Many people, but primarily young, educated, Western women, struggle to sustain a positive body image—for a multitude of reasons that have been discussed in previous posts. Often a negative body image leads to a poor relationship with the body and other aspects of self. It is associated with impoverished self-care and unhealthy eating and lifestyle habits.

Having a negative body image is related to general low self-esteem and depression or anxiety. Women with poor body image often struggle with boundaries in relationship to self and others. In this post, I will attempt to shed some light on the issue of boundaries related to poor body image, a concept often discussed and infrequently understood.

Women with poor body image tend to have a compartmentalized approach to well-being. For example, they may be overly focused on certain parts of the body or particular goals, such as weight loss, while devaluing other important aspects of overall health and fitness. People who have poor body image demonstrate an all-or-nothing approach to wellness, swinging from one extreme to the other, sometimes within the same day. They tend to have an exceptional level of acquired knowledge about what is healthy and set idealistic goals based on this knowledge and also are frequently disappointed and blame themselves when they are unable to attain these goals.

The lack of a holistic perspective is evidenced in an inability to balance fitness with relaxation, healthy food choices with enjoyment of food, and so on. Not surprisingly, it is common to hear that they have dissatisfying relationships with others. The all-or-nothing tendency is implicated in their sense of being overwhelmed in relationships. They sometimes become preoccupied with the other person, swinging from feeling too close to feeling uncomfortably vulnerable even feeling lost in a relationship and wanting to cut it off.

The biggest and most obvious issue I see in working with women with poor body image is that most of the information used to make decisions about relationships and well-being comes from external sources. A total and complete lack of trust in the body and the self’s ability to regulate is obvious in their decision making. There is usually a clear history in the development of this lack of trust with regard to personal, familial, and cultural messages that have been internalized. (A full discussion of these factors is beyond the scope of this article). A lack of trust in the body and in the self leads to poor listening and misinterpretation of the cues that emerge from within. After a prolonged period of not paying attention to these signals, one’s ability to understand and act in accordance to one’s own needs becomes weakened. The needs of others become the focus of too much energy and attention, often referred to as a boundary issue.

Boundaries can be physical, mental, or emotional. Clear boundary violations are easy to identify and are well known as something that is usually morally or legally wrong and/or clearly harmful to another person’s safety, integrity, or well-being. However, there is a huge gray area between what is ideal and what is harmful, and sometimes subtle violations can lead to hurt, shame, self-doubt, and low self-esteem. Violations usually happen by the person who is in a perceived position of power, as in the obvious case of an adult taking advantage of or imposing his or her personal needs on a child, or a doctor over a patient. But there are other relationships in which people can feel vulnerable and open to influence, harmful or positive. In these more subtle cases of power and vulnerability, the delivery of emotional (or more direct) messages about the self can also lead to unhealthy attitudes, self-doubt, and low self-worth. For example, people in positions of perceived or felt power who regularly directly or indirectly impose their opinions and choices can influence others to have doubts about their own choices.

A healthy boundary between people is a perceived buffering zone, whereby a felt sense of acceptable difference exists. Respectful support of differences by people in positions of perceived power and influence can help a person grow a strong sense of self and hence the ability to re-enact these perceived boundaries in other relationships. Good boundaries lead to healthy awareness of needs of the self and also positive choices that enhance the sense of self and relationships. Supporting an individual’s development involves a strong sense of self and honoring differences in others, an open attitude of acceptance and humility. A supportive stance involves allowing another person to feel, think, struggle, learn, and identify what is right for him or her without unwelcome advice or control tactics or too much distance or silence.

Recognizing and accepting differences, a supportive stance, involves sharing personal views and opinions with a sense of humility and recognizing that they are indeed personal and individual and should not be imposed on others. Offering help when it is asked for and refraining from taking over, micromanaging, or rescuing another person is important. Healthy boundaries lead to healthy relationships, and healthy relationships lead to healthy development of individuals.

Where the development of healthy boundaries has been challenged, an individual will often be overly dependent on external information and feedback to feel safe in their decision making and hence may have a poorly developed or negative sense of their own worth. In the case of the person with poor body image, this person becomes adept at information gathering, using perceived feedback to set expectations for the self that are often unrealistic. Perception itself is flawed and is often skewed towards negative, self-fulfilling ideas of self-worth. By engaging in a selection bias, people with low self-esteem will seek out and attend to cues that confirm what they think they know about themselves that is usually negative. In addition, they may believe it is possible to please others all of the time, which is clearly faulty.

