Search Results for: kessler/2009/11/nerf-guns-–-what-are-we-afraid-of/2009/11/nerf-guns-–-what-are-we-afraid-of/2009/11/your-role-in-your-childs-development/2009/06/communicating-with-children

Are You Repeating Your Parents’ Traits?

…r personal goals and more authentic expressions of who we are. Because, as children, we internalize our early environment, when we grow up, most of us are not fully differentiated selves. The degree to which we’ve failed to identify, understand, and separate from certain overlays on our personality can lead us to relive rather than live our lives. One important question that we can explore is, “to what degree are we following a prescription laid o…

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Being Vulnerable to Love

…tes in early childhood from incidents when basic needs were not fulfilled. Children are left feeling deeply ashamed of their desire for affection and for wanting to be touched, loved, seen, and understood. To avoid the humiliation of ever again feeling unloved or being seen as unlovable, children become desperate to cover up any signs of wanting, and as adults they continue to expect humiliation and shaming if they ask for what they want. In a clo…

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How to Be Vulnerable to Love

…from incidents when basic needs were not fulfilled. These incidents leave children feeling deeply ashamed of their desire for affection and for wanting to be touched, loved, seen, and understood. To avoid the humiliation of ever again feeling unloved or being seen as unlovable, children become desperate to cover up any signs of wanting, and as adults they continue to expect humiliation and shaming if they ask for what they want. In your relations…

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Who Do You Think You Are? And Why You May Be Wrong

…that had more to do with our parents, the ways they made us feel, and the roles they assigned to us than with us is not an exercise intended to make us feel victimized or powerless. Rather, it’s meant to be an act of empowerment and differentiation. When we accept that our earliest relationships and these old identities drive a way of feeling about ourselves that often has nothing to do with who we are, we give ourselves permission to break down…

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narcissist's mind

What Really Goes On in the Mind of a Narcissist?

…elling her she was the prettiest. A recent study showed that narcissism in children was predicted by parental overvaluation, not by lack of parental warmth. Interestingly, the exact opposite was true of self-esteem, which was predicted by parental warmth, not by parental overvaluation. A parent who offers a child special treatment, build-up, or false praise is not necessarily conveying real love, warmth, or nurturance to the child. They may even b…

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Voice Therapy

…alized at times when parents were the most rejecting or punishing of their children, during events or circumstances children actually may have experienced as life-threatening. (3) Countering or answering back to the negative voice attacks There are two aspects of the answering back process: (1) clients offer a rational and realistic evaluation of their own point of view; and (2) clients counter the charges by responding with strong emotions of ang…

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6 Things You Should Know About Depression

…for Mental Health Services, “depression affects as many as one in every 33 children and one in eight adolescents.” The APA has additionally reported that higher numbers of college students are seeking treatment for depression and anxiety, with the number of students on psychiatric medications increasing by 10 percent in 10 years. As I highlighted in my recent blog “Depression in Mothers,” babies born to women who struggled with depression while pr…

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How to Not Lose Track of What’s Really Important

…erfect family vacation. Most of us consider time spent with our partner or children precious. We plan and plan, book tickets and tables, build jam-packed itineraries, but when it comes down to it, we can sometimes be so bogged down in our intentions that we miss out on the actuality of our experience. It’s easy to be swept up in an internalized checklist, dragging our kids from site to site and posing for pictures, that we lose touch with what it…

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Healthy Relationships Matter More Than We Think

…sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all men, women, and children. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong.” What Happens Without Good Relationships Without healthy connection, the result is not simply a quieter, duller life. The outcome is much worse than that. “When these needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to,” Brown assures us. “We break. We fal…

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building self esteem how to build self-esteem

Building Self-Esteem

…st to instill copious amounts of self-belief and confidence in their young children. In the process, children were often overpraised. They were told that everything they did was great and made to feel that they were special. This type of overpraising, according to Dr. Lisa Firestone, leads to feelings of both inadequacy and entitlement. (Not a winning combination.) In many ways, our society’s focus on high self-esteem has become problematic. Dr. K…

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