Category: c) Trauma & healing

a) My Personal Fav Posts, b) Psychology, c) Trauma & healing, d) Saving the World: Environmental and other Challenges of this Age of Humanity, e) The Meaning of Life and related thoughts

167) Thanks Mom: Intergenerational Wisdom, Part 2 — Friendship and Community

by claradolderman

I believe that Wisdom is about sharing as the default, trusting as the default, being open as the default, and putting your heart on your sleeve, as the default. Obviously, sometimes you will get burned for this, and in those instances, you need to pull back, have good boundaries, and be willing to value yourself…

a) My Personal Fav Posts, b) Psychology, c) Trauma & healing, e) The Meaning of Life and related thoughts

166) Thanks Mom: Intergenerational Wisdom, Part 1 — Professor Dolderman

by claradolderman

These next two posts are the most difficult pieces of writing I’ve ever made public. Definitely the most personal (which is saying a lot!! lol….). The fact that this was so difficult to write is kind of weird, because these posts are entirely positive. (I mean, there’ll be some negative stuff in here probably,…

b) Psychology, c) Trauma & healing, d) Saving the World: Environmental and other Challenges of this Age of Humanity

164) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 17: “Feeling Seen”

by claradolderman

As with our discussions of both Competence and CONTEXT, the fact that social validation is important to us, is pretty obvious. Of course it feels good to be validated, to be accepted, to feel “Seen”! We’ve known that since we were kids and needed, very deeply, for people to pay attention to us. We all…

c) Trauma & healing, d) Saving the World: Environmental and other Challenges of this Age of Humanity

141) Coming Full Circle: Part 1 — Me, this blog, Pink, and a Scathing Diatribe against The System, maaaan

by claradolderman

I feel really, really grateful for you all. All the people who have been reading this and sharing thoughts, a whole community of people who share ideas on Facebook especially and in comments here — it’s just awesome to have experienced all this. Blogging is (for me anyway, lol….) a pretty personal thing, like writing…

b) Psychology, c) Trauma & healing

140) Wow…weird…. I healed: Part 4 – Backlash (or, as my therapist likes to say, “Shame is a tricky bastard”)

by claradolderman

If you have a history of trauma, addiction, self-harm, shame — you know, fun things like that — then as you experience growth and healing, you will also likely experience the “backlash” that follows, and can slam you right back down to the bottom. It’s awfully demoralizing, especially if you don’t know what’s happening. You…

a) My Personal Fav Posts, b) Psychology, c) Trauma & healing

139) Wow…weird…. I healed: Part 3 – The Spontaneous, Seemingly-Magical Transformation of Motivation

by claradolderman

I do, sincerely and excitedly, want to share my story of healing in detail. It’s going to take some time to fully put it together. In the meantime, for this post, I want to share one of the most – stunning – outcomes of this whole experience. Which, in short, is the “spontaneous transformation of…

b) Psychology, c) Trauma & healing

138) Wow…weird. I healed: Part 2 — The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Self-Improvement

by claradolderman

It is important to recognize (as I obliquely alluded to in the previous post, #137), that when you are “working on self-improvement” in whatever way you are, even “failure” isn’t failure. I truly mean that, not as some cliché but as a deeply-felt truth. Because “working on self-improvement”, even when it “fails”, keeps you open,…

b) Psychology, c) Trauma & healing

137) Wow…weird. I healed: Part 1 – The struggle and the miracle

by claradolderman

Hello Friend, and welcome back! If you have been following my “From Shitty-ness to Well-ness” series on healing from trauma, I have to apologize to you! I had intended to post the final part of the “Rational Self-Analysis” section already, like, months ago. But wouldn’t you know, the strangest thing happened. As odd as it…

b) Psychology, c) Trauma & healing

136) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 15: FACT Exercise #2 — Choosing Meaning over Control

by claradolderman

We’ve talked about the self-defeating nature of our Shit Avoidance Strategies, especially over the long term. Not that they’re totally, 100% bad; they can even be life-savers! But long-term, Shit Avoidance doesn’t help us rise to the challenges of life, fix the problems we’re facing, accomplish our meaningful goals, or grow as a person. At…

b) Psychology, c) Trauma & healing

135) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 14: FACT Exercise #1 — Focusing

by claradolderman

I’ll never forget the first time I looked at the moon through a telescope. I was in my early 30s, and after having looked at the moon regularly for three decades, it was like I was seeing it for the first time. The vague spots my eyes could see on their own were now cliffs…

b) Psychology, c) Trauma & healing

124) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 10: Finding out who you really are: Rational self-analysis

by claradolderman

The predominant workhorse of the psychological healing world is a family of therapeutic practices and exercises centered on what I call “rational self-analysis”, or more colloquially, finding out “who you really are”. This journey towards “authenticity” is central to most forms of talk therapy, and what most people likely think of when they think of…

b) Psychology, c) Trauma & healing

121) When you feel you’ve been turned into a newt

by claradolderman

“Waking up this morning, I smile;24 brand new hours lay before me;I vow to live fully each moment,And to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” — morning gatha; Thich Nhat Hanh * * * * * So, I started this practice about 20 years ago, after reading one of TNH’s books. The…

