For this post, I will list the most common disruptive communication mechanisms/patterns that people use when receiving another person’s emotions. People come into my office all the time asking for assistance with communication, loneliness, and lacking connection. In other posts I have described what ‘to do’ when your goals are to be compassionately empathetic – for this post, […]
Category Archives: Emotions
Fear, Competence, Values and Anger in Parenting Rambunctious Children
This post will investigate how our perceived parenting competence impacts our fear and resulting emotional and behavioral reactions. We will focus on how fear can lead us into parenting interventions that are not consistent with our parenting values. I was offering a parenting coaching intervention in a couples context the other week and I arrived […]
Feelings are important in growing consciousness – Existential and Mindfulness Based Emotional Reflection Therapy
Accepting your emotional reality and holding an awareness of those feelings helps us to be conscious of how we are currently being influenced … understanding this influence opens up the possibility to use reflection to guide your actions towards your best interests and towards the most ideal interaction patterns.
Reflection and Psychotherapy
Reflection is the ability to hold a stimulus in the present moment without reacting automatically. In a state of reflection, a person can notice or observe the presence of a thought or feeling that they are experiencing… noticing or observing can then lead to two different reflective actions; either the person can continue to observe […]
Relationship Help | “My partner says that I don’t listen” | how to meet the emotional needs of your partner
I am going to talk to you about what you should be paying attention to and what you should not be paying attention to while trying to become a better listener in your relationship.
Compassionately Assertive – Maintaining Boundaries without Aggression – using empathy and clarity to get your needs met
Quick summary: This post will explain how to use empathy, self-awareness, and assertiveness to ensure that your personal boundaries are respected by others. Often we have a difficult time when an instance calls for decisive action in order to help the environment to respect our individual boundaries. Some react with aggressiveness that protects a person’s own boundaries yet often violates another person’s boundaries in the process. Other people are wary of engaging with conflict and therefore choose to not defend themselves or they choose to use an avoidance strategy. I am going to suggest that it is possible to be both assertive and compassionate when helping another person to stop violating your boundaries.
Empathy building exercise – learning to be empathetic – increasing emotional understanding
Quick summary: In difficult times often we really want someone to ‘just be there for us’ and to ‘show compassion and understanding for what we are dealing with’ as opposed to offering pragmatic solutions or taking initiative to ‘fix it.’ In short people very often simply want empathy and they can feel worse, alone, or misunderstood if their confidant goes into problem solving mode. In this post I will give you a methodology as to how to offer empathy to a person. The process might not feel genuine at first, but by understanding and utilizing this technique you will eventually grow a more sincere empathetic ability.
Understanding how your Values impact the choices that you make
In this context I will use the word ‘values’ as having the following definition – a ‘value’ is an emotional state or character attribute that you desire to live within or to be defined by; If you value feeling in control you will make behavioral choices that you believe will lead you to acquiring the relevant emotional disposition… if you value being defined as independent you will make decisions that you believe will assist you in displaying that attribute. By understanding our values we can get a better understanding of what is driving us to engage in certain behavioral patterns. As we gain a greater understanding of our values we can free ourselves to either change an ‘outdated’ or otherwise unwanted value, or we can come up with new behaviors that will help us to arrive at the desired value with fewer consequences. Often times we find that we are stuck in a pattern of behaviors that are not helping us to achieve a desired value.
What is Transference in psychotherapy – placing emotional reactions related to another onto the therapist
Quick summary: Transference = when you transfer an emotion meant for one person onto a different person. Transference is unconscious = the person is not aware that they are doing it (though they can be made aware). Transference happens in psychotherapy when a client places an emotional reaction that is related to someone in his or her personal life onto the therapist (ex. the client claims to feel belittled by the therapist when in actuality the client feels belittled by his/her father… transference can occur before the therapist has a chance to “do” anything to incite the given emotional reaction). The client believes that the therapist is the source of their emotional reaction when in fact the emotion has nothing to do with the therapist, as the therapist was generally not present when the emotion was initially created.