Search Results for: lisa firestone/feed/2009/11/fear-of-intimacy

Why Women Find it Diffiicult to Attach to Pleasure

Lisa Firestone: It’s also been my experience when people really feel the most joy or the most loving or close moments that it also brings up, it brings up more anxiety about death and loss— Carol Gilligan: It’s perfect. If I enjoy, like, how will I deal with death. But if I’m not enjoying, like, I might as well be dead right now. I remember when I was doing workshops with women with Kristin Linklater in what was called “Company of Women” and we d…

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Relationship Compatibility

…sychologist and author of Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships, Dr. Lisa Firestone answers some fundamental questions about relationship compatibility. How would you define relationship compatibility? Relationship compatibility exists, first and foremost, when a couple relates with equality and respect. It’s important for couples to have fun together and really enjoy the time they spend together. Relationships thrive when two people share compan…

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The Importance of Choosing Your Thoughts

…give our lives meaning and direction without falling victim to the inner critic that holds us back and keeps us from achieving our goals. Learn more about Dr. Lisa Firestone’s latest book, The Self under Siege: A Therapeutic Model for Differentiation…

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VIDEO: How Mindfulness Meditation Allows You to Embrace Yourself

In her interview with PsychAlive Senior Editor Lisa Firestone, Dr. Donna Rockwell talks about how mindfulness meditation allows you to embrace yourself more authentically and tenderly. You know, when you sit there – I meditated, I don’t know, for 15 years before I could really have this have this sort of breakthrough, which is all of that thinking has nothing to do with me. It’s not who I am . It’s just this thing my mind is doing. So, it sort of…

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The Inner Voices Behind Violent Behavior

…iewing, and assessing violent individuals, along with my father Dr. Robert Firestone, I began to recognize certain “voices” (negative thought processes) that flood the minds of these individuals influencing them to engage in acts of violence. These “voices” aren’t experienced as hallucinations but rather are a systematic pattern of negative thoughts against to the self, and hostile and suspicious toward others. We call these destructive thoughts “…

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Compassionate Child-Rearing: An In-Depth Approach to Optimal Parenting

In this revolutionary work, Dr. Firestone develops the theory and underlying dynamics involved in disturbed family relationships and the “poisonous pedagogy” that characterizes generally accepted patterns of child-rearing. The author expands on the phenomenological descriptions of the traditional abuses of children previously offered by Alice Miller, R.D. Laing, James Garbarino, and others, and explains how well-intentioned parents unwittingly in…

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The Myth of a Perfect Mother

…to be real people with them. In his latest book, Separation Theory, Robert Firestone writes that parental love “includes a willingness to be a real person with the child as opposed to acting the role of ‘mother’ or ‘father.’” Our children need us to step out from behind the role of Perfect Parent so they can see and know us as an authentic person. And they need to be related to by a genuine person to feel seen and real themselves. In Compassionate…

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Voice Therapy: A Psychotherapeutic Approach to Self-Destructive Behavior

by Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D. Foreword by Joseph Richman, Ph.D. Voice Therapy: A Psychotherapeutic Approach to Self-Destructive Behavior is a thought-provoking work that provides clinicians with a detailed description of Voice Therapy, an innovative therapeutic procedure developed by Dr. Robert W. Firestone that can be used to elicit and bring to the foreground negative thought patterns antithetical to the self and cynical toward others (the crit…

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The Secret to Happiness and Well-Being

…sh their goals. This approach to life represents what my father Dr. Robert Firestone has identified as being in an adult mode, in contrast to maintaining a childish stance or adopting a parental/ judgmental point of view. He sees these characteristics as essential elements to being an emotionally healthy individual. The idea that resilience is one of the primary keys to well-being is backed by Dr. Salvatore Maddi’s 35 years of research into “hardi…

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love and deception

Overcoming the Real Pain of Break Ups, Affairs and Rejections

…ave often observed what my father, psychologist and theorist Dr. Robert W. Firestone, refers to as the “critical inner voice” to be the chief culprit in making break ups and affairs a matter of humiliation. While one would never think badly of a friend (or film star) who had been hurt by a significant other, rarely do people maintain the same standards for themselves. Instead, when they are hurt, they start to have harsh attacking thoughts toward…

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