GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Judith Barr, MA, LMHC

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We live in a world that is frightened of the darkness. A world that doesn’t understand and therefore is frightened of the darkness. As a consequence of holding the fear at bay, that fear gets distorted into hatred of the darkness, denial of darkness, scapegoating of the darkness. And in scapegoating the darkness, we also scapegoat anything or anyone that triggers in us memory of the darkness – memory of a conscious or unconscious experience of the darkness within us that needs to be explored, healed, and transformed. We live in a time where we are all going through darkness in some way communally and individually. Just like anything else, this passage can be misused and abused, or it can be used well and for magnificent good!*

We live in a culture where darkness is not tolerated. It’s not tolerated physically: there are lights on twenty-four hours a day! It’s not tolerated emotionally: many people will do anything to get away from pain! It’s not tolerated mentally: so many use their minds to manage and control what are too often thought of as dark or negative emotions – the painful emotions people try to get away from and get rid of! And darkness is not tolerated spiritually: too many people use the spiritual – prayer, chanting, meditation, etc. – to get away from and transcend the pain we need to go through rather than escape. Responding in this way to the darkness, we perpetuate a duality that splits us apart, within and without, and keeps us from integrating, from becoming whole. Responding so to the darkness, we deprive ourselves of the riches it has to offer: among them wounds reaching to be healed, strengths calling to be discovered, gifts longing to be developed. Read the rest of this entry

GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Judith Barr, MA, LMHC

Click here to contact Judith and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

“Every form of power can be used well or misused.
The law has been used to manipulate as well as to serve justice.
Parenthood has been used as a means of captivity, and it has been used to nourish a soul, helping it grow into fullness.
Sexuality has been used as a weapon to rape and dominate, as a substitute for unmet childhood bonding and physical touch, and as an exquisite sacred expression of love and union.”*

The recent events related to film director Roman Polanski bring up a lot of questions for us to examine as individuals and as a world culture. Read the rest of this entry

GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Judith Barr, MA, LMHC

Click here to contact Judith and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

So much is being said and felt about healthcare reform. But do we know if our fears surrounding the issue of healthcare reform are from the here-and-now, or from once-upon-a-time long, long ago?

As a psychotherapist I see how often our ancient terrors are enmeshed with our current fears, such that the fear we feel over current events is magnified by the unresolved fears from our childhood. This happens not only on an individual scale, but also a cultural, national, and even global scale. This enmeshment of ancient and current fears (and other feelings) blinds us to the truths that are present today and to making wise decisions for lasting solutions. Read the rest of this entry

GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Judith Barr, MA, LMHC

Click here to contact Judith and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

A few weeks ago, I spent the morning with a group of financial planners in Atlanta. It was a delicious experience . . . from the moments before my talk began, when several of the members introduced themselves and thanked me for coming to their meeting . . . through the talk, and two heart-touching demonstrations of my work with the root of people’s relationships with money . . . to the harvesting, during which many participants acknowledged they realized they knew they needed to do their own work for themselves and they knew they needed to do their own work if they were going to help their clients.*

I was moved again and again as these open, willing, courageous men and women allowed me to touch them with the truth . . . that nothing we do with our money in the here and now will create a sustaining and sustainable relationship with money . . . until we do the inner work on our relationship with money. No matter how well we budget our money; no matter how much money we save; no matter how wisely we spend; no matter how well we plan. That the only thing that will create a sustainable relationship with money is doing our own inner healing work with the root of our relationship with money . . . which inevitably leads to some other aspect of our life experience and our psyche that is calling out for healing and growth. Read the rest of this entry

A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Judith Barr, MA, LMHC

In the Prologue of Power Abused, Power Healed, I quote Claude Steiner, author of The Other Side of Power:

“The personal is political; our personal struggles follow the same patterns and motivations observed in local, regional, national, and global politics.”

I have rarely read an article that so very clearly depicts this truth as a recent in-depth article from news and opinion website AlterNet. The article, Bush Era Horrors Will Haunt Us Until We Truly Face Them,* tackles the issue of our reaction to breaking news of the misdeeds of various members of government and governmental organizations during the years the Bush Administration was in office. Predicting that the recent report of past abuses in government “will have its brief time in the media sun and then be swallowed up by oblivion, just as each of the previous flaps has been,” this piece offers the following words of wisdom:

“We can’t just ‘move forward.’ We need to face who we’ve been and just how badly we’ve acted, if we care to become something better.”

***

This is indeed true of our focus and attention relating to the revelations of abuse… and also of a more subtle, but just as important, aspect of our lives: the inner wounds and feelings, rooted in our childhood, that are still alive within us.

As I have said so many times before, we live in a society and world that, sadly, at present often seeks a “quick fix” for painful feelings and situations. We try to manage, control, suppress, repress, think away, wish away, even spiritualize away our pain, both present and past. But, the consequences of forgetting our individual, our national or our global past leads only to a re-burial of our wounds…which, in turn, leads to these same wounds rising again and again to the surface, to haunt us from our underground. Read the rest of this entry

A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Judith Barr, MA, LMHC

Ten-year old Ann is playing outside on her family’s patio. There’s a bush at the edge of the patio with a funny-looking hanging sack attached to it. Ann watches as the sack seems to swing back and forth on the branch.

