Search Results for: michelle deen/2010/06/2009/12/dr-lisa-firestone-“suicide-the-warning-signs”/2010/03/how-you-can-help-someone-at-risk-for-suicide-by-lisa-firestone-ph-d/2010/03/busting-the-myths-about-suicide

The Self Under Siege: A New Model of Differentiation

…ative approach to differentiation, a four-step process developed by Robert Firestone, Ph.D. involving: 1. Breaking with internalized thought processes, critical attitudes toward self & others. 2. Altering the negative personality traits in oneself that represent an incorporation of aversive traits of one’s parents 3. Identifying/relinquishing patterns of defense formed as an adaptation to painful events in childhood. 4. Developing one’s own values…

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Why Break Ups Hurt So Much

…tner. A fantasy bond is a term developed by my father, psychologist Robert Firestone, to describe an imagined connection a person develops to another person, thereby creating an illusion of security or false sense of safety. When individuals do this, they no longer express genuine acts of love; instead they substitute real relating with the form of having a relationship and exist as two isolated people living two separate lives. A fantasy bond hel…

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How Negative Thoughts Are Ruining Your Life

…heory and therapy technique developed by my father psychologist and author Dr. Robert Firestone. It is the basis of a book we co-authored titled Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice and the subject of many of my lectures, Webinars and my upcoming six-week eCourse “Overcome Your Inner Critic.” Why I have invested so much of my time and work into this subject is because what I have found in my 30 years of research and clinical practice is that, in almo…

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Becoming Your Real Self: Shedding the Baggage of Your Past

…rds at your child that your father yelled at you? Do you find yourself withdrawing from your romantic partner in a self-protective style similar to how your father was with your mother? Or do you find yourself acting without regard for another person’s boundaries in a fashion reminiscent of your mother? These are all examples of common ways that negative traits of our early caretakers manifest as part of our personality. These patterns can also hu…

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A New Look at Differentiation

…painful feelings this awareness arouses. Expressing deep sadness and sorrow about these existential realities appears to have an ameliorative effect on those who are open to this emotional experience. Moreover, facing the feelings of sadness, anxiety, and dread surrounding our existential dilemma helps us to live out our priorities and transcendent goals and to find our own meaning in life. We have observed the impact of this process on many of th…

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What Goes On in the Mind of Your Therapist?

…verlays on their personality generated by the past, and they take steps to help them eventually see themselves this same way. “Nowhere in life is a person listened to, felt, empathized with, and experienced with such concentrated sharing and emphasis on every aspect of personal communication,” wrote my father. My goal in therapy is to honor this form of communication and continually ask, “what would that person be like if they were really most the…

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The Fantasy Bond

Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D. – 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/ primary caretaker and later with significant others in the individual’s environment. 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 “fant…

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Where the Rubber Meets the Road

…ed a psychology conference in New York City and stumbled across Dr. Robert Firestone’s book, The Fantasy Bond. In spite of the fact I had stacks of assigned reading, this was the book I couldn’t put down. It enlightened me in ways none of my professors could, answering theoretical questions roaming around in my freshly primed mind. Most importantly, it made sense, not just theoretically, but personally. And this really is the crux of the matter, t…

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Why Are We Hooked on Rejection?

…” become “I will never meet anyone like him. No one will ever love me?” To help us catch on to this cruel internal dialogue without blindly believing every word it utters, it’s helpful to think of our thoughts in the third person. Would we ever let someone talk to us the way we are shouting at ourselves? Moreover, would we ever tolerate someone speaking to a friend of ours the way our critical inner voice speaks to us? We have to catch on the mome…

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Why Are So Many Parents Limited in Loving Their Children?

…d-rearing practices in a more loving, positive direction.   Join the eCourse on “Compassionate Parenting” featuring work by Dr. Robert Firestone….

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