Emphasis on interpretation and internalization of other people’s expectations is a recipe for impoverished self-worth. Living according to perceived notions of other people’s expectations often leads to repressed resentment, disempowerment, and disappointment. In some cases, the only way to assert the self is in a passive-aggressive manner, which is usually not received well by others. While indeed it is healthy to have a sense of social expectation and be kind and thoughtful towards others, these behaviors need to be enacted based on a clear and healthy sense of self, which requires an awareness of personal thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and needs and the differences between self and other. Healthy self and healthy relationships interrelate and influence the development of both. The development of clear boundaries has a positive impact on individuals and on others with whom they have relationships.

However, the responsibility for nurturing clear boundaries falls on individuals in a position of power of any kind. Most people in some domain of their lives are in a position to help or hinder the development of another person. It is important that we always be aware of the difference between our own needs and feelings and those of others and to refrain from overstepping and imposing or, conversely, mistakenly taking on responsibility for other people in a way that invalidates or challenges their own development.

Where boundaries were violated, or not properly developed, psychotherapy can help to personalize new ways of being that include more emotional self-awareness and self-regulation, as well as assertiveness and effective communication skills. Healthy boundaries and self-esteem are achievable goals.

Related articles:
Our Bodies/Ourselves
The Vanity Myth: Eating Disorders and Beauty
Self-Esteem and Standards

Value affirmations, also known as self-affirmations, are positive assessments of one’s abilities, traits, and personality qualities. Value affirmations can increase self-esteem, self-worth, and fulfillment of one’s needs. When an individual recognizes their own worth and has a strong sense of identity and autonomy, they are more willing to help others meet their needs. This relationship between self-worth and prosocial behaviors has been examined in the past, but until now, few studies have looked at the effect of value affirmations on prosocial attitudes in adolescents. Sander Thomaes of the Department of Psychology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands recently conducted a study that sought to determine if subtle value affirmations could have a short-term and long-term positive effect on adolescents’ prosocial behaviors and attitudes during the crucial years of identity formation.

The participants were required to write down things that they felt were positive attributes about themselves. They were instructed to identify traits or skills they had and briefly write about them. Six weeks later, the teens were again required to acknowledge their positive traits during a booster exercise. Three months after the first writing exercise, the researchers noticed that the participants who practiced the subtle value affirmations were more inclined to exhibit prosocial behaviors than the participants in the control group. The effect was most noticeable among teens who had exhibited antisocial behaviors prior to the exercise. Thomaes believes that the results occurred for several reasons. First, teens with a strong sense of identity are not subject to the stress and pressure of trying to assimilate to others. Also, the students participated in the exercise as they transitioned into secondary school. This critical time in relationship formation was positively, rather than negatively, influenced by the feelings of love and fulfillment gained from the writing exercise. Thomaes added, “In summary, the practical value of the present research is that it identified value affirmations as a promising intervention technique, and illustrated the possibility of helping students to adopt a more prosocial orientation by allowing them to reflect on their personal values—by providing them a stronger sense of who they are.”

Reference:
Thomaes, S., Bushman, B. J., De Castro, B. O., Reijntjes, A. Arousing “Gentle Passions” in Young Adolescents: Sustained Experimental Effects of Value Affirmations on Prosocial Feelings and Behaviors. Developmental Psychology 48.1 (2012): 103-10. Print.

According to a new study, individuals from Western cultures are more willing to express positive emotions than those from Eastern cultures. “All around the world, people should generally want to feel positive emotions and avoid feeling negative emotions,” said Yuri Miyamoto of the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Depending on individuals and situations, people sometimes try to down-regulate positive emotions. For example, when experiencing positive emotions, people low in self-esteem tend to become anxious and dampen their positive emotions compared with people high in self-esteem.” Miyamoto believes that cultural differences influence how people regulate their response to positive emotions. “In Western culture, the dominant cultural script is to maximize positive emotions and minimize negative emotions,” said Miyamoto. “Although positive emotions are generally considered to be more desirable and appropriate than negative emotions are across cultures, positive emotions are considered to be more desirable in Western cultures than in Eastern cultures, whereas negative emotions are considered to be more undesirable in Western cultures than in Eastern cultures.”

