Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Going to Therapy Means You're "Weak"

In a prior blog article, Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Therapy Takes a Long Time, I addressed one of the biggest misperceptions about therapy that has lingered for many years.  In my current article, I'll address another common myth, namely, that if a person goes to therapy, it means that he or she is a "weak" person.

Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Going to Therapy Means You're Weak

In the United States, we live in a society where rugged individualism is admired and encouraged in many areas.  The idea of "picking yourself up by your bootstraps" is also admirable to many people.  And while there is much to admire about people who overcome adversity, it's also true that if any of us is put through enough stress, we will need help and emotional support to get through it.

For people who seek psychological help in therapy, it's not a sign of weakness--rather, it's a sign of strength and courage to seek help, especially when we live in a culture that often doesn't encourage reaching out for psychological help.

The following vignette, which is a composite of many cases with all identifying information changed, illustrates what I'm talking about:

John
John grew up in a small town where everyone knew each other and family friendships often went back generations.

His family struggled financially, especially when his father lost his job.  And, even though the family was entitled to public assistance to help them through the tough financial times, his parents adamantly refused to apply for it.  His father said he didn't believe in it, and he felt that each family should make their own way rather than relying on, from his perspective, "handouts."

During the lean times, John and his sister, Betty, knew better than to complain.  They watched their parents maintain a stoic attitude and they took their cue from them.

His parents never talked about their feelings, and John saw little in the way of affection between them.  So, John learned to keep his feelings to himself and he never wanted to "bother" anyone with his problems.  Even as a young child, who felt lonely much of the time because his parents wouldn't allow friends to come over, John didn't complain.

Whenever John's father heard anyone talking about feeling sad or anxious, he would just shake his head and say that, personally, he didn't have time to think about how sad or anxious he might feel, and he considered "complaining" about it to be a luxury.

Years later, after John graduated college and moved out to NYC to settle into a career, he felt guilty and self indulgent whenever he realized that he felt sad, lonely or anxious.  Instead of focusing on his emotions, he just worked harder and tried to forget about his feelings.

But when he began developing physical problems, including back pain, headaches and gastrointestinal problems and he went to see his medical doctor, his doctor told him that he couldn't find a medical cause for John's physical problems, and he recommended that John see a psychotherapist.

John was shocked to hear his doctor tell him that there were probably underlying psychological issues  involved with his medical problems.  So then, his doctor explained the mind-body connection to John to help John understand that his body was taking the toll for his unexamined and unresolved emotional problems.

No one in John's family would ever think of seeing a psychotherapist, so he felt ashamed and "weak" for not being able to handle his problems on his own, especially as a man.  He shuttered to think what his parents, especially his father, would think if they knew that he set up a consultation with a psychotherapist.  He knew, even if they didn't say it out loud, that they would think he was "weak."

Over time, John learned in therapy how hard he was being on himself and that his rigid views about what people "should" and "shouldn't" do were getting in his way and creating more problems for himself.  He also discovered that an experienced psychotherapist could help him to access his own strengths in ways that he couldn't do on his own.

Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Going to Therapy Means You're Weak

It took a while before John was able to feel that it actually takes courage to get help in therapy.  As he worked through his emotional problems, his medical symptoms were alleviated and he realized that his unresolved emotional issues had turned into medical problems because he wasn't dealing with them in the past.  But now that he was dealing with them directly, he also no longer felt sad or anxious, and he didn't feel lonely because he was learning new and effective ways to relate to people, so he was making friends.

Distorted Perceptions About Being "Weak" Are Often Deeply Ingrained
One of the reason why a myth like "going to therapy means you're weak" lingers is that it is a distorted perception that remains ingrained in the minds of many people.  Unfortunately, it also makes it difficult for people who need help to ask for help (see my article: Tips on Overcoming Your Fear of Asking For Help ).

