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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“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…
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”.…
