You don’t need IFS or EMDR
The Music Theory of Psychotherapy As a white dude in his early twenties with a penchant for melancholy, at some point, I had to learn guitar. This seems to be genetic destiny for my people, like how homing pigeons instinctively know how to find True North. At some point our DNA activates and we know […]
Lost in the Alphabet Sauce Of Therapy Approaches
In our last entry, we examined why the dominant therapeutic paradigm of technique-focused learning and approach is incomplete and inadequate. I likened techniques to musical scales—useful, but incomplete without knowing the rhythm and key. Rather than just focus on techniques, I’m arguing (along with a lot of research, bee tee dubs) that one needs to […]
Everyone’s Meditating But Me
Aftermath: I’m having lunch with my supervisor, a meditation and Buddhism enthusiast, someone particularly interested in the fusion of psychotherapy and meditation. I am present with him and in my day-to-day life in a way that is both different from before and yet paradoxically noteworthy and not-special at the same time. He tells me he […]
Meditation, Disassembled.
Day 2: I am somehow surviving. Waking up at 4 AM. No speaking, no eye contact, no journaling. I have never looked forward to meals so much—they’ve become one of the only remaining distractions in this new austerity. The food is all recognizable but Northern California hippie-ified: yogurt toppings include stewed prunes and toasted sesame […]
How Meditation Became Medicine
Day 3 S.N. Goenka, the teacher of this technique, offers only the meditation technique of “the body scan.” A copper-skinned bullfrog of a man with a sonorous baritone voice, he instructs us to scan from our feet to “the top of de head” over and over. The amount of sensations that reveal themselves is staggering—numbness, […]
The Promise and Limits of Meditation Research
Day 5: My capacity to notice small details has increased exponentially, for better and for worse. I am acutely aware of my body in a way I’ve never experienced. I can track with minute precision the moment a thought arises, the way it causes a ripple of physiological impact, the way that shapes the subsequent […]
When Meditation Goes Very, Very Wrong
Day 6: I cycle through every meditation posture I can think of. I have amassed a pillow fort of props and cushions, desperate to help myself make it through each session. I fear I am doing permanent damage to my knees. The physical challenge heralded by my first practice was worse than I had feared. […]
Why you should or shouldn’t meditate
I’m on day nine of this retreat, and honestly, I cannot wait to be done. The chaos from earlier this week has settled into something manageable—not because I’ve transcended anything or broken through the walls of the Self to become one with the cosmos. I don’t levitate or see mystical lights dancing behind my eyelids. […]
How I Actually Use Meditation in Therapy Now (or don’t)
Aftermath: I’m having lunch with my supervisor, a meditation and Buddhism enthusiast, someone particularly interested in the fusion of psychotherapy and meditation. I am present with him and in my day-to-day life in a way that is both different from before and yet paradoxically noteworthy and not-special at the same time. He tells me he […]
How to Get the Most Out of Therapy
Therapy can be confusing. It’s expensive. It’s time-consuming. It’s also weird and confusing. The diversity of approaches is staggering – IFS, CBT, DBT, Somatic, Psychoanalytic, on and on. Anyone you talk to has tremendously strong opinions about what works and what doesn’t, what’s “correct” practice and what’s borderline abusive. The narcissism of minor differences reigns, […]