Getting Help in Therapy
If you recognize yourself in the vignette above, you owe it to yourself to get help from a licensed mental health professional who can help you work through your problems and lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me:
I'm a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with adult individuals and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

See my article:  Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Therapy Takes a Long Time

Relationships: How to Get Closer When You've Grown Apart

In a prior article, Your Relationship: Telltale Signs That You and Your Spouse Might Be Growing Apart, I addressed some of the telltale signs of individuals in a relationship growing apart.  In this article, I'll be focusing on what you can do if you've grown apart and you want to get closer together.

Relationships:  How to Get Closer When You've Grown Apart

While it's true that for many couples, by the time they acknowledge that they've grown apart, their problems are often too far gone to resolve, for many others relationships, there are still things the couple can do to salvage their relationship.

Make Your Spouse Your Priority
There are many things that can compete for your attention, including your job, your friendships, family, and other activities.

While it's important to have close relationships and activities outside of your marriage, if these other relationships and activities become more important than your spouse, chances are good that you're going to grow apart until the relationship ends.

So, it's important, while finding a balance to have close friends, family and social activities, that you make your spouse your top priority.

Spend Time Together to Bond With One Another
Spending time together is important to getting closer together.  Time together should be quality time without distractions from the TV, phone and electronic gadgets.

This isn't the time to talk about the problems in your relationship.  This is a time to reconnect.

Address Problems as They Come Up Rather Than Allowing Resentments to Fester
Aside from spending time together to bond, there also needs to be time to communicate with each other about problems.

Too many couples try to avoid talking about problems between them.  But, often, all this does is make resentments fester.

It's a good idea to "pick your battles" rather than addressing every little thing that bothers you.  Over the course of a long-term relationship, bickering about petty issues can erode a relationship and create more distance between two people.

Remember What Brought the Two of You Together When You First Met
It's so easy to forget all the things that drew you to each other when you first met.

Talking about these happy memories could help to bring you closer together and motivate you to recapture some of those moments:

Did you used to feel close to each other when you danced together?  Why not play one of your old favorite songs at home and dance together?

Relationships: How to Get Closer When You've Grown Apart: Remember What Brought You Together

Aside from being fun, it can help to increase some of the emotional intimacy that you lost over the years.

Find Something That You're Both Passionate About
Whether it's a hobby or social activity, find something that you're both passionate about and share this experience.

Sharing in a hobby or new activity can bring you closer together.  It can also bring new meaning into your life.

Share Your Hopes and Dreams
When two people in a relationship grow apart, they often stop talking to each other about their hopes and dreams for themselves as individuals as well as their relationship.

Opening up and talking to your spouse about what's meaningful to you can bring you closer together.  It can also increase emotional intimacy that might have decreased over the years.

Recognize That Nurturing Your Relationship is an Ongoing Process
Getting closer together isn't like a one-time event and then you're done.  It's an ongoing process.

You and your spouse need to keep paying attention to each other.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you find that, despite your best efforts, you and your spouse are having problems getting closer after you've grown apart, there's still a chance that your relationship can be salvaged by seeing a licensed psychotherapist who has expertise working with couples.

It's important that you find someone that both you and your spouse both feel comfortable with, so you might need to have consultations with a few therapists until you find a therapist that you both like.

If you begin couples counseling, recognize that years of problems in your relationship aren't going to go away in a few sessions, so you both need to make a commitment to the therapy to work.

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Relationships: Telltale Signs That You and Your Spouse Are Growing Apart

As a psychotherapist in New York City, one of the most common responses that I get when I ask clients what caused their relationship to end is: "We grew apart."

Relationships:  Are You and Your Partner Growing Apart?

Often, people tell me this and they don't really understand what happened and why they grew apart.  Most of the time, it seems to be a gradual process where the two individuals in the relationship slowly start to spend less time together and, when they're together, they're not as engaged with each other as they once were.

What Are Some of the Signs That You and Your Spouse Might Be Growing Apart?

There's a Decrease in Your Sexual and Emotional Intimacy
There's an old saying, "Sex is the first thing that goes" and, generally, this is usually the case with many relationships where people grow apart from each other.

