If you effectively ask for your loved one to right a wrong he committed, you might find that he’s interested in what you have to say and will do everything he can to please you and become a better person in the process. He just might surprise you and change. Continue reading
A Narcissist’s Apology
A Narcissist’s Apology
You’re imagining it, it didn’t happen.
But, if it did, it wasn’t so bad.
But, if it was, it wasn’t so big a deal.
But, if it is, it wasn’t my fault.
But, if it was, I didn’t mean it.
But, if I did, you deserved it.
My variation of the widely distributed Narcissist’s Prayer, author unknown.
For more wacky writing by narcissists, read, A Narcissist’s Love Letter
Articles
I have written hundreds of articles on mental health and relationships. The latest are published in a weekly Substack newsletter, The Reflective Eclectic.
Most Recent Articles
Thorny Issues I’ve Written About
I’ve been a counselor for more than 35 years in a variety of settings; I’ve heard everything. There are a few issues, though, that are so common, that I have a lot to say about them.
Addiction
Are you looking for hassle free help for addiction?
Anger
Truly powerful people have no need for violence
Anxiety
You can avoid anxiety or face it. I can face it with you, if that’s what you must do.
Depression and grief
Depression and grief represent a call to realign values as much as a sadness or lack of motivation
Improve Your Relationship
What kind of relationship do you want?
Trauma
If you had awful things happen to you, you might have put it away in a mental closet so that you could deal with it later. Perhaps it’s time to clean the closet.
Eventbrite
Bringing you the best of mental health every week.
Just as long as you don’t put too much on your plate, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to try something new. That’s something that can help with depression, anxiety, fighting with your partner, recovery from addiction, as well as garden variety loneliness, pointlessness, and despair.
One thing I like to do as I drive around, is, when I see something new, like a sign for bingo, for instance, or an owl prowl or hot yoga, I jot it down in a notebook so I can remember it for later. You can do that, too. I recommend one new thing every week if you can manage it. If you want to save gas, you can go on the Eventbrite website. This is a website where people announce all kinds of events, everything from a lecture on the paid family leave law, to silent disco, to the 5th Annual Rochester Salsa Cruise. I think Eventbrite works better than driving around, since most people just drive around in the same places and never see anything new, anyway.
Click here for the Eventbrite website.
By the way, if you have an event you want the public to attend, you can easily announce it there.
Sharpening the Point Till You Miss It
There are two way of asking for what you want; you can be broad, or you can be precise. It’s possible to be too broad or too precise.
Let’s say you’ve been together for years and you have become vaguely dissatisfied. Nothing really bad has happened between you; but nothing exciting has happened, either. One year goes by after another and it’s the same thing. The fire’s gone out, the passion is quenched. You’re feeling taken for granted. You could complain; but what could you say? He may not know what you’re talking about. He may not know what to do about it. Your dissatisfaction is pretty vague. [Click here to continue reading…]
How The Art of War Can Help Your Marriage
The Art of War, that classic work of Chinese literature, written in from the 5th century BC and attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, is packed with good advice on marriage, although marriage is never once mentioned.
It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the cost of carrying it out.
Before you go to war with your spouse over a trivial thing, you should thoroughly consider the cost of doing so. Sun Tzu makes it very clear that war, even if successful, is costly.
In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.
Maintaining bitterness and bad blood, holding grudges and grievances are like long sieges that deplete your resources. Even if you do win, what you win is no longer worth having.
In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to capture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.
Taking whole keeps as much intact as possible. It gives you something worth having. Destruction only leaves devastation, not only for the defeated, but also for the conqueror.
Authentic victory is victory over aggression, a victory that respects the enemy and makes further conflict unnecessary.
Therefore, one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful. Subduing the other’s military without battle is the most skillful.
The sage spouse doesn’t attain victory by defeating her partner, but by creating the conditions that make further conflict unnecessary.
Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. If it accords with advantage, then employ troops. If it does not, then stop. A kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.
A marriage destroyed can be brought back into being, but it’s hard. Love that has died can be brought back to life, but it seldom happens. Therefore, don’t put your marriage at risk just because you are angry or annoyed. Feelings will pass. But, if you have something worth fighting about and fighting will solve the problem; then fight only to the extent that it’s advantageous.
He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.
If your partner loses her shit, don’t lose yours.
Use order to await chaos. Use stillness to await clamor. This is ordering the heart-mind.
Instead, keep your wits about you and she will regain hers.
A leader leads by example, not by force.
Fighting does not end fighting. Fighting is ended by making up. Show an example of making up.
Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.
When you attack your partner, she will dig in and defend herself at all costs. Then you’ll have a battle.
Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.
Give your partner an opportunity to stop fighting.
Above all, says Sun Tzu, know yourself and know the other.
Knowing the other and knowing oneself, in one hundred battles no danger. Not knowing the other and knowing oneself, one victory for one loss. Not knowing the other and not knowing oneself, in every battle certain defeat.
Click here to read the Art of War.
Articles
I have written hundreds of articles on mental health and relationships. The latest are published in a weekly Substack newsletter, The Reflective Eclectic.
Most Recent Articles
Thorny Issues I’ve Written About
I’ve been a counselor for more than 35 years in a variety of settings; I’ve heard everything. There are a few issues, though, that are so common, that I have a lot to say about them.
Addiction
Are you looking for hassle free help for addiction?
Anger
Truly powerful people have no need for violence
Anxiety
You can avoid anxiety or face it. I can face it with you, if that’s what you must do.
Depression and grief
Depression and grief represent a call to realign values as much as a sadness or lack of motivation
Improve Your Relationship
What kind of relationship do you want?
Trauma
If you had awful things happen to you, you might have put it away in a mental closet so that you could deal with it later. Perhaps it’s time to clean the closet.
