by

counter-transference

I like this passage, though I take issue with it. Countertransference is not always "inappropriate". Sometimes it is very helpful. One example of this is the simple fact that in AA group meetings, there is a sense of ease, safety and connection that is felt among the co-sufferers because of some important things they have in common.
—

Countertransference is a word used to describe the counselor’s conscious or unconscious emotional reaction to the client (Curtis et al., 2003). Many people think this is Freudian mumbo jumbo, and the word does sound like something said by a "shrink." Yet, inappropriate feelings toward a client, both positive and negative, are very common. Here the term inappropriate is used advisedly. These feelings are inappropriate because they are felt in the wrong context. They are not appropriate in the counseling relationship. Due to our previous relationships, upbringing, cultural background, family of origin, and personality, we react automatically to others before we even get to know them (Kottler 8: Balkin, 2017).
In his book, Love’s Executioner (1989), Irvin Yalom writes about a client he calls the "fat lady." From the beginning, he was repulsed by her, and she notices the fact that he never looks at her and never even shakes her hand. Yalom realizes What he is doing and traces its origins to the obese women in his own family who were very controlling. Thus, the counselor’s feelings cannot be truly hidden from the client. We do not always know why we have these prejudices, but when we have them with our clients, we react automatically.

~ Counseling Today: Foundations of Professional Identity (Merrill Counseling) 2nd Edition

by

from Stephen King’s IT

Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.

…

Power, power, Ben thought, looking at Beverly. It was okay now; her eyes had met Bill’s again and they were looking at each other as if lost. It was only for a moment, but to Ben it seemed very long.
It always comes back to power. I love Beverly Marsh and she has power over me. She loves Bill Denbrough and so he has power over her. But—I think—he is coming to love her. Maybe it was her face, how it looked when she said she couldn’t help being a girl. Maybe it was seeing one breast for just a second. Maybe just the way she looks sometimes when the light is right, or her eyes. Doesn’t matter. But if he’s starting to love her, she’s starting to have power over him. Superman has power, except when there’s Kryptonite around. Batman has power, even though he can’t fly or see through walls. My mom has power over me, and her boss down in the mill has power over her. Everyone has some . . . except maybe for little kids and babies.
Then he thought that even little kids and babies had power; they could cry until you had to do something to shut them up.
“Ben?” Beverly asked, looking back at him. “Cat
got your tongue?”

…

When Bill stands up, the class looks at him. He is tall, and has a certain presence.

Speaking carefully, not stuttering (he has not stuttered in better than five years), he says: “I don’t understand this at all. I don’t understand any of

this. Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics . . . culture . . . history. . . aren’t those natural ingredients in any story, if it’s told well? I mean . . .” He looks around, sees hostile eyes, and realizes dimly that they see this as some sort of attack. Maybe it even is. They are thinking, he realizes, that maybe there is a sexist death merchant in their midst. “I mean . . . can’t you guys just let a story be a
story?”

No one replies. Silence spins out. He stands there looking from one cool set of eyes to the next. The sallow girl chuffs out smoke and snubs her cigarette in an ashtray she has brought along in her backpack.

Finally the instructor says softly, as if to a child having an inexplicable tantrum, “Do you believe William Faulkner was just telling stories? Do you believe Shakespeare was just interested in making a buck? Come now, Bill. Tell us what you think.”

“I think that’s pretty close to the truth,” Bill says after a long moment in which he honestly considers the question, and in their eyes he reads a kind of damnation.

“I suggest,” the instructor says, toying with his pen and smiling at Bill with half-lidded eyes, “that you have a great deal to learn.”

by

ADHD

As psychiatrist Dr. Ed Hallowell says to children with attention-def‌icit/ hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, “You have a Ferrari of a mind, and I’m a brake specialist. I am here to help you learn to apply the brakes.” Meditation and cultivating deliberation—slow talking, slow reading, slow eating, not interrupting—all work."
from Flourish by Marty Seligman

by

fledging

"A hospitalized late-adolescent woman who was in severe psychological distress had a father who was clearly very domineering and controlling. In line with stan— dard practice, the hospital staff kept telling the father he had to “let his daughter separate from the family.” The more the father heard this, the more controlling he became and the more def‌iant was his daughter. Finally, Niki, who has a relational approach, advised the staff to say to the father, “Your daughter needs you now more than ever. She needs you to help her f‌ind the ways to grow into a young woman.” On hearing this, the father’s anxiety diminished: he did not have to leave his daughter. He could be helped to refocus on trying to f‌ind the ways to help her to bring forward her perceptions and thoughts as they were in the present, not as they were in his image of her as a child.

While this relationship did not have to be more distant, it did have to be different than it had been. It had to be more mutual, with room for more of the daughter’s expression of herself as she was now and as she was struggling to become. The father could show his loving and supportive side but he did have to change; in turn, the daughter could drop some of her more recalcitrant behavior and begin to grow again."

~The Healing Connection
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780807029213
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0807029213

by

independence vs interdependence

".. infants are exquisitely equipped to relate to other people and do so from earliest life. For example, within the f‌irst twenty-four hours of life, infants can distinguish their mothers’ voices from other voices. The issue is the evo- lution of enlarging forms of relationship as the child ma- tures, not the search for gratif‌ication—or separation from others."

~The Healing Connection
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780807029213
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0807029213