If you were hurt by someone you love, it’s important to get real about the injury and account for all the damages inflicted: the common money the compulsive gambler spent, the trust the adulterer squandered, the confidence the abusive parent wrecked. It’s equally important to note the damages that were not done, the parts of you that are untouched by your misfortune, and qualities of yours that may even be strengthened.Continue reading “What Can’t Be Hurt”
The Shrink’s Links: Identity Design
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I hope you have met, at least once in your life, someone who can break it down and tell you how it is; someone who brings out the best in you, with an unerring moral compass, and can give you a good swift kick in the ass when you you need it. Apparently, the Honorable Frank Szymanski, of the Juvenile Court of Detroit, is such a person. Good thing; Detroit needs it.
The question is: Can a good swift kiss in the ass be effectively delivered by book? Judge Szymanski certainly tries in, Identity Design: Design the Identity You Need to Get the Life You Want.Continue reading “The Shrink’s Links: Identity Design”
Has the Hurt Ended?
The wind stopped blowing and the sky looks nice, but, if this is a hurricane, you may be passing through the eye of the storm. The earthquake has struck, but watch for aftershocks. You’ve had a minor stroke, but is a major one coming along? If your loved one did something to hurt you and you have assessed the damage, there is another thing to take into account. Is he still doing it?Continue reading “Has the Hurt Ended?”
Day One
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Day One is a simple way to journal.
It’s easy to quickly enter your thoughts and memories and have them synced and backed up in the cloud.
Day One is well designed and extremely focused to encourage you to write more.
Assessing the Damage
If you were in a car accident and sued the person at fault, you would go to court and describe the accident to establish culpability, of course; but, at some point, the judge would ask you what it cost to fix your car. The judge is asking for a monetary figure so she can fix an amount that would make it better. Any court I ever knew about requires that there be damages if you are trying to sue.
This is not a court and there is no judge, but if you were hurt by someone close to you, and the want to settle the matter, you have to assess the damages. How would you know how to settle it, if you didn’t? Assessing the damages might lead you to conclude that no harm was done. The matter might be easy to conclude, then. If there was some harm, establishing just what it was may help you in deciding how the person can make amends. So, what is the nature of the suffering you have had to endure?Continue reading “Assessing the Damage”
The Shrink’s Links: Alternate Nostril Breathing
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Before you try drugs for anxiety, try alternate nostril breathing.
Click here to go to the YouTube site.
Looking at the Flip Side
If you’ve been hurt by the one you love, don’t forget to look at the flip side. That’s the other side of the coin, the positives, the reason you have been with the person in the first place. It’s only fair, but don’t do it because it’s fair. Do it because the flip side says as much about you as it does about him.
In the same way you were honest about how much he hurt you, now be honest about how he’s been good to you. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. You have to look at the flip side if you really want to know what’s going on, to get a full inventory. You can’t judge a person only by the worst things he did, you also have to look at the best to get a complete picture.Continue reading “Looking at the Flip Side”
The Shrink’s Links: Sabbatical of the Mind
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Six years from retirement, working for a three-letter government agency, David L. Winters suddenly quit his job so he could devote some time to getting a handle on his anxiety, his over-eating, and to deepen his faith.
Winters relied on medication to manage nearly disabling panic attacks. The meds weren’t helping him manage very well. His life was a grind. Long DC commute. Long DC work hours. Frustrating meetings as an elder of a dying church. So, he quit his job and searched for answers to life’s big questions. It didn’t take very long, just five months, and he was ready to return to work, better than ever.
Then he wrote a book about his experience: Sabbatical of the Mind: The Journey from Anxiety to Peace. He also wrote a thoughtful appendix that may guide you, should you take a sabbatical of your own.
I get books for free sometimes with the expectation that I will give an honest review. That’s how I got Sabbatical of the Mind. What’s my honest review? For starters, the subtitle should read A Journey…, not, The Journey….Continue reading “The Shrink’s Links: Sabbatical of the Mind”
The Road to Reconciliation: The Journey, Restated
I’ve been at this series for quite a while, describing the road to reconciliation. These posts are an early draft of what I expect to be my next book. You have the privilege of getting it first; but, sometimes, as I write, need to go back and revise. That’s the case this time. I had initially planned on describing the journey a victim makes towards personal peace, then describing the efforts of the perpetrator towards taking responsibility, and then chronicling their passage towards reconciliation. However, as I went along, I realized that the offender’s journey does not begin when they accept responsibility. Before they ever get to that stage, they first have to go through the same passage as the victim.
Therefore, I went back to the first post, what I anticipate will be the initial chapter, and re-wrote it. This is good time to post it here.Continue reading “The Road to Reconciliation: The Journey, Restated”
The Shrink’s Links: A Labor Day Manifesto
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go.Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.–Wendell Berry, The Mad Farmer Poems
Keith Wilson - Counseling 