Search Results for: firestone

VIDEO: Attuned Attachment and Healthy Attachment

In her interview with PsychAlive Senior Editor Lisa Firestone, Dr. Donna Rockwell talks about the difference between attuned or healthy attachment and the negative types of attachment Buddhism often refers to. You know, you’re absolutely right. So often a lot of the words that are used have a meaning in Sanskrit or in the Tibetan culture or any culture that mindfulness has come from. And when you’re talking about psychodynamic theories or Winnico…

Learn More

VIDEO: Sitting Meditation Practice

In her interview with PsychAlive Senior Editor Lisa Firestone, Dr. Donna Rockwell talks about the significance and effect of the posture assumed during sitting meditation practice. The other thing that’s interesting in sitting practice is, you know, when we’re sitting on the cushion, we find that we’re either shlumping this way or this way and I know when I would sit and still do I always end up leaning forward because that’s how I relate to life…

Learn More

VIDEO: Teaching Children to Be More Mindful

In her interview with PsychAlive Senior Editor Lisa Firestone, Dr. Donna Rockwell talks about The Hawn Foundation and the benefits of teaching children to be more mindful. Goldie Hawn started the Hawn Foundation and she’s very active in teaching children in school what she calls focusing because mindfulness is too scary or meditation is too scary. So, and this is another important point – they spend a lot of time with children working on their se…

Learn More

Psychological Defenses in Everyday Life

by Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D. Joyce Catlett, M.A. Psychological Defenses in Everyday Life is a rich resource that broadens personal understanding by examining the origins of childhood pain, subsequent defense formation, and the pervasiveness and destructiveness of resulting maladaptive, addictive behaviors in adults. The authors point a way toward reversing the damaging process that keeps individuals from experiencing genuine satisfaction. The cl…

Learn More

The Fantasy Bond

by Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D. Foreword by R.D. Laing, M.D. Based on 28 years of research into the problem of resistance, this book offers a consistently developed set of hypotheses centering around the concept of the “fantasy bond,” an illusion of connection originally formed with the mother and later with significant others in the individual’s environment. The book develops the concept of the core defense of the “fantasy bond” and describes the…

Learn More

Beyond Death Anxiety: Achieving Life-Affirming Death Awareness

by Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D. Joyce Catlett, M.A. Beyond Death Anxiety: Achieving Life-Affirming Death Awareness assists mental health practitioners in helping their clients learn to accept and face their mortality. They describe the many defenses of death anxiety, and suggest methods to cope directly with fears of death; an approach that, ironically, can lead to a greater appreciation of life. This book examines the many destructive consequences…

Learn More

The Self Under Siege: A New Model of Differentiation

…ach to increasing differentiation, a four-step process developed by Robert Firestone, Ph.D. that 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’…

Learn More

VIDEO: Becoming a "Self-Scientist"

In her interview with PsychAlive Senior Editor Lisa Firestone, Dr. Donna Rockwell talks about the impermanence and the freedom that arises when one becomes a “self-scientist.” Everything’s impermanent. That’s what the Buddha discovered when he was sitting under the Bodhi tree for that whole night and said I won’t get up until I realize enlightenment. What he discovered through that whole night was that whatever arises is subject to cessation. Tha…

Learn More

VIDEO: Mindfulness Meditation and Happiness

In her interview with PsychAlive Senior Editor Lisa Firestone, Dr. Donna Rockwell talks about mindfulness meditation as a shortcut to realizing happiness. It increases our overall sense of wellbeing and allows us to be here. You know, we can’t be happy if we’re thinking about what happened yesterday and what might happen tomorrow. There’s no happiness in that. You actually have to be present to feel joy and happiness, you know. And there’s just s…

Learn More

VIDEO: Dr. Donna Rockwell on Her Experience with the Dalai Lama

In her interview with PsychAlive Senior Editor Lisa Firestone, Dr. Donna Rockwell talks about her experience with the Dalai Lama. I was part of that conference at Harvard Medical School and he is just, I mean, he personifies being natural and real in the moment. Being alive and vital right now. He’d be the first one to tell you that he also carries ego with him. So it’s not about getting rid of that altogether. It’s about how to be present with s…

Learn More