LINKING PEOPLE TO PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH A Brentwood Psychologist Describes Her Own Story and the Vision Behind It
	DECEMBER 2005

by Eileen Norton, PSY.D
Photos by Russell Byrne

In my role as a Brentwood psychologist I help people identify the actual problems they are having of which their surface problems — anger, compulsive behaviors, depression etc. — are only symptoms. I don’t merely “fix” people’s problems; my mission is to unlock the spiritual resources that people have within themselves to deal with their own problems.

My role in life is more than simply doing a job or participating in a profession. I’m providing emotional and spiritual health for people as a joyful mission. I’m replicating in other people the insights that are shining a healing light into shadowy places in my own soul.

Through Dark Valleys
I was a moody and emotionally volatile young person. I grew up in a sub-optimum home environment because my mother left my father and me when I was ten years old.

It was tough trying to cope with the feeling of being abandoned by my mom, and I was plagued with a sense that I was somehow responsible for her leaving. I knew on a rational level that I wasn’t to blame, but we get into trouble because our hearts sometimes insist upon sending us messages that our heads know aren’t true.

Children with dysfunctional experiences, such as abandonment or sexual abuse, commonly subject themselves to feelings of guilt because of a twisted but compelling logic. When bad things happen to children they lack any control and so they internalize the experience. If it is bad on the outside and they can feel guilty about it, the guilt raises the possibility that they might take control in some fashion.

The adults in my life, my dad, step-mom, and my mother, actually did the best they could under the circumstance, but it was a psychologically unhealthy situation for me. I was really “under” that particular “circumstance,” I guess.

I found it extremely difficult to let people into my personal life and to make emotional connections with others. I couldn’t trust myself to be authentic with them. I was afraid for others to see me as I really was. The darkness persisted into adulthood.

Analyzing My Problems
As a psychologist, I now can provide labels for some of the unhealthy behaviors in which I was involved. I was having something we call “cognitive distortions,” for example, which are distorted interpretations of other people’s words and actions. For example, feeling awful when someone would fail to greet me while passing in a hallway. Perhaps the other person was absorbed in thought and simply didn’t see me, but I would twist the experience into a feeling of rejection, often taking offense where no offense was intended.

I had boundary issues, as well, which caused me to maintain an inappropriate spiritual distance from people who might have loved me and helped me love myself. I had problems with forgiveness, anger management, and self-esteem.

My distorted psyche had submerged me into an unhappy state that I remained in all the way through college. My spiritual and social shortcomings actually meant that I was a fairly normal person. I didn’t spend all day in bed weeping or living on the street unable to take care of my needs. “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation,” according to Thoreau’s famous quote, “and go to the grave with the song still in them.” That was my life, exactly.

I was coping OK with the dark things going on inside my head and my heart, but I wasn’t filled with light and song. My “quiet desperation” resonated with the darkness and silence that mark the lives of many people — perhaps even “most men,” as Thoreau supposed.

I’m so thankful, however, that I didn’t fulfill the second part of the quote, because I’m not going to go to the grave “with the song still in (me).” Something happened that changed the course of my life completely.

Moving into the Light
The change actually began in a single identifiable moment. After graduating from college I was living on the beach in Santa Monica. I had a great job writing TV commercials. One day I was arguing with a friend about something when he suddenly said to me. “How you deal with the issue is the issue.”

I can remember my friend saying those words as if he spoke them yesterday. My whole body suddenly filled with a “great invincible surmise,” to borrow words from Martin Luther King, because it suddenly seemed possible that I might be able to live life on a level far superior to the emotional doldrums in which I was merely existing.

I suddenly imagined that I could be free in my own skin, and no longer be controlled by my dark moods, feelings, circumstances, and perceptions. The simple words, “How you deal with the issue is the issue,” seemed to stir into wakefulness some benevolent and powerful thing that had been sleeping deep within my soul.

“Where did that come from?” I asked. He told me that the words came from someone at the University of Santa Monica. I got in touch with the head of the program and began to turn my moment of joyful discovery into life-giving change. I enrolled in the program with no idea of making any professional move; I simply wanted to find out about this, for myself.