After some time, the sack breaks off the limb and falls on the patio, rolling and jumping about on the slate. Ann stoops to look at the fallen sack. Then she runs purposefully into the house . . . and a minute later back out onto the patio with a pair of scissors in her hand. Ann picks up the sack, holds it gently, and begins to carefully cut open the sack length-wise. When the opening she makes spreads wide, out flies a beautiful creature, deep orange in color with black markings. Working its wings, it rises in the air, as though taking off, and then . . . crashes to the ground.

A look of horror on her face, Ann starts screaming for her mother. “Mommy! Mommy!” she shrieks, “come help me.”

Her mother races out to the patio, scared that Ann is hurt, to find Ann safe and sound, though sobbing, and a beautiful butterfly dead on the patio. Taking her daughter into her arms, Ann’s mother looks around and sees the butterfly, the sack with its opening, and the scissors.
Read the rest of this entry

By Debbie Devine, MS, LPC

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“In the depth of winter, I finally realized that deep within me there lay an invincible summer.” A. Camus

Let’s face it, life throws us curves sometimes. We all experience the ups and downs that lead some of us to seek the help of a therapist or counselor: relationship issues, money problems, job struggles, grief and loss. Add any of those stressors to our current economy and it becomes even more challenging to stay positive and thankful! And yet, an optimistic focus is an essential quality for mental health and happiness. What do we do?

The Practice of Optimism

The alarming thing about tough times is that negativity feeds on itself. As we “talk fear” to others, we contribute to THEIR anxiety. They then spread that talk to more people, keeping us all in a state of uneasiness. Negativity is truly contagious, a “mental virus” spread by thoughtless conversation, news stories, and emails. Before you know it, a whole nation is panicking, which helps cause the very hard times we fear.

What we Focus On, Grows…

An ‘attitude of gratitude’ simply means that we make a conscious choice to put our attention on what we like about our lives. One easy exercise is to list the three best things that happened to us today, and then note why they happened. The “why” is usually because we chose to make an effort to improve our lives, whether it’s the good feelings we get from working out, or the pleasure of calling a friend. This helps us see that we are not victims and we are not powerless. There is always one small thing we can do to improve our present circumstance and ease our anxiety. Some ideas: Read the rest of this entry

A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Judith Barr, MA, LMHC

Click here to contact Judith and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

We are going through a transformation . . . individually and globally. Many people are scared . . . they haven’t been taught about transformation. They haven’t been taught how to go through it.

Many people are afraid . . . so many things that are part of transformation
trigger feelings from long, long ago, trigger fear from long ago.
The triggering is a guide to the healing.
The feelings from earlier times are the guides to our healing and transforming –
if we learn how to discern them from here and now feelings;
if we learn how to utilize them safely and draw a boundary so we feel them
but don’t act out on them;
if we learn to build our capacity to feel them;
if we follow through and allow ourselves to go through the feelings at the heart
of the wound and out the other side.

Many people are afraid of change . . .
are afraid of the unknown . . .

But we have examples in nature that show us how. Read the rest of this entry

By Joanna Poppink, LMFT

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Recovery is a noun that describes a continuing process. To start eating disorder recovery is to start a journey.

To be on that journey is to be on your path to health and emotional and intellectual development. Your path leads to your true self, to your inner resources of courage, creativity, self respect, strength and ability to be committed and dedicated.

Recovery from bulimia or anorexia or binge eating or compulsive eating is not just about making peace with food and developing healthy eating habits. Recovery is not just about developing or forcing yourself into living with a realistic sense of your body.

Recovery involves living a balanced life. It means feeling all you can feel and digesting your feelings so they inform and enrich your entire personhood. They don’t spill out for others to take care of. They don’t create such distress that you need to use food or drugs or sex or shopping or high drama or manipulations or dissociation to get relief.

Recovery is about being real in the real world. It is about having the ability to live, cope, adapt, work, love, play in freedom. It means being responsible for yourself and your actions. It means respecting and honoring boundaries so you can truly take care of yourself while respecting and being in relationship with others. Read the rest of this entry

A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Judith Barr, MA, LMHC

Click here to contact Judith and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

The Story of Sharon

The discussion of corporate power, its misuses and abuses, abound in our world today. The story of John (see GT Blog 5-7-09) took this issue to a deep place: the place where change must occur in order for our world to recover. This place is within each of us. How do we use our personal power? Misuse and abuse of personal power can undermine the potential of any corporation. And right use of power has the ability to transform it.

An interesting perspective on the issue of power … what if we look at the misuse of power manifested in those who don’t use their power? If those who abuse their power obviously are doing so from early wounds . . . then what about those who don’t use their power when it is needed, out of frozenness, their inability, their own childhood wounds. Read the rest of this entry