Inner Message Approach™

What is the Inner Message Approach™?

The Inner Message Approach™ is a stand-alone method that can also be used as a first step in therapy services rendered by trained professionals.

It is based on the following principles:

• Thoughts and emotions are coded messages revealing your deepest desires, current state, future direction, motivation, and obstacles.
• These messages encompass your past, present, and potential future.
• Your mind encodes wisdom in thoughts and emotions, based on your unique inner blueprint.
• Thoughts and emotions are influenced by your internal and external environments, filtered through cognitive schemas.
• Decoding these thoughts and emotions unlocks this wisdom, aiding in personal growth and smoother progress.
• Thoughts and emotions signal the need for self-rebalance and are themselves attempts at achieving balance.
• They provide access to subconscious content, which is just below the surface, termed pre-conscious.
• Accessing this subconscious material requires logical questioning, leading to insights that feel true and obvious.
• The premise is that you possess sufficient internal information to find clarity and a better way forward. By logically decoding your thoughts and emotions, you can connect with your core self and navigate obstacles, facilitating a smoother journey toward your goals.

The key lies in decoding your thoughts and emotions to reveal this inner roadmap and achieve well-being 🙂 This approach not only empowers you with the knowledge to heal yourself but also allows you to see yourself more clearly — hence our slogan, “You See You, the Essence of You”.

The Inner Message Approach™ is versatile, serving as an initial phase in various therapies (psychodynamic, CBT, DBT, ACT, EFT, etc.) and coaching. It can also stand alone as a complete method.

How can the Inner Message Approach™ be applied?

The Inner Message Approach™ consists of 3 phases:

• Engage your Inner Compass: what is the thought or the emotion calling your attention? Go deeper.
• Reveal your inner blueprint: your thoughts and emotions carry where you are in this moment, what you are aiming for, and the way you motivate yourself to get there: you can infer obstacles along the way and ways to resolve them
• Crack the Code: put all the information you gathered for an easy way to a better future

Here are 5 steps to use to go from phase 1 to 3:

1. Identifying the thought or emotion that you are experiencing
2. Identifying the unmet desire that is triggering the thought or emotion
3. Connect to what this desire reflects about you or your relationship with yourself
4. Connect to the growth opportunity rather than focusing on what’s missing
5. Be grateful for your thoughts and emotions and your self-discoveries: Identify what you have learned about yourself in terms of what you desire, your way of motivating yourself, your obstacles, and ways to overcome them. Can you be grateful for your thoughts and emotions and the inner blueprint they contain?

Why choose the Inner Message Approach™?

The Inner Message Approach™ is fast and effective right away. Once you understand how to use it, you do not need a coach or therapist. The Inner Message Approach™ teaches you how to decode your thoughts and emotions to break free from the negative and access the wisdom that is lying right in front of you. In sum:

• It’s efficient and provides immediate benefits.
• Encourages self-reliance, reducing dependency on external guidance.
• Teaches you to decode thoughts and emotions, unlocking hidden wisdom and guiding you towards a more fulfilling future.
• It connects you to an inner system that constantly attempts to bring you to balance.

So the question is more, why wouldn’t you use this approach that will give you freedom and access to your inner guide so that you see clearly what needs to be done for a better future?

How can we apply the Inner Message Approach™ to thoughts of not being good enough?

Step 1: Engage your inner compass
What is the thought calling your attention to?
In this case, it is calling your attention to your self-esteem

Step 2: Reveal your inner blueprint

What do we know about your present self-esteem? If you think that you are not good enough, you have an idea of what good enough would be (even if you cannot put it into words), your mind is referencing a different level of self-esteem, and you are not there. So we know that you are aiming for a higher level of self-esteem and that in the present moment, you haven’t achieved it.

What else do we know? You are using your whole self to describe your self-esteem, you are not saying I am good at this and not good at that. Everything about you is not good enough. Most people who say this about themselves do it either to motivate themselves to do better or to make a point that it is a lost cause, so you either are trying to get a break from someone else’s demands or you are kicking yourself so that you get to this higher level of self-esteem. So we have discovered how you motivate yourself.

What obstacle can we infer? It is very difficult to get to good enough from a place of beating on oneself or giving up on oneself, so we know that the way you motivate yourself is an issue in your ability to get you from where you are right now to where you want to be.

What else can we infer? We can infer that you need a different way to motivate yourself for an easier path.