The University of Santa Monica promotes a program of Spiritual Psychology that is based upon a principle of learning to love yourself. They constantly reinforce a motto: “getting in touch with the divine inside.” The words sound religious, but “divine” is actually meant to reference the spiritual energy inside all of us.

The insights and techniques of Spiritual Psychology profoundly changed my life. I discovered that healthy living is a process of change and renewal and not some summit that I might eventually climb to.

On this journey, however, my studies at the University of Santa Monica developed qualities of peace and balance that created a sense of internal ease and release within my spirit. My liberation and growth soon manifested themselves in outward changes as I experienced new success at work, in my social life, and in my family relationships.

Finding Resources to Repair the Problems of My Spirit
Spiritual psychology views a person as simultaneously functioning on four levels — mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. Each of the levels have characteristics that can be analyzed and they all profoundly influence each other. They are “deeply intertwingled,” as a friend of mine recently noted.

Spiritual Psychology teaches that, “Healing is the application of loving to the place inside that hurts.” It is a more humanistic system than those espoused by people like Freud and Addler. Their work was based on identifying what’s wrong with us; Spiritual Psychology is based upon reinforcing what’s right with us.

Spiritual Psychology has the goal of liberating people from psychologists in becoming fulfilled human beings, because one of the principles is that we have sufficient resources within ourselves to effect the healing we need and desire.

Psychologists play their highest role in helping us learn and use techniques to achieve that level of integration so we can leave their couches behind and actually practice the healing science for ourselves. So I have developed an incredible set of skills and resources for working on the problems I face. I’m managing the processes of my own growth.

In 1993 I caught the vision of helping people learn to love themselves. I had finished the Masters Degree in Spiritual Psychology, and it occurred to me that I should share with others the powerful insights that had served to transform my own life.

I visualized myself becoming a link in a human chain connecting the people in the program who had helped me to people whose lives I, in turn, could touch. In order to do this, I went on to obtain a Doctorate in Counseling Psychology with a Cognitive Behavioral and Psychodynamic orientation.

Doing All the Good I Can for All the People I Can
I am offering help to troubled people and assisting them in facing whatever is going on in their lives — helping them to dig down and fix the real problem that is causing whatever symptoms they are coming to me with.

I am not applying psychological Band-Aids, but am teaching clients ways of dealing with whatever deeper situations are creating the symptoms that are troubling them. I am “seeing the divine in them” and helping them see it too.

My clients bring me all kinds of problems. Some of them are dealing with past trauma, current abuse, conflicts, compulsions, anxiety, and negative thinking. I see couples on the verge of break-up, parents and kids dealing with communication issues, singles dealing with broken relationships, et cetera. I intervene in clients’ problems by helping them reduce defensiveness and giving them tools to resolve their particular issues. I begin to teach them skills for their own healing in the future.

My patients and I are constantly learning lessons about turning poison into medicine — turning the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as Hamlet put it, into implements creating patience, power, and love in our lives.

I develop feelings of great affection for my patients, and wish that I could accompany them as they face the future challenges of life. On the other hand, I think of them as birds being pushed out of the nest, so that they can soar on wings and fly. I’m glad that they eventually leave me to go live their lives, flying in freedom because of the skills and coping mechanisms that I taught them.

The service goes both ways. Everybody I meet presents me with opportunities for learning and growth. I consider it an honor and privilege to sit in the company of people who display the courage to ask for help and the patience to deal with their problems.

Everyone is involved in a struggle of some kind, they say, and it seems to be true. There have been some negative feelings in the past about people who seek psychological help of one kind, or another. The fact that the individual sought help was taken as a sign of weakness.

But in many cases seeking help is actually a sign of strength. It’s a sign that people aren’t willing to simply give up in the struggle. They are determined to find resources to help them fight and to win over negative things in their lives.

I have a complete though non-sectarian faith in God. He is present with me, and I’m firmly convinced that each of us are put on earth to learn lessons and to accomplish things that will have some eternal significance, whatever that turns out to be.

My work is very hard, but it has wonderful rewards, both personal and professional. Spiritual Psychology is making a tremendous difference in my life and now I’m connecting people to their own sources of psychological health, power, and wellness. Witnessing their journey makes my own heart sing!