Love Your Self For No Reason

Psychologist - Fresnaye Cape Town

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The Most Ridiculous Question You Can Ask!

The most ridiculous question you can ask is, “Do you believe in God?”

Why ridiculous, well it would be like asking, “Do you to believe in music?”

When I ask my clients if they believe in music, you should see the puzzled look on their face.

It would be absurd to think that you can believe in music because music is an experience it has nothing to do with what we believe or don’t believe, it has nothing to do with what’s happening in your mind.

Music and God are experiences.

But…and this is a very big but, for most us our identities, our definition of self, is created in the mind. [Read more…] about The Most Ridiculous Question You Can Ask!

The Gateway To Stillness

At the most fundamental level, great Self-Esteem is expansion and poor Self-Esteem is contraction.

I have asked thousands of clients what is happening in their bodies when they experience a ‘negative’ emotion and they all describe a contraction.

We contract against life so often that we mostly only notice it when it is severe.

Let me illustrate.

My partner Sue and got back from the most amazing holiday in Australia 10 days ago, seeing my brother and niece and nephew and sister in law and extended family for the first time in 10 years.

It was an awesome experience.

Getting back, I noticed how inspired and motivated I was feeling, anticipating the start of the working year, thinking about getting back to my desk, to get organized, to work with clients, doing what I love so much.

Beneath the inspiration, which is of course wonderful, I noticed a contraction in my body, an urgency, a pushing and clawing toward the future. [Read more…] about The Gateway To Stillness

A Closed Heart Cannot Live!

I was reading a post from a Facebook friend, Francis Bennett, a couple of weeks ago. She was a Franciscan monk – previously being a ‘he’ who transgendered.

She is spiritually Awakened. She wrote about the suicide of a spiritually Awakened friend of hers Wayne Wirs.

The comments about his death were really fascinating, many and varied. I just loved one written by Birelle Eden. She says, “In my understanding we are born with our hearts wide open…This open, whole state is inherently joyful…But when our authentic selves are met with rejection, betrayal and abandonment, our hearts freeze to stop the overwhelming pain…this is the ONLY thing that can disrupt our basic faith in the goodness of ourselves and life.”

Over the years I have watched this closing, this freezing in myself and in my clients. [Read more…] about A Closed Heart Cannot Live!

Guilt Creates Anger!

It’s a really fascinating thing about Self-Esteem. If you get it from approval and success, you will never feel complete.

In other words there may be areas in which it is high, but there will also be areas in which it is low.

Extremely successful people have areas of very low Self-Esteem. Over the years I’ve watched this in high profile business people, sports people and the Hollywood brigade.

They look powerful and confident as long as they’re talking about their success and then if you push a button which evokes a sense of their inadequacy in an area where they are struggling in their lives, the Self-Esteem disappears, like mist in the sun. [Read more…] about Guilt Creates Anger!

Are You Emotionally Blocked?

When I first went into my own psychotherapy 40 years ago I was immensely emotionally blocked.

What does that mean?

It means that I spent a lot more time in my head than in my body, where feelings occur.

I had experienced so much pain in my life, with no way of processing it, so I shut down emotionally. It’s like wearing a suit of armour.

The armour tightens you against the threat of life and not much can touch you, but you get to lose touch with emotions.

In the psychodynamic literature it’s called using an intellectual defence.

Perhaps the most famous and simple example of this comes from one of Aesop’s Fables. [Read more…] about Are You Emotionally Blocked?