Ron Johnson
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Racks and Cutters: and other family sayings
Families tend to have “family sayings” that have meaning to them but not necessarily to other people. These can be real fun to use in the right setting, but when they are used outside of the family, they might not make any sense to the people who hear them. My family has many of these…
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Perfect Love Prevents Fear
In one of the later books of the New Testament, the writer and apostle, John, states this: “There is no fear I love. But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4.18, New International Version). Other versions of…
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The Only Mental Health Diagnosis
I am amazed how frequently people talk about various mental health diagnoses. It is common to hear people talking about their “anxiety,” “panic disorder,” “ADHD” or other things, so much so that I hear such conversations while waiting in a cashier’s line. Of course, it is even more common in my business. I regularly do…
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Crazy is Contagious
I heard the statement, “crazy is contagious” from a colleague of mine when I told him about an experience I had recently had with a patient. It got me thinking. “Crazy” is not by any means a part of my vocabulary, nor are other typical terms when we think of the challenges that people have…
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Life’s Issues and Challenges: It’s All about Trauma
A colleague, Jackie, recently told me about an experience she had had with an attorney. This colleague does quite a bit of family therapy and has a long history of having been involved in families that are usually quite dysfunctional. “Dysfunctional” is not one of my favorite words, but it means that the adults in…
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Intention and Production
It is important to produce. It is equally important to intend to produce. But these two ways of engaging the world are profoundly different, a difference we might call spiritual. I conceive of these elements of psychological life on a spectrum with purpose in the center of the spectrum, something like this: Intention…………..……….……Purpose…………………………..Production ______________________________________________________________________________ This…
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Patience
I am not, by nature, a very patient person, which means that I tend to jump before I think and talk before I think. However, this lack of “thinking” is not the real essence of patience. Patience is much about feeling. If you have followed our recent blogs, specifically over the past year, you have…
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Dealing Effectively with Challenges: The Four A’s
We can effectively meet the challenges of the day, of the year, or of one’s life. Likewise, there are four ineffective ways of facing the challenges of life, which are Avoidance Anxiety Anger Accommodation I will briefly describe each of these ways that people frequently deal with the challenges they face in their…