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Most recent posts
- Psychotherapy and Medication
- Female Therapist or Male Therapist?
- The Failure of Categories
- Psychotherapy: Clinical Supervision and Training
- Anxiety plus Depression
- Addiction to Drugs and Alcohol: Self-hatred, cravings, and therapy
- Finding the best therapist
- Empathy is not enough
- Psychotherapy in NYC
- Experiential psychotherapy
- Advertising psychotherapy: Attraction not promotion
- Expect the unexpected: Living with alcoholics and dysfunctional families
- Psychotherapy and spirituality
- Trauma and dissociation
- Finding meaning: Existential psychotherapy
- The anxiety spiral
- Depression: Struggling in the dark
- Codependency: Being dependent on others’ dependency
- Therapy and the 12 steps
- Trauma and memory
- CBT and the zeitgeist
- Psychologists, Psychiatrists, and Social Workers
Tag Archives: insight-oriented therapy
Empathy is not enough
Empathy can be seen as the matching of feelings or the matching of minds. It can reflect compassion, recognition and communion. It reflects an emotional understanding of another person’s feelings or problems. The ability to be empathic can be a … Continue reading
The anxiety spiral
The experience of anxiety falls along a spectrum, or continuum. You may have a bit of difficulty concentrating; perhaps you’re restless; you may be worried and have repetitive thoughts; and/or you may feel an unpleasant self consciousness. On the extreme end, you may have panic attacks, a feeling of impending doom, you may fear that you’re losing control or dying or ‘going crazy’; you may be dizzy and lightheaded, faint, sweaty, you may have difficulty breathing, you may have chest pain or heart palpitations. You may even experience depersonalization – the feeling that you have changed, and the world has become far away. It may seem like you are looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Continue reading
CBT and the zeitgeist
CBT is a popular therapeutic style, now. The fad. In my view, lasting change of an important type cannot come from such goal-directed, externally-driven exercises. CBT relies on a logical and linear system, and in my experience, people in fact act globally and their actions represent the final common pathway that grows out of a gestalt of their drives, desires, needs, and unconscious and conscious processes. True change arises from an appreciation of complexity. Lasting change involves integration of different aspects of your personality, of understanding why you do things, of unfolding and deepening your understanding of yourself. Effective work with a good therapist involves facilitating change, not directing it. Continue reading