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Theory Thought: Hope

March 22, 2025Uncategorized
Theory Thoughts: Hope Hope springs eternal. Transitioning into a season of regeneration evokes thoughts and feelings of hope, expectation, and anxiety. “Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other

Making Changes in Relationships

March 16, 2025Define self
Changing relationship patterns can be hard
When is comes to making changes in relationships, why does it take time to make a significant change and what can one do about this? News flash. I'm not perfect. My immaturities and anxiety lead to me being more reactive in relationships than I want.

Reactivity’s role in defining self

February 28, 2025Uncategorized
Theory Thoughts: Evaluating the role of reactivity in our efforts to define self How can we use our reactivity to inform thoughtful and more differentiated responses? The following is a scenario provided to me by one of my friends. The names used are

What an Emotional Systems Perspective can Reveal

February 19, 2025Uncategorized
Emotional Systems in all species
The challenge of emotional systems How does one think "systems" and work with an individual at the same time? It's a challenge. This applies to one working on self in their family or work systems. And especially to a clinician working with a client.

Function for Self in 2025

January 28, 2025Uncategorized
function better like successful hiking in mountains

Bowen wrote that there are two major aspects of differentiation. One is the ability to discern subjective, feeling driven thinking from more objective fact based thinking. In addition, this would include “self” focused versus other focused thinking.

Give the Gift of Differentiation

December 26, 2024Uncategorized
Differentiation is the game of life

The mall Santa had noticed the child in the line of kids. They were all eager to share what he was supposed to get them for Christmas. This one child looked a bit puzzled, like they were searching for something. Santa wondered what might it be.

How Relationships Impact Health

October 27, 2024Anxiety, Define self, health
Stressed Woman

New research shows how our thinking can impact our gut health and trigger an immune system reaction. Chronic anxiety in relationships can activate this pathway. Define self could be more important to overall health that most people realize.

Radical Acceptance and Bowen Theory

September 13, 2024Anxiety, attachment, cut off

A family system perspective can make all the difference to adopting radical acceptance of a situation. For many people, the shift from an individual model perspective to a family emotional systems perspective is a radical thing to accept. But the core of radical acceptance theory is understanding and acknowledging “what is”. What Dr. Bowen observed, understood and acknowledged was that families operate as an emotional unit.