self-awareness
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Love the Way You Love
Love the Way You Love On my way to work yesterday I found myself singing, “If you can’t be with the on you love, love the one you’re with.” I remember this from the 60’s with the free love theme that was part of that era. While there are so many dangers with such a…
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Finishing Past Losses
The bulk of the work we do with people is to help them recover from the losses that they have suffered in life. With very few exceptions, the only meaningful diagnosis we ever give anyone is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because all mental health disturbances, relationship disturbances, and other life difficulties originate with the…
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Grief and Relief
I just met with a man who recently lost his wife. They had a long, successful, and enduring marriage but she contracted a debilitating disease that dominated their lives for nearly a decade as she deteriorated in physical condition. This meant that the man felt compelled, both by love and by necessity, to be the…
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You Don’t Want to Do It
How often do you feel compelled to do what you don’t want to do? If you’re like me, you often avoid these things, and then unfortunately, you feel burdened by thinking about what you should do quite a bit. In fact, you end up thinking about what you should do frequently, but interestingly, you don’t…
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Growing up or Growing Down
I have had the privilege recently of seeing a number of “senior” people. Specifically, these folks are all above 70 and the oldest one is 86. All of them have come to me for help with their relationships. Most of these couples have been married for decades and most of them married only once. Why,…
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I Need to Feel Shame
Many people seem to need to feel shame, however crazy that sounds. Allow me to make sense of this seemingly nonsensical statement. Common sense seems to suggest that shame is a terrible feeling to have and most people avoid it like the plague. But sometimes the feeling of shame is better than the alternative. Guilt,…
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Men and Responsibility
“It is the best of times. It is the worst of times,” to quote Charles Dickens as he penned the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities. The best and worst times for men have to do with responsibility, or we might say “their responsibilities,” namely how they face responsibility (or responsibilities), understand responsibility, and…
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The Paradoxes of Life
A few years ago Deb wanted to take a trip on her own where she could hike and explore, which is one of her true passions. She went to Portugal and hiked a long trail along the coast of the country. After she had been there a few days, she called me up and said…
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The Centrality of Safety
The more I do this work of psychotherapy, augmented by daily life experience, I see that safety is central to life, and any abridgement of safety causes alarm in a person’s psychological state, which then causes alarm in one physical state and one social system. In other words, I need to be safe first and…