Tuesday is for Therapists: Biweekly Essays

TIFT #62: Why is Emotional Awareness Important? tift Oct 25, 2022

 

The key to undoing psychotherapy’s divisiveness and silos is understanding the healing moment at the core of every therapy. You could call it a “moment of meeting” or an “ah-hah” moment, or a successful exposure session. What our field doesn’t know yet...

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TIFT #61: On Research and Clinicians tift Oct 19, 2022

 

This post is about difficulty clinicians have with researchers and vice versa.

  • An important but little recognized cause of divisiveness arises from contrasting standards of evidence and proof.
  • The conscience, including its standards, does not stop forming at age 5. Internalized...
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TIFT #60: The Inner Child Owns Our True Motivation inner child tift Sep 27, 2022

 

Summer is a time when toddlers warm one’s heart as they scale steps, run away from parents, and insist on what they want, period! Will and motivation are the same, and they start very young. Like lambs who get to their feet within minutes of brith, if we didn’t have strong...

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TIFT #59: Internal Family Systems–the "Self" ifs tift Sep 27, 2022

 

A reader asked if I could help “de-confuse” Internal Family Systems therapy. Doing so is very much part of the mission of these posts. IFS therapy, like most "branded" therapies, has developed its own set of constructs, and its explanations are, as is usual, self referential....

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TIFT #58: Internal Family Systems...? tift Sep 01, 2022
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TIFT #57: Deep Emotion, “The Dread,” Continued tift Aug 17, 2022
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TIFT #55: De-Confusing Psychotherapy tift Jul 19, 2022

Psychiatry residents are required to learn three therapies, CBT, Psychodynamic therapy, and Supportive therapy. While the goal is to gain a broad knowledge, incompatibility among these therapies leads to a lot of confusion. It doesn’t have to be that way because they do the same things in...

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TIFT #54: Therapeutic Challenge–"I can't sleep!" tift Jun 21, 2022
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TIFT #52: An Extraordinary Conference on Trauma inner child tift May 24, 2022

 

Today’s writing comes after attending a blockbuster online conference* organized by Tian Dayton, a psychodramatist, who spent 90 minutes with each of five leading thinkers on trauma: Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Stephen Porges, Ed Tronick, and Richard Schwartz. What made...

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TIFT #51: The Adolescent Mental Health Crisis, A Fresh View tift May 14, 2022

*Notice:  I would like to discuss therapist's most troublesome cases. Email or use the communication form.

The New YorkTimes recently published an article on the adolescent mental health crisis. They cited many factors but missed the center of the problem. Yes, puberty comes...

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TIFT #50: Notes on Anger tift Apr 26, 2022

This post started out with curiosity about why fathers are often antagonistic towards their children. There isn’t much talk about this often unjustified anger, so why is it common? One important answer came when that observation connected with the way self-made successes tend to look upon...

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TIFT #47 The Future of Psychotherapy tift Mar 15, 2022

 

Until very recently, psychotherapy’s future has been obscure. Just as in the early years, schools and orientations have continued to build their private troves of findings and techniques, while hoping to recruit new acolytes and ultimately triumph over the others. Every year, new...

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*** Residents and Fellows in Psychiatry Course enrollment ending Sunday***