourse Way, our efforts are toward facilitating change from the inside to the out-not from the outside in. Our observation has been that so many personal challenges stem from attachment history. As humans, we see and interpret the world through the eyes of our experience. Not a difficult concept to understand, but what does it really mean? In a nutshell it means that we are not responding to the world as it is, we are responding to the world as our experience has been. We can change how we act by exerting a strenuous effort of will, but until we reconcile the way that we feel, are we going to know the calm security of living in authenticity that we so desperately suspect is lacking? Is a change in behavior without a change in our heart going to foster in us the stillness that comes from living an authentic, purposeful life?