Transformation is a therapeutic approach focused on the significance of my thinking and the power of my thoughts and beliefs to change my experiences and life. At the heart of the transformational philosophy, particularly in psychology, psychotherapy, and the treatment of addictive behaviors and mental health issues, is the notion that my most crucial thought or belief is my self-perception. This concept, referred to by Dr. Maxwell Maltz as my self-image, encompasses my beliefs about my perceived value and worth as a human being.

A transformational approach to counseling and treating substance use disorders and mental health issues aims to help me learn how to change my negative thoughts and beliefs about myself into positive affirmations. Once learned, this new way of being will enable me to care for and love myself authentically. A fundamental principle of this approach is that the challenges and discomforts I experience often stem from the belief that I am not good enough, insufficient, worthless, inadequate, or broken somehow.

Transformational counseling aims to assist me in shifting my negative self-perceptions to a more positive outlook, leading me to recognize that I am perfect, whole, and complete. By adopting this new mindset and way of being, I can learn to respect, acknowledge, accept, and genuinely love myself as I am in the present moment. Once I achieve authentic self-love, many of my struggles, including substance abuse and other forms of addiction, as well as mental health issues, can and will be resolved.

The treatment process is about fostering a new inner dialogue within me, what I refer to as the conversation of transformation. This inner dialogue encourages me to create, generate, and engage in a transformative conversation with myself and others. The conversation of transformation revolves around changing how I think, speak, feel, and behave, especially concerning myself, transitioning from past negative patterns to envisioning a new, miraculous, and extraordinary future for myself. It is about constructing a new self-image and incorporating the wisdom of the Principles of Transformation into my life.

I am responsible for all my experiences and everything I think, believe, say, feel, and do. I am responsible for all my experiences because of the ideas and thoughts I have been exposed to early in life, accepted, chose to think repetitiously and eventually came to form what I believe about my value and worth in life, my self-image. As a result of these thoughts and beliefs, I create all my experiences, including my addictive behavior concerning drugs and alcohol. It is from the negative thoughts and beliefs that structured my initial self-image that I am entirely responsible for the creation of all my addictive behaviors.

I am also responsible for my mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem because of the negative thoughts and beliefs that I have chosen to accept, think repetitiously, and eventually come to believe about myself, precisely the negative thoughts and beliefs that I repeatedly tell myself, that I am not good enough, not enough, inadequate, damaged or less than. I am and always have been responsible for all my negative experiences, substance use, and mental health issues alike due to my negative thoughts and beliefs about my value and worth as a human being all of which I have created.

I am not nor ever have been a victim in my life. Victimization does not exist but is merely a thought or belief that I create, believe, and attempt to use to avoid assuming and accepting my responsibility for creating all my thoughts, beliefs, feelings, actions and experiences and the current trajectory of my life. My work in transformation is to take or assume complete responsibility for everything I think, say, believe, feel, do, and experience in my life. I must remember that I generate or cause the negative thoughts and beliefs that create all my present and past negative experiences in my life. I am responsible for the source and creation of my thinking and thought patterns.

My ability to change and transform my life is intricately connected to my complete acceptance of my responsibility for creating and generating all my experiences and their consequences. Without my acceptance I am unable to change or transform my life, especially my negative thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about myself, my value and worth as a human being and the negative experiences and consequences they have caused, all my addictive behavior toward drugs and alcohol and mental health problems. I am responsible for all my experiences in life as they occur, regardless of their content or context.

I choose all my experiences and how my life is occurring. I decide or choose all my experiences, including my addictive behavior towards drugs and alcohol and mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. I have always chosen all my thoughts and experiences and created them from moment to moment. By completely accepting my ability and power of choice, I have discovered my responsibility for my life and how to transform it.

I constantly choose what to think and believe, what to say, how to feel, and what to do. All my choices and decisions in my life are made initially from the context of a thought or belief about my perceived value and worth as a human being that I have created and continue to generate in the present moment. My self-image determines my choices in all my life’s domains.  Everything in my life emanates from my self-image. I have always had the power to choose to think differently, to think positive feeling thoughts instead of negative ones.

My work in transformation is to practice consciously being aware of my thinking, being mindful of my thoughts and beliefs from moment to moment and being conscious of all my choices due to my thinking and thought process and their consequences for myself and others. Becoming aware of my choices and their consequences, including, and especially, the thoughts that I choose to think and believe about myself, about my value and worth as a human being, allows me to be completely and consciously responsible and start to access my power to transform my life and as a result, to think and be differently.

Remember, practicing being conscious that I am creating all my experiences and life by my choice of thoughts that I make from moment to moment, always in the present moment, empowers me to begin to change and transform my life and, in the process, give up the false thought, belief, and illusion of not being good enough and of being a victim. I choose my life from the ideas and thoughts I accepted, reinforced, and acted upon in the past and continue to do so in the present. Choosing is how I am responsible for my power and what I use to transform my experiences and life. I can choose to think and be different.

