(Sandra's books and articles can also be read at wwwQuestForSelf.com. This article describes her Quest For Self program.)

by Sandra Michaelson 

Have the techniques and systems you have used to find success, peace of mind, wisdom, and love been working?

What sort of system or knowledge have you been using? If it's traditional psychology, you have perhaps been ingesting a psychological hash that is dished out in most of the country's mental-health facilities like fast food of the psyche. This bland, processed knowledge consists of behavioral advice, positive thinking, cheerleading platitudes, and rational reinforcement.

It is just a matter of time before you are passed on to the pharmaceutical industry for the anti-depressants and mood stabilizers that you're willing to ingest because nothing else has worked.

If you have been using meditation and yoga, you may have found some comfort and respite from mental and emotional static. But as a Westerner who's not likely to sit for two or three hours a day for many years, you find that meditation doesn't penetrate your psychological resistance to seeing your collusion in the problems in your life. Thus, it will not produce permanent transformation.

If it's traditional religion you rely on, you are taught conditional acceptance of yourself, based on your performance in God's eyes. Your goodness, you are told, depends on whether you are obedient, loyal, and submissive to outside authority. Isn't this a repeat of the relationship you had with your parents? And isn't this what we all do to ourselves, accepting ourselves only when we can demonstrate how good or smart we are?

If you're seeking answers in the New Age movement, you are inclined to believe you can wipe out your emotional blocks and painful memories with healing rituals and magical thinking. This is being naive about psychological reality and the entrenched nature of self-limiting and self-defeating emotions and behaviors.

None of the above systems get to the heart of the matter the way the Quest for Self program does. Our system leads you into the depths of your human nature, to understand the psychological structure that supports your self-limiting emotions, attitudes, and behaviors.

Quest for Self penetrates our defenses and our resistance with power and insight. Through Quest for Self, we understand what is behind our need for the negative, how we resist and reject the positive and the good in our lives, and how we collude in creating and maintaining our problems.

We understand that we are responsible for the problems in our lives, that we are "co-creators" of our experiences and not innocent victims, and that our negative feelings and reactions toward others and life are reflections of our condemning relationship with ourselves.

Core questions are addressed: Why is the negative there in the first place? Why is it so difficult to do what is in our best interest? Why don't we exercise more, eat better, stay focused, worry less, remain positive, keep friends, save money, hold on to love, and achieve more with our creativity and skills?

Quest for Self represents a new technology that connects our isolated experiences and memories into a coherent whole, illuminating clearly the self-awareness that will guide us out of our emotional and behavioral difficulties. We especially become aware of how to heal our relationship with ourselves as we move toward harmony and love.

Or go back to start and look around our information-rich web site for more understanding of how this powerful system works.

Michaelson Psychotherapy
436 S. Marengo Ave., Apt. 110, Pasadena, CA 91101