In an effort to provide support for this theory, Miyamoto interviewed East Asian and European American undergraduates after they recalled specific positive memories. He found that all of the participants wanted to experience and savor their positive emotions, but the East Asian participants were more prone to minimize the impact of the positive memory. Additionally, Miyamoto found that the East Asian students continued to experience less positive emotions than the European Americans even a full day after the event. “Overall, these results suggest that a dialectical cultural script not only underlies cultural differences in hedonic emotion regulation but also has consequences on subsequent emotional experiences.”  Miyamoto said, “This might have practical implications, for instance, for therapists.” He added, “Therapists may want to be aware that a lack of hedonic emotion regulation might not be necessarily indicative of a mental health problem for Asians. Instead, helping Asians strive to achieve a more ‘middle way’ in their emotion regulation strategies might lead to optimal mental health.”

Reference:
Miyamoto, Yuri, and Xiaoming Ma. “Dampening or Savoring Positive Emotions: A Dialectical Cultural Script Guides Emotion Regulation.” Emotion 11.6 (2011): 1346-347. Print.

In my neck of the woods the majority of therapists see mainly women (probably about 80% of their clients). Not so for me – more than half my clients are male, and when I work with a couple it is more often the men who initiate conjoint therapy. I think this is because many guys tend to become very uptight about their penis, what Paul Joannides (author of The Guide to Getting It On) calls “deadwood – the bummer in your pants”. Many of the men I work with are concerned about their system crashing when their pants are off!

I’m not comfortable diagnosing erection problems as “erectile dysfunction.” I hate labeling, and the “dys” implies failure and the overwhelming shame that goes along with it. I never click on the links that come with the numerous ads in my spam folder offering “your instant cure for impotence” (why are they sending these to ME?). Viagra can make a huge difference but masks the issues that cause the tissues to stay soft.

It’s not just men over 50 who have erection problems. They happen to men of all ages, from teens on up. Often erectile challenges crop up quite early in a sexual relationship when folks are just beginning to find their sexual rhythms together. Many guys are nervous that their performance is not up to par – they may require a few weeks or even months to find their groove. Especially when the couple moves from dating to mating in domesticity!

So gals, remember that expecting a guy to get it up straight away could be a big mistake – especially if you truly feel that he’s the man for you.

It can make for a big opportunity to look beyond sexual performance to deep bonding with each another. The danger is not the lack of an erection, but what each of you makes of it. When a woman needs her partner’s erection to validate that she’s desirable, a short term problem can quickly become long term.

Recently a 23 year old client described a typical scenario with his fiancée, with whom he has a long distance relationship. “So it’s Friday evening and we’re coming home from a romantic dinner. She says, ‘Wanna have sex when we get home?’ and I panic! I feel like all the blood is draining from my body. It’s this deep seated fear that I won’t be able to get an erection 30 minutes from now and it becomes self-fulfilling and self-defeating. How do I get control over my own body?”

He was extremely surprised when I suggested that trying to “get control” was precisely the problem. Viagra did indeed help with his attempts to stave off what he called “hydraulic failure.” But the blue pills were only part of the picture for this couple. In this kind of situation I usually sit down with both people separately as well as seeing them together. I call this my three-legged stool approach. When you eliminate one leg the stool often topples.

His fiancée had been blaming herself, “He obviously doesn’t find me attractive any more. I’ve gained some weight…” etc. Once I helped her to realize that his erection problems had nothing to do with her, it turned out that she wasn’t nearly as attached to a hard penis as he had imagined.

Viagra produced the requisite hard-ons but was no help at all when this couple couldn’t laugh together or let go of their attachment to having things go a certain way between the sheets. They needed to learn more about intimacy. Many couples require some help deepening their intimacy, and therapy can provide the tools.

Joannides again: “When it comes to making love, relationship issues trump d*** issues.”

Failure is a part of life. How an individual perceives their failure gives an indication of their overall sense of well-being and adjustment. Reflecting on past failures through imagery can provide even further detail into the one’s coping strategies. “As people recall and imagine life events, they often form mental images of those events and may do so from different visual perspectives,” said Lisa K. Libby of the Department of Psychology at Ohio State University. “With the first-person perspective, one sees the event from their own vantage point, as an actor in the scene; with the third-person perspective, one sees the event from an external vantage point, watching the self. This subtle phenomenological variable can have powerful effects on responses to pictured events, influencing judgment, emotion, and behavior.” Libby was interested to see if this shift in perspective was influenced by self-esteem, or if self-esteem played a role in how perspective affected one’s perception of failure. “One of the most well documented differences between low- and high-self-esteem individuals (LSEs and HSEs) is in how they react to failure: LSEs have more extreme negative reactions,” said Libby. “In particular, LSEs are prone to overgeneralize, a response style that is characterized by ‘a tendency to bring thoughts of personal inadequacy to mind and/or experience a reduction in the sense of self-worth.’”

