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Care of the Soul
completed: 02 Jul 2015Sometimes we may need to stop growing. We may need to backstep and regress. Growth, so often these days assumed automatically to be a goal in psychology and in life in general, can become a sentimental value that overlooks the necessity of such things as stagnancy and slippage. The child is not honored if we always expect him to grow up, because a child is not grown up.
I was obsessed with growth even at the expense of being violent to myself, and this book altered the way I think about caring for myself.
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Memories, dreams, reflections
completed: 06 Jul 2015Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a whole.
This was the book that got me deeply interested in psychoanalysis, and made me aware of the power of the unconscious.
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On Becoming a Person
completed: 22 Apr 2016If I can create a relationship characterized on my part: by a genuineness and transparency, in which I am my real feelings; by a warm acceptance of and prizing of the other person as a separate individual; by a sensitive ability to see his world and himself as he sees them; Then the other individual in the relationship: will experience and understand aspects of himself which previously he has repressed; will find himself becoming better integrated, more able to function effectively; will become more similar to the person he would like to be; will be more self-directing and self-confident; will become more of a person, more unique and more self-expressive; will be more understanding, more acceptant of others; will be able to cope with the problems of life more adequately and more comfortably.
What does it even mean to become a person? Have we ever contemplated this? This book transformed how I view therapy and human psychology.
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A General Theory of Love
completed: 14 Mar 2016Attachment security continues to be a powerful predictor of life success. The securely attached children have a considerable edge in self-esteem and popularity as high school students, while the insecurely attached are proving excessively susceptible to the sad ensnarements of adolescence—delinquency, drugs, pregnancy, AIDS. Almost two decades after birth, a host of academic, social, and personal variables correlate with the kind of mother who gazed down at her child in the cradle.
A friend recommended me this book, and my life was changed permanently, the way I love and want to be loved, the way I see and understand people.
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The Body Keeps the Score
completed: 11 Apr 2018Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.
This is the book to read on the paralysing effects of trauma.
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Healing Developmental Trauma
completed: 17 Dec 2017“It is now understood that one of the most significant consequences of early relational and shock trauma is the resulting lack of capacity for emotional and autonomic self-regulation. Shock and developmental trauma compromise our ability to regulate our emotions and disrupt autonomic functions such as breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and sleep.”
"How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship"
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Complex PTSD
completed: 08 Jul 2018Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions to the overwhelming feeling-states of being an abused/abandoned child. These feeling states can include overwhelming fear, shame, alienation, rage, grief and depression. They also include unnecessary triggering of our fight/flight instincts…In an emotional flashback you can regress instantly into feeling and thinking that you are as worthless and contemptible as your family perceived you. When you are stranded in a flashback, toxic shame devolves into the intensely painful alienation of the abandonment mélange — a roiling morass of shame, fear and depression…While the origin of Cptsd is most often associated with extended periods of physical and/or sexual abuse in childhood, my observations convince me that ongoing verbal and emotional abuse also causes it. Many dysfunctional parents react contemptuously to a baby or toddler’s plaintive call for connection and attachment. Contempt is extremely traumatizing to a child, and at best, extremely noxious to an adult.
"If you felt unwanted, unliked, rejected, hated and/or despised for a lengthy portion of your childhood, trauma may be deeply engrained in your mind, soul and body."
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My Age of Anxiety
completed: 24 Nov 2015view meta | in 2 collections | 0 responsesBut the amygdala, operating with lightning-fast acuity beneath the level of conscious awareness, perceives the distressing faces and flares in the fMRI. Some subjects report feeling anxiety at these moments—but they can’t identify its source. This would seem to be neuroscientific evidence that Freud was right about the existence of the unconscious: the brain reacts powerfully to stimuli that we are not explicitly aware of.
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The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions
completed: 09 Oct 2015view meta | in 2 collections | 0 responses“we can begin to understand why it is that many patients with inflammatory diseases may also experience depression at different times in their lives. Thus, the psychosomatic notion that inflammatory and allergic diseases originate in a disordered upbringing and repressed emotions can now be reexamined in more precise physiological terms.”
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Owning Your Own Shadow
completed: 12 Sep 2015view meta | in 1 collections | 0 responsesOne such unexpected source is our own shadow, that dumping ground for all those characteristics of our personality that we disown. As we will see later, these disowned parts are extremely valuable and cannot be disregarded. As promised of the living water, our shadow costs nothing and is immediately—and embarrassingly—ever present. To honor and accept one’s own shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It is whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime.