As a trainee, I worked at The Center for Attitudinal Healing (subsequently re-named Corstone) in Sausalito, CA. In this capacity, I worked with individuals, couples and families as well as facilitating several groups including Spousal/Partner Loss, Family Loss, Living Well with Chronic Illness and General Grief and Loss.
The Center for Attitudinal Healing was founded in 1975 by Dr. Gerald Jampolsky, a psychiatrist and graduate of Stanford University Medical School, to create a safe place for children with cancer to talk about illness and dying. Attitudinal Healing integrates practical spiritual principles into a psychological format. The principles introduce the dynamic of choice into the psychological process, and offer people the opportunity to step through fear, conflict or separation they are feeling and make a choice to experience peace instead of conflict and love instead of fear, even in the face of extreme difficulty.
Attitudinal Healing supports people in finding a different way of looking at life and death, or approaching difficult situations or relationships in a new way. Attitudinal Healing asserts that it is not people or circumstances outside ourselves that cause us conflict or distress, but rather what causes us conflict are our own thoughts, feelings and attitudes about people and events. By exploring the thoughts, feelings and attitudes that cause us conflict and distress we can eventually heal them.
The Principles of Attitudinal Healing
1. The essence of our being is love.
2. Health is inner peace. Healing is letting go of fear.
3. Giving and receiving are the same.
4. We can let go of the past and of the future.
5. Now is the only time there is and each instant is for giving.
6. We can learn to love ourselves and others by forgiving rather than judging.
7. We can become love finders rather than fault finders.
8. We can choose and direct ourselves to be peaceful inside regardless of what is happening outside.
9. We are students and teachers to each other.
10. We can focus on the whole of life rather than the fragments.
11. Since love is eternal, death need not be viewed as fearful.
12. We can always perceive ourselves and others as either extending love or giving a call for help.