Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “The myth of human independence exists despite the fact that all people need each other. Psychotherapy does not make dependent people independent; it makes them able to more effectively use their natural dependence.”
My patient this morning, perfectly describing therapy: “There are no major revelations that just change your life. The “aha moment” is more like you finally accept a truth that you’ve been resisting for years, when your defenses wear off and denial is no longer sustainable.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes: The main nonspecific result of good psychotherapy is an increase in ego strength and self-connectivity. A person wants to learn how to cope with difficulties without falling apart and not feeling completely destroyed.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes: The main nonspecific result of good psychotherapy is an increase in ego strength and self-connectivity. A person wants to learn how to cope with difficulties without falling apart and not feeling completely destroyed.
@Theholisticpsyc
There’s a huge difference between being liked and being respected. Being liked just means the other benefits from your presence; being respected means they care about you benefiting from theirs. We don’t have to keep settling for being liked.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams posits, “Those who suffer most in childhood usually suffer most as adults, and in scenarios that uncannily mirror their childhood circumstances.”
@Theholisticpsyc
This is really good. And I’d add, there’s also an underlying fear that if I don’t successfully defend myself, my friend or partner will leave me, as, I believe, my flaws, when exposed, will disqualify me.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes: “The main nonspecific result of good psychotherapy is an increase in ego strength and self-connectivity. A person wants to learn how to cope with difficulties without falling apart.”
A patient of mine said to me: “There are no major revelations that just change your life. The 'aha moment' is more like you finally accept a truth that you’ve been resisting for years, when your defenses wear off, and denial is no longer sustainable.”
When I was in therapy, my therapist, Jennifer, challenged me, maintaining, “It seems like you don’t want therapy to help you. Everything you do is a big fuck you to psychology.” And she was spot on!
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes: “The main result of good psychotherapy is an increase in ego strength and self-connectivity. A person wants to learn how to cope with difficulties without falling apart and not feeling completely destroyed.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams notes, “Those who suffer most in childhood usually suffer most as adults. To add insult to injury, the adult situations seem to observers to be of the sufferer’s own making, though that’s hardly the experience of that person.”
Twitter’s refusal to verify
@BlackSocialists
says more about its own political leanings than its desire to protect others. Peaceful organizations only pose a threat to the status-quo.
The great psychoanalyst Otto Rank remarked that “we often refuse the loan of life in order to avoid the debt of death.” We keep the possibilities in front of us and avoid making abstract choices because each decision brings us closer to our mortality.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams says that shame becomes adaptive “by regulating experiences of excessive and inappropriate interest and excitement and by diffusing potentially threatening social behavior.” It works to curb self-absorption and immorality.
A patient of mine said to me: “There are no major revelations that just change your life. The 'aha moment' is more like you finally accept a truth that you’ve been resisting for years, when your defenses wear off, and denial is no longer sustainable.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams notes, “If I find myself preoccupied with issues of diagnosis in an ongoing way, I suspect myself of defending against being fully present with the patient’s pain.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams posits, “Those who suffer most in childhood usually suffer most as adults, and in scenarios that mirror their childhood. To add insult to injury, the adult situations seem to observers to be of the sufferer’s own making.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “The analytic emphasis on understanding is partly attributable to the fact that the two participants in the work need something interesting to talk about while the nonspecific factors are doing their quiet healing.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams maintains that shame becomes adaptive “by regulating experiences of excessive and inappropriate interest and excitement and by diffusing potentially threatening social behavior.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “The Western myth of human independence exists despite the fact that all people throughout life in practical and emotional terms need each other. Psychotherapy does not make dependent people independent.”
Humanistic Psychologist Carl Rogers noted, “True empathy is always free of any evaluative or diagnostic quality,” meaning that our diagnoses often inform our perceptions of moral character, sometimes causing us to solely blame the client for her distress.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes: “The main nonspecific result of good psychotherapy is an increase in ego strength and self-connectivity. A person wants to learn how to cope with difficulties without falling apart.”
Nancy McWilliams writes, “The therapist’s love is experienced in processing the repetitions. The therapist, unlike the early love objects, tolerates the client’s pain, and by empathy contributes to the client’s capacity to distinguish now from the past.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Narcissistically structured people may use a whole range of defenses, but the ones they depend on most fundamentally are idealization and devaluation. This grandiosity may be felt internally, or it may be projected.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams notes, “If I find myself preoccupied with issues of diagnosis, I suspect myself of defending against being fully present with the patient’s pain. Diagnosis can be used as a defense against anxiety about the unknown.”
Humanistic Psychologist Carl Rogers noted, “True empathy is always free of any evaluative or diagnostic quality,” meaning that our diagnoses often inform our perceptions of moral character, sometimes causing us to solely blame the client for her distress.
Traumatic childhoods can cause people to attempt to flee their lives by cultivating and pursuing fantasies, or utopic lives, believing that they’ll make up for all the sorrow and harmonize their existence. But the fantasies never do, as reality pushes back.
Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan noted that most individuals preferred fantasy to reality, especially as it related to the acquisition of some desired object. For Lacan, fantasy was, in itself, the ultimate prize; it was the de facto object of affection.
