All You Want to Know About Therapy

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For Therapy to work, you must have a good connection…

and that’s why        

self-help books don’t work.

Our emotional lives, with all their emotional cues, are on board before any verbal or conceptual ability appears. And the consequences of these experiences are unaffected by intellectual efforts to change them.

That may be because emotions, and our most powerful “memories”, seem to be stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. And yet our thinking (or intellectualizing) is a left-hemisphere activity.

Books and conversations about why we act the way we do are certainly helpful, but they don’t seem to be enough to effect real changes in our interactions with the world and ourselves.

So how can we make real changes?

Only by recreating as much as possible the initial conditions in which the processes were created in the first place.

We are born wired to seek connection with others. 

You may have heard that your first loves (parents) create the models for every relationship there after. They become our relationship-blueprints. Our experiences, especially with our caregivers, will become unconscious, intuitive memories that form the basis of our emotional life.

So if you want to change the deep, unconscious patterns that define your reactions to life’s events, you need an environment that can mirror those earliest connections, while, ideally, re-writing them (“neuroplasticity”). The result is a more harmonious existence in your current situations.

A powerful way to do this is through a positive connection with a trained professional (i.e., a psychotherapist). Good therapy aims to create a safe connection with the client so that emotional healing can take place.

And there is more to it, of course. Techniques that require direct experience have proven effective, such as working with the “inner child” , mindfulness meditations, Journaling and others. I believe these techniques work because they access the right-brain.

When my client opens up to me as much as they can in a session, I know that we are accessing the right-brain. In doing so, the chances for authentic change become possible.

If you’d like to contact me, have a question, or want to chat, please click the link:

Work and contact info

call, 801-252-6754 (private voicemail, 24/7),

or Email me:  JaneLCSW@gmail.com

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TxGoldCouchBeachCTB

Stay in Love by Staying Out of Fantasy

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Old CoupleThere is hard science behind the notion that true love can last a lifetime. A neurological study from Stony Brook University revealed that couples who experience “romantic love” long-term, keep their brains firing in similar ways to couples who have just fallen in love.They defined “romantic love” as characterized by “intensity, engagement and sexual interest.”

If lasting love is an attainable goal, then what’s getting in the way of achieving it? What keeps so many people from maintaining that excitement and closeness they once felt with a partner?

One psychologist would argue that many couples can preserve “romantic love” by avoiding the trappings of a “Fantasy Bond.”

The fantasy bond is a concept developed by psychologist Robert Firestone. It describes an illusion of connection a couple forms that replaces real acts of love, affection, and relating. A fantasy bond exists when a couple starts to forego their individually and lose the “me” to become a “we.”

The most remarkable sign that a fantasy bond has been formed is when one or both partners give up vital areas of personal interest, their unique points of view and opinions, their individuality, presumably to become a ‘unit’, or a ‘whole’. The attempt to find security in an illusion of merging with another leads to an insidious and progressive loss of identity in each person.

According to Dr. Firestone, people have a tendency to reenact the defensive styles developed in childhood. Once old defensive styles are triggered,the individual acts with this defensive posture, blocking the development of a genuine, unique relationship with the partner.

The fantasy bond allows us to feel secure and connected to someone else, while numbing us against some of the more painful emotions that love stirs up, such as fear of loss, memories of hurt, longing, or rejection.

Unfortunately, we cannot selectively block out pain without also blocking out joy.

Without knowing it, couples tend to set up routines and fit each other into roles rather than face the unpredictability and inherent challenges that come with maintaining passion, excitement, and a deep sense of fondness for another person, separate from themselves.

So what are some signs that you may be in a fantasy bond?

• Less eye contact
• Breakdowns in communication
• Less frequent affection and routinized lovemaking
• Loss of independence
• Speaking as one person, overusing “we” statements
• Using everyday routines as symbols of closeness, in place of being emotionally close
• Engaging in role-determined behaviors (i.e., as father, wife, breadwinner, decision-maker), rather than developing yourself based on your personal goals and interests
• Using customs and conventional responses as substitutes for real closeness and relating

If you notice that your relationship has some of these qualities, don’t despair! A fantasy bond exists on a continuum. It isn’t a black or white, good or bad label for your relationship. Once you realize that you have fallen into some form of a fantasy bond, it is possible to reemerge as a happier, more in-love version of yourself.

To do this, you must first investigate and explore how your old wounds were triggered. Therapy can help you with that. It’s often hard to discover on your own. Then you can engage in behaviors that encourage real and meaningful contact with your partner, i.e.,try the opposite of what’s on the above list.

Ultimately, you can become the person you want to be in your relationship—minus the fairytale, but with a much happier ending.Stay in Love by Staying Out of Fantasy.

Some excerpts from PsychAlive: http://www.psychalive.org/stay-in-love-by-staying-out-of-fantasy/