While it's usually true that people are less sexual after the first year or two, if a decrease in sexual intimacy gets to the point where you and your spouse's sexual life is almost non-existent, this is usually a sign that the two of you are growing apart.

Aside from sexual intimacy, when people in a relationship grow apart, there's often a decrease in emotional intimacy.  You're not sharing your feelings with each other as much as you used to do.

There are so many distractions, TV, cellphones, iPads, and so on, that it's easy to distract yourself from your partner by getting immersed in these distractions instead of paying attention to your spouse (see my article: Relationships: The Importance of Unplugging From Electronic Gadgets to Spend Quality Time Together .

The Two of You Are Spending Less Time Together
This is related to a decrease in sexual and emotional intimacy.  Often this happens because the individuals in the relationship are bored with each other and look to find other outlets (staying late at work, spending more time with other people, having affair) instead of spending time with their spouse.

The Romance is Gone
No one expects that you'll be as passionate in a long term relationship as you were when you first got married, but when you and your spouse are growing apart, there usually aren't even romantic gestures any more.  Both people might be "going through the motions," which usually isn't fulfilling to either person.

The Fun is Gone Out of the Relationship
Humor is an important part of life, especially in a long term relationship.  Having a sense of humor and the ability to have fun enriches the relationship and helps couples to weather the challenges in any relationship.

You're Bickering Has Increased Over Petty Issues
When people are growing apart, they often feel frustrated with each other.  This can lead to bickering over petty issues.

Are the Two of You Growing Apart in Your Relationship?

If you and your spouse are bickering and there's a voice in your head that says, "Why are we arguing about this petty issue?" it's often because the bickering is a symptom of two people who are growing apart.  Whatever precipitated the bickering, it's usually not about whatever you're arguing about.  It's usually indicative that there are other things going on that you and your spouse aren't addressing.

In my next article, I'll discuss what you and your spouse (or partner) can do if you realize you're growing apart and you both want to get closer to each other (see my article: Relationships: How to Get Closer When You Have Grown Apart).

Getting Help in Therapy
If you feel that you and your spouse are beyond the point where you can repair your relationship on your own, you could benefit from seeing a licensed psychotherapist who works with couples, a therapist who has expertise in helping couples get closer and who can be objective.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Mind-Body Connection: EMDR Therapy Can Help Resolve Emotional Problems Rooted in Childhood Trauma

In a prior article, EMDR: Resolving Childhood Trauma to Lead a More Fulfilling Life as an Adult, I discussed how childhood emotional trauma is often at the root of problems that people experience later on as adults, often without people being aware of it.

Mind-Body Connection: EMDR Therapy Can Help Resolve Emotional Problems Rooted in Childhood Trauma

In that article, I discussed a vignette, which was a composite of many cases, where Ina, a therapy client, kept entering into romantic relationships with men who drained her emotionally and financially to the point where she was in emotional and financial crisis.

As I mentioned, when she started therapy, she had no understanding of how her childhood emotional history was repeating itself over and over again in her adult life.  But with the help of EMDR therapy she was able to not only make connections between her childhood history and her current problems but also work through the original trauma that was repeating itself in her current life.

How Emotional Problems in Adulthood Are Often Rooted in Childhood Trauma
In the example that I gave in my article, EMDR: Resolving Childhood Trauma to Lead a More Fulfilling Life as an Adult, Ina, without understanding why, kept getting involved with men that she kept trying to "rescue" and who were emotionally and financially dependent upon her.

How Emotional Problems in Adulthood Are Often Rooted in Childhood Trauma

What Ina didn't understand was that she was unconsciously repeating her childhood history with a father, who would lose one job after another because of his alcoholism.

After Ina's mother got fed up and left Ina's father, taking 12 year old Ina and her 10 year old brother with her, Ina would worry a lot about her father and what would become of him.  When she saw him, she would offer him whatever money she saved up from her allowance.  They would both pretend that it was only a loan, but Ina knew that her father wouldn't pay her back.

