Search Results for: robert firestone

Stay in Love by Staying Out of Fantasy

…e starts to forego their individually—losing the “me” to become a “we.” As Robert Firestone explains it, “Perhaps the most significant sign that a fantasy bond has been formed is when one or both partners give up vital areas of personal interest, their unique points of view and opinions, their individuality, to become a unit, a whole. The attempt to find security in an illusion of merging with another leads to an insidious and progressive loss of…

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Trust Issues: Why Is It So Hard for Some People to Trust?

…the veracity of their perceptions and subjective experience. According to Robert Firestone, “The betrayal of trust brought about by a partner’s secret involvement with another person leads to a shocking and painful realization on the part of the deceived party that the person he or she has been involved with has a secret life and that there is an aspect of his or her partner that he or she had no knowledge of.” Similarly, in Living and Loving Aft…

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Self-Esteem vs. Narcissism

…the world’s wars and political conflicts. Conversely, both Dr. Solomon and Robert Firestone argue that when death awareness isn’t denied but recognized, it can be used to promote peace and compassion. The idea that we are all in the same boat, albeit a sinking boat (as Solomon indicates), promotes a sense of equality and togetherness. The acknowledgement that our physical selves share the same fate and that we all have the same fears, can help us…

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Home (not again) for the Holidays

…e to say goodbye to our childhood by not recreating it in our lives today. Robert Firestone writes about this in the first chapter of his book. In order for people to pursue their own destiny, they must differentiate from the destructive aspects of their early programming and cultivate significant characteristics of their unique identities. In the process of differentiating, they must contend with and challenge fantasy bonds and develop a realisti…

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Death Anxiety

…tone’s Article on Factors that Increase or Suppress Death Anxiety Read Dr. Robert Firestone’s Article on Societal Defenses Against Death Anxiety References Florian, V., & Mikulincer, M. (2004). A multifaceted perspective on the existential meanings, manifestations, and consequences of the fear of personal death. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 54—70). New York: Guilford. H…

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Voice Therapy: A Psychotherapeutic Approach to Self-Destructive Behavior

…ion of Voice Therapy, an innovative therapeutic procedure developed by Dr. Robert W. Firestone that can be used to elicit and bring to the foreground negative thought patterns antithetical to the self and cynical toward others (the critical inner voice). Compelling case histories illustrate the core defense and its effect on patients’ personality and behavior. The approach is unique in that it unifies cognitive, existential, and psychoanalytic fra…

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Beware of the Soulmate Myth

…were excerpted from Daring to Love Reprinted with permission: New Harbinger Publications, Inc. Copyright 2018 by Tamsen and Robert Firestone, PhD…

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The Inner Voice that Drives Suicide

…to evaluate the risk of self-destructive tendencies. First, we created the Firestone Assessment of Self-Destructive Thoughts (FAST), and eventually, we developed another scale that uses the identification of a self-destructive thought process to assess suicidal intent. This became the Firestone Assessement of Suicidal Intent (FASI). A 2001 comparative study used the FAST to identify suicidal potential among Pakistani and American psychiatric patie…

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A Way Out of Loneliness

…h in which they feel more alone. My father, psychologist and author Robert Firestone further describes how “the isolation and comfort of contemporary society carry with it the risk of reinforcing psychological defenses that contribute to an inward, self-protective, and somewhat emotionally deadened way of being and living.” In this 90-minute Webinar, Dr. Lisa Firestone will explore how a person’s defenses and their critical inner voice perpetuate…

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How Your Attachment Style Impacts Your Relationship

…On-Demand Webinars     In this Webinar: This online workshop with Dr. Lisa Firestone will provide tools to help people heal insecure attachment, resolve trauma, integrate their… Learn More One essential way to do this is by making sense of your story. According to Dr. Dan Siegel, attachment research demonstrates that “the best predictor of a child’s security of attachment is not what happened to his parents as children, but rather how his parents…

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