Ron Johnson
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Water and Other Simple Things
Water. So simple. So necessary. So easily neglected. I will never take water for granted again. It has been a blessing (recently) and a curse (in the past). It started about six months ago. More accurately, it started several years ago. Much more accurately, it started 15 years ago. But back to the present and…
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Mother’s Job is Done
We have too much mothering in this country. Mothering of all kinds including biological mothers, fathers and others who for one necessary reason or another act as “mothers” to their children, government providing a kind of mothering too people who act like children, single mothers who have no choice but to continue to be mothers doing…
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Friends
“I don’t have any friends,” he said. Jack went on: “I don’t know what to do about this. How do you go about finding friends when you’re 50? I had a lot of friends when I was a kid; I had a few friends in high school; I met one or two people in college…
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Loving and Liking
I have been musing about the business of loving and liking. More accurately, I have been thinking about such matters for many years, certainly as most people have thought about these important elements of life. Deb and I have dealt with so many couples over so many years that it has become almost routine for…
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Knowing, Expressing, and Governing Feelings
The business of psychotherapy is largely about feelings. We tell our patients what most therapists tell patients: you have to express your feelings. Certainly, this is true: in order to be satisfied, happy, and productive in life you need to express your feelings. But the story is much broader than simply expressing your feelings. There…
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Saying No
The most important word learned by most people when they are toddlers is “no.” The word no is more important than Daddy or Mommy. It is more important than love, joy, sadness, excitement, or disappointment. The word no is perhaps the first definitive statement of “self.” No defines me, or rather defines what is not…
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“My bad” and Other Rules of Life
Everybody seems to have some kind of addiction. Mine is basketball. Despite my aging body, I can’t seem to get away from playing the game. This means (believe it or not) that I not only get up at 5 AM twice a week to play basketball, but give up my Sunday nights to the game…
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One Day in the Life of a Therapist
The contemporary Russian author and former dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, wrote a book entitled, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch some years ago. The book was made into a movie of the same name. “One Day,” as it was called was a story of one day in the life of a man named Ivan…
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Magic in Psychotherapy
I have a colleague who really does real magic in his work. The work where he does his magic, however, is not in the counseling office. Dan is not only a psychotherapist, he is also a professional magician. He has performed his magic in various venues, and sometimes uses his magical skills in a demonstration…
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Meandering
Deb and I have just come back from…meandering. We were in “the Southwest” of the country visiting various canyons and Native American cliff dwellings and the like. This, like most of our travels are begun with a general thought or direction followed by a commitment to…meander. We stop, stay, leave, go, and even return as…