I have the power to transform my experiences and life.  I have always had the power to change and transform my life, including the ability to end my addictive behavior to drugs and alcohol forever and resolve my mental health problems. I am the cause of my life, not the effect of it. I am not and never have been a victim. I have always had the power to change and transform my experiences and the trajectory of my life.

I have always been doing the best I can in the present moment with the knowledge, understanding, and awareness I have had. When I learn and know more, I will create the possibility of doing different and better for myself, to live life powerfully and not as a victim. Knowledge is power, and the key to my ability and power to change my life is to change my thinking, thoughts, and beliefs, especially my negative thoughts about my value and worth as a human being

I can transform my life, end my addictive behavior toward drugs and alcohol forever, and find a permanent resolution to my mental health problems by learning how to change my negative thoughts and beliefs about my perceived value and worth as a human being to positive thoughts and beliefs. I can and have the power to learn to think and be differently, more adequately, and more positively, especially about my value and worth as a human being.

My negative thoughts about my self-worth are merely thoughts I created and came to believe. I can change these ideas or thoughts to ones that reveal my actual and positive value and worth as a human being, my true nature. My power to change my life is found only within the transformation of my thinking, in my thoughts and beliefs. The solution for me is always about learning how to use my mind to think positively about myself and applying this knowledge to bring the wisdom of self-love into my life.

My thoughts, beliefs, and current thinking patterns are very powerful and creative. They create all my experiences and life. I am constantly shaping or creating how my life occurs to me from moment to moment, in the Now. I create all my experiences in the present moment through and from my thinking patterns, the thoughts, and beliefs that I create and repeatedly think, both positive and negative.

I created my addictive behavior to drugs and alcohol and mental health problems initially by specific ideas, thoughts, and beliefs that I have chosen to accept early in life, continue to think, and eventually come to believe as the truth. Once accepted and chosen, I am also responsible for repeatedly generating negative thoughts and beliefs about my perceived value and worth as a human being, precisely the idea and belief that I am not good enough.

The actual cause of my addictive behavior is in my mind, not my body. The exact cause of my addictive behavior and mental health problem is a thought I have about myself, an idea that I initially accepted and recreated in the past and continue to generate in the present, a negative thought or belief about my value and worth as a human being. This negative thought repeatedly tells me that I am not good enough, not enough, inadequate, in the present moment.

The thought or belief that tells me that I am not good enough is my self-limiting belief, which dictates every aspect of my life, shaping and even determining what I can and cannot experience and achieve. I am addicted not to drugs and alcohol but to negative thinking and negative thoughts and beliefs about myself. This way of thinking is created from the context of a fundamental negative thought or belief that I have about myself, a thought or belief that repeatedly tells me I am not good enough. This belief defines and determines my self-image and the experiences that follow from it.

My point of power is always in the present moment. My power to change and transform my life and way of being is always in the present moment, in the Now. My ability to change and transform is not to be found in my past or the future, as neither has any existence or ontology. Only the present moment exists and is real and powerful.

My past and future experiences do not exist; only the present moment does. This present moment exists and is all that truly matters! What I think and do in the present moment is so crucial that it is only in the present moment that I can and will be able to create what I will experience and refer to as my life! Change and transformation only take place in the present moment.

Learning to be entirely in the present moment gives me the ability to access my true power, the power that comes from inside me, the power that resides in my thoughts and beliefs, in my thinking, in my mind, the power that emanates from my Source, Spirit, Higher Power or God. Part of my work is to stay grounded in the present moment to access my natural power to transform my life and experience true happiness.

When I stay grounded in the present moment, I can gain access and authentic connection to my Higher Power, Source, Spirit, and God. When I do this powerful work and stay in the present moment, I will also know who I truly am, from that from which I came, from Source, Spirit, Higher Power, and God. I will learn and experience the meaning of “I am God, Higher Power, Source, Spirit.”

My thoughts and beliefs are very powerful.  They create and determine what I say, believe, feel, do, and experience in my life. My thoughts and beliefs also affect the functioning of my physical body. My thoughts, beliefs, and thinking patterns are so powerful that they can influence and even alter the structure of my body’s organs, especially my thoughts and beliefs about my worth and value as a human being.

My psychology, what I think and believe, affects the fundamental nature of my physiology. My thoughts and beliefs create what I experience and what happens in my physical body. My thoughts and beliefs are very powerful and can, as a result, affect and alter the functioning and operations of my physical body, which can result in either illness or health in my body.

