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Most popular psychotherapies today tend to be symptom-focused.

Psychiatric symptoms are potentially meaningful and significant.

Simply suppressing a symptom does not necessarily solve the problem.

This post is Part 1 of a series.

Psychiatric symptoms are just that—symptoms—or expressions of some underlying psychological, emotional, spiritual, philosophical, or sometimes physiological or neurological condition, conflict, imbalance, mistaken attitude, or distorted core belief. Most popular psychotherapies today tend to be symptom-focused, meaning they take the symptom, such as anxiety, depression, mania, or substance abuse, at face value and try to suppress or eliminate it. This can sometimes feel like a futile effort.

Hercules and the Hydra

In Greek mythology, the Hydra was a hideous serpent-like creature with nine venomous heads, one of which was immortal. The legendary hero Hercules was tasked by the gods as punishment to perform 12 labors, one of which was to slay the dreaded Hydra. Cleverly luring it from its lair, each time Hercules lopped off one of the Hydra's heads, two immediately grew back in its place. Preventing their return required an even more........

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