Archive

Archive for the ‘perserverence’ Category

What I’ve Learned in Therapy: The Complete List

January 11, 2012 22 comments

Someone once posed the question on the forum, what are the most important things you’ve learned in therapy? I’ve actually written expanded posts on some of my answers, but thought it might be useful to post my whole list here. I’ve put links a the end for the previous expanded posts.

The most difficult thing to explain about healing in therapy is that it isn’t about “knowing” it’s about experiencing being with another person. So much of what I talk about below totally gonzo confused me when I first learned it. I used to tell BN that he was talking in Russian. But staying with my feelings and continuing to express them through the confusion is how I learned it. And I must give credit again to BN, who is really an incredibly gifted, compassionate man doing exactly what he should be. So much of my “wisdom” is actually my ability to accurately quote him. 🙂

So the full list is below. If there’s a particular item in the list you would want me to expand upon, please feel free to leave a note in the comments. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, boundaries, commitment, dependence, earned attachment, encouragement, feelings, healing, hope, love, needs, pain, perserverence, self-worth

Learning Developmental Skills: Emotional Regulation

January 7, 2012 3 comments

This post is a continuation of a series started in But therapy can take us a long way: Learning Developmental Skills Part 1. In this post, I want to talk about emotional regulation. We are not born knowing how to regulate our emotions. This is a skill that must be implicitly learned by being in the presence of another attuned human being who is capable of regulating their emotions. Which is why people with insecure attachment, or who suffered neglect or long-term abuse, often have difficultly “regulating” their emotions. They were never taught how to. The good news is that this is one of the things that can be fixed by therapy. Being with your therapist in a right-brain to right-brain way (with your feelings engaged, and experiencing attunement and limbic resonance) while accessing your intense emotions can teach you how to face and handle those emotions on your own. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, attachment theory, disassociation, Emotional regulation, feelings, healing, limbic resonance, perserverence, trauma, Uncategorized

Bass Ackwards

December 13, 2011 4 comments

I was talking to a friend about therapy today and connected to a very important principle about healing that I wanted to share. We often approach healing from the standpoint of “once I heal enough to not be <insert emotion here> than I’ll <insert new behavior here>.” We want to get our feelings to the right place, then act. But it doesn’t really work that way; we need to act in a new way so that our feelings follow. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, encouragement, feelings, healing, hope, perserverence, self-worth

Lake Loop Trail

December 1, 2011 5 comments

Hi all, sorry for the gap in posting but you’ll be happy to know I have a number of excuses reasons for why this has occurred. 🙂 Thanksgiving was a very busy weekend with lots of plans (not to mention the unseasonably high temperatures. Do you have any idea how rare it is to put up your outdoor Christmas decorations in shirtsleeves in Syracuse NY?!? We just had to take advantage of the opportunity.) Then, since it is November, I came down with a sinus infection. Actually I was two days away from making it through the month without one, which hasn’t happened in years, but didn’t quite make it. The good news was, I already had a doctor’s appointment for a routine visit set up, so I was able to get antibiotics and may have actually caught this before I go into my usual follow-up of bronchitis and kicking off my asthma. Light years to go, but my self-care is getting better! 🙂 Not to mention, one of my rare visits with the Boundary Ninja. (Ok, rare might not be EXACTLY accurate, but humor me, I’m trying to hang on to a sense of progress!) And to be perfectly honest, I am having a much more difficult time writing the next entry in my Developmental Skills series (Series? What series?! How do you call one post a series? ) then I expected. So I thought that if I wander off in another direction for a bit and write about something else, I could distract myself, so that whatever subterranean level of my brain which actually produces this stuff can proceed unhampered by my conscious mind.

I was talking about therapy with a friend the other day and how endless it can feel, when I was reminded of a story which is the perfect analogy for therapy. And that is the story of the Lake Loop Trail. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, healing, hope, perserverence