Let's use a giant hedge in Vienna that I hung out with last summer to illustrate a feature of therapeutic and spiritual practice: externalization.
Wikipedia will tell you that Michael White, founder of Narrative Therapy, developed externalization. However, externalization has been a critical feature of meditative practice and Asian philosophy and psychology for centuries. Narrative Therapy arguably does not see externalization as a metaphysical or empirical claim, but systems like yoga and Buddhism do. In these ancient systems, externalization reflects a fundamental truth. So what is it? It's the recognition (and associated techniques) that our identity, base consciousness, or essence (or non-essence, depending on your view) is NOT one with the objects of our perception. We are not our bodies, thoughts, and emotions. We have minds and bodies that, as mechanisms of the cosmos, construct physical, feeling, and thinking phenomena. But we are not the phenomena. There are a myriad of ways this can explored and taught in therapy or contemplative practice. But ultimately, these practices create a space between the observer/experiencer and what is being observed/experienced. In Euro-American therapeutic approaches, linguistic framing, creative arts, and observation play a crucial role in enhancing this understanding, which is often sufficient for therapeutic effects to occur for many.
Conversely, in Asian contemplative traditions, attaining various degrees of perceptual clarity around selfhood versus the objects of our perception is significantly more complicated. But how is this beneficial for your well-being? In short, it creates a sense of agency and spaciousness for the intrapsychic change process. We realize that the mind can create nightmares, but we aren't essentially the nightmare. The body can create disease, but we are not the disease. This perceptual posture can free us to engage skillfully with a myriad of forces to reduce or eliminate rigid patterns of suffering. In a therapy session, a distinction can be framed with language: "I am experiencing anxiety" or "I am observing anxious thoughts" versus "I am anxious."
Most of us are enmeshed in the objects of our consciousness throughout the day without a second thought. So, externalization practice is just that, a practice. It often takes time for the experiencer to start teasing out conscious awareness from the momentary, ever-changing processes bubbling up at any moment. But even beginning this process can produce revelatory and restorative impacts. This perspective is also why I do not shy away from labeling forces of the mind as negative, maladaptive, counterproductive, or unwholesome. Some therapists avoid this, understandably concerned clients will internalize these labels as selfhood. However, a view that embraces externalization practice avoids the threat of identification (or further entrenching identification). From this perspective, calling a spade a spade is empowering. The mind-body system is creative. It creates degrees of suffering and well-being. Your essence, integrity, and inherent worth have nothing to do with these creations. But we are participants in this process. The sooner we can articulate these forces and not cling to them, the more psychological flexibility, agency, and empowerment are produced.
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