Therapist Blogs for October 2011
Love Your Soul
The last time you saw a mirror, what were your thoughts? Did you fix your hair? Straighten your clothes? Were you wishing you were thinner? Did you wish you had straighter teeth, or less pimples, or darker hair? Did you make a note to remember to schedule your next Botox appointment?
We give mirrors a tremendous amount of power. Our reflection can cause us joy or despair. Unlike children, who use mirrors with joy, we use them to critique and punish ourselves. But in reality, a mirror is simply a reflection of the body. It's when judgment is passed so easily, quickly, and harshly, that suffering is caused. We tell ourselves that we need to lose weight, or whiten our teeth, or buy newer clothes. Mirrors don't tell us that we are loved. They don't congratulate us on making a child smile. They cannot identify the strength of our love, or the state of our soul.
It can be incredibly hard to see ourselves as we truly are. Often our self-perception is like seeing our reflection in fun house ...
Perfectly Imperfect
Once there was a father who forgot his two day old daughter at a restaurant, on the way home from the hospital. This was the first sign, the first true indication, that the girl's father was imperfect.
The mother of this child forgot to bring a clean diaper to the store, and stuffed paper towels down the child's pants. When she was two, the child acted out by biting smaller, slower kids. No one in her family bothered with any Mommy-And-Me classes. At the age of 5 she didn't know how to swim, or count to 10 in a foreign language. Once when no one was watching closely, her brother shoved a toy truck in her face and gave her a black eye.
She wore mismatched clothes, when she wore clothes at all. She wasn't made to eat vegetables every day. Her parents often gave in to her screaming by bribing her with chocolate. When she was three she could identify the three major fast food chains by their logos. Her mom yelled at times, sometimes she screamed. Her dad swore.
Since that first ...
Intro to Depersonalization and Derealization
These are the terms for two different, although similar enough, experiences of being “checked out” or dissociated.
Depersonalization is kind of like feeling like a robot. Internally, someone who struggles with depersonalization may be emotionally and/or physically numb.
Derealization is when the world around you is like a movie, or maybe it seems as if someone put the rest of the world behind a pane of glass. If this is your issue you may notice changes in your vision and/or hearing.
People with Dissociative Identity Disorder will have at least one of these experiences, but they also experience severe fragmentation of the self.
Intro to DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder)
Dissociative Identity Disorder [DID] is the psychiatric/psychological term for the experience of having a highly fragmented and compartmentalized sense of identity along with ‘losing time’, forgetting signficant chunks of one’s life. In the past this experience has been called Multiple Personality Disorder.
These experiences occur on a spectrum and very few people with Dissociative Identity Disorder look or act “crazy” most of the time. Many hold down professional jobs, go to school, have families and are indistinguishable from people who have a much more cohesive sense of identity. In fact, one of the unnerving aspects of living with Dissociative Identity Disorder is that it is not uncommon for someone to go through much of their life without being aware of having this experience. Since one of the components of this experience is to be unaware of gaps in time and switches in identity, unless these things happen in ways that cause others to notice or creat...
Change; Making Friends with Fear
Lately I have been thinking a great deal about change and fear. I know I am supposed to be writing about ADD, but the thoughts and feelings around the idea of change and fear keep flowing into my mind; so I have decided to share some of my thoughts about this, knowing that change and fear is something that is universal to us all.
Change is the one universal thing that each of us experience daily in our lives. But the really big ones, which create tremendous fear, are the ones that have the most potential for our inner growth and transformation.
I can honestly say that I have lived a courageous life for the most part; having taken big leaps of faith when many would have taken an easier road, (having made major life decisions on my own most of my life, starting my own company at 27, moving to a new state and starting a new career at age 40, facing cancer and my own mortality at 50) but I can also say that fear has also been a pervasive companion along the way, and a formidable on...
You Don't Have to Wait to be in Pain to Seek Counseling
When people are seeking counseling, sometimes they wait until they are in deep emotional pain to ask for outside help and this does not have to be the case. Because of fears attached to the idea of counseling, people may stay away from asking for help which can be enough time to put them in more pain, or cause them further isolation and withdrawal from others when they need the help the most. What they may not realize is that people seek out counseling for a variety of reasons from deep trauma, to life transitions, to needing more support. If people could allow themselves the opportunity to ask for support, they open themselves to solutions for their situations and the possibility of feeling better. Some people have a stigma attached to asking for support from a therapist that something may "be wrong with them" or a fear they "have a problem". They may be afraid of someone else knowing what's going on with them. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right person to talk to and someone...
The Good Enough Parent is Good Enough
Donald W. Winnicott (1896-1971) was an instrumental therapist that formulated and developed the idea of the "good-enough" parent.
We can beat ourselves up all we want about not being the "perfect" parent. What it really boils down to is whether or not we are being fundamentally "good enough".
Some basic ideas that Mr. Winnicott professed about this kind of parent include:
They provides what the child needs without giving into immediate gratification. They create a space between the action and the consequence so that the child has time to become self sufficient. The time is short at first and gradually increased.
They remain fundamentally warm, keeping a loving attitude that never retaliates and nor takes revenge on the child. They handle negative reactions in a constructive, healing fashion.
They lives with the reality that their children will not always be happy, and that they will inevitably face hurt and difficult times in their lives and they provide a space for ...
Stress Reduction through Mindfulness
The modern day version of “mindfulness” in therapeutic practice has its roots in the teachings of the Buddha, born 430 BC in Nepal. Buddhism made its way to the America’s by way of Asian immigrants in the 19th century. By the mid-20thcentury the practice had started to take on a more pluralistic audience. Debated as being classified as a religion among followers, the Buddhist practice has components that are helpful to modern culture for its effectiveness in alleviating stress and tension.
Some common therapeutic practices include:
Concentrating only on the present
If there is a task at hand, simply put your mind solely on that task. The idea is to block out the past and the future as much as possible bringing yourself to the complete awareness of the act of being in the now. To take this further, one would also mentally block out other distractions that are happening at the same time.
This is called “living in the here and the now”.
An example of thi...
Choosing a Meaningful Career
A common question that we ask ourselves when we are looking at our life career is “Am I doing something meaningful?” or “What can I do that is meaningful?” One of the age old questions that humanity has tried to answer time and time again is “What is the meaning of life?”.
These are hard questions but I will attempt to offer one person’s perspective in the hope that it will insight your own imagination.
Viktor E. Frankl (1905-1997), a renowned Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, approaches this subject in his acclaimed book “Man's Search for Meaning” (1946).
Frankl, of the Jewish faith, lost his father, mother, brother and wife in the Holocaust of World War II. Only he and his sister survived. Frankl observed and theorized in his book that the concentration camp victims most likely to survive were those who had meaning in their lives and were oriented toward the future.
He further hypothesized that life can hold a potential m...
Establishing Family Rituals
A family can be defined as any group of adults and children living in co-existence together.
In the traditional sense this might include a mother, father, their children and elderly parents. In the contemporary form this may include any group of people living in shared commonality.
When considering the health of a family unit, rituals have been identified as powerful organizers of family life that provide stability during times of stress and transition. It allows family members to find meaning in their collective lives and have the ability to protect mental health under high-risk conditions.
Families live with a great deal of uncertainty in their lives. The weather changes, our friends move, people pass on, there are weddings, there are divorces, there are rites of passage, etc.
Although not all families include children, make sure that you include your kids in planning the rituals if you have them. The more invested they are in creating it, the more meaningful it will be.
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