Intuitive Behavioral Therapy (IBT) is an inclusive treatment modality founded by Dr. Uta Hoehne, which treats the whole person by encouraging and including the higher self or “soul” in the therapeutic process. It is an adjunct to existing psychological practices. In its framework, therapists view every person as having something good, beautiful, and true within them. In addition to other names, this something is called by some traditions the higher self, true self, or soul.
Intuitive Behavioral Therapy has its roots in humanistic, transpersonal, and analytical therapy.
- The word Intuition relates to higher cognition, which is capable of insights, recognition of patterns, and the realization of meaning.
- The word Behavioral in this context includes thoughts, emotions, sensations, and physical behavior.
The intention behind IBT is:
To assist individuals to free themselves
from the rigid, constricting, and painful accumulations
of unprocessed life experiences
and to realize their soul as the locus of control.
As humans, we are consistently faced with stressors. Our reactions to the stressors often come with strong emotions, which involuntarily trigger defensive reactions whereby we drop our level of functioning from levels of higher into lower functioning. We drop from selfhood into personhood into victimhood – or drop from our normal level of functioning personhood into victimhood.
In these moments, our hard-wired emergency responses such as contracting, retracting, fighting, fleeing, and freezing are triggered, which change our lively, fluidic pulsation system into a rigidly frozen state. These frozen states can persist whenever we encounter a similar stressor later in life.
To reverse this process and lift up to our previous level of functioning, the application of the IBT method can bring to consciousness the related mental, emotional, and etheric/physical reactions. It is then that the focus can be redirected from the locked-in maladaptive behavior patterns to the healthier patterns established earlier in life.
Using the IBT method, clients and therapists together focus on the following step-by-step sequence: Effect – Meaning – Cause or Victimhood – Personhood – Selfhood. Below is a brief overview of this sequence:
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Effect – In the framework of IBT, effects are the discomfort, the ill health, and the pains that the person is experiencing. The effects are the results or symptoms of something seemingly hidden. People may experience outside stressors and, in reaction to them, find themselves dropping into an earlier evolutionary stage of consciousness.
Within the therapeutic hour, the client and their therapist together define clearly the symptoms that are connected to the presenting complaints. These can include the persons’ body languages, felt internal sensations, affects, and external sense impressions such as sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch. These symptoms can reveal the energy centers around which the symptoms are clustered. If applicable, the behavior pattern is identified and discussed with which the person habitually reacts if a similar stressor is presented.
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Meaning – This points to the basic reason why there is pain present or, stated differently, what could have been the purpose of the felt pain? If the situation’s meaning is realized, then the regressive process can be reversed by moving energetically upward from victimhood into personhood. Furthermore, the understanding of meaning can open the person up to greater insights and can bring into their awareness what changes would be needed to restore health.
Frequently, the realized meaning brings about positive changes in the person such as the righting of wrongs, the lessening of fear of life or death, and the restoration of the will-to-live. In addition, if the person is mentally polarized, then the realized meaning can shed light on an even more encompassing and deeper cause of the persons’ distress.
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Cause – This leads the client back to their source. Cause brings them home to their true selves – higher self or soul. Understanding cause can raise the person from personhood into selfhood. The person needs to ask themselves:
Where and how in my life have I not respected myself
and hindered the expression of my true self?When the cause is realized and experienced, then the persons’ authentic self is encouraged and supported. The until now perceived hopeless, meaningless, and thankless toils and suffering, which seemed to keep the person chained to the humdrum of daily living, are realized as but stepping stones toward a more expanded, inclusive consciousness and a joyful and more fulfilled life.