My Writing

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I’ve done a lot of writing.

RR_MockupWebMy newest book is The Road to Reconciliation: A Comprehensive Guide to Peace When Relationships Go Bad. and I recently published a workbook connected to it titled, How to Make an Apology You’ll Never Have to Make Again.   Click here to find out more.

I also have another self help book, Constructive Conflict: Building Something Good Out of All Those Arguments and two novels: Fate’s Janitors: Mopping Up Madness at a Mental Health Clinic and Intersections.

For those on you who prefer your reading in easily digestible bits, together with pictures, I have created an Instagram and a Facebook account, in which I will post many of the pithy sayings people have found and come to expect in my books and Blog posts. The Instagram account is roadtoreconciliation. The Facebook page is called Keith R Wilson – Author.

 

My blog is below. I’m currently working on two series, The Reflective Eclectic and A Field Guide to Feelings, as well as occasionally re-posting old favorites, called the Old Posts series.

Stop the Madness

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I have many role models, but two of them are of the negative type: people who have made mistakes I want to avoid. The first is James Nasmith, the inventor of the game of basketball; the second is Thomas Jefferson.

The reason I don’t want to be like Nasmith is not because he invented basketball. B’ball is a wonderful sport. I don’t want to be like Nasmith because he exemplifies something I want to avoid. The tendency to become oblivious to madness. Continue reading →

The Beauty and the Beast

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You’ve seen Disney’s version of the Beauty and the Beast. If you’ve had a toddler, you’ve seen it a thousand times. Did you know that you may be acting it out in your own life? Do you realize it might be ruining everything?

You know the story: a charming young woman falls in love with a beastly man and, through her love, he is transformed into a prince. The ancient Greeks had elements of the plot in their myths of Eros and Psyche and Hades and Persephone. In fairy tales, you have ladies kissing frogs. Then there’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and, in our own time, a variation was developed in the Phantom of the Opera. The hope it offers is intoxicating. The picture of marriage seems true to life. Continue reading →

Outrage

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Photo by Ryan Magsino on Unsplash

If you spend any time thumbing through Facebook or Twitter, listening to talk radio, or watching the news, you’d agree we’re in the age of outrage. It doesn’t take long, going through any of those media before you’ll see someone who’s outraged about something, or outrageous. Soon, you will get outraged about something, yourself.

As an emotion, outrage is obviously related to rage and, by that route, is also associated with anger, frustration, and indignation. All the feelings in that family serve to alert you that there is an injustice afoot and you need to do something about it. Compared to its relations, outrage is, well, more outrageous. It means you’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. When peasants appear at the castle with torches and pitchforks, ready to burn the place down, they are outraged. Outrage appears to be an essential ingredient in popular, if not mob, rule.

Outrage is also what you feel when you caught your husband cheating and have all kinds of names to call him. It’s characterized by feeling of moral superiority and a willingness to express yourself freely, in no uncertain terms, and to not quit doing so until you’ve completely said your piece.

Having felt outrage many times, I perfectly understand the impulse to give yourself in to its mixed pleasures. On one hand, it’s not a pleasant thing to need to be outraged; on the other hand, it feels good to get something off your chest. But what I really want to know is, does outrage work? Is it an efficient method of effecting change? Continue reading →

Ride the Ego Balloon

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You may be amused, instructed, affirmed, chastened, enriched, or enlightened by my latest video.

The ego is a good tool if you understand its uses and limitations. The ego balloon can make you crazy, but it’s often a good crazy, a necessary madness, provided you can land the thing when it needs to come down.

Freud, Explained

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Of all the figures in shrinkdom, Freud is the most revered and reviled, the most quoted and misquoted, and the most influential and ignored. It used to be that every shrink wanted to be like him, now we want to challenge him and be as different as we can. Perhaps this is what he gets from being first in the field. More than anyone, he broke the ground for what has become modern psychotherapy, turning over centuries of assumptions about human nature. We should not be blamed for wanting to see what we can grow on this plot. However, it pays to sometimes go back to first principles and relearn the basics.

It is said that the great golfer, Arnold Palmer, used to start off every golf season by stopping at a country club, asking to see the golf pro, and taking a lesson. Most pros must have been intimidated to have Arnold Palmer as a student, for he was already a better golfer than all of them. Nonetheless, he would insist on a lesson, going back to basics: the grip, the stance, the swing, before going on with his season. He needed to remind himself of the fundamentals.

In that spirit, let’s return to Freud and re-examine the first principles of psychotherapy, many of which have since been distorted. Continue reading →