Libby and her colleagues enrolled 83 undergraduate students in their study. The students were instructed to recall a failure they had experienced or to imagine one, from whichever perspective came naturally. The results revealed that LSE’s overgeneralized when they viewed their failures from the third-person. “In contrast, no such effects of self-esteem emerged when individuals pictured failure from the first-person perspective.” Libby added, “Further, among LSEs, picturing failure from the third-person, as opposed to first-person, perspective produced greater negativity in accessible self-knowledge and greater shame. Among HSEs, no such detrimental effects of third person imagery occurred—only beneficial effects.” Libby believes these results have important implications for understanding how clients cope with failure in their lives.

Reference:
Libby, L. K., Valenti, G., Pfent, A., & Eibach, R. P. (2011, November 7). Seeing Failure in Your Life: Imagery Perspective Determines Whether Self-Esteem Shapes Reactions to Recalled and Imagined Failure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0026105

Most people would agree that having a compassionate stance towards oneself is desirable. But how do you cultivate self-compassion?

Let’s quickly define the term. In this article, “compassion” means tenderhearted recognition of pain or distress, coupled with a desire to alleviate it. Each component of this definition—recognition, tenderheartedness, and a desire to alleviate distress—offers opportunities for cultivating compassion. This article will look at how the skill of “recognition” can help you grow self-compassion.

The ability to recognize your pain or distress requires that you embrace your limits. Each of us has inherent human limits, as well as personal limits that are rooted in our personalities, life experiences, knowledge, skill levels, and more.

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For example, one obvious human limit is that everyone needs sleep on a regular and consistent basis. A less obvious human limit is that everyone needs some amount of play. Other examples may include the amount of money you need in your savings account in order to feel prepared for a “rainy day,” your tolerance for grumpy individuals, the patience you have for slow drivers, and more.

Some people have a difficult time accepting these human and personal limits. This desire to have no limits stems from a variety of sources. One common reason is that people confuse limits, which are neutral facts, with weaknesses. To put it another way, some people (falsely) believe that if they have limits, they are somehow flawed, weak, insufficient, or not capable of great things—therefore, they deny the reality of their limits. Denying your limits does not enhance your worth or value, but does block you from having genuine self-compassion.

By recognizing that you have limits, you can notice when you have been pushed beyond them, and then deem your ensuing emotions as legitimate. For example, if you know one of your limits is that you need a break every three or four hours of work, and you have to work a full day without breaks, you will know it is legitimate to feel exhausted.

Understanding this emotional distress as legitimate sets you up for the next component of compassion, which is tenderheartedness. In order for you to have compassion towards your distress, you must recognize your distress as legitimate: worth noticing, worth caring about, worth turning towards, and worth alleviating. It is by acknowledging, accepting, and allowing your limits to exist that you bestow legitimacy onto your distress.

Another piece of “recognition” is granting yourself permission to accept your limits as they are in the here and now. Your limits are not what you desire them to be or think they should be. Some limits, such as how much sleep you need, cannot be changed. Other limits, like patience for slow drivers, can be changed—but regardless of the flexibility of the limit in question, if you’ve exceeded your limit, you are beyond it.

While it is entirely appropriate, and a sign of maturity, to work on expanding limits, you can’t do that by denying that you have exceeded a limit. Instead, practice noticing when you have passed a limit and acknowledging it, instead of judging yourself harshly for having it in the first place. Rather than berating yourself for being exhausted at the end of a work day that had no breaks, recognize that you are bone-tired not because you are incompetent, but because you eclipsed your work-break limit.

Self-compassion is grounded in the ability to recognize that you are in pain or distress and that this pain or distress deserves and requires attention. Recognizing your limits as they are in this moment in time, personally and as a human being, allows you to acknowledge the legitimacy of your pain and the ensuing need to attend to your distress. You are entirely capable of growing into a person with more self-compassion, and I encourage you in this work. If you desire or need the guidance of a trained professional, do not hesitate to reach out.

Why do people we care for sometimes engage in cruel behavior? What can we do about it?

Alfred Adler believed the ultimate goal for all human beings is to belong and feel connected to others. Unfortunately, when a person doesn’t find connection with others through kindness and good deeds, they become discouraged and feel inferior to others.

