Tag: psychotherapy
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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Spiritual/Psychological Counseling? Christian Counseling? Buddhist Counseling?
Spiritual/Psychological Counseling? Christian Counseling? Buddhist Counseling? What is the best way to go with psychotherapy? How spiritual meets with psychological in psychotherapy is very important. One may or may not support the other as they are each brought into individual counseling, couples or marriage counseling, and family counseling. Much of this integration depends on the…
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Mania and the Manic Episode, Symptoms and their Meaning
It is important to define mania in two ways: By defining symptoms. What those symptoms mean for each individual. Many of those suffering with these symptoms only choose medication for treatment and disregard psychotherapy because the underlying suffering seems too painful or impossible to make any sense out of it. This is the reason for…
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Logotherapy, an Approach to Suffering
The principals of Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy came out of his personal experience and observations during his time in German concentration camps during the holocaust. We need to listen to the insights that come out of such unimaginable physical and emotional pain. Wisdom that addresses the helplessness and emptiness that many feel today. Frankl’s principles were…
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A Brief Explanation of Existential Therapy
Everyone is faced with their experience of existence. It is wonderful, emotionally painful, beautiful and sweet, traumatic and tedious, ecstatic and depressing, meaningful and meaningless at times. What are we to do with these opposites? Repress the dark and only think good thoughts? That works temporarily but doesn’t offer a way to face these extremes…
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I Need Help, Who Doesn’t?
“I need help” means a lot To admit that I need help is huge. It means I am ready to surrender something: resistance to change, false pride, coping mechanisms that no longer work, skewed perceptions of myself and reality, and the resistance to our inherent vulnerability as people. The first step is admitting I need help,…
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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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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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Mindfulness and The Order of Interbeing/Tien Hien
Many people long for a spiritual practice that makes sense and is not woo woo or dogmatic. I find that many people have been very disappointed or hurt by conventional religious organizations, but yet want something to put their energy into that has meaning. Generally speaking Buddhism is not a religion but a way of…
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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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Finding a Psychotherapist
Whether it is your first time to psychotherapy or you are looking to find another therapist, it is important to consider a few things. Yes, they need to be a licensed psychologist, licensed marriage and family therapist or licensed clinical social worker. But the main consideration is, do you like them as a person, do…