Step 3: Crack the code

Put together all the information you gathered to move towards your goal with ease

Ask yourself: 

1. 1. How come you have adopted a “kick in the butt” way of motivating yourself? Are you turning some anger or aggressive drive towards yourself? Do you need to learn another way of channeling stress, frustration and anger so that you do not turn it inwards? Or do you believe that only force or effort will help you achieve your goals? If so, where did you get these ideas? You might have misinterpreted a life event or are living by someone else’s harsh words. It is time that you change this narrative. If you have a hard time letting go of this way of motivating yourself, reach out.
   2. How can you motivate yourself through praise? Do you have some beliefs that it will soften you or not get you where you want to go if you have a less harsh way of motivating yourself? Uncover the underlying beliefs that prevent you from embracing more empowering methods of motivating yourself. If you need help, reach out 🙂
   3. How can you tap into your strengths to get you to where you want to be? Identify the obstacles to tap into your strengths: do you believe that you do not have strengths, do you not value your strengths? Uncover the underlying beliefs that prevent you from relying on your strengths to get you where you want to be.

How can we apply the Inner Message Approach™ to thoughts of not being good enough?

Let’s use the 5 steps described above to go from phase 1 to 3 and decode your frustration:

1. Identifying the thought or emotion that you are experiencing
2. Identifying the unmet desire that is triggering the thought or emotion
3. Connect to what this desire reflects about your relationship with yourself
4. Connect to the growth opportunity rather than focusing on what’s missing
5. Be grateful for your thoughts and emotions and your self-discoveries: Identify what you have learned about yourself in terms of what you desire, your way of motivating yourself, your obstacles, and ways to overcome them. Can you be grateful for your thoughts and emotions and the inner blueprint they contain?

1. Identifying the thought or emotion that you are experiencing

For example, you are frustrated that your partner did not do the dishes

2. Identifying the unmet desire that is triggering the thought or emotion

For example, you want your partner to share the house chores with you. If you go deeper, you might realize that you desire to be relieved of some of life’s burdens

3. Connect to what this desire reflects about you or your relationship with yourself

This reflects that you are too burdened by life

4. Connect to the growth opportunity rather than focusing on what’s missing

Here is your growth opportunity: Who do you need to tweak internally to be less burdened by life? Maybe you approach life’s chores from a perspective of responsibility and need to reintroduce some fun in doing house chores or in living your life. Maybe you take on too many responsibilities and rely on effort to get what you want out of life. You need to shift your mindset to connecting to how you are supported and seek support

5. Be grateful for your thoughts and emotions and your self-discoveries: Identify what you have learned about yourself in terms of what you desire, your way of motivating yourself, your obstacles, and ways to overcome them. Can you be grateful for your thoughts and emotions and the inner blueprint they contain?

Your frustration shows us that you want relief from the burden of life and either sheds light on your way of approaching life or the fact that you need to tune in to the support around you or work on getting more support. Just one emotion, many discoveries, and a clear blueprint to get you to a happier place!

How is the Inner Message Approach™ different than reframing?

At the core of The Inner Message Approach™ is the principle that thought and emotions carry wisdom about you, and therefore, they should be understood and decoded to access this wisdom. Once you have decoded the wisdom, you can start doing some inner work for an easier path forward. You will know exactly what inner work needs to be done and if reframing will be part of this inner work. Reframing could therefore be added to the Inner Message Approach™ but is not necessary. 

The technique of reframing instead does not include the idea that your thoughts and emotions are as valuable as coded messages. It rather implies that you have to think about things in a different framework. Although this might be true, engaging in reframing with applying the Inner Message Approach™ will rob you of the wisdom hidden in plain sight about how you operate, what you want to achieve, and how you are going about it. The Inner Message Approach™ will save you time and give you a clearer and better-defined path which will lead to faster results.

How is the Inner Message Approach™ different than CBT?

The Inner Message Approach™ is rooted in the idea that your thoughts and emotions carry wisdom about you and that they are a product of your inner and outer environment filtered by your cognitive distortions. CBT does not focus on the wisdom embedded in your thoughts and emotions, it rather focuses on your cognitive distortions and their impact on your emotions and behavior. The focus of CBT is to identify these distortions and remove them. Although, The Inner Message Approach™ involves identifying some limiting beliefs and schemas. Its premise is that thoughts and emotions canary so much information about you and that you would be robbing yourself of that information if you only looked at your pattern of thinking and tried to change them to change your life. CBT can be and will likely be used after the Inner Message Approach™ has been implemented, and it is very important that CBT be used only after some work with The Inner Message Approach™ has been done. Otherwise you will lose the connection to the essence of you and the definition of a clear and easier path for you.

