Posts Tagged ‘Self-Inquiry’
You Really Screwed Up AND You Are Lovable
I teach listening and value empathy. A lot. As Carl Rogers says, “[Empathy] just feels damn good.” (If you need a primer on empathy, here is a video that makes it fun and easy to learn about.) I want every human to experience as much good listening and empathy as possible because it is the…
After the Women’s March, What Do the Men Do Now?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about men. Not just the out-of-work, “forgotten”, rust belt men who voted for Donald Trump, but also about the smart, progressive 18-year-old son of a friend of mine, who confides in his mother that it’s hard to hear so much about how much white men have screwed everything up. I’m angry…
How To Talk To Other Parents About Conflict Between Children
I am a successful businesswoman. I am a successful entrepreneur. I am a successful psychotherapist. And yet, in talking to other parents about conflict between my children and theirs, I frequently feel like a failure. Why is this such a challenge, and not just for me, but for most parents I speak to? How and…
Social Comparison: How Do I Stack Up?
Living in San Francisco in 2016 is enough to make the most well-adjusted individual grapple with inadequacy. If you look around, you are likely to see many highly educated, successful, productive and intelligent people. These folks seem to have it all: money, fitness and health, attractiveness, successful careers, loving relationships, well-behaved children, and time to…
Listening to Depression: The Choice of a New Generation
Meet Poppy. She’s spunky, hip and successful. She’s the V.P. of marketing at a happening firm and recently got married to a successful lawyer. She and her beau are also in the process of baby-making talks. Life is, well… perfect. Only, it isn’t. In those rare moments of inactivity, Poppy increasingly finds herself feeling exhausted,…
Sharing the Shame
Mortified: connecting with others to find relief from shame When I was 15, I wrote some pretty silly things in my diary (because I was 15). When I was 17, I went back through those entries and edited them, leaving critical comments about my intelligence and maturity as a 15 year old. Actually, a big chunk…
Self-compassion in five words
Self-compassion is at the heart of my personal and professional life, and when people ask me how it got there, I usually say that it was through my meditation practice. It’s true that sitting for years on a consistent basis (when I’m tired, anxious, joyful, frustrated and everything else) showed me a lot about the…
Do you remember?
Spring cleaning in the garage came to a premature halt the other day when I happened across a photo album from 1997. India. That’s me there, sitting for some morning journaling in cool mountain air. I can still remember that moment. I ended up traveling and living in India for the next several years, learning…
Winning Your Procrastination Games
Procrastination abounds. As an editor, I get to see a fair share. As a writer I am painfully and personally familiar with the state of overwhelmed anxiety that writers are in when they email me the night before the deadline saying, “I’m having trouble thinking of a topic.” I don’t think there is any cure…
What is Awake and Aware Right in the Middle of This Experience?
What is awake and aware right in the middle of this experience? Let’s say it’s a tinge of sadness you’re experiencing. Letting that be just as it is, neither turning the volume on it up nor down, inquire. Then just really feel it consciously, from that non-locatable center. When fully inspected, this question can be…
What Are We Yearning For?
Author: Tom Rhodes, MFT www.selfinquirytherapy.com This seems like a fair, if albeit, under-examined question. Far from under-examined, however, are the myriad attempts at ways to quench this yearning! TV, drugs, eating, being alone, being around people; pretty much anything that we could think up to do or not do, can potentially qualify as a means…