Counselor, Author, and Reflective Eclectic
You could make a meal of a moth, hang upside down and sleep, flap your arms and try to fly, and close your eyes and navigate by sound; but you will never, never really know what it’s like to be a bat. Continue reading →
As if understanding feelings wasn’t hard enough, we also have to understand feelings that aren’t really feelings: metaphorical feelings. Continue reading →
I heard the critically acclaimed series, In Treatment is coming back this year for a new season, so I thought I’d catch up and see what the excitement is about. It’s an unusual show that’s set entirely in a therapist’s office. I’ve avoided the series so far because, why I would want to watch therapy in my time off when I’m seeing clients as a therapist all day long? It seemed to be a drama best left for a wanna-be therapist, in the same way as, when I watch football, I imagine myself as Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
However, Josh Allen may like to watch football from time to time. He can appreciate how Tom Brady picks apart defenses. I should be able to enjoy seeing the therapeutic expertise of Dr Paul Weston. Weston is no slouch when it comes to overcoming defenses, in his own way.
The scene of episode one, season one, opens with Weston’s patient, Laura Hill, in agony on the couch. She arrived hours early and waited in the parking lot, but now does almost everything possible to avoid talking about what she needs to talk about.
[Spoiler alert] Continue reading →
Sooner or later, if you come to me for therapy, I’ll ask you to put, in a single sentence, your objective in seeing me. I ask this because I want to know how to be successful. I also want you to define your goal. The most common answer I get is something like, “I want to know why I am the way I am.” In other words, why do I drink more than I should, why can’t I get the courage to leave my husband, or why am I so depressed, so anxious, or so angry?
I used to be surprised by this, especially if it came after a long, intense description of how unhappy they were. Wouldn’t they rather know how to stop drinking, how to be less depressed, anxious, or angry, or how to leave their husband? Why ask why? Continue reading →
A lot of feelings will draw your attention elsewhere where your attention doesn’t do you any good. The feeling of frustration is this way. When you’re feeling frustrated, your attention is on the object of your frustration when it should be on yourself. Continue reading →
If someone pointed a gun to my head and forced me to admit, as a psychotherapist, what my preferred counseling method was, I could not say I was a reflective eclectic. That would get me shot. It’s not really an answer. Instead, I would have to confess that I have a soft spot for narrative therapy. I might get shot anyway because few people know what that is. Continue reading →
There’s a way to repair what was damaged.
What you’ve got to do is ditch shame. Continue reading →
If you’ve ever watched a person walk a dog, you’ve seen a good illustration of your mind at work. You have two minds: one is like the dog, the other like the dog walker. Continue reading →
You might not think you would choose to have stress, but many people do, for good reasons and bad. For many, very many, stress is an acceptable price they pay for values they hold dear. Continue reading →
If you’re one of those people who says you can’t understand how you can forgive when you’ve been deeply hurt, how you can be silent when injustice abounds, or how you can rest when you must make amends; I would say you already know how, if you know how to sleep. Continue reading →
