Stephen C

The topic made me think of this article. I don't mean to imply this is the answer or the best way to approach the topic, it's just a tool you can add to your belt if you want to. http://www.rebtnetwork.org/ask/may06.html FEAR OF APPROACHING WOMENEven more important to the young Albert Ellis was his shyness around women. He flirted with them in Bronx Botanical Garden near his home, but he never approached them. Instead he made up all kinds of excuses to avoid doing so because he was scared of rejection. At the age of 19, he gave himself a homework assignment when he was off from college. He went to Bronx Botanical Garden every day that month, and whenever he saw a woman sitting alone on a park bench, he would sit next to her, which he wouldn't dare do before. He gave himself one minute to talk to her, calming his fears by saying silently to himself, "If I die, I die. Screw it, so I die." He didn't die. He found 130 women sitting alone that month on park benches. He sat next to all of them, whereupon 30 got up and walked away. He spoke to the remaining 100 — for the first time in his life — about the birds and the bees, the flowers, books, whatever came to mind. Al later said, "If Fred Skinner, who was then teaching at Indiana University, had known about my exploits, he would have thought I would have got extinguished, because of the 100 women I made one date — and she didn't show up! "But I prepared myself philosophically, even then, by seeing that nobody took out a stiletto and cut my balls off, nobody vomited and ran away, nobody called the cops. I had 100 pleasant conversations and with the second 100 I got good and made a few dates. "I used techniques I later developed into Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy on myself by thinking philosophically and differently. Nothing is awful or terrible, it's just a pain in the ass. That's all it is. "There's no horror in being rejected. I forced myself uncomfortably to do what I was afraid of, the opposite of what phobics do, because whenever they're afraid of innocent things, they beat it the hell out of there and then never get over their fears. "They increase their phobias, as I at first did. In Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy I combined thinkingand philosophy for the first time with feeling — emotion — and also with behavior therapy, which I got from John B. Watson, Fred Skinner and others. "So it's one of the very few therapies that is multi-modal in Arnold Lazarus' sense, and it includes thinking, feeling and behavior, and has about 20 or 30 techniques under each heading; it has lots of evidence in favor of it." The emotiveness of REBT makes it unique among the popular cognitive and behavioral therapies used today. The Friends and Supporters of Albert Ellis feel honored to help Dr. Ellis carry his life's work into the 21st century where REBT is as fresh and exciting as it was when the young Albert forced himself to sit on that park bench many years ago. In our support for Albert Ellis and REBT, we're willing to do what Al suggests— take the risk, experiment, try it!

I'm sad to hear you had to internalize abusers throughout your life to keep yourself safe, but I'm glad you made it out alive.One of the reasons I made this video is so that people might see it and say "Hey, that's what goes on inside my head!" and not feel so alone. It sounds like I've reached my goal.You're welcome, thanks for watching and expressing your experience.

I'm interested to hear how you view yourself differently after watching this video, if you'd be up for sharing.Thank you for the kind words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdOKsLY7p_cUgh, give this video a thumbs down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdOKsLY7p_cAll done.

Ohhh, gotcha. I'll see if I can add it to the "About" section on YouTube.Mhm, yeah. I agree.I'm glad that my personality doesn't only consist of little quips and jokes. Phew.

I appreciate the feedback and honesty, MCS. Thank you!I'm going to make a video "A message to Stephen M. Colgan from Inner Critic". I'll post it here when I'm done.

Whoa :)I can dig it.

I think +1 session is always more beneficial than 0 session, assuming the therapist is providing what you need.

Thanks for the feedback, MCS. I'm trying to loosin' up a bit on camera, hence the antics. I'm glad to hear you got a kick out of it. :DI'd like to hear more from your "inner critic". Maybe next time I see you in the chat room you can tell me more, "inner critic" feedback is welcome too.This was a milestone dream in that it's one I'll never forget. I'm impressed with how my mind works, I be like "How the heck did you did that?" sometimes. I love bringing dream fodder into therapy and seeing what can be done with it, it's like direct access. Bam, I'm ovah heah now!I had a very fierce protector Part that was working hard to protect me from "the world", but, man, he was tired. He was a Black Stone Golem Building with no windows or doors when I first met him, then during one of my therapy sessions he sank into the ground and emerged as a modern glass skyscraper with the light from the sun shining into and through him. I'm glad the video was well received by you, but don't hesitate to let your "inner critic" come at me, bro. I think I can take it. You better.

Done diggity done. Great idea, Ster. I don't know about "people at FDR". I'm one of them, so are you and we can appreciate what Fred Rogers is doing. I imagine many others can too. Fred Rogers is working the system the best he can for a beneficial outcome.I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the story, what did you imagine I sounded like before watching the video? Pearl Jam was doin' it big back in the day.

