Search Results for: Linda Firestone

Why We Lost a Lovable Genius: The Hidden Enemy in Suicide

…suring people’s self-destructive thoughts on a continuum. Results from the Firestone Assessment of Self-Destructive Thoughts (FAST) showed that people at high risk for suicide or who have prior attempts are experiencing critical inner voices further down a continuum of self-destructive thoughts, and they are experiencing these thoughts with greater intensity than non-suicidal people with the same mental health disorders. The voices at this extreme…

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How Your Attachment Style Impacts Your Relationship

…On-Demand Webinars     In this Webinar: This online workshop with Dr. Lisa Firestone will provide tools to help people heal insecure attachment, resolve trauma, integrate their… Learn More One essential way to do this is by making sense of your story. According to Dr. Dan Siegel, attachment research demonstrates that “the best predictor of a child’s security of attachment is not what happened to his parents as children, but rather how his parents…

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Self-Sabotaging: Why We Get in Our Own Way

…Siege: A Therapeutic Model for Differentiation, co-authored by Dr. Robert Firestone, Dr. Lisa Firestone and Joyce Catlett, we describe the four steps involved in differentiation. Step one involves separating from the destructive attitudes (critical inner voices) we internalized based on painful early life experiences. The second step requires us to separate from the negative traits in our parents or influential caretakers that we’ve taken on as o…

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Stop Self-Sabotage by Conquering Your Inner Critic

…our new book, The Self Under Siege. In the book, my co-authors, Dr. Robert Firestone and Joyce Catlett, and I outline a four-step process for differentiating yourself from negative influences from your past and from society at large, in order to become the person you have the potential to be, “your real self.” To be able to recognize and separate from destructive voices, you must first recognize that many thoughts you regard as your own point of v…

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How to Stop Fighting and Feel Close Again

…challenge our critical inner voice. Drop your half of the dynamic Dr. Lisa Firestone, co-author of Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships recommends what she calls “unilateral disarmament” as a tool couples can use to defuse arguments and be close again. “What it involves is momentarily dropping your side of the debate and approaching your partner from a more loving stance,” explained Firestone. “The idea is that when couples have tension between…

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Fantasy Bond 101

…parent or caretaker. In his new book, Challenging the Fantasy Bond, Robert Firestone describes the baby’s situation, “The infant, lacking any sense of time, knows only the intensity of the moment and suffers intolerable fear and emotional pain when faced with frustration and separation anxiety.” To allay those feelings, a baby develops an illusion of connection or merged identity with their parent. This imagination provides the baby with partial g…

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Why Should You Write Memoir?

…ing, and in the process he found himself transforming. For her entire life Linda Gray Sexton, daughter of celebrated poet Anne Sexton who committed suicide when she was in her forties, has struggled to come to terms with losing a mother in such a way. Writing her two memoirs, Searching for Memory Street (1994) and Half in Love (2011), has helped her to heal and to reconcile herself to the trauma of her childhood. Writing has also helped her deal w…

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How to Bring "Vacation Sex" Home With You

…ntity of their sexual encounters. In her blog, therapist and sex educator, Linda E. Savage, stated that in a long term relationship, sex often becomes “just one more task to check off your list of chores (women tend to view it that way) or a way to relax before sleep (common among men).” According to psychologist David Snarch, 70 percent of people report that their sexual life is asleep. So it is not just vacation sex that a couple is trying to br…

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Home (not again) for the Holidays

…nt? In his upcoming and updated book, Challenging the Fantasy Bond, Robert Firestone discusses how we recreate the past in our current relationships. The concept of the fantasy bond, when applied to a couple relationship, demonstrates people’s compulsion to relive the past with new persons. The illusory connections they form invariably lead to a re-enactment of defensive styles of relating developed in childhood. In essence, people transform the d…

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Want to get help now?

…on Association – Suicide and Self Destructive Behavior American Association of Suicidology Read: PsychAlive’s Suicide Prevention Advice Page “Something to Lose” Dr. Lisa Firestone’s blog, Suicide: The Warning Signs Dr. Lisa Firestone’s blog, Suicide: How Can You Help Someone at Risk…

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