Posts Tagged ‘boundaries’
A very brief guide for parenting
This blog post is an excerpt, with some additions, from the blog post “Other people, our moral mirrors: Part 1, negotiating needs.” I decided to make it a separate blog post as a quick resource for parents who might want to focus on the specific ideas here. When clients come to me seeking parenting support,…
Read MoreOther people, our moral mirrors: Part 3, refining our personality
As I said in “Other People Parts 1 and 2,” when we are young children, we are concerned with our needs and preferences, so when we think of other people, we primarily ask ourselves the question “What?” “What do we want?, What kind of things do we like to do?” At around the age of…
Read MoreIntrospection Part 10, Avoiding Narcissism
Having spent the last several months writing about “going inside yourself” (introspection), it occurs to me that I should take a breather and answer the question, “is there such a thing as too much introspection?” I want to say “no” because introspection is so much a part of my life as a therapist and a…
Read MoreIntrospection Part 7, Intersubjectivity
There’s this scene in the movie The Elephant Man that was transformative for me. I saw the movie in my late teens. In the movie, the main guy has a disease which disfigures his whole body, including his face. In this particular scene, he is running from reporters. I think he’s in a hospital. At…
Read MorePower
Power is morally neutral. Power is neither good nor bad. Power just is. It is part of the universe in which we live, part of the human condition, part of life. Power is: the capacity to influence a process to achieve a desired outcome. One way to think about power is to compare it to…
Read MoreDefiant Morality
I have for some time been considering how to approach more directly my thoughts on morality—on what is “good” and “bad” when it comes to human decisions, including their behavior, beliefs, attitudes, and judgments. I have wanted to write about this topic directly, but have hesitated. The problem has been that is in my nature…
Read MoreJudgments
We all say we don’t like to be judged by others, and yet, let’s face it, we all judge others. Does this make us hypocrites? Not necessarily. It depends on what you judge and how you use judgments. There are a couple of different ways to judge and to be judged. There are also different…
Read MoreResponsibility and blame
Desire for personal growth, and the kind of change that comes with it, is usually driven by a recognition that things as they are now are somehow unsatisfactory, problematic, or just more difficult than we want them to be. Somewhere there is a situation that needs changing, a problem to be resolved, a challenge to…
Read MoreA thought for the Holidays, let others be who they are
Let’s say you find a sibling, an in-law or some other family member you have in the past found particularly irritating; maybe you disagree with their values, politics, religion, or their lack of filters (e.g. when they drink). Now let’s say you only see them once or a few times a year, like during the…
Read MoreTherapy with couples, Part 2, the process
As a Marriage and Family Therapist, it probably comes as no surprise that a significant portion of clients are couples who want to resolve issues in their relationships. Although the kinds of issues that couples bring to therapy vary greatly, there are certain common elements to the process of working with couples that are quite…
Read MoreThe Power of Tenacity
A search for the definition of the word “tenacity” first brings up “stubbornness.” It works for a starter—except we think of stubborn as a mostly negative trait and I want to write about the positive aspect of tenacity. Sometimes, though, there is also strength in stubbornness. While on a walk a few years ago with…
Read MoreA Theme for the Holidays: Stay frosty, stay flexible
Last year, I wrote my first blog about the holiday season, in which I gave my take on how we can best address whatever might come up for us when we spend time with our family over the Holidays. I feel this need to say something again this holiday season, maybe as a kind of…
Read MoreGestalt Prayer by Fritz Perls
Yesterday, I visited with my mother for a few hours, showing her a bit about how to use the internet beyond email. She recited a line from a poem to offer some insight into a relationship issue we were discussing. She only knew one line, but didn’t know the rest of the poem, or who…
Read MoreAnger: is it ever a good thing?
Of course it is, but sometimes you wouldn’t know it by what clients tell me during their narratives of how they feel about themselves or other family members who become angry. Listening to an interview on NPR a few years ago, a psychologist said, “anger is a moral feeling.” I can’t remember anything else he…
Read MoreBoundaries
I can safely say nearly all of my clients have issues that would be far less important to their daily feelings of well-being if they were able to establish more consistent and healthy boundaries with the people they are close to in their lives. What do I mean by “healthy” boundaries? Boundaries in which you…
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