…ritical Inner Voice, a concept generated by my father, psychologist Robert Firestone, is formed early in life during stressful and traumatic events. Just as positive childhood experiences lead to confidence, ability and optimism, negative experiences lead us to low self-esteem, self-destructive behaviors and pessimism. The Critical Inner Voice thus describes a dynamic operating within each of us that causes us to relive rather than live our life….
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…rsonal relationships, both I and my father, psychologist and author Robert Firestone, Ph.D., have closely followed hundreds of clients and case studies of couples. In our research we have found overwhelming consistency in certain behavioral patterns that systematically sabotage real intimacy. First off, the search for a partner to whom we feel a real attraction and deep connection is a challenge that it would be foolish to underestimate. The idea…
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…ting from the deadening effects of what my father, psychologist Dr. Robert Firestone, termed “The Fantasy Bond?” A fantasy bond is created when two people replace real acts of genuine love, admiration, passion, and respect with the role and ritual of “being” in a relationship. Though this process is often unconscious, people can begin to recognize patterns and behaviors characterized by a Fantasy Bond that are destructive to their closest relation…
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…se its sizzle? One explanation, which I (along with psychologist Robert W. Firestone) wrote about in our book Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice is that “The single most important factor that contributes to the deterioration of love, friendship and sexuality in a relationship is the formation of a fantasy bond. The fantasy bond is an illusion of connection or imagined fusion with another person that provides an individual with a false sense of safe…
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…psychologist and my co-author on Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice, Robert Firestone, recently pointed out that living in the moment isn’t always as joyful as the saying would suggest. Life is filled with a wide array of emotions including pain. However, living in the moment does ensure us a more lively existence. We can’t experience the past or the future, yet we spend much of our time lost in regretting the past and worrying about the future. Th…
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Resolutions are notorious for falling by the wayside a few months or even days into the New Year. A University of Scranton study revealed that only 8 percent of people who make New Year’s resolutions are successful in achieving them. This low success rate may relate to the fact that many of us are more inclined to center our resolutions on self-criticism than on real aspirations or desires. Rarely do we set a goal to spend more time joking around…
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