Category: Psychology and Relationships
These are very personal questions: What is spiritual to you? When and where do you feel spiritual? How do these spiritual feelings get blocked or expanded?
We can carry these questions throughout our lives. Spiritual practice aims to refine and deepen our understanding of them.
I will focus on three specific spiritual practices: psychological relationships, meditation, and psychedelic plant medicines, including cannabis.
Spiritual practice is about psychological relationships because if our spiritual practice doesn’t improve our relationships with others, what’s the point?
The practice of psychological relationships with others and with one’s inner life is a personal experience with spiritual meaning. This involves experiences of vulnerability, hurt, and confusion that teach us the depth of human love and kindness.
Spiritual practice is not only personal but also universal and objective. We need to look at our minds as they are, our human instincts as they are, and our relationship with the natural world. We are born, go through all the developmental stages, and then die. Life is both precious and painful. We cannot change most of life, but we can learn to connect with it gracefully, little by little.
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Why is Dialectical Behavior Therapy helpful?
Webster’s Dictionary defines dialectical: a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth. Dialectical behavioral therapy was adopted from the mindfulness meditation traditions that go back thousands of years. It has been very effective in treating those with symptoms of borderline personality. In the previous post, Fear of Abandonment, I…
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Fear of Abandonment
Everyone has some degree of fear of abandonment, some more, some less. It comes from our instinct for attachment. We need each other. It starts at birth, when we are one hundred percent dependent on another for physical and emotional survival. This attachment becomes the foundation for growth. Gradually, from this dependence, a…
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Do I Need Therapy?
Instead of asking your self, “Do I need therapy?”, first ask your self, “Would I like some help with my confusion?”, “Would I like support with feeling over whelmed?”, “Would I like to understand relationships better?”, and so on. Basically, “What would I like a little help with?” These sorts of questions help us…
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A History of Mental Illness in the Family
Many people have described to me a history of mental illness in their family. Some know of depression dating back several generations. Many know histories of alcoholism, psychotic breaks and hospitalization, anxiety and trauma symptoms that still show their faces generation after generation. I have seen patients over the years having psychotic episodes, major depressions,…
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The Art Therapist
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle Art has an essential place in psychotherapy. It provides expression for places within the self that are not yet known. If these places remain unconscious, they appear as struggle or staled maturity. A poem or story…
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The Art of Communication, The Inner and Outer Voices
As we refine our communication with others, we are refining our communication with our own inner life. The quality of communication with another is based on the quality of communication within ourselves. If I am judgmental with myself, I will be judgmental with another. If I can hear my inner voices empathically, I can do…
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Seeking Therapy, A Place to Start
Psychological tests on line can be a good place to start when seeking help with therapy. Sometimes these tests help us to become aware of our experiences throughout the day. Many times we are not even aware of the difficulty we are having because we have become numb or assumed “that’s just the way it…
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Marriage Therapy, “The Argument with Ourself”
Couples therapy usually begins with a few long standing arguments that are draining the life out of the relationship as well as each individual. One person may be aware of the problem and the other may not. One person or both may be angry about the state of affairs. There may be raging arguments, smoldering…
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Todays Therapist | Raising a Teenager Infographic
Raising a teenager is confusing for everyone in the family, so, how as parents can we guide our children through this time of life? First, we have to learn of few new parenting skills, because parenting a teen is very different than parenting when the kids were young. What use to work when they were…
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Men and Mental Health- Podcast
Men and Mental Health Here is a podcast I did with the guys from mancertified.com. This is a podcast concerning depression, a man’s resistance to psychotherapy, marriage, parenting and mental health in our culture today. http://www.mancertified.com/mancertified-episode-10-steve-lee-men-mental-health/ Men and Mental Health-Podcast
