• 

Bewildering grief or anger for no reason? The unrecognized sixth element.

Details

Category: Friends and Family

This is me, writing to you from my home office on Sunday afternoon.  Stay well.  Keep safe.

You and the people in your life are experiencing the anxiety, trauma, loss, fear and insecurities of this pandemic, politically volatile time. You access your power to cope in five ways. But one stressor may be missing from your awareness so how to cope is also missing. Here are the five you know about. The sixth comes later in this essay.

1.  For COVID you know that your power to protect yourself and your family is to physically distance and wear masks.

2.  For financial insecurity you know your power is in finding an income source familiar to you or from something new.

3.  If someone you love is sick you know your power is in supplying as much care as you can to the one you love and reaching for your spiritual supports, like prayer and inspirational reading.

• 

How Are You Holding Up? Depression, Anxiety, Eating Disorders emerging show us what we need now

Details

Category: Psychotherapy and Recovery Work

       We need our internal structure to hold, especially when we can't see ahead.

Values

We define ourselves by our personal values. We know who we are and live by our personal code. At least, that is what we convince ourselves.

But some of our values are what we wished we supported. Some of them are based on what we are told to support by respected others. And some of our values may be based on our fear of disapproval.

In a normal, ordinary day we live by these values. Our behavior is consistent with them. We seem to have integrity, i.e. our behavior and our values are integrated.

Stressed Values

But these are not normal, balanced ordinary days. Every day is still a corona day.

• 

Why Start Psychotherapy?

Details

Category: Psychotherapy and Recovery Work

Shadows of the mind. Light and darkness. Active and passive. More in our depths that we can develop and use than we know.

People usually come to psychotherapy for the first time because they are in pain, bewildered and because everything they knew about problem solving no longer works for them. Going inside their psyches seems like the last option. Even then, they do not know what to expect. At first, they want to know how long it will take to fix their lives.

This is a normal response when a person is plunged into an unrecognizable world where their well-honed talents and skills do not bring desired results. They feel angry, lost, frustrated and afraid.

Despite the pain, for an individual in this situation the outlook for success is optimistic. It was the person’s own defense system that fell apart, leaving them flailing. Their own psyche pushed them to seek help outside themselves.

• 

Stability in an Unstable World: eating disorders during corona crisis

Details

Category: Psychotherapy and Recovery Work

This slackliner achieves stability from a developed inner sense of fluid subtle movement to maintain sustainable balance. We need that ability now.. Pix

The eating disorder system that gave you a sense of control and protection is drastically altered during this Corona Era.

When you have an eating disorder you have developed ways to rely on it when your feelings are too uncomfortable to bear and when disruptions in your life feel overwhelming. That’s what an eating disorder is for. It may cause havoc in your life and prevent you from developing and moving on to a more mature and satisfying existence, but it’s there for you when you want comfort and escape from what feels like too much to experience.

In this time of Corona reliable and familiar external life is falling apart. New protocols for daily life suddenly are established. Our future is unknown. No one can find the necessary balance and stability through an eating disorder.