By the time Ina was 13, her father was living in a halfway house because he had alienated all of his relatives and friends because he continued to drink and never pay back the money that he borrowed.

Whenever Ina saw her father collecting bottles and cans from the trash, she felt like her heart would break.  She would immediately turn around and go the other way so he wouldn't see her and feel humiliated.

One day, when Ina was with a friend, her friend said to her, "Isn't that your father?" and Ina, who felt ashamed, denied it.  Afterwards, Ina went home and felt even more ashamed of herself for being embarrassed to acknowledge her father.

By the time Ina was 17, her father died from alcohol poisoning.  It was a tremendous loss for Ina.  Even though she knew logically that it wasn't her fault, on an emotional level, she felt like it was her fault.  On an emotional level, she felt she could have done more for him to help him.

EMDR and the "Float Back" to Earlier Trauma
In EMDR, there's a concept known as the "float back" technique where a therapy client uses the emotions and internal experiences, including where the client feels the emotions in his or her body, to connect current trauma to earlier trauma.  The "float back" technique is similar to the Affect Bridge in clinical hypnosis (also known as hypnotherapy).

During one of her EMDR sessions, Ina was able to connect her current emotional problems of attempting to "rescue" her current and prior boyfriends to her earlier memory of trying to "rescue" her father.

EMDR and the "Float Back" to Earlier Trauma

When Ina had a felt sense of this connection, it was a powerful experience for her.  As we continued to use EMDR to work on her earlier trauma related to her father, over time, she was able to work through the original childhood trauma that was getting triggered in her current life.

Once Ina was able to work through the original trauma, she was no longer affected by her early history, and she had healthier relationships.

I've used the EMDR "float back" technique with most EMDR clients and it usually becomes clear to clients how the original trauma is driving his or her current problems.  At that point, the client can work through the original trauma that acts like an emotional trigger in his or her current life and this helps to resolve both past and current problems.

EMDR and the Mind-Body Connection
When therapy clients are able to connect their current emotional experiences, including making the mind-body connection of where they feel these emotions in their bodies, it helps them to connect to earlier trauma related to current problems.

Often, there are multiple traumatic experiences that act as emotional triggers in the present.  EMDR is most effective when the EMDR therapist can get to the earliest experience.

Are You Struggling With Emotional Problems That You Don't Understand?
EMDR helps clients to get to earlier experiences that often remain unconscious during regular talk therapy.

Many clients are relieved to finally be able to make sense of their current problems and realize that they are rooted in earlier experiences.  They're even more relieved to have a way to work through these problems so they're no longer triggered in the present.

Getting Help in Therapy
Your early history doesn't have to keep repeating in your life.

Getting Help:  Your Early History Doesn't Have to Keep Repeating Itself in Your Life

EMDR therapy can help you to work through your past and present problems so that you can lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me:
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many therapy clients to overcome traumatic experiences so they can lead happier lives.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

EMDR: Resolving Childhood Trauma to Lead a More Fulfilling Life as an Adult

While most people understand that childhood trauma, including emotional neglect, abuse and unmet childhood emotional needs, can create problems for them as adults, many people who had childhood trauma feel powerless to stop these problems from repeating in their adult lives.

Resolving Childhood Trauma to Have Healthier Adult Relationships

Current Emotional Problems as an Adult Are Often Rooted in Childhood Trauma
Many people who live their lives from one crisis to the next are so immersed in their day-to-day problems that it's hard for them to see that the core of many of their current problems are rooted in the past.

Of course, this is understandable because it's often very hard, when you're immersed in a crisis, to look beyond the current problem to gain perspective.

Current Emotional Problems Are Often Rooted in Childhood Trauma

But for many people, who are able to develop a perspective about how their childhood trauma affects them now, getting psychological help with EMDR therapy, a mind-body oriented form of psychotherapy, has been very helpful.