My thinking and thought patterns intimately affect the structure of my physiology, as the mind and body are connected. There are not two worlds, the physical and mental; essentially, the mind and body are one. What happens in my mind, in my thoughts, and in my beliefs manifests in my physical body. What and how I think will appear in my physical body’s nature and existence.

When I think positively, I simultaneously create a healthy physiology. When I think negatively, I simultaneously create an unhealthy body. My physical health is dependent upon my mental health. To help ensure that my body is healthy, I must also ensure that my mind is healthy. Positive thoughts lead to a positive and healthy body.

My psychology determines everything I think, say, believe, feel, do, and experience. The power to change and transform my life is to be discovered in the thoughts and beliefs I constantly create and generate from moment to moment. The outcome of my experiences and life depends on the adequacy and Truth of my knowledge. I know that knowledge is power.

The nature of what I experience and my life initially depends upon what I think and believe, the foundation of which is knowledge.  As I also know, I am doing the best I can in the present moment with the knowledge, understanding, and awareness I possess now. The Truth or adequacy of my knowledge can change and transform.

When I learn and come to know more, when my knowledge becomes more adequate and aligned with the Truth, I will do differently and better. A positive outcome of my way of being and life depends on me gaining knowledge that reflects more of the Truth.  When I learn more about the Truth, I can and will live healthier.

I must remember that knowledge is power.  My work in transformation is to gain knowledge, understanding, awareness, positive thoughts, and more adequate beliefs that reflect the Truth.  Understanding gives me insight.  Moreover, awareness is the first step in healing and changing my life, of my transformation.  When what I know becomes more adequate, I will be and do not only differently but better.

Forgiveness is necessary for my recovery and transformation. I need to let go of the negative experiences of my past, forgive everyone, and especially forgive myself for what I think happened in the past and the negative energy I created concerning my thoughts and beliefs about the past. Forgiving will allow me to access my inner power to change and transform my life, end my addictive behavior to drugs and alcohol forever, and resolve my mental health problems.

When I do not forgive, I will remain a slave to my past, attached to it, stuck in it, unable to move forward and will remain a perceived victim of it. I will blame others, take no responsibility for my behavior, and possibly create resentments. I must remember, my past does not exist but appears to me merely as a thought or belief, what I can refer to as memory, an idea or belief that can be changed or transformed.

I can transform my thoughts and what I think about the past. The only real thing is the present moment, the Now, not my past. What happened in my past, the events that took place in my past, do not have any real effect or power over me now; they never have. What matters is what I think and believe about what happened, not what occurred in the past. Letting go of the past through forgiveness allows me to be in the present moment.

My thinking and beliefs about my past are what matters, not the event that took place, as it no longer exists, passing out of existence immediately after it happened. I can learn to let go of my past and move powerfully into the present moment, into the Now. To not forgive, to not let go, to stay stuck in the past denies me my power and access to that which is the only thing that will allow me to transform my life and way of being, that is, my thinking, my thoughts, and beliefs, in the present moment, especially those about my perceived value and worth as a human being, my self-image.

I am not my thoughts or beliefs. My thinking, thoughts, and beliefs are different from who I truly am. My thoughts and beliefs are not the same as my mind. My mind is merely a tool I use to create my thoughts and beliefs. I am not my mind, either. I have not known who I am in life. I have thought and believed that my identity was to be discovered and derived from the external world of people, places, and things. I derived my identity from what I do, what I have, other people’s opinions of me, and my reputation.

However, if I continue to define my identity in this manner I will eventually experience emotional or psychic pain as the world of people, places, and things constantly changes, leaving me dissatisfied with the identity I created, chose, and attempted to live. This dissatisfaction comes from looking in the wrong place for who I am and trying to live and be who I am not. Believing that my worth and value are to be found in the external world will leave me experiencing an existential crisis, eventually devaluing myself and reinforcing my negative self-image.

However, suppose I go inside rather than focusing on the outside or external world for my identity, value, and worth as a human being. When this happens, I will create the possibility of discovering who I truly am. Letting go of my attachments to the external world, which I believed to be at least connected to my identity, I will embark on an inward journey, eventually discovering my identity, the Source, and the Power of my thoughts. I will learn to love myself unconditionally by transforming my thoughts in this manner.

I can and do have the ability to create positive thoughts and feelings about myself and my life. I can create positive thoughts of respect, acceptance, approval, and acknowledgment about myself that will eventually allow me to love myself as I am in the present moment authentically. In this authentic love of myself, as I am now, in the present moment, I will create the possibility of discovering who I am and, as a result, enable me to connect to my true identity simultaneously, what and who I am, that is Higher Power, Source, Spirit, or God. Loving myself authentically, getting to know my identity, and getting connected to my Higher Power, Source, Spirit, or God is the same process. The authentic love that I experience of myself is God, as God is love.

