Q&A with Dr. B.

Dr. Larry Berkelhammer

The purpose of this website, my book, and the Community Education course I teach at the College of Marin, is to teach people how to live a vibrant, meaningful life through the cultivation of self-empowerment and self-efficacy. In this weekly Q&A column, I post questions from students and from people who attend my presentations along with my answers.

Here is this week’s question:

QUESTION: Does your self-empowerment method involve working with thought processes?

ANSWER: There is very little time spent analyzing thoughts and no time spent in trying to change them. This method does include objective examination and acceptance of troubling thought processes, which allows us to be free of the suffering that results from mistaking those thoughts for reality. The ability to recognize and accept those particular thought processes as simply products of the brain, which cause suffering, leads to the ability to defuse or disentangle from those otherwise harmful thoughts. The thoughts cause us to suffer emotionally only when we buy into the thoughts or try to suppress them.

This website is offered as a free public service, supplying information that has been found helpful to certain people living with chronic health challenges or issues related to wellbeing. No treatment is offered on this website. The advice is general, and may or may not apply to your individual situation, and is not a substitute for psychotherapy or medical treatment.

If you would like to ask me something, you can type your question in the comment box below. An answer to your specific question may not necessarily appear in this column. The reason for that is I wait until I get a certain number of related questions, then I pick one that covers them all and I answer that one.