Let's take a look at a vignette, which is a composite of many cases with all identifying information changed to protect confidentiality:

Ina
When Ina, a woman in her mid-30s, came to therapy, she was feeling hopeless about her life.

In the past, she had been through cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and she learned important coping skills and learned a lot about how her thoughts affected her emotionally.

But even though she had gained some insight into her problems, she continued to live her life from one crisis to the next and having insight didn't change this, much to her frustration.

The current crisis was that, even though she was established in her profession and she earned a good income, she was constantly on edge financially.  She was behind in her mortgage and owed thousands in credit card expenses.

On the surface, Ina's problems didn't add up.  It wasn't that she didn't make enough money to pay her bills.

It was only after we explored her dynamics in her current relationship that the underlying link to her traumatic childhood became obvious.

Ina's Current Problems Were Rooted in Childhood Trauma

Ina's pattern in relationships, which she acknowledged, was to choose men that she had to "rescue."  Often, her boyfriends were unemployed and unwilling to work.

Usually, her relationships would begin with her boyfriend coming across like a loving, emotionally supportive man.

This is what usually drew Ina to each of them because she was a lonely child for most of her childhood and continued to feel lonely through much of her adult life when she wasn't in a relationship.  So, having someone that was loving and affectionate was very appealing to Ina, as it would be to most people.

But within a short while, inevitably, things would turn around:  The man who seemed so caring and affectionate would turn out to be someone who was emotionally and financially dependent upon Ina.

The pattern was usually the same:  After a couple of months, her boyfriend's underlying emotional problems would surface and Ina would feel obligated to do anything possible to "rescue" her current boyfriend.

Within a short time, Ina was emotionally, physically and financially drained by her current relationship.  She was also helping her boyfriend to the point where she was hurting herself financially.  But she was unable to extricate herself, and she felt like she was drowning emotionally.

Ina's current relationship fit the pattern but, in many ways, it was worse:  She noticed lately that a couple of her expensive pieces of jewelry were missing.

As hard as it was for her to think about it, she knew that her boyfriend stole them.  He was the only one who was in her apartment during the last month or so when she last saw the jewelry.

This was a terrible dilemma for Ina:  On the one hand, she was angry and hurt that her boyfriend took the jewelry, which was given to her by her grandmother, who died several years ago.

But, on the other hand, Ina felt too "guilty" to confront him about it.  She knew that her boyfriend, who refused to work, probably pawned her jewelry.  She also suspected that he might have a drug problem that he was hiding from her.

As we discussed this theft, Ina made a lot of excuses for her boyfriend:  He had a difficult childhood, no one ever loved him, and he just couldn't get a break in life.  She felt she couldn't be another person who hurt him by confronting him about the theft.

Logically, Ina knew that she was making up excuses--she realized that if a close friend told her this story, she could see that her friend's boyfriend was taking advantage of her.

But, despite seeing this and knowing logically from her prior CBT therapy that her thinking was distorted, on an emotional level, her feelings about her boyfriend made sense to her.  It was a very painful dilemma of her, and she wondered if she would ever be able to overcome these problems.

EMDR Is Often An Effective Therapy to Resolve Trauma
It has been my experience as a therapist, who is trained in psychodynamic and CBT therapy, that often when childhood trauma is at the root of current problems, clients who can see their problems are unable to make the necessary changes to resolve the type of problems described in the scenario above.

EMDR Is An Effective Therapy to Resolve Trauma

It's not that CBT and psychodynamic therapy don't ever work for trauma.  Both forms of therapy are often helpful.

But for many clients, who have insight into the underlying issues and the distortions in their thinking, their insight and understanding alone don't result in their being able to make changes so they can stop cycle of their problems.

