Search Results for: critical inner voice

It’s Not Me: It’s My OCD: Overcoming Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

…would grimace each and every time. My older sister’s gentle, yet insistent voice: “Just tell yourself, ‘It’s not me’ it’s my OCD.’” “How corny,” I would think before retaliating with, “You don’t understand, it is me.” These were my real thoughts. Real fears. I had real reasons to wash my hands 10 times an hour, to open doorknobs with my elbows, to avoid contact with bed sheets and dollar bills, to fear the tiniest speck of red on any carpet, becau…

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Facing Death and Learning to Live

…of a touching moment with my partner or a loved one, I was hearing an old voice in my head telling me, “You know he doesn’t really care about you, don’t you? It’s all just a pretense.” Or “You aren’t someone people really like to be around, are you?” My self-attacks would have me re-write my own history, wipe out friendships and loving feelings that have lasted for years, rather then face the fact that it will end. The end will be final and there…

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“Stuck” A life lesson on parenting by Debra Kessler, Psy.D.

…bit tense, but her attention was focused on the challenge before her. Her voice was slightly alarmed but she wasn’t screaming, crying or yelling. Somehow I knew that by my being there and not intervening, she had a good chance of figuring it out for herself. After all, my goal as a parent has always been to raise a self-confident and self-reliant child, so giving her time to struggle seemed appropriate. How long I would have waited and how much d…

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CE Webinar: The Self Under Siege

…at involves: 1. Breaking with internalized thought processes, that is, the critical, hostile attitudes toward self and others. 2. Altering the negative personality traits in oneself that represent an incorporation of the aversive traits of one’s parents. 3. Identifying and relinquishing patterns of defense formed as an adaptation to painful events in one’s childhood. 4. Developing one’s own values, ideals, and beliefs rather than automatically acc…

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Raising Windhorse: How to Harness Personal Power

…The way to free ourselves from such conditioned habits of mind is to build inner-confidence through a process Tibetan meditation master, Chögyam Trungpa calls, “raising windhorse.” There is an uplifted quality that exists in our lives. You could call it sacred existence, which is automatically created because of your mindfulness and awareness. We pay attention to details: we wash the dishes, we clean our room, we press our shirts, and we fold our…

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What Every Baby Knows

…T. Berry Brazelton, M.D. – Explore the inner workings of your child’s mind in this book by Harvard Professor of Pediatrics and renowned child development expert T. Berry Brazelton. Looking deep into the experiences of five families, this book helps make sense of children’s unique and universal experiences, exploring why they feel how they feel and how we can best respond as parents….

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Violence, youth violence, PTSD

7 Ways to Stop Violence at Every Age

…r boy turned to a gang for companionship and violence as an outlet for his inner turmoil. This combination of trauma and neglect, though unintentional, became a breeding ground for violent behavior. Without a constructive outlet (like school, counseling, or an available parental figure) one of her sons faced a heavy social and emotional struggle and followed a path toward violence and crime, while the other was able to channel his struggle into so…

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Staying Healthy for Our Most Vivacious Self

…e mind in meditation in order to access the deepest part of ourselves, our inner resources of love, compassion, empathy, and joy. Since the world is busy and constant — Internet fast, in fact — if we want to continually avoid confronting our roadblocks to wellness, it is an easy enough task. As pointed out on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, maintaining wellness requires dedicated effort: The website was developed “to provide…a wid…

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Review: A Psychological Look at Crime and Punishment

…taking us through his actions, his interactions with other people and his inner monologues and rants during his frantic walks in the streets of St Petersburg. From the way I construed the novel, the main struggle that Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov—the protagonist—faces, is his rebuttal to relate to people. He appears to loathe human nature, and sees human struggles as pitiful and repugnant. Though he displays rare generosity and pity towards cert…

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Making Sense of Your Past by Daniel Siegel, M.D.

…teacher, a counselor— something about that connection helped them build an inner experience of wholeness or gave them the space to reflect on their lives in ways that helped them make sense of their journey. They had what the researchers called an “earned secure” life narrative. Such a secure narrative has a certain profile; we can describe its features. Even more important, like Rebecca we can change our lives by developing a “coherent” narrative…

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