Archive for January, 2011
Boundary Problems
Thursday, January 27th, 2011Even in otherwise high functioning people who have been sexually abused, blind spots linger in the ability to distinguish compelling but inappropriate and destructive sexual fantasies from attractions that can be safely and harmlessly lived out. They fail to anticipate the impact of their acts, just as their abusers did, […]
Boundary Problems
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011Maintaining appropriate and healthy internal and external boundaries is an area of difficulty for abused and neglected people. The developmental issues involved in boundary problems are complex, but the end result is a blurring of roles and functions that can confuse and sabotage later relationships. If, for example, a parent […]
Effects of Abuse and Neglect in the Relational Dimension
Thursday, January 20th, 2011A more common case of effects of abuse and neglect in the relational
dimension, occurs when one partner is avoiding painful and frightening issues in the Physical, Psychological and Relational dimensions by escaping into the three nonordinary dimensions without being grounded in the lower dimensions. Often such patients will choose partners who are at […]
Which Dimensional Perspective We Are Judging
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011In one couple, the husband had been a Zen meditator for many years,
focusing on the Transcendent dimension, and would not have anything to
do with his wife’s Energetic healing practice, which he saw as delusional
and unenlightened. For her part, she regarded his meditation as too risky
because she believed it opened him to negative […]
Multidimensional Understanding
Thursday, January 13th, 2011A multidimensional understanding helps to make sense of certain mutual
projections that occur in couple relationships: each partner is identified
primarily with a dimension that the other partner avoids because it can appear
deluded or even destructive to them from the standpoint of their preferred
dimension. Why should two such people be attracted to each […]
Effects of Abuse and Neglect in the Relational Dimension
Tuesday, January 11th, 2011If we have been deprived of love in childhood, no person in later life
can ever really make it up to us. Our adult self must learn to take responsibility
for feelings of loss, grief, anger and inadequacy without depending
on finding a new and more perfect surrogate for a depriving or abusive parent.
That strategy […]
Scapegoats
Thursday, January 6th, 2011Another person can help us by meeting some of our current needs, but no one can ever complete us or restore that which we have disowned. It doesn’t help us or the harmony of the world to scapegoat another for failing to make up for past abuse and neglect or for lacking qualities […]
Conscious Behavior as an Adult
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011To the extent that we are conscious of our behavior, adult relationships give us an opportunity to develop greater awareness and control over our Relational life than we had as children. When we feel critical of another person, we can be sure that this person is reflecting back at us an attribute […]