Learning to Love What Really Is

    Your husband had an affair. You think you hate him. You think he should have been faithful. These kind of  thoughts can drain a woman’s energy faster than a crash diet. Friends suggest therapy, others mention exercise, but even doing both, ugly thoughts prevail. How to stop them?

Heather Ambler, 36, an integral counselor from Mountain View, Calif.,, has the answer: a process called “The Work,” first developed by author Bryon Katie in 1986, which now has millions of fans around the world. The Work, simply put, is four questions that, challenges a stressful thought.

The four questions are:
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do you react when you think that thought?
4. Turn it around. (What is the opposite thought?)

In Katie’s bestseller, "Loving What Is," she states that trying to let go of a painful thought never works; instead, once we have done The Work, the thought lets go of us. The idea originated in the early 1980s when Katie, who suffering from depression, suddenly “woke up” and realized that when she believed her thoughts, she suffered -- and when she did not believe them, she did not suffer. Since then, Katie travels the globe giving workshops and established The School for The Work and The Institute for The Work in Los Angeles, which includes a facilitator (practitioner) certificate. Facilitators like Ambler, guide people through the process.

“If a client tells me, ‘My husband is a jerk.’ I ask, ‘Is it true? Can you absolutely know with 100 certainty that that’s true? And the client becomes quiet and really considers the question. The answer is, ‘No.’” Asked what happens when the belief is, “He should have been faithful,” and the reality is that this husband is unfaithful, Ambler says she tells the client that nothing her husband does can cause her to suffer, only her beliefs can make her suffer. But as The Work proceeds, the unfaithfulness statement, evolves to The Turnaround. “His unfaithfulness may even save the marriage,” says Ambler. “It could be the thing that finally gets them to talk after three years of going through the motions.”

Asked about what stressful thought she hears the most, Ambler says, “Divorce is always painful.” She notes that most thoughts about divorce are culturally supported, which makes the belief more powerful. Ambler adds that there is no difference between men and women in their problems. “Most of us are suffering over a boss, a partner, or our parents. Essentially, we worry about the same things.”