How is the Inner Message Approach™ different than DBT?

At the root of The inner Message Approach™ is the principle that thoughts and emotions are calling your attention so that you can rebalance yourself. By themselves, they are rebalancing attempts. Your job is to decode them to see what they are pointing to so that you can do the inner work. In contrast, at the root of DBT is the idea that you need to rebalance yourself through acquired skills and knowledge about the mind, you will be taught skills and, through the application of them, will rebalance yourself. The main difference relies on the idea that in the Inner Message Approach™, you have everything within to rebalance and that your inner system is constantly working for you to rebalance you through your thoughts and emotions. That being said, DBT can be used after The inner Message Approach™ has been applied. For example, if you discover that you need to regulate your emotions in a different way so that you can motivate yourself in less harmful ways, you can apply some DBT principles and get there. You decide which path and which therapeutic modality best suits you once you have all the information about your deepest desires, your goals, and obstacles. It can be DBT, CBT, etc… It can also be that The inner Message Approach™ is all that you need. You certainly do not need to add anything to it, but you can.

How is the Inner Message Approach™ different than Psychodynamic therapy?

The Inner Message Approach™’s premise is that your thoughts and emotions give you access to subconscious material about you, material that is just underneath the surface, which is usually called pre-conscious, and the method needed to access this material is pure logic, a series of pure logical questions will give you access and when you have access it will feel true to you and will feel obvious. In contrast, psychodynamic therapy is based on the principle that thoughts and emotions are by-products of unconscious processes and that through free associations or connection of themes, underlying patterns will get revealed, these patterns are not available from immediate consciousness. In Inner Message Approach™, everything is there for you, you just have to use your logic to decode it and gain access to your own blueprint.

How is the Inner Message Approach™ different than Positive Psychology?

The Inner Message Approach™ relies on the idea that you are supported as your thoughts and your emotions are a byproduct of you and carry messages for you for a better future. These thoughts and emotions carry as much positive as negative and as such are neutral, they are just a byproduct of your inner blueprint, so when decoded can give you access to you. In contrast positive psychology wants to tilt your mindset towards positive often through positive affirmation. The belief is that negative thoughts are harmful and should be replaced. In contrast, in the Inner Message Approach™, negative thoughts are calling your attention and are not helpful nor harmful, they are coded messages that can lead you back to you, the essence of you.

How is the Inner Message Approach™ different than most coaching techniques?

The premise of the Inner Message Approach™ is that you have everything within you to get you where you want to be in life. You have an operational system that creates thoughts and emotions, and these are a byproduct of what you need, what you learned in the past and carry your obstacles. With the use of simple logic, you can decode your thoughts and emotions, connect to the essence of you, and access how to overcome those obstacles for a smooth path towards your goals. In sum, you carry everything within you, and the only need here is to learn to access the wisdom within. In contrast, coaching is based on the premise that you need to be coached. Coaches use a variety of techniques to coach you. Some coaches assume that the answers are “hidden” within you and, through a series of questions, aim to bring to self-awareness these insights. The concept that your thoughts and emotions carry sufficient information about you and about a better future is nonexistent in coaching. The Inner Message Approach™ can be used in coaching for a much easier and more clearly defined path.

In Sum:

• Unlike reframing or CBT, the Inner Message Approach™ values thoughts and emotions as insightful messages rather than patterns needing alteration.
• Differing from DBT,  the Inner Message Approach™ emphasizes internal rebalancing through understanding your mental messages.
• In contrast to Psychodynamic Therapy,  the Inner Message Approach™ focuses on accessing the pre-conscious using logic rather than exploring unconscious patterns.
• Positive Psychology often promotes a positive mindset, while the Inner Message Approach™ views all thoughts as neutral and insightful.
• Most coaching methods assume the need for external guidance, whereas this approach empowers you to find answers within your thoughts and emotions.

How can it be added to all these modalities?

In sum, the Inner Message Approach™ helps you gather a lot of information about yourself through simple logical questions that are used to decode your thoughts and emotions. With this information in hand, you can decide which approach you would like to engage in (psychodynamic therapy, CBT, DBT, coaching, etc..), and you will know when a provider steer you in the “right” direction for you and your goals. It is an empowering approach that makes the inner work so much more effective and will save you time and money:) It can be the first step to any other therapeutic modality or a standalone method, depending on individual needs.

It is up to you! You now have access to an easier path to a happy you!