Forgiveness and radical acceptance
It’s astonishing how many human miseries can be resolved through forgiveness and radical acceptance. Never forgiving is taking poison to punish someone else—the more you punish the sicker you get.
[VIDEO] Psychotherapy as a Martial Art
Blending the principles of martial arts with the practice of psychotherapy was central in my early development as a clinician, and I still find the material invaluable in my healing work.
Happy yes: Part 1
One great principle of happy relationships is to say “Yes” as much as possible. Couples who do this are happier, healthier, and have better sex. “Yes, I’ll remember to wipe …
Post-Issue Relationships
Post-issue relationships are the goal of all psychotherapies In a post-issue relationship, each problem is an opportunity to grow and love. A post-issue relationship still has problems, resentments, doubts, and …
How Enchanting Stories Can Reshape Your Reality
“Observe with interest” is one of the nuggets of wisdom I say repeatedly thanks to my guest joining us today, Dr. Keith Witt. He teaches us that we can observe stories through an outside perspective, and when we do it with interest there are gifts just waiting for us.
The Shrink & The Pundit: Fighting and Friending Our Way Forward
Dr. Keith Witt on the psychological mechanisms that animate evolution. All living processes exist in a rhythm of opposing forces which create conflict, resolving into either cooperation or domination. This dynamic of tension is the subtext of most human activity.
Myths from the pair bond
We humans take the drives and turn them into art, and arguably the oldest art forms we have are the mythic stories beginning with the ancestral tribes. I believe the human pair bond is the fundamental driver of much mythology.
Invisible Audiences
We feel observed all the time. We feel observed by our conscious selves and our inner critics. We feel observed by others–by our real and imagined tribes, by the people we pass on the street—because we are tribal beings, evolved to need each other.
The Warrior, the Healer, development, and Shadow
The Warrior, the Healer, and the Man of Wisdom are universal archetypes that inform our personal evolution in countless ways. They are intertwined in our adaptive unconscious–our Shadow selves.
The Integral 3-2-1 process expanded into a 1-2-3-1 process
In sessions, therapists use the power of the lower left quadrant intersubjective relationship to help clients make transitions from defensive states into states of healthy response, where the client has some form of compassionate witness activated, thus making numerous healing moves possible.