I've heard some positive things about the EMDR method. Thanks for sharing your experience with it. I'm sad to hear that you were left with depression as an adult, but I'm glad to hear you have and are working on yourself. I've had some skepticism about the method. Years ago, my former roommate began to go to therapy after having some conversations and experiences with me and then listening to some of the FDR podcast content. His mother is a EMDR therapist and she suggested he try EMDR to work on some of things he felt he would like to address in himself. This made me skeptical because in the past, throughout my roommates lifetime, she had made some very poor decisions as a mother. Interestingly, me and her later had a great conversation about therapy at a dinner party we were both at. I was asking about her work as a therapist and explaining what I had been and was working on in Internal Family Systems therapy. She was not familiar with IFS, but she was curious to hear more about it and my experiences with it. We also talked about the poor decisions she made as a parent and I was surprised to hear that she was willing to accept responsibility and expressed sympathy and a desire to be a better mother. Anyway, a few months after my former roommate began weekly therapy he went to visit his father who was not there for him throughout his life. When he came back from his trip he had his fathers last name tattooed in big letters across his back and was talking about his father as if they were best friends. His father got the same tattoo. I thought to myself "This EMDR is a cognitive shortcut trick that skips over our history. Accurately processing our childhood experiences is not something this method of therapy encourages." This was a problem for me. Thinking about it now, it's not EMDR. It's not about the method of therapy a person utilizes to heal. It's about how the client utilizes the therapy that determines what they get from it. My former roommate was avoiding delving into deep historical pain related to his father. I later had a conversation with him and he admitted that exposure to his father was not a good idea.

http://youtu.be/_9hOmTbrykkIn reference to something I bring up in my video...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q

http://youtu.be/_9hOmTbrykkIn reference to something I bring up in my video...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q

I have a Part that has said to my therapist things along the lines of "You wouldn't help me if I had no money" and "You don't really care about me.". I would suggest you explore more with this Part. Some questions that were worth me asking... How old are you? What is your job? Do you like your job? What do you think about me? Is there another Part you are protecting? Also, it may be worth considering if this perspective reminds you of any memories from your past.

wish I had the recording of the conversation this is a follow up to. I'll do my best to keep in mind that I'm working towards creating content for the internet now. Feedback is always appreciated.

I think the two topics are irrelevant in these interactions, not that they aren't important topics. What is relevant is your feelings and the thoughts attached to them.You could say "I feel frustrated and anxious" and see if you are able to make any contact this way. .

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I like your posts here, Ster. Thanks for your additions to the topic. That sounds great. I think the skepticism is useful, so big thanks to your "critic" Part for watching your back and keeping you safe the best way it knows how. I try to remind myself that people in general are going to have a Manager / Protector Part that is skeptical about a Self / Part model or any therapeutic model really. It's helpful to me because I have a Part that wants to strongly defend the beliefs I carry that I'm passionate about and that when I'm blended with that Part it makes it difficult to be curious, calm, confident and compassionate. I have worked with a Part that is skeptical about the therapy process. I've come to realize that Part has concerned about change most of all. For most of my life if I changed my patterns and beliefs I would of been attacked, so this Part is vigilant as a mofo. Thanks for making this thread, it's interesting to see what people have to say about this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Family_Systems_Model Criticism[edit] Critics have been pointing out that there is no empirical data comparing IFS to other proven methods, and that there have been no follow-up studies to investigate the long-term success rate of IFS. This makes it impossible to verify whether IFS is actually an effective form of therapy.[8][9] Hello, MCS's Critic Part.

Congratulations, Newshoes. I hope you're able to get everything you want out of your therapy sessions.

I don't think exposure to power, parenting and conditions result in projection. dissociation, suppression, repression. I would say exposure to ABUSE and /or NEGLECT result in these things. Every child will be exposed to power, parenting and conditions, it is impossible to avoid this. I don't think children need to be pushed towards anarchy. Instead children need to not be pushed in order for them to maintain the acceptance of anarchy they are born with. Something that stands out to me here is that you used the word "pushed" when talking about a child accepting anarchy, but used the word "exposure" when talking about a child accepting statism. Maybe a switcheroo is in order? Children must be pushed to accept statism. Children must be exposed to accept anarchy. Does that make sense?

You mentioned that you felt annoyed at the beginning of your last post. In that post you expressed a lot of truth about your history and experience of it.I imagine it would be relieving to write it all out. You felt calm and satisfied, which sounds something like relieved to me. Ahhhhhh. What do you imagine I am implying is wrong with you, Marc?This is not the first time you have expressed truth about your history and experience of it here on the FDR boards. What I am thinking while asking you how you felt: "I wonder how Marc felt after writing this out here. When I finished reading his post I felt relief, did he feel relieved?"What is my purpose in asking this: "To gather information about your emotional experience"Someone gave you a negative reputation click on your response to me, but that wasn't me. I don't like that your response to me got a negative reputation click. Would the person who gave Marcs response to me this negative reputation please explain here why they did that?

Thank you for sharing, Marc.How do you feel after typing this all out?

I made a list today of topics I'd like to discuss in a video. "How I Found My Daughter" is one of them. I'll post it here if I make it.