Keith R Wilson

Making Amends is Better than Making Apologies

No one is interested in your apologies, unless you back them up with a change in behavior. Making amends repairs the damage; making apologies is only a promise to repair the damage. One is action; the other, words. One will cost you something; it might even bring about a transformation. The other is as cheapContinue reading “Making Amends is Better than Making Apologies”

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Bringing you the best of mental health every week. Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual. You have emotions, but they’re often at odds with your best thinking. Thoughts come along, but a lot of them are as crazy as the emotions. You have habits, but some will be your undoing. What are you supposedContinue reading “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy”

Don’t ever let anyone talk you out of feeling guilty

Don’t ever let anyone talk you out of feeling guilty about something you’ve done. Even if what you did was not wrong, even if it was justified and every court in the land would agree; if you feel guilty, then OK, go ahead and accept it. Guilt is a guide. You can’t travel in aContinue reading “Don’t ever let anyone talk you out of feeling guilty”

Rogerian Person Centered Counseling

Bringing you the best of mental health every week. A therapist who doesn’t practice Rogerian Person Centered Counseling is like a musician who doesn’t practice scales. It is so basic and foundational that I wouldn’t know what to do without it. But, going to a therapist who only practices Rogerian Person Centered Counseling is likeContinue reading “Rogerian Person Centered Counseling”

The Effects of your Actions

Once you have written your statement of responsibility, you’re ready for the next step: imagining the effects of your actions.

Buzzed

Bringing you the best of mental health every week. The best book I know about how drugs of abuse work and their effects is Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy, now in its fourth edition. No one is frying eggs and exaggerating or diminishing the effectsContinue reading “Buzzed”

Broken Promises

While you’re at it, while you’re acknowledging the exact nature of your wrongs, don’t forget one wrong you might’ve committed that is so central that it may overshadow all others and be key to this whole business of reconciliation. Broken promises. Embedded in every wrong is a broken promise; a promise either declared or implied,Continue reading “Broken Promises”

Freedom

Bringing you the best of mental health every week. If you’re interested in understanding human behavior, you could do a lot worse than reading novels and fictional short stories. The worse thing you could do, I suppose, is to read instruction manuals on how to assemble Ikea furniture, astrophysics, or the nature of chemical reactions,Continue reading “Freedom”

Admit the Exact Nature of the Wrong

Now I’m going to talk about an essential part of the process of going from wrong to reconciliation, a part that many people, incredibly, try to pass over. What is this indispensable but neglected component? Identifying what you did wrong. People often want to pass right over this part to get to forgiveness, to argueContinue reading “Admit the Exact Nature of the Wrong”

Unbroken Brain

Bringing you the best of mental health every week. People have often asked me to recommend a book about addiction. For thirty years, the only one I ever urged people to read has been the Big Book of AA, written eighty years ago, when we knew next to nothing about addiction. I’ll get into theContinue reading “Unbroken Brain”