Search Results for: Robert Firestone

Stay in Love by Staying Out of Fantasy

…e starts to forego their individually—losing the “me” to become a “we.” As Robert Firestone explains it, “Perhaps the most significant sign that a fantasy bond has been formed is when one or both partners give up vital areas of personal interest, their unique points of view and opinions, their individuality, to become a unit, a whole. The attempt to find security in an illusion of merging with another leads to an insidious and progressive loss of…

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How to Say What You Want in Your Relationship

…und victimized or childish. In his blog, “Don’t Play the Victim Game,” Dr. Robert Firestone wrote “Maintaining a child victim role leads to chronic passivity.” It’s important not to be passive aggressive toward your loved ones. You shouldn’t punish them for not knowing instinctively what you want or for failing to read your mind. No one can expect any one person to meet all their needs. Rather, you should strive to feel like a whole person in your…

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The Over-Parenting Syndrome

…y in this scenario of family life. In their book Beyond Death Anxiety, Dr. Robert Firestone and Joyce Catlett explain how many parents envision family continuity as a form of symbolic immortality — a kind of living on through their sons and daughters and their grandchildren in an endless chain of biological attachment. In one sense, our children do represent a symbolic victory over death by perpetuating our identity into the future. This notion is…

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How Childhood Defenses Hurt Us As Adults

…our lifetime. However, we can also create what my father psychologist Dr. Robert Firestone termed a “Fantasy Bond” with our parents, an illusion of connection that aligns us with those who raise us and causes us to identify with them in ways that are negative as well as positive. As I’ve said before, no person is perfect. Even the best parents are only attuned to their children about 30 percent of the time. This is why, as adults, it is important…

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The Secret to Happiness and Well-Being

…to ‘me’ alone.” In his book The Ethics of Interpersonal Relationships, Dr. Robert Firestone addresses the benefits of seeing our common humanity and outlines the dangers of focusing on our differences and the need to see “our group” as superior. Truly adopting these four principles of well-being into our lives can help us to live a more harmonious and rewarding existence. However, there is a fifth element I would add that can enhance our ability t…

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Self-Esteem vs. Narcissism

…the world’s wars and political conflicts. Conversely, both Dr. Solomon and Robert Firestone argue that when death awareness isn’t denied but recognized, it can be used to promote peace and compassion. The idea that we are all in the same boat, albeit a sinking boat (as Solomon indicates), promotes a sense of equality and togetherness. The acknowledgement that our physical selves share the same fate and that we all have the same fears, can help us…

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

…empt or die by suicide are listening to what my father psychologist Robert Firestone refers to as the “critical inner voice” or “anti-self,” which berates them and lures them into their ultimate destruction. This internal enemy exists within all of us. Yet to some, particularly those who struggle with depression, addiction or other mental health disorders, this enemy can be life-threatening. In truth, it can be life threatening to any of us who su…

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A Way Out of Loneliness

…h in which they feel more alone. My father, psychologist and author Robert Firestone further describes how “the isolation and comfort of contemporary society carry with it the risk of reinforcing psychological defenses that contribute to an inward, self-protective, and somewhat emotionally deadened way of being and living.” In this 90-minute Webinar, Dr. Lisa Firestone will explore how a person’s defenses and their critical inner voice perpetuate…

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The Inner Voice that Drives Suicide

…to evaluate the risk of self-destructive tendencies. First, we created the Firestone Assessment of Self-Destructive Thoughts (FAST), and eventually, we developed another scale that uses the identification of a self-destructive thought process to assess suicidal intent. This became the Firestone Assessement of Suicidal Intent (FASI). A 2001 comparative study used the FAST to identify suicidal potential among Pakistani and American psychiatric patie…

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