How Your Body Can Help You Find Peace

If you’ve been feeling depressed, anxious, grieving, guilty, or preoccupied with cravings, then you probably tried to reason yourself out of it. You’ve wanted to get your head screwed on right and the clouds cleared from your mind. You believed if you talked to somebody, they could tell you things that might help you feel better. Don’t let me stop you. I would be the last person to prevent you from thinking better, but it isn’t just a matter for the mind. Your body can help, too. Let your body help you with your depression, anxiety, grief, guilt, or craving. Continue reading →

What Is the Meaning of Life?

I have an answer

It’s taken humankind thousands of years, but I think I finally have the answer. I know the meaning of life.

For many people, questions about the meaning of life get set aside; but, for us therapists, we encounter them every day. Questioning the meaning of life is part of the human condition, as ubiquitous and basic as walking upright and having opposable thumbs. It preoccupies many of us some of the time but is generally dismissed as an enigmatic and fruitless endeavor. It’s hard to talk about it and even harder to find someone to talk about it with, which is why people talk about it with their shrinks.

Having had so many of these conversations, I’ve stuck with it longer than most. I’m ready to tell you what it is.

The meaning of life is like this: Continue reading →

Why is it Hard to Talk About Feelings?

You don’t have to be hyper-rational or repressed to have a hard time talking about feelings, you could be emotionally intelligent and still have difficulty. Feelings are hard to talk about. There are simple reasons and deeper, more complex reasons. The simple ones first. Continue reading →

Metaphorical Feelings

As if understanding feelings wasn’t hard enough, we also have to understand feelings that aren’t really feelings: metaphorical feelings. Continue reading →

Reflections on “In Treatment”: Season 1, Episode 1

Can You Fall in Love with Your Therapist?

And what should happen if you do?

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 →

Frustration

The feeling that detects the impossible.

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 →

How to Ditch Shame

There’s a way to repair what was damaged.

What you’ve got to do is ditch shame. Conti nue reading →

Walk the Dog

And understand how your minds work

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 →

Cultivating Change

There’s a lot you can do to change another person, up to a point

If you hang around a therapist’s office long enough, or around anyone who’s seen a therapist, they’re going to tell you that you can’t change another person; you can only change yourself.

Basically, it’s true; but, like many adages, there’s more to it than that. There’s a lot you can do to change a person. If there wasn’t, there would be no therapists. But, once you reach a certain point, there’s nothing more you can do, and the other person must take over.

Cultivating change is a lot like cultivating a garden. Continue reading →

Intolerant of the Intolerant and Outraged by the Outrageous

Sooner or later, if you declare yourself as a supporter of liberal democracy, you’ll run into a thorny problem. Do you show tolerance for the intolerant? Can you permit the free speech of those who will destroy free speech? Should you give publicity to those who threaten a free press? Can you get disgusted with disgust or outraged by outrageous behavior?Continue reading →