According to experts in neurobiology, when we are afraid we are at our least intelligent. Literally. We stop thinking like grown human beings with our cortex and frontal lobes and start thinking with that small walnut of a lizard brain we call the limbic system.The other day I had a personal experience of just how foolish fear can make a person. With all my training in psychotherapy, trauma, and crisis counseling, with all my years in the trenches seeing the very worst that humanity is capable of, with all the professional composure and philosophical peace I have made with the suffering and idiocy of the world, I still acted like an ass in a thunderstorm. One little peel of thunder and off went my adrenal glands, madly galloping away with my cerebral cortex, disappearing into the sunset, never to be thunk [sic] of again.
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About a year ago I heard a sermon about two brothers, Cosmas and Damian, both of whom were doctors. Trained in Syria they practiced as physicians in the seaport Ægea, now Ayash, on the Gulf of Iskandrun in Cilica.
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For a full article on ways to help your children through grief and loss, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-acosta-lisw-cht/death-and-dying-talking-t_b_621011.html
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Passengers on a Train – A Study in Cultural Narcissism
While traveling north on the railroad from New York City, we were seated comfortably by a window seat watching the east river slowly move past us back out to sea.
More on The Need for Verbal First Aid Principles in Ordinary Life
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Verbal First Aid as an Attachment Aid
Babies come into the world crying, cooing and clinging. They need—food, warmth, love, and safety.
They are born with the innate capacity to feel fully, scream for us, hold onto us.
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In a radio interview this past weekend with Mimi Stoneburner at KTIP-AM, we got to the topic of dogs as we discussed Verbal First Aid. We were on the topic of leadership and how Verbal First Aid helps parents develop rapport so they can give their children therapeutic suggestion to help them stay calm and heal faster.
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When people talk about infidelity—whether in marriage or in committed relationships—they talk about trauma.
I recently met a man whose wife cheated on him repeatedly. As he told me the long and circuitous story of suspicion, denial and revelation, he moved through a snake pit of emotional confusion—anger, hurt, longing, disbelief, shock. And as I watched him weep, rant, deflate in despair only to bound back in self-reproach (“how could I have been so stupid?!”), I saw that he was still in shock, in the trance of his own disappointment. He was only bodily in the office with me. Most of him was lost in the torment of his recent past and his fear about the future.
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Holistic Psychotherapy With A Heart
The other day a patient told a story of how she got her first kitten. It wasn’t anything like what one might expect—found a litter in the alley behind the house, or a stray wound up on their porch. Her family doctor was over for dinner with his wife and he had found a kitten.
“Your doctor came over for dinner?” I asked.
More on Psychotherapy and Boundaries: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
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Be Still & Know That I Am God.
Be still…It’s really such a simple request and such an impossibly difficult task for so many of us as we get older and more acculturated. It certainly has been for me. I can barely talk on the phone for 15 minutes without washing the dishes or multi-tasking in some other way. America is a culture of action. We do. We don’t sit.
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In a recent episode of Bones, the psychiatrist on staff, Sweets, is on a train with a kid who’s just received a text. He looks like he’s crying, so Sweets leans over and asks him if everything’s all right. The kid is weeping and excitedly recounts for Sweets how he’s had lymphoma for years and has finally been declared cancer-free. He tells Sweets all the things he’s going to do with his new lease on life. The kid is obviously overjoyed and Sweets is clearly moved by the good news. Because it’s a dramatic series, as the Producers would have it, an earthquake rattles the train, turns the cars up and over, and throws the delighted kid into a pole, killing him instantly.
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