c) Trauma & healing

120) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 9: Healing, and the Doctrine of Original Awesomeness

by claradolderman

The essence of all three approaches to healing that I am planning to cover is the same. It is rooted in what I have previously called the Doctrine of Original Awesomeness (https://dandolderman.org/2020/09/22/88-jordan-peterson-part-7-psychology-at-the-ending-of-the-world-subsection-2-the-doctrine-of-original-awesomeness/). This, in short, is the basic starting point of Humanism, and is increasingly recognized within the bio-psycho-social sciences as “the way we are”.…

c) Trauma & healing

119) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 8: Oops, I fucked up

by claradolderman

I made a mistake in my last post, and it has caused me some consternation. More accurately — I made a mistake in my last post, and it has activated a set of sub-routines in my consciousness-program, or “parts of my self”, that function to erase me from existence. Yikes. What was this oh-so-terrible mistake? …

c) Trauma & healing

118) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 7: Resistance, the sneaky bastard

by claradolderman

In this series on healing, we have been discussing the “problem” of resistance, and noting how people’s deeply internalized self-feelings and beliefs can be so strong, so reactive, so “resistive” that they are able to forestall, sabotage or otherwise prevent the person from truly walking the path to healing. In other words, far too often,…

c) Trauma & healing, g) And Now For Something Completely Different

112) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 6: Backlash, resistance, and dissociation

by claradolderman

Why am I making such a big deal about Backlash & resistance? It’s because resistance, learning to feel into it, to approach it and eventually learn from it and harness it, IS much of the healing path. If you want to heal, or “grow” as a person, then you are working with resistance. Inevitably. …

c) Trauma & healing

111) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 5: What Backlash can teach us about ourselves

by claradolderman

Backlash, as we were discussing, is a major impediment to healing. I believe the technical term is “pain in the ass.” Backlash causes so much bloody suffering, causes us to perpetuate our own misery, undermine our goals, mess up our relationships, underperform in our careers, neglect our health, and transmit our dysfunctions onto the next…

c) Trauma & healing

110) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 4: Healing, when you hate yourself, think you don’t deserve it, want to die, believe it’s impossible anyway, avoid doing what you most need, and constantly sabotage yourself

by claradolderman

When you start to turn towards “healing”, you will very likely experience a backlash. Probably lots of backlashes. You and Mr/Ms Backlash are going to become really great friends, in fact. But first, you’re going to be enemies. Epic enemies. Like, Avengers vs. Thanatos kind of epic. Sparta vs. Xerxes. The Boston Bruins vs. Montreal…

c) Trauma & healing

103) From Shitty-ness to Wellness: Part 3 – The Self-Improvement Treadmill and Its Perpetuation of Trauma

by claradolderman

I became a Psychologist in order to figure myself out, and my family. I imagine that’s what gets a lot of people’s foot in the psychology-door, initially. You wonder things like, “Why am I (or other people), so screwed up? Why can’t I get myself together? Why do I sabotage my successes? Why do…

c) Trauma & healing

102) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness: Part 2 – Stigmatization and the disempowerment of the struggling

by claradolderman

One of the stumbling blocks that has repeatedly interfered with me getting help more reliably, is the stigma against mental illness, which I have been surprised, and troubled, to discover that I internalized despite many years of being a psychologist. This stigmatization starts with society, in whatever forms you’ve meaningfully encountered it. –…

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Category: c) Trauma & healing

167) Thanks Mom: Intergenerational Wisdom, Part 2 — Friendship and Community

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166) Thanks Mom: Intergenerational Wisdom, Part 1 — Professor Dolderman

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141) Coming Full Circle: Part 1 — Me, this blog, Pink, and a Scathing Diatribe against The System, maaaan

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140) Wow…weird…. I healed: Part 4 – Backlash (or, as my therapist likes to say, “Shame is a tricky bastard”)

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139) Wow…weird…. I healed: Part 3 – The Spontaneous, Seemingly-Magical Transformation of Motivation

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138) Wow…weird. I healed: Part 2 — The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Self-Improvement

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137) Wow…weird. I healed: Part 1 – The struggle and the miracle

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136) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 15: FACT Exercise #2 — Choosing Meaning over Control

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135) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 14: FACT Exercise #1 — Focusing

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124) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 10: Finding out who you really are: Rational self-analysis

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121) When you feel you’ve been turned into a newt

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120) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 9: Healing, and the Doctrine of Original Awesomeness

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119) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 8: Oops, I fucked up

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118) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 7: Resistance, the sneaky bastard

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112) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 6: Backlash, resistance, and dissociation

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111) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 5: What Backlash can teach us about ourselves

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110) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 4: Healing, when you hate yourself, think you don’t deserve it, want to die, believe it’s impossible anyway, avoid doing what you most need, and constantly sabotage yourself

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103) From Shitty-ness to Wellness: Part 3 – The Self-Improvement Treadmill and Its Perpetuation of Trauma

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102) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness: Part 2 – Stigmatization and the disempowerment of the struggling

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