change therapy

may is mental health month. it might be useful to think about what we’re talking about here. what is mental health? there are many definitions out there. years ago i wrote a paper about my definition but i can’t find that paper anymore. so why not try again. let’s see … mental. health. mental mental [...]

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recently, i have had numerous little conversation bits on twitter about meaning and meaning making. rather than expound on my ideas here, i’d like to invite you to reflect on the questions below and/or the words of others who have thought about the topic. maybe you’ll come up with your own questions. maybe we can [...]

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last month we had a conversation about acceptance, and i’d like to continue it. evan said, “i think changing the world can be valuable, too.” maybe there is no either/or between acceptance and making changes. to accept comes from the latin, meaning to receive (as in “UPS delivered a parcel for you, and i accepted [...]

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a few semi random musings on parents … through my parents, a lot of challenges came my way. but through them, i also learned how to build the tools to overcome those challenges. for example, creativity was highly encouraged. parents irrevocably shape most of the way we view the world. some of that can be [...]

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after reading this morning that BC philosopher and counsel to psychologists sydney banks had died, i thought i’d write a bit about him.  alas, i cannot find in myself any interest in his work.  he talked about the three principles of mind, thought and consciousness. if there’s a sydney banks fan among you out there, [...]

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what is guilt? we usually think that guilt is a feeling. however, it is not a primary emotion like fear or happiness, sadness or even shame. it is more complex. when joe feels guilt over having forgotten his and mary’s wedding anniversary, a number of things happen. he needs to have a basic concept of [...]

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the other day someone said that i was a picky eater. this was after telling them that i can’t have any dairy products in the morning – it gives me bad cramps. i was hurt that i was called picky and defended myself by saying that it wasn’t that i was rejecting their food, or [...]

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a few years ago, i put together this list of definitions to answer the question: what is learning? acquisition of knowledge · gain some understanding that we have been able to commit to memory · a seal of approval on particular thoughts and feelings that we want to stay with us in the future · [...]

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“Study Shows Nearly Half Of Eating Disorder Patients Self-Harm” this is the title of an article in medicalnews. it made me stop and think because it shows a certain line of thinking about

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in my last blog entry i talked about how the words “i don’t know” often stem not from not-knowing, but from information overload. the knowledge gets buried in a mass of (often unpleasant) information. the second reason why we sometimes feel we don’t know the solution to our problems is because we might have a [...]

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“i don’t know …” when we’re confronted with a difficult issue, we often come up with these words, “i don’t know”. “why do i always end up drinking more than i wanted? i just don’t know.” “i wish i could change how i talk to my son. we always seem to end up fighting. i [...]

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okay, so let’s see what we can make of all the information and opinions we’ve gathered in the last few days about the subject of “making” someone feel something. in the first part, we concluded that it’s not possible to make anyone feel anything, as evidenced by the fact that when a teacher says something [...]

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(the following entry is a retreat of something i posted back in january. when i transferred my blog over from blogger, for some reason none of the material from january made it over here. so i’ll post some of the posts anew.) a while ago i skulked around the internet again, using wordtracker to find [...]

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the other day i received an email from a friend. it started with the ominous “please read and pass on”. immediately my antennae went up; in my experience, 95% of such emails turn out to be hoaxes. the friend of mine who passed the email on to me is an ex teacher, has an excellent [...]

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okay, here is something that i absolutely have to get off my chest: what goes on in the head of spammers? and what, specifically, is the process of coming up with these amazing names, like abhorrence p. versifying amateurism g. causal ambiguities u. magnetos annihilation j. silliness arnulfo mcleod (more at the end of this [...]

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