Nancy McWilliams writes: In therapy, narcissistically structured individuals may have the ego-syntonic expectation that the point of undergoing treatment is to perfect the self rather than to understand it and find more effective ways of handling its needs.
Therapy isn’t non-judgmental; it’s non-shaming. Idealists tend to fluctuate between severe self-censure and complete denial; they cower from shame. But for therapy to be effective, shame has to be faced, and we address it, in part, through judgment.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Unlike the early love objects, the therapist tolerates the client’s pain and by empathy and interpretation contributes to the client’s capacity to distinguish what has happened now from what has happened in the past.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams notes, “If I find myself preoccupied with issues of diagnosis in an ongoing way, I suspect myself of defending against being fully present with the patient’s pain.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “The client may feel hurt in ways like his or her childhood suffering, and yet the therapist, by empathy and interpretation, contributes to the client’s capacity to distinguish now from what has happened in the past.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes: Analysis is a mutually loving process where the therapist’s subordinated subjectivity fosters an actualization of love along with an actualization of self in patients through a progression of desire, belief, and hope.
Therapists, mostly psychoanalysts, give me shit for writing for the public, asserting that I don’t understand and oversimplify concepts. In reality, I think they just hate the uninitiated and fear losing their aura of supremacy.
My therapist Eileen loved Irv Yalom; she told me that it was the relationship that healed, and it was our relationship which healed me. As a fellow traveler, she went with me into that dark, and nearly deserted, basement, that I perpetually feared entering.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “A therapist who is able to help a narcissistic person find self-acceptance without either inflating the self or disparaging others has truly done a good deed and a difficult one.”
Shame compounds. Of all of the negative emotions, shame is the worst. Anxiety subsides when we avert a threat. Sadness ends when fortune shifts. Anger resolved through rectification. But, shame persists relentlessly.
Nancy McWilliams writes, “Despite the fact that we all need a general sense of what to do in the role of therapist, the feeling that one is breaking incontestable rules is the enemy of developing one’s authentic individual style of working as a therapist.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams asserted that shame is “typically characterized by withdrawal from social intercourse, which can have a profound effect on relationships. Shame may motivate not only avoidant behavior but also defensive, retaliative anger.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “In therapy, narcissistically structured people may have the expectation that the point of undergoing treatment is to perfect the self rather than to understand it and find more effective ways of handling its needs.”
@emmyzen
, the prominent existential psychologist said, “If we present ourselves as wonderful all the time, nobody will like us or love us, but far worse than that, we stop our capacity for loving other people.”
#existential
#MentalHealthAwarenessMonth
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Psychotherapy does not make dependent people independent; on the contrary, it makes them able to more effectively use their natural dependence in their personal interests.”
Self-acceptance is different from self-love in that there’s no pretense. Self-acceptance is self-neutrality. It’s the ability to say that you’re a flawed individual who possesses some good traits, but that the flaws don’t disqualify you altogether.
In the popular HBO show In Treatment, Paul, the psychoanalyst confronts his clinical supervisor, Gina, and asserts his decision to begin a romantic relationship with his patient and to shut down his practice, choosing instead to become a life coach.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Their need for others is deep, but their love for them is shallow. A therapist who is able to help a narcissistic person find self-acceptance without inflating the self has truly done a good deed and a difficult one.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams posits, “Those who suffer most in childhood usually suffer most as adults, and in scenarios that uncannily mirror their childhood circumstances.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “A person wants to learn how to cope with difficulties without falling apart. Or he hopes that after the completion of psychotherapy, he’ll be able to withstand the temporary destabilization necessary for development.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “The client may feel hurt in ways like her childhood suffering and yet the therapist tolerates the client’s pain and by empathy and interpretation contributes to the client’s capacity to distinguish now from the past.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams wrote that “feelings have their own kind of wisdom.” And, when functional, feelings make life worth living while protecting us from harm. But, when not, feelings supersede experience, becoming the boogeymen tormenting us.
Therapy isn’t non-judgmental; it’s non-shaming. Idealists tend to fluctuate between self-censure and denial; either magnifying a minor mistake or denying a significant misdeed. They cower from shame. But for therapy to be effective, shame has to be faced.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Envy may also be the root of the judgmental quality of narcissistically organized persons. If I feel deficient and l perceive you as having it all, I may try to destroy what you have by deploring or ridiculing it.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams describes moral masochists as “introjectively organized people who have organized their self-esteem around their capacity to tolerate pain and sacrifice.” To them, pride stems only from intense effort.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams maintains that shame becomes adaptive “by regulating experiences of excessive and inappropriate interest and excitement and by diffusing potentially threatening social behavior.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “People who are strongly preoccupied with being upright and responsible may be struggling against more powerful temptations toward self-indulgence than most of us face.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams notes, “If I find myself preoccupied with issues of diagnosis in an ongoing way, I suspect myself of defending against being fully present with the patient’s pain.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams argues, “Everyone behaves masochistically under certain circumstances, often to good effect. Children learn on their own that one way to get attention from their caregivers is to get themselves in trouble.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams wrote that “feelings have their own kind of wisdom.” And, when functional, feelings make life worth living while protecting us from harm. But, when not, feelings supersede experience, becoming the boogeymen tormenting us.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Shame is the underbelly of narcissism. It’s associated with inadequacy, a sense of defect, and the perception of scorn. So painful are these feelings that we hide them from ourselves, yet they have a profound impact.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “People who are strongly preoccupied with being upright and responsible may be struggling against more powerful temptations toward self-indulgence than most of us face.”