As I genuinely love myself, I am coming to know who I truly am in life and as a human being. As I experience my love for myself, I restore my connection to my Power, Higher Power, Source, Spirit, and God. In creating the connection and restoration, I know and experience that I am a Higher Power, Source, Spirit, and God. As Dr. Wayne Dyer once said, saying that I am God is not blasphemy but rather my identity! In the conversation, I will eventually learn and experience that who I am, my identity, is from that from which I came, my Source, God.

I must be fully committed to my transformation. The level of my commitment to my healing and transformation will make the difference in whether I return to active addictive behavior, continue to experience mental health challenges, and even possibly perish or change the negative trajectory of my current life to one where I am happy, joyous, and free. To change and transform my life and what I experience requires a complete commitment.

This commitment involves transforming my negative thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes, especially those related to my perceived value and worth as a human being, into entirely positive ones. Achieving this will require dedication, discipline, perseverance, and complete immersion into the conversation. The bottom line for me, especially at the beginning of this work, is to follow my therapist’s suggestions completely, even without question.

There can be no picking and choosing from the suggestions given to me by my therapist. I must follow all suggestions from the perspective of obedience and not from agreement. From the suggestions given to me, I must also plan my work and work my plan with my therapist, staying accountable and responsible to my therapist and doing so as if my life depended upon my work because it does.

Following the suggestions and wisdom of those who came before me will allow me to transform and eventually serve others similarly. The advice now given to me here is even more critical when I begin changing my negative perception of myself to a genuinely positive one. Eventually, I will experience the urge to resist change, the suggestions and direction given and offered to me and stay the same or even return to active addictive behavior and the experience of mental health problems. I must stay committed to the conversation of transformation.

The actual cause of my addictive behavior with drugs and alcohol, of all my addictive behaviors, is a thought or belief. The exact cause of my addictive behavior to drugs and alcohol and many, if not most, of my mental health problems is that I think and believe that I am not good enough or less than others, and as a result, there is a lack of authentic self-love due to my negative thinking about my value and worth as a human being.

When I think and believe that I am fundamentally not good enough, referred to here as my core or self-limiting belief, I will continually engage in self-destructive behaviors that will support, reinforce, and even validate my negative thoughts and beliefs about my perceived value and worth as a human being. What I think and believe about myself will affect, if not determine, how I feel about myself and how I treat and behave toward myself in all my life domains.

As a result of my negative thinking about myself, I will also source or attract specific dangerous experiences, including substances, into my life, including and especially drugs and alcohol, that will not only validate my negative perception of myself but will harm, if not eventually kill me if I continue with that type of behavior. The cause of my addictive behavior to drugs and alcohol is in my mind, my mental health, my psychology, and my thinking, especially in my negative thoughts and beliefs about myself and not in my body!

Drugs and alcohol are not the real problems; they never have been. Drugs and alcohol are merely symptoms and instruments I use to inflict self-harm. More precisely, drugs and alcohol are simply the instruments that I use to self-execute. The actual cause of my drug and alcohol addiction is the belief that I am not good enough, inadequate, and do not matter. This principle applies to all other addictive behaviors, including gambling, food, porn, and sex addiction, as well as many, if not most, mental health disorders.

Loving myself is the only solution to my addictive behavior and mental health issues. To change and transform the current trajectory of my life, to end my addictive behavior and dependency upon drugs and alcohol forever, and to find an actual resolution to my mental health problems will require that I learn how to authentically respect, approve, accept, acknowledge and eventually come to love myself just as I am now, in the present moment, in the Now.

Learning what loving myself is all about and bringing the knowledge of self-love into my life will give me true Wisdom and genuine happiness. Experiencing authentic self-love is simple but requires commitment and dedication to transformation. I will need help from others and, as a result, must be open-minded and willing to accept and follow all the suggestions given to me by others who know about and live the principles of transformation.

I will need to learn the knowledge necessary to transform and practice it daily to experience and bring the Wisdom of self-love into my life. I can transform my life only if I change my negative thinking about myself, especially about my perceived value and worth as a human being, into authentically positive thinking. Any negative ideas, thoughts, beliefs, or considerations about myself must be given up absolutely and replaced with positive thoughts and beliefs. The key to loving myself is to have a positive self-image.

When I think positively about myself, I will come to think and believe that I am perfect, whole, and complete, that I genuinely matter, that I am good enough and that I am enough, just as I am in the present moment. When I come to think positively about myself, I will come to love myself authentically, I will no longer have a desire or need to use drugs or alcohol or feel depressed, anxious, and worthless, and I will be truly happy with who I am in the present moment, in the Now. Self-approval and self-acceptance are the keys to my genuine self-love and transformation.

Dr. Harry Henshaw

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