Getting Past Your Past
This post is to recommend a new, self-help book by EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) developer Francine Shapiro, Ph.D, Getting Past Your Past; Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy (2012). For more information about EMDR, see this website’s “Services” link. Early in chapter one, Shapiro offers a simple experiment which not only sets the tone for the book, but EMDR in general. Asking for the first thing that pops into the reader’s mind, she writes: “Roses are red…” There’s an extremely high...
Read MoreExiles, Managers, and Firefighters
It is not uncommon to describe ourselves in “parts.” For example, “A part of me loves him, and a part of me doesn’t even like him.” Or, “A part of me is mad, and a part of me is sad.” Such is the language of ambivalence that often characterizes human awareness. There is even a biblical reference to such ambivalent “parts”: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15; NRSV), and vice versa. So “parts” is often how we describe our internal conflicts....
Read MoreIce Cream and Avoidance Behavior
Before leaving the book, The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy (2010)–see last blog post–I include the following experience (verbatim) by author Louis Cozolino. “I’m a person who has been on a diet all my life with limited success. I could do well all day–eat properly and exercise–but at night, I would seem to have no self-control. I would go into each day feeling bad about the night before and vow to do better, only to fail again….I mentioned this in a (therapy) session and was given the following suggestion: ‘Pay attention to your thoughts,...
Read MoreShame!
In his book, The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy (2010), Pepperdine University professor and psychologist Louis Cozolino writes about the crippling effects of “shame” on human beings. Behaviorally, a shame state often expresses itself as a downward gaze, a bowed head, or rounded shoulders; similar to our scolded pet dog’s hunched frame, slinking away behavior, and “tail between the legs.” Contrasting an infant’s first and second year of life, Cozolino observes that a child’s increasing “mobility” changes how parents care for their young. “As the infant transforms...
Read MoreFiring and Wiring
In his book, The Developing Mind, psychiatrist and UCLA professor Daniel J. Siegel gives the analogy of a hillside in the springtime filled with tall, flowing grass. Looking down from the top, you notice an idyllic little pond which you’d like to visit. You seem to be the first person to enjoy the secluded spot since there are no other observable paths. So, you begin tromping down some of that beautiful, flowing flora between you and your destination. When finished, you walk back up the hill via the same crumpled route. The next day, another hiker sees the pond and follows the route you...
Read MoreRedirect!
In his new book, Redirect (2011), University of Virginia Professor of Psychology–Timothy D. Wilson–observes that people’s self-views (self-beliefs) evolve from a variety of sources, beginning in one’s family-of-origin and continuing outward. Because these early influences are so foundational and formative, we can’t expect a change in views overnight. He writes: “If a teenager is a rebel without a cause, it doesn’t do much good for his parents to implore, ‘Please change your view of yourself’ any more than it would to say, ‘I would...
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