Adler said no one can tolerate these inferiority feelings, and so they over compensate by striving for superiority. One way to strive for superiority is to become a bully. Bullies who band together with other bullies in order to strengthen their sense of belonging are called gangs, terrorists, mafias, and racists.

Understanding Cruelty

Learning theory explains cruel behavior as being modeled. If a child is treated with emotional or physical abuse, the child learns to act that way: “monkey see, monkey do.” So a person, the child who has experienced being treated cruelly, learns to be cruel.

Still another reason for cruel behavior may be mental illness. There are some mental illnesses that manifest themselves with angry outbursts, violence, a lack of empathy, or difficulty understanding the impact of one’s behavior on others. There are also medical conditions, like brain injuries or Tourette’s syndrome, which can feature aggressive outbursts as a symptom.

There are a number of other theories that can explain cruelty, including genetic inheritance. Darwin thought behavior is related to survival, so violence could be seen as adaptive to our very survival—or violence may in the end be the reason humans ultimately fail to survive.

Responding to Cruelty

We can’t change another person’s actions, but we can change our own reactions. Here are some typical reactions to cruelty:

• Retaliation
• Anger and outrage
• Defensiveness
• Fear
• Avoidance
• Passive-aggressiveness
• Self-blame
• “Walking on eggshells”
• Lowered self-esteem
• Attempts to please

These are natural responses, but they never work to stop cruelty. In fact, any of the above reactions can make cruelty intensify. So what can we do to stop cruelty?

We can do as Rudolf Dreikurs said and “separate the deed from the doer.” A person who engages in cruelty engages in unacceptable behavior, but that does not mean the person is unacceptable. That does not mean we chastise, admonish, and punish the person. If we believe in Adler’s theory that all people have a thirst to belong, we can make an effort to accept the person while not accepting cruel behavior. We learn to be more inclusive and forgiving .

We have to feel good about ourselves when we hear cruel things. If we like ourselves enough, there’s no need to get defensive when nasty things are said. We can react as if it’s untrue nonsense that doesn’t deserve an ounce of our negative energy. If someone tells me my hair is pink, which it is not, I don’t have to argue. I may make a joke of it or say, “Thank you, pink is my favorite color!”

We have to take a stand against cruelty. No one deserves to be treated cruelly. It takes two people to fight and only one to stop it. Be the person to stop the nastiness. Refuse to fight. Say “I’m not going to fight with you,” and physically remove yourself.

We must tell ourselves over and over and over again, “I deserve to be treated kindly.”

Does knowing the source of the cruelty help stop the nastiness? I’m not sure. What I do know is that if we want cruel people to stop their behavior, we have to look within and change our own reactions to this heartlessness.

You look terrific today. I love what you’re wearing. You have such a nice smile. I like the sound of your voice.

Many people would rather eat a broccoli-flavored Popsicle than be on the receiving end of a compliment. Are you one of them? How did you feel when you read the previous paragraph? Receiving compliments – and also giving them – is hard when self-esteem has been injured. Low self-esteem tells us we’re just plain not good enough. And we imagine that if we can see it, so can everyone else.

If I believe I’m a dull and boring person, I will assume that you agree with me. So if you tell me that you think I’m fun and interesting, something feels very wrong. Either you’re being nice to spare my feelings, you don’t know me very well, or you’re just plain lying to me. Any way you slice it, your compliment makes me uncomfortable! (more…)

Which of the following statements are true?

People with high self-esteem:
A. Are convinced they can never be wrong
B. Don’t usually appreciate negative feedback
C. Think whatever they do is great
D. Couldn’t care less what others think of them
E. All of the above

Answer: None of these are true of people with genuine self-esteem! The truth is, the higher your self-esteem, the better you tolerate criticism and disappointment.

Let’s go over these again and get the real scoop on people with high self-esteem:

False: They’re convinced they can never be wrong
True: People with healthy self-esteem aren’t delusional; they know and accept that sometimes they mess up. (more…)

This article is part of a series that explores the ways that specific “clusters” of depression symptoms manifest to create different experiences of depression. The previous article in this series discussed the low-ambition experience.

Self-attack is my term for thinking mean, diminishing, insulting, and shaming thoughts about oneself. People often think of this as low self-esteem, but I think self-attack better describes what is actually going on. People who experience depression often think like this, but it is also possible to engage in self-attack and not meet the full criteria to be diagnosed with depression. Whether or not your self-attack is part of depression, this is a very painful, disabling, quality-of-life-reducing, and even life-threatening way to exist.

