“Boredom is inversely related to experience.”
Yalom & Leszcz
The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy
Viewing entries in
therapy
“I believe that anger is often a serious problem because people let it build up to high levels and then they are unable to express it. The release of so much anger would feel like a volcano exploding. It’s frightening both to you and others. It’s much more useful in the group to work with young anger, before it turns into red anger - for example, impatience, frustration, or very minor feelings of annoyance. Would you be willing to express in the group any minor flickerings of impatience or annoyance when they first occur - for example, irritation at the way I lead the group today?”
Yalom & Leszcz
The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy
One aspect of the importance of validation is that, it’s not that I am agreeing with what you are saying, but simply that I listened and heard you.
That you actually got some idea or feeling of yours heard by me.
That whatever words I used, my underlying message was: “I see you”.
And so this releases me from needing to be some wishy-washy agree-with-everyone person and allows me to be myself, to find my voice with which to say, “I see you”. Because the “I” in “I see you” needs to be present.
And the more I am authentically me, the more I can see you.
“…advice-giving may reflect resistance to more intimate engagement … in an attempt to manage relationships rather than to connect.”
Irvin Yalom and Molyn Leszcz, “The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy”
“In the growth model, the therapist sets the example of an active, learning, fallible human being who is willing to cope honestly and responsibly with whatever confronts [them], including [their] own vulnerabilities.”
Virginia Satir, “Conjoint Family Therapy”
There are always ever only four parts to a message:
I (the sender) am saying something (the message) to you (the receiver) in this situation (the context)
All messages are always requests by the sender for the receiver to do or say something or to not do or say something.
Silence is a message.
Virginia Satir, “Conjoint Family Therapy”
“The urge to fix, or deny, or to avoid a problem can be very intense, particularly when anxiety is high.”
Kerr and Bowen, “Family Evaluation”
“A person who feels rejected and blames it on others, usually is underemphasizing his own subjective distortion of reality.”
Kerr and Bowen, “Famlly Evaluation”
“The phrase ‘processing at the highest levels of mental functioning’ does not mean that people with high intelligence quotients (IQ) have more capacity for autonomous functioning. Objectivity and the associated autonomy from one’s environment derive from the capacity to recognise the difference between emotional, feeling, subjective, and objective responses and to act on that recognition.”
Kerr and Bowen, “Family Evaluation”
“Despite the limits of our objective understanding of human behaviour, we have not been especially constrained in terms of our willingness to passionately adhere to certain viewpoints about the nature of human problems. We demonstrate against war as if we undertand the cause of war. We could just as easily demonstrate against schizophrenia.
Our understanding of that phenomenon is about as limited as our understanding of war. We continually admonish ourselves for what we do or do not do and continually implore each other to be different. There appears to be an infinite supply of people available to tell us the “right” way to think and the “right” way to act.
The vast majority of the admonitions and directives that swirl around us are hopelessly entangled in subjectivity.
Depending on the phenomenon under consideration, we blame some thing, some person, some group, some whatever for its presence. We blame genes, chemicals, parents, schools, a variety of “bad” influences, and certain politicians for what goes wrong.”
Kerr & Bowen, “Family Evaluation”