Tag: psychological theory
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Cultivating Self-love in times of crisis
The last few weeks… they have felt very familiar. I’d like to think I’ve grown wiser since 2016, and 2020. My former therapist often said that in times of crisis, people tend to either overfunction or underfunction. She correctly observed that I am an overfunctioner. For much of my life I had used achievement, workaholism, and over-attending to relationships as…
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Discerning our inner voice
Alongside the thrill of learning how to tap into a flow of images, sounds, sensations, and loving support, a gnawing question loomed at the edges. “How do I know I’m not just making this up?” The thought emerged again, and again, as I began listening to my inner voice. It’s probably one of the most…
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Wind of the mind
At the end of June I was on retreat at Menla. The experience of the land there was pretty incredible, but what struck me the most was the wind. It ripped through the valley many times per day in powerful, smooth currents that rustled the leaves and carved through the bands of energy. I used to have…
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The Art of Journaling
I suspect every one of you reading has heard the suggestion, or are aware of the practice, of journaling for self-care. It is one of the best, practically free ways to process emotional material and deepen insight. For me it’s right up there with conscious breathing and body awareness as an essential part of any…
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Finding Satisfaction in not knowing
I recently learned that I calculated my personal tarot archetype of 2023 incorrectly. Which seems like a cosmic error because evidently I also did this the prior year, in spite of it being simple math! I double, triple checked and sure enough I had been believing this whole time that I was working through one…
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Is healing possible?
Healing can be a loaded word, and lately it seems trauma has become one too— the subject of numerous think pieces about whether the wider understanding of what constitutes trauma has gone too far. As a person who has experienced both “big T” and “little T” trauma, I feel it’s a great disservice to compare…
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A Constellation of Selves
Developing a “cohesive sense of self” is a goal in many perspectives of therapy and personal development. In this view, the self that is not cohesive is in conflict, opposing parts fighting for primacy in the personality and in relationships. We could refer back to concepts illuminated in the Adult Attachment Interview, that this lack of cohesion…
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Is it intuition, or anxiety?
Many of us are taught not to value our gut instincts, and even to ignore them. The less privilege you hold societally the more likely that you have been told that you can’t trust how you feel. If you’re offended, that’s because you’re too sensitive. If you feel unsafe, you’re being paranoid (or you actually brought…
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Winter Dreaming…
Dreaming for me is an act of communion, a relationship. I allow my dreams to hold their own space. I try not to analyze my dreams, but to participate in them. To let my dream selves show me what I need to know. I take some time in the morning to transfer to my conscious…
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Energy loops? Another layer of “reexperiencing”
I can’t remember the first place I read the term “energy loops,” but it almost immediately resonated with my experience of a particularly challenging trauma recovery phenomena. You’ll have to excuse the less linear nature of my attempt to describe something so abstract. In the mental health field, we tend to focus on reexperiencing as a…
Inward Vision 