In fact, I believe self-attack is possibly the most common type of misery and symptom of depression. So many people frequently say things to themselves—whether they even notice or not—that diminish or shame them: “I’m a failure,” “I’m stupid,” “I’m lazy” “I’m unlovable,” (which may sound like “I’m fat and ugly”, or take other forms), “I’m a terrible parent, employee, friend, spouse…,” “I can’t do anything right,” I’ll never be good enough,” “I’m not worth what I have,” and so on.

It may surprise you that people attack themselves for good reasons. Many do it because it’s how they understand love—it’s how their parents “loved” them. Others think that shame is the only thing that motivates them. Once people learn to handle themselves this way, they practice it over and over and over, and learning to do something different is very difficult.

I often ask people who are plagued by self-attack, “What if someone were following you around all day saying these things to you?” Most people would yell at them, argue with them, stop them, fight back, or at least get away from them. But when it’s their own voice, they listen and believe it—and it’s devastating.

This can change. There are ways to change this on our own, and ways that psychotherapy can help. In either case, the key is to develop an internal parent who parents us the way good parents do.

How the Parenting We Experience Affects Our Brains
This is the most important thing to know about how to become a happy, well-functioning adult. Generally, when children are parented by caretakers who understand their feelings and needs and respond to them compassionately and protectively, children learn to respond similarly to themselves. Over time, children build skills in parenting from imitating their parents. This is how we know how to take care of ourselves as adults.

We now know from neurological research that we are hard-wired through special neurons to imitate our parents. Our brains learn how to act in the world by incorporating the things that we see our caretakers do when we’re children. It’s a great system when we have parents who act in nurturing, protective, and wise ways. It doesn’t work so well when our parents are abusive, neglectful, unhappy, or dysfunctional people themselves.

We also see that our brains are able to re-wire throughout our lives, so if this doesn’t go well when we’re children, we can usually still change what goes on in our brains when we’re adults. This is what psychotherapy and EMDR do, but there are also ways to work on this outside of therapy.

We also know that when we close our eyes and imagine something, the same pattern of functioning occurs in our brains as when we look at something. So if you see your best friend, then close your eyes and imagine your best friend, your brain will be doing the same thing. This makes guided imagery very powerful. Anything we do that involves imagining being parented, or parenting ourselves in a nurturing, compassionate, protective, wise, functional way, can actually help build the brain structure we need to be the adults we would have been if we’d had better parents.

The Experience of Parenting Yourself
There are many ways to do this, but let’s take a couple moments to try out one. Think of a problem that is upsetting you right now—nothing too upsetting. Now imagine you have a niece or nephew, four to ten years old, who comes to you for help because they are struggling with a similar problem. With the most nurturing, protective, compassionate part of yourself in charge, what would you say to them? Write this down.

What would you do for them? What do you think you could give them that would help them feel a little better? Try expressing your understanding of their feelings and needs. Normalize what they’re experiencing. Show them compassion. Offer forgiveness if they need it. Offer solutions or ways to get solutions. Offer to stay with them through the process. Comfort them any way you can imagine.

Of course, this exercise is just a beginning. But once you learn to do this, and can do it with yourself, you have access to one of the most powerful tools we as human beings have to be happy and functional.

Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy can help with this process in many ways. For example, my clients usual begin to heal when I treat them with respect, am very genuinely interested in them and amazed by who they are, reflect what I see as I come to understand what they’ve had to overcome and how, and encourage them without shaming them. Being consistent and compassionate, listening carefully and responding with insight,  is what parents are supposed to do with children so that they can develop into happy adults. Many parents don’t or can’t do it well—usually because their parents couldn’t do it with them.

By being treated this way, people learn to treat themselves and others that way. They learn to expect healthy relationships where they are treated with a similar respect. It helps people express the feelings they haven’t felt safe to express and to feel more capable of coping with painful feelings. It builds self-esteem and confidence. In this environment, depression usually recedes.

Self-attack is very destructive, but can be overcome by developing a compassionate, nurturing, protective parent inside.

As much as indulging in “retail therapy” can trigger a short-term giddy feeling, new research shows that some products actually work in the opposite manner: we buy them because they make us feel bad. A new study finds that beauty product marketing, in particular, makes female shoppers feel bad about their appearance by suggesting to women that without the product, they are not as attractive as they should be. The unrealistic appearance of air-brushed models has already been shown to have a negative affect on female self-esteem. But this study found that even packaging and advertisements without humans in the imagery had a negative psychological impact on female viewers.