BASELINE MOOD & AMPLIFIERS In the past, I’ve written about our baseline mood in life, imagining it as a flat line that represents how we can check in with where we are. This baseline is neutral, neither good nor bad; it is simply a starting point. As things come in and out of our awareness, our … More Fields of Awareness
RECALLING DREAMS Often, when I talk to people about dreams, people insist they don’t dream. I believe that research has shown that we all dream, and perhaps even that we must dream. Most people mistake not remembering dreams for meaning they don’t dream. Learning to remember our dreams usually takes some concerted effort. I learned early in my life … More DREAM ARCHETYPES: The Dream Stage
Awakening the Soul’s blueprint from Aristotle to Jung I’m thinking about the concept of stuckness in life, and how it’s challenging to recognize when we’restuck. We may be stuck in a certain job, a relationship, or a lack of a relationship. We may be stuck with a philosophy of life that is no longer serving us, and … More BECOMING UNSTUCK:
CONSTELLATIONS There is a term for a different way of seeing constellations in the night sky, dark constellations. Instead of seeing a constellation as those points of light that we have learned over millennia to think of as images, we can think of this differently, but it takes a shift in how we typically see things, at … More Dark Constellations
I do not claim to be great at meditation, my goal is to help people start with meditation, just as I try to guide them with journaling. To listen to an audio version of this article, please use the audio file below. I want to outline the steps here that I will get into in this article … More MEDITATION: Learning to Fold the Mind
I often use metaphors to describe the human mind to clients. One commonly used metaphor, originally from Freudian psychology, compares the mind to an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg above water, represents the conscious mind– the thoughts and perceptions we are aware of. Just beneath the water’s surface lies the preconscious — thoughts and … More Fractal Lattices of the Mind
A DREAM REVISITED I have written in the past about the Ouroboros symbol of the snake biting its tail before. This symbol had adopted me, or I had adopted it after a dream I had in 2017. Perhaps it was always there, buried in my unconscious. The dream I’ve written of before was at my … More Trust in the Return: Ouroboros revisited
When I began this article, it was just meant as a short guide to understanding something I emphasize with clients all the time. The work in session continues outside of sessions and can be summarized by three words, Tracking, Processing, and Integration. Now this is a simplification of the process of psychotherapy. It is meant … More Indiana Jones and the Inner Crusade
As a Jungian and Depth psychotherapist, one area I am interested in is finding new strategies to support us in mental health care. We all have coping mechanisms in our lives, and often our coping mechanisms are unhealthy or simply nonexistent. I use the word mechanisms because these are more like automatic ways we attempt to regulate ourselves. If a mechanism or habit is … More Journaling Tips
This article was originally published on medium.com on June 6, 2022. With the goal of collecting my articles in one place, I am re-publishing it here with an audio version above. For this father’s day inspired article I am borrowing my title as homage to the fictitious thesis written by Robin William’s character Henry/Parry in … More The Fisher King: A Mythic Journey for Modern Man: Part 1
An audio version of this article is below, if you would like to listen instead. A little over a year ago I wrote about grief and the intertwining of words, talking of May Sarton’s explanation that the gothic word Kara, means “lament” and is the root word for care. This intertwining of words means that lament, or … More PROEMNESIS: Folding with One’s Life
This article contains some spoilers for the Foundation series on AppleTV. I like to think that psychotherapy is in part, about trying to understand the narrative of one’s life. This is not such a simple thing because our narrative, as we explore it in psychotherapy, involves following the many threads that are woven into the fabric of our life. … More Mural of Souls
This article on the Hulu/Fx Series The Bear will have spoilers, it is not meant to be a review of The Bear, but an examination of why the Bear is good writing, and what it offers as it mirrors human relationships and experiences back to us. In particular, I will examine The Bear from a Jungian standpoint of … More The Bear: A Modern Fairy Tale
TRIGGER WARNING: Although I write at times about grief and sometimes pair my writing with a film or series that surrounds this subject, this series is different from a series like Lost Ollie on Netflix for instance. I am NOT recommending The Third Day as a series for those who may be treading the rough waters … More GRIEF: EXILED TO AN ISLAND
In my last article on grief, I wrote about living below our baseline, and talked about how even our dopamine level may be very low when we are grieving the loss of a loved one. That article can be viewed in the link below. AMPLIFIERS AND ROGUE WAVES I want to talk about how trauma and … More GRIEF: TRAUMA AS AN AMPLIFIER
As a psychotherapist, I sometimes talk to people about how grief and trauma may appear in their lives. Most of the time therapists speak of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who wrote about the five stages of grief, but this is not something I feel the need to explore today. In part because people may feel lost trying to figure … More Grief: Living beneath our Baseline
The fairy tale Rapunzel has been told and retold for a long time and given different morals or what I call the takeaway from various writers. The story was retold again recently, in the Victor LaValle’s Changeling in episode 4 which appeared on Apple Tv. In this episode it is Cal who is telling Apollo this fairy … More Rapunzel & The Changeling
There is a particular children’s book that I read to my sons when they were little, that still resonates with me now that my oldest is grown, and my youngest is nearly grown up. Wolves in the Walls, by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Dave McKean may fall under the umbrella of what I might … More FAIRY TALES: Neil Gaiman’s WOLVES in the WALLS
An audio version of this article is below, if you would like to listen instead. When I was in grad school I was watching the film, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi late one night as I was finishing up papers that were due. While listening to the film, I heard them quote Joseph Campbell. I … More ALL THE GODS ALL THE HEAVENS ALL THE HELLS ARE WITHIN YOU
An audio version of this article is below, if you would like to listen instead. THE MYTHICAL JOURNEY The film Ad Astra (2019) with Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones begins with Roy McBride (Pitt), an astronaut who is doing work outside of the International Space Antennae. It is an umbilical cord that extends from Mother Earth into … More AD ASTRA: A Father Son Film
An audio version of this article is below, if you would like to listen instead. As we are approaching Father’s Day, I wanted to write another series of articles about fathers and in particular father-son relationships. This article will explore the film Field of Dreams, (1989) with Kevin Costner as Ray,James Earl Jones as Terence Mann, Ray … More Field of Dreams: A Father-Son Film
American writer Louise DeSalvo writes about the connection between caring and grief in her book, Writing as a Way of Healing where she explores the origin of the word care, writing: When we think of the transitional time for our children who may be passing that threshold into adulthood I think of this connection between grief and caring and additionally how it’s entwined with the … More Individuation: Entanglement of Grief & Caring
In my last article I wrote about how Pamela Anderson in her Netflix documentary, Pamela, A Love Story, discussed Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson who she quoted as saying, “romantic love is not sustainable.” I discuss why the gist is right, but not fully accurate. Importantly, I question whether this idea that romantic love is unsustainable, may be overshadowed by … More MYTHS OF ROMANTIC LOVE: The Fairy Tale Happy Ending
My interest as a Depth psychotherapist is studying where myth and fairy tale imagery bubbles up to the surface touching our waking world, and exerting its influence on our individual and collective psyches. At least two expressions of this I came across recently declared that romantic love is dead, never existed, or is unsustainable. In this article, I … More MYTHS OF ROMANTIC LOVE: The Fairy Tale of Pamela and Tommy
The stigma of psychotherapy is something many still struggle with (admittedly women too), but I want to explore a little why it may be difficult for men to be vulnerable and admit they could use some help in this life. I wonder why it is that men would rather wait until the ship is sinking, and their … More Why are men ashamed of psychotherapy?
Follow Your Myth 