In my article, The Mind-Body Connection: EMDR Therapy Can Help Resolve Childhood Trauma That Affects You as an Adult, I explain how Ina's childhood continued to affect her in her adult relationships and how EMDR therapy, a therapy that takes into account the mind-body connection, is often more effective in resolving emotional trauma.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you feel that your current problems are related to unresolved childhood trauma, you can find a list of EMDR licensed psychotherapists in the US and internationally on the EMDR professional website:  http://EMDR.org.

Getting Help: EMDR Helps Resolve Emotional Trauma

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

What Unconscious Decisions Have You Made That Are Impacting Your Life?

In an earlier blog article, I wrote an article called Psychotherapy: Making the Unconscious Conscious.

In this article I'm focusing on how unconscious decisions can impact your life without your even realizing it.

What Unconscious Decisions Have You Made That Are Impacting Your Life?

Sometimes, you can get a glimpse of what these unconscious decisions are by paying attention to your internal dialogue or by looking at your dreams.  But much of the time, these unconscious decisions remain hidden away in the recesses of your mind.

Let's take a look at the following vignette, which is a composite of many cases with all identifying information changed, to see how these unconscious decisions can play out:

Ann
Ann was the first one in her family to go to high school.  Her parents and older siblings loved her and were very proud of her, but they would tease her about being "an egghead" because she was so dedicated to her studies.

Ann knew that they were teasing her, but she also felt that, as she got older and developed interests that her family couldn't understand, she felt she was moving away emotionally and intellectually away from her family.

This caused Ann a lot of pain.  She knew that her mother, who was the valedictorian of her class in 8th grade, would have loved to go to high school.  But her mother needed her to help support the family, so  Ann's mother was forced to leave school.

What Unconscious Decisions Have You Made That Are Impacting Your Life?

Ann's mother told Ann how she cried for days after she had to leave school to get a job as a store clerk to help the family.  Ann's heart ached to hear her mother tell this story.

Ann would try to show her mother what she was learning in school.  She hoped that her mother would take an interest and, in a small way, it might make up, at least on an intellectual level, for what her mother missed by not going to high school.

But Ann's mother, who was once a curious young woman, showed little interest.  Ann knew that, in many ways, her mother had been beaten down by life, and she felt guilty that she had opportunities that her mother didn't have.

When Ann's high school announced that they were going to have tutoring classes to help students practice for the SAT college entrance exam, her parents encouraged her to sign up.  But Ann was feeling increasing guilty that she was going to have the opportunity that her mother really would have liked when she was a young woman--a chance to go to college.

Without realizing why, Ann kept losing the information from the school and forgetting the deadline to apply.  And every time her parents mentioned it, she felt anxious.

Then, one evening, Ann's mother came to her room and sat on her bed.  Ann wasn't sure why her mother came to her, but she could see that her mother looked serious and had difficulty starting the conversation.

Finally, Ann's mother took her hand and began to speak.  She told Ann that she thought she knew what was going on with her lately.  Then, she proceeded to tell Ann that she wanted her to do the best she could do and go as far as she could go without ever worrying that she would lose her family.

Her mother told Ann that she thought she understood what Ann was feeling because she had similar feelings when she was a young girl and she had an opportunity to go to elementary school and junior high and her mother was illiterate.  Even though she loved school, she felt guilty that she had an opportunity that her mother didn't have and would have loved.

She told Ann that, even though she understood, she wanted Ann to go to the tutoring classes, take the SAT exam, do well and excel at college.

Ann always loved and admired her mother, but she realized at that moment that even though her mother didn't have a formal education, she was a wise woman.

Ann went on to do well in college and to get a good job in college.  But she continued to feel guilty whenever she had opportunities that her family didn't have, and this continued to be problem for her until she realized that she almost sabotaged an opportunity for a promotion with a sizable increase in pay in her company's California branch.

At that point, she knew she needed help, and she started therapy to deal with the guilty feelings that she felt were oppressing her.

Shortly after she began therapy, Ann had a dream where she was surrounded by family members who were pointing their fingers at her in anger.  Everywhere she turned, she saw her mother, father, and brothers and sisters pointing their fingers at her in anger.

