You have to love yourself first, they say. Have you ever been asked if you love yourself? Since the beginning of my healing journey over a decade ago, I have interacted with more than ten counselors, therapists, and coaches. Every single one has asked me if I love myself. Or, they have explained to me that I have to love myself first. You have to love yourself first This could just be my trauma speaking,…
Do you love yourself? I know, it’s an extremely personal question. When a counselor first asked me this question I was taken aback. It’s offensive and puts one in a defensive position. And who likes feeling defensive? But therapy is about healing and I answered as best I could. Again, and again. I’m fairly certain every counselor, therapist, and coach I have worked with has asked me some form of this question. I do love…
The Purpose of Growth Embracing neurodiversity Have you ever felt like everyone understands the rules except for you? Me, too. And I’ve spent over a decade in therapy trying to figure it out. The main reason I sought help from therapists, counselors, and coaches is because I have always felt different. Like everyone else got the ‘Manual to Human Life’ except for me. As a result, I have always felt like an outsider. I think feeling…
Are you a religious person? An atheist? Agnostic? I consider myself to be agnostic. Mostly because I Don’t Know. If I had to choose any belief system to attach to, I would be a Darwinist. Natural Selection is the best explanation of the meaning of life I am aware of. When I think about ‘why we are here’, I can’t help but recognize how life persists through time and changes with each generation. In short, I…
Have you ever felt like the only person who didn’t receive a ‘How to Live Life’ handbook? Did you think everyone else understood what was going on except you? I’ve felt like that my whole life. And it isn’t that I don’t like myself. I love myself. Everything breaks down when I move from my ‘inner world’ to the ‘outer world’. I struggle to understand human interactions. I always feel like I’m different. And don’t…
If you are in therapy or considering psychoanalysis this episode is for you. This episode is also for you if you have been wondering about neurodivergence, autism, or ADHD. This is the beginning of what I think will be a long quest and potentially a new direction for this podcast and blog. In this episode, I lay out my experience with psychoanalysis and my recent foray into learning about ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and neurodivergence.…
I used to think there was something wrong with me. AsI mull over my recent late self-diagnosis of Level 1 Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) I feel the need to document my thoughts. This is the third of many posts to come on the subject. I started telling my neurodivergent story here and here and I think I’m going to be podcasting and writing about this a lot. My purpose in this essay is to illustrate the many ways that…
I ask this question as part of my journey to demonstrate that diversity is better than conformity. The idea, briefly, is that Life facilitates variety or diversity, yet we humans seem to resist this. We are all different, yet we do everything in our power to reduce this variation by trying to force each other to be the same. This journey was influenced recently by my exploration of neurodiversity and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD or…
Do you remember the term ‘coping mechanisms’? We used to hear this phrase often, usually when people were referring to our bad habits. Like, smoking is a coping mechanism for stress. Avoiding conflict is a coping mechanism for people who don’t want to get involved. Denial is a popular coping mechanism for avoiding hurtful truths. Though the term ‘coping mechanism’ has sort of gone out of style, we still talk about the same phenomenon. We…
Meditation for your middle-of-the-night worries Do you follow the weather? You know, do you check the forecast to see what it’s going to be like outside? Do you appreciate meteorologists? Or beat up on them? It probably depends on whether the forecasts are accurate. And they are accurate a lot of the time. Meteorologists go to school to learn how to be good forecasters. But most of us have zero training in predicting the future.…