Update on the Rehab Reviews
Some time has gone by, so I thought I’d update you on the progress of my project to review chemical dependency facilities of the Rochester area.
I haven’t made any.
You see, I knew I wasn’t going to be satisfied with my own impressions or the impressions of the people around me. I was looking for outcome data. I thought it would be the responsible thing to do. I knew that the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services makes programs collect information on how every client that is admitted to their facilities does, whether they complete the program, meet goals, and stay clean. I wrote to the directors of all these programs and asked for a summary of this information. Then, I thought, I would have something more to go on.
With the exception of one facility that publishes their outcome data online, Tully Hill, none of these facilities would send me this information. One of them was nice enough to invite me to their annual barbecue and send me a new client as a referral, but they wouldn’t release their outcome data. I wasn’t asking them for confidential medical information on individuals; I was asking for a summary of how effective their programs are.
My next stop was to write to the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, itself. Certainly, they would release the outcome data that they require these programs to report. It’s not like I’m an ordinary slob, looking for this information out of idle curiosity or with an axe to grind. I’m a licensed professional who needs to know so I can do my job. Nope they said; I would have to file a Freedom of Information Act request first.
So, that’s where we are on this project, awaiting a response for a Freedom of Information Act request.
Meanwhile, if you’ve had experience as a patient, a professional, a family member, or a visitor with any rehab or detox in the region (anywhere in the Northeast) and care to share it, please fill out the form below. Your response will be kept confidential.
Feel free to forward this announcement to anyone else you think might be interested in this project.
Hemi-Sync
Bringing you the best of mental health every week.
Something wonderful happens when a sound of one frequency enters one ear at the same time that a sound of another frequency enters the other. The listener will perceive an auditory illusion of a third tone, in addition to the two pure-tones presented to each ear. The third sound is called a binaural beat.
That’s not the only wonderful thing. These sounds are said to induce relaxation, promote sleep, facilitate learning and memory, and elicit altered states of consciousness for the purpose of spiritual development. There are also claims that they help with ADHD, depression, and could cut down the need for anesthesia in surgery.
It all sounds too wonderful for me, but the folks at the Monroe Institute have been sponsoring research for over 40 years into what they call hemi-sync technology. They also sell that technology, which rouses my skepticism. You can read about their research, buy their DVDs, and try out binaural beats yourself to see if it does all that. Or you can listen to the sounds on YouTube for free. Just be sure you use a good set of stereo headphones or nothing will happen.
I don’t usually recommend things of questionable scientific value on the Shrink’s Links. There’s quite enough flakey recommendations in mental health treatment already. But binaural beats have the advantage of being very cheap, even free if you access them on YouTube. Also, I can’t imagine what kind of harm they would do, as long as you don’t discontinue other, established forms of treatment.
I tried out a few of the recordings on YouTube and, except for the initial YouTube advertisement blaring at me, found listening to them a relaxing experience. However, I suspect listening to any calm music would be relaxing.
If I was really serious about setting up a trial of binaural beat recordings to see if they help with all the things they claim, I would need to be able to listen to a few recordings randomly, along with some relaxing, non-binaural beat recordings as a control, and compare the results. I can’t know what I’m listening to beforehand, so I’ll need to have someone help me.
I just don’t have that kind of time; and, if I did, I wouldn’t need binaural beat recordings to relax me. But, if you have the time for this and want to try it out, please do so and write back to me by filing out this form. Tell me anonymously how you set up your experiments and what the results were.
Click here for the Monroe Institute website.
Here for some sounds on YouTube.
Cognitive Bias Cheat Sheet
Bringing you the best of mental health every week.
Do you ever worry that, as carefully as you think something through, you might be missing something? Are you concerned you might be fooling yourself? Is there something about something that someone claims that doesn’t seem right; or, does it all sound too good to be true? There are a million ways you can deceive yourself (and one of them is by exaggerating for effect); how do you know that you aren’t engaging in one of them?
You could know if you have this handy-dandy cognitive cheat sheet. It classifies all the most common errors in thought and links you to extended articles about them. There’s even a chart that lays it all out. Click here to see.
Asking for what you want without asking for trouble
All too often, people who know what they want, fail to get it, not because their partner is unwilling, but because they ask for it in a manner that starts a fight. If you’ve been following along as I describe the road to reconciliation and dealt first with your own shortcomings, before correcting the faults of others, you can avoid a lot of these unnecessary fights; but not all. Manners still matter. The way you talk about things matters as much as the things you say.
If you want to ask for what you want and actually have a chance of getting it, there are certain rules to follow, regulations to adhere to, guidelines that increase your chance of success. I wrote about all of these in detail in my other book, Constructive Conflict, but let me summarize some of these regulations for you here, now. [Continue reading…]
Announcement: My New Website
Bringing you the best of mental health
If you ever write a book, I highly recommend posting early versions of it on a blog so you can get feedback and encouragement as you go along. If you establish a regular pattern of posting, as I have for this blog, looming deadlines can compel you to get to work.
Unfortunately, if your book tries to make any profound points, or if it requires readers to start at the beginning before they can comprehend later points, reading a book on a blog is not the best thing. Also, blogs show the latest posting at the top. So, if you’re reading a book posted on a blog, you have to read from the bottom, up.
This is why I have created another website, theroadtoreconciliation.com. As you may know, I have been posting chapters of my next book, The Road to Reconciliation, as I write it on this site every Friday. I’ll continue to do that. More precisely, I’ll post the first few sentences of the new chapter; then, if you click on the link to continue reading, you’ll be brought to The Road to Reconciliation website where the text that I’ve added begins. This way, you’ll be able to see the new chapter in context and be able to navigate around the whole book easier.
Keith Wilson - Counseling 