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Discovery

Kindness is love made manifest

Kindness is love made manifest. I believe that with all my heart. I believe it more the older I get. It can’t be the sticky, put on kindness. It has to be connected to the HEART to be love made manifest.

Stepping Into Another Point of View

Our ability to adopt another person’s point of view (POV) steps us and our clients into accepting other people more completely and ultimately reveals the felt sense knowledge of the koan-like question “who is another human being?” More on that at another time ?

As our clients develop and enhance their ability to assume another’s POV….

Therapeutic Failures, Ugh.

Therapeutic failures. Ugh. Rarely do we discuss them openly. Yet our failures can be one big playground on which we can discover and fortify leaps in skill.

I recently hit a therapeutic failure with a client. I don’t want to write about it. Sharing failure seems counterintuitive and oh, so wrong. Yet oh so right at the same time.

Empathy, AAIT & The Imago Dialogue

Those of us in long term relationships with a commitment to do what it takes to learn how to love each other know what a high game that is. There’s a lot that gets in the way of that. For therapists, our relationships are a rich playground for expanding our capacity to accept one another.

The imago dialogue is an intentional, refined approach to communicating. With practice, it can become a sweet effortless entry into real connection.

Empathy’s Role

The last few weeks, I’ve been going the long way around answering a question raised by a talented young therapist, “What is the role of empathy in AAIT?” NOW, I think I’m ready to more directly answer the question.

Empathy is essential in ANY therapeutic relationship. It is crucial to developing trust which is critical to establishing a collaborative relationship. Collaboration is central to creating a solid crucible for transformation and is one of the five phases of AAIT.

Empathy, Bridge of the Heart

We all have our challenges with empathy. There are a variety of emotional states we inhabit that inhibit our capacity to empathize with someone. Anything on the mad, sad, glad or scared continuum can stop us from pausing and reflecting on what it’s like to be that PERSON at that TIME going through that SITUATION.

Exercising Empathy

In the context of our current political polarization, I often receive the question, how do we use AAIT with THIS? Aside from inviting an exploration of the shadow, I’ve been a bit at a loss. I KNOW that doing our deliberate practice has an impact on our state of being. What I don’t know is how that impacts those around us.

Why Race Matters ~ Susan Bryant

My friend, Susan Bryant, shared this post on Facebook on February 17, 2018. She wrote it before joining a group, #unitedinlove. This gathering was a counter-protest in the face of a white supremacist presenting at the university where she works. Susan eloquently points to some of the struggles associated with race along with an invitation for deeper reflection.

Got Empathy?

Empathy has long been recognized as an essential element to providing proper service to our clients. To make sure we are on the same page, let’s start with this basic definition of empathy: the ability to share and understand the feelings of another.