As Ann listened to her family members angrily accuse her of thinking that she was better than them because she had a better education and she made more money, Ann closed her eyes, put her hands over her ears and began to cry.

When she couldn't stand it any more, she screamed, "I don't want to do anything that takes me away from all of you!"

At that point, Ann woke up in a sweat with her heart pounding.

During her next therapy session, Ann told her therapist about her dream.  The dream upset Ann very much, and she knew that it encapsulated the feelings she had since childhood.

As she and her therapist discussed the dream, Ann realized that, throughout her life, she had been giving herself the unconscious message that she didn't want to do anything that caused her to feel separate from her family.

She knew that her family really wanted her to be successfully, and her guilt was her own, not induced by her family.

Over time, Ann was able to work through her guilt in therapy.  She also learned that everyone goes through periods in his or her life where becoming an individual means being more independent from his or her family.  But she had another layer to this process because of her family's history and her good fortune to have opportunities they didn't have.

What Unconscious Decisions Have You Made That Are Impacting Your Life?

As she worked through this issue, she accepted the promotion in California and felt good about it.  Her family was also very supportive.

Unconscious Decisions People That People Make That Impact Their Lives
Unconscious decisions that people make can take many forms.  Often, they involve their relationships with family members.  But they can involve other aspects of their lives.

Guilt, fear, anger and mistrust are often involved with these unconscious decisions.

Because these decisions are unconscious, they're usually hard to discern.  But they might come out in dreams, as in the vignette above.  They might also become increasingly apparent as a person engages in self sabotaging behavior.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you feel there are underlying unconscious decisions you've made that might be affecting your life, you owe it to yourself to get help from a licensed psychotherapist who has experience helping therapy clients to discover and work through this issue.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

The Challenge of Keeping New Year's Resolutions

The New Year is usually the time when people take stock and make resolutions to change or improve their lives. Whether this involves losing weight, smoking cessation, or improved time management, most people start out with sincere motivation to change. But research has shown that, often within a few months, most of us become discouraged and abandon our resolutions. Often, people make the same resolutions every year--only to give up by March or April.

The Challenge of Keeping New Year's Resolutions

Why Do People Usually Give Up on Their Resolutions So Quickly
So, if people usually start out with such high hopes and determination, why do they give up on their resolutions in such a relatively short period of time? Well, it's obvious that there's no one answer for everyone.

For some people, the resolutions are either too vague or poorly defined. For others, their resolutions are things they think they "should" be doing, but the resolutions aren't really what they want. And, for others, there are unconscious underlying reasons that keep tripping them up. Unaware of these reasons, they keep looking for external obstacles for their difficulties in keeping their resolutions.

Becoming Aware of the Unconscious Intention

For example, weight loss, which is one of the most common New Year's resolutions, is very challenging for many people.

The Challenge of Keeping New Year's Resolutions

Often, the underlying unconscious intention for overeating is to feel loved, especially in families where food symbolized nurturing. The intention, to feel loved, is a positive intention. But the way it's being expressed, by overeating, has negative consequences, weight gain and, possibly, poor health.

If the person who wants to lose weight is unaware of these underlying intentions, he or she will continue to struggle with this resolution. Even if someone is aware that food symbolizes love, s/he might not know how to have this need fulfilled in a more positive way.

Achieving Your Goals in a Healthy Way
For people who have struggled year after year with the same resolutions, rather than feeling discouraged, consulting with a psychotherapist to overcome these obstacles can help them to achieve their goals in a healthier way.

New Year's Resolutions:  Achieving Your Goals in a Healthy Way

A licensed psychotherapist, who has experience with helping people to discover their underlying obstacles, and to set and achieve goals, can help clients to overcome longstanding impediments to their happiness.

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist. I work with individual adults and couples. I have helped many clients to overcome obstacles so they can lead meaningful and fulfilling lives.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at 212 726-1006.



photo credit: Martin Gillet via photopin cc