Therapy’s purpose isn’t to help the client cultivate a sense of self-love; it aims to help the client loosen her grip on her obsessive need for control, to open the doors to her fortified city and accept the risk that her inner sanctum may be ransacked.
As Bessel van der Kolk, the prominent trauma therapist, noted: “I wish I could separate trauma from politics, but as long as we continue to live in denial and treat only trauma while ignoring its origins, we are bound to fail.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams asserted that shame is “typically characterized by withdrawal from social intercourse, which can have a profound effect on interpersonal relationships. Shame may motivate not only avoidant behavior but also retaliative anger.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes: “The main nonspecific result of good psychotherapy is an increase in ego strength and self-connectivity. A person wants to learn how to cope with difficulties without falling apart and feeling completely destroyed.”
The great psychoanalyst Otto Rank remarked that “we often refuse the loan of life in order to avoid the debt of death.” We keep the possibilities in front of us and avoid making abstract choices because each decision brings us closer to our mortality.
Daniel Kahneman’s research into human potential led him to the conclusion that shame and anxiety, which (surprisingly) isn’t mitigated by shame, lead to a state of tension, which is most likely, then, avoided rather than resolved.
In psychoanalysis, transference is the process in which feelings and expectations from the past, usually those related to a caregiver, are experienced in the present, normally related to one’s relationship with the therapist.
The famed psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan noted that most individuals preferred fantasy to reality, especially as it related to the acquisition of some desired object. For Lacan, fantasy was, itself, the ultimate prize; it was the de facto object of affection.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Their need for others is deep, but their love for them is shallow. A therapist who is able to help a narcissistic person find self-acceptance without disparaging others has truly done a good deed and a difficult one.”
@BlackSocialists
@Ocasio2018
The Democratic center is convinced that unity is key, yet continue to blame progressives and socialists for splits that engender electoral losses. But, socialists and progressives seem to find common ground in their quest for understanding, without resorting to blame or censure.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams wrote, “Envy may also be the root of the much-noted judgmental quality of narcissistically organized persons. If I feel deficient and l perceive you as having it all, I may try to destroy what you have by ridiculing it.”
The fear of rejection, expressed in one’s anxiety about being invisible, forgotten, or directly shunned, is the core driver of perfectionistic tendencies. In black and white terms, you believe you’re liked for what you can do rather than who you are.
Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan noted that most individuals preferred fantasy to reality, especially as it related to the acquisition of some desired object. For Lacan, fantasy was, in itself, the ultimate prize; it was the de facto object of affection.
To be respected, we need to risk being disliked. The paradox being: only when you allow yourself to be unlikable will you open the door to respect. When we set boundaries, and people stop benefiting from us (at least momentarily) they may start to hate us.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “People who are strongly preoccupied with being upright and responsible may be struggling against more powerful temptations toward self-indulgence than most of us face.”
My therapist Eileen loved Irv Yalom; she told me that it was the relationship that healed and it was our relationship which healed me. As a fellow traveler along my side, she went with me into that dark and nearly deserted basement, that I feared entering.
Contrary to popular belief, therapy isn’t non-judgmental; it’s non-shaming. Idealists tend to fluctuate between severe self-censure and complete denial; either magnifying a minor mistake or denying a significant misdeed. They cower from shame.
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes: “The main nonspecific result of good psychotherapy is an increase in ego strength & self-connectivity. A person wants to learn how to cope with difficulties without falling apart & not feeling completely destroyed.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “The analytic emphasis on understanding is partly attributable to the fact that the two participants in the work need something interesting to talk about while the nonspecific factors are doing their quiet healing.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Envy may also be the root of the judgmental quality of narcissistically organized persons, toward themselves and others. If I feel deficient and I perceive you as having it all, I may try to destroy what you have.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “People who are strongly preoccupied with being upright and responsible may be struggling against more powerful temptations toward self-indulgence than most of us face.”
Please check out and share my first ever blog for
@PsychToday
! “Perfectionism is a way to attempt to silence external and internal critics, stemming from the belief that one will be exposed by (and fall apart from) any negative social commentary.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Despite the fact that we need a general sense of what to do in the role of therapist, the feeling that one is breaking incontestable rules is the enemy of developing one’s individual style of working as a therapist.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “Shame has been called the underbelly of narcissism, the underside of a healthy vital self. It is associated with inadequacy, inferiority, a sense of defect, failure, and the perception of scorn by others.”
Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams notes that shame becomes adaptive “by regulating experiences of excessive and inappropriate interest and excitement and by diffusing potentially threatening social behavior.” It works to curb self-absorption and immorality.