SELF-ARCHEOLOGY

Many of those who start therapy know or soon realize that it’s a long, slow, and difficult process. Even knowing that, people still sometimes feel frustrated. This is understandable: we all want for our problems to end as soon as possible, especially if those problems are so heavy, blurry, draining, and have been present for decades. Therapeutic Expectations and Challenges A unique thing about therapy is that there is no clear end point. To a degree, self-work involves healing from trauma , growing, and maintaining your mental health, and your well-being in general. And this, naturally, last all our lives. Self-work is an ongoing process. However, therapy can—and need to—have goals. In my work with clients, in the first session I ask what their expectations are and how they will know that we have made progress, so that the person would have some sort of point of reference, even if it’s very broad. It is interesting to note that a person’s expectations sometimes are a part of ...

Over the years, I have encountered, observed, and professionally worked with many people who come from difficult childhood environments . One common feature that these people, and the vast majority of people, have after becoming adults is feeling empty, lacking, and lost. Many of us enter adulthood hurt, deprived, misled, lonely, anxious, tired, angry, numb, bored, or terrified. When a person grows up, leaves their childhood home, and “becomes an adult,” it is common for them to feel totally lost and disconnected. They don’t know who they are, what they like, how they feel, where to go, and what to do about it. Now why do so many people feel this way? If, as a child, it is forbidden to be yourself, and if your true self is met with violence, rejection, scorn , or invalidation, then you learn to hide it. This is necessary to your survival in an otherwise problematic or dangerous environment. And so you repress your feelings, you hide your thoughts, you abandon your interests, a...

Disrespectful Treatment of Children People often forget or lack the empathy to realize that children are human beings too, just smaller. As a result, children are treated disrespectfully, humiliated, controlled, manipulated, and traumatized in a variety of other ways. In this article, I won’t talk about harsher forms of abuse that occur but rather will specifically address two main forms of how children are disrespected in regular interactions on a basic human level. If you are a relatively healthy person, you treat your fellow human beings with respect. You meet someone, you say hello, you smile back, and so on. Now, since children are smaller than us and have much less life experience, it is easy to forget that they are human beings deserving decent treatment, too—one might argue even more than adults do. And yet, more often than not, children are engaged with as if they are fundamentally inferior. Such treatment can be separated into two categories: Scorn . Engaging with a...

Here we are again. The holiday season is upon us. People are running around trying to organize things for the upcoming holidays, and trying to find gifts for their friends, loved ones, and those they don’t care about or even hate. Why? Many reasons, and we’ll talk about some of them. There are a few problems with all of this and here I will discuss two of them. Moreover, I offer a perspective on how you can make things better for yourself and those around you. The first problem is that the whole tradition thing can be messy and complicated. Yes, the holiday tradition can be beautiful: devoting time and attention to those who are dear to you, thinking about them and giving them something that will hopefully bring them some joy. But—the important thing is to ask yourself if it’s something you WANT to do or if it’s something that you feel you HAVE to do? Plenty of people think they “have to”—that’s the tradition, and everyone is doing it. Yet, many people hate the holidays and exp...

Practice listening to yourself and meaning-making. This is a quick article on the topic of self-connection. Here, I will talk about the importance of self-connection, the origins and difficulties of (self-)disconnection, and the cultivation of self-validation and individuality. The Origins and Results of Disconnection When we are children, we often are invalidated, mistreated, rejected, frightened, manipulated, confused, and abused in a thousand other ways. To avoid all of that and survive in our toxic and dangerous environment, we learn to adapt to it by disconnecting from it—and, fundamentally, from ourselves. Then we grow up, and those survival and defense mechanisms carry into our adulthood and manifest themselves in the same or similar forms. Except now, being in a completely different habitat, they are not protecting us but hinder our growth and lead to numerous problematic, even unhealthy situations, behaviors, and moods. Being disconnected from yourself leads to realit...

This article is the second entry in my Q&A series, where I answer a question or respond to a comment. If you missed the previous article, you can find it here: “Should I Talk to My Parents About My Childhood Hurts?” Question Today’s question is extremely popular: I’m in therapy, and some people [my spouse, or parent, or friend, or coworker, or partner] say that it’s not working for me. I’m confused. Is it true? Answer Although it can be nuanced, generally there are only two possibilities: it’s either true or false. Everyone’s situation is different, so you need some objective criteria to be able to figure out your own case. First, it’s worth noting that the vast majority of people working in the mental health and helping field are not very good at their job, and not necessarily out of malevolence. They themselves are highly unresolved, lack true skill and actual knowledge (formal “education” is barely anything), and sometimes are even more traumatized than their clients. S...

It is highly recommended to read Part 1 and Part 2 before reading the following. We’ve already established why and how disconnected people react when in confrontation with reality, and that in order to remain in denial and disconnection one has to ignore trauma and silence reason—that of other people and in themselves. Here, I will talk about the personal and social effects of being a voice of reason. There are both negative and positive consequences related to being a voice of reason in our society. The negatives: 1. Social outrage. If you decide to be principled and to have high integrity, you see that most people don’t objectively see reality. If you share your insight and stand up for what is objectively right, some of those people will get upset and try to silence you. Remember, in their eyes, the problem is not the horrors and injustices of reality that you are describing, but rather the problem is YOU describing it because you are challenging their denial and delusio...

“Don't conceptualize reality as it is!” In this series of articles, I will talk about people’s avoidance of reality, and about personal and social outrage when encountering a voice of reason. In the first part that is this article, I will explain the origins of a person’s unreasonable reaction to describing reality and the mechanism behind this phenomenon. I will also talk about the social outcomes of openly describing the unpleasant aspects of reality, especially child mistreatment. All of us have probably been in a situation where we saw something and we’ve tried to describe or address it, but we were quickly shut down or realized it is not allowed to do so. If all of our memories were accessible to our conscious mind, most likely we would see that it started very early. Children are born rational and smart, in a sense that initially they try to experience and describe reality as it is. Sadly, in childhood and adolescence many of us are not allowed to describe reality corr...

The second episode of our podcast is here! In it, I and my co-host Jackie talk about the concepts of hope, passivity (self-)responsibility, boundaries, and more. Get cozy and join us for an hour of self-archeology.

Everyone wants to change something in their lives. However, if we tried to do that, we probably noticed that often it's very hard do change something. Why people change and what motivates them to do so? The first – and in my opinion the most effective – motivator to change is pull , or positive motivation . It means that we feel very fascinated about something, we get drawn to something very strongly, or we truly and passionately want to achieve something. For example, we get exposed to very fascinating ideas and we get inspired to fundamentally change our life, our values, and our personal relationships. Or we realize that it's possible to live a completely different life, so we decide to change our job or move out to a different country. Or we meet new, amazing people, and we get inspired to change the world with our talents and our generosity. The essential thing here is that when we feel positively pulled towards something; this pull – and our motivation to act – ...