Summary, end of year six

* Here is my Zen koan-like formulation which I invented, as have others at different times and in different contexts:

We need the strength to be weak, and the courage to be afraid.

I think these necessities are the essence of therapeutic healing. They are not the essence of emotional healing in and of itself, because being weak and afraid while alone is not helpful. There must be another person, the right person, there to listen and to join.

I glanced, via google search, at a few other writers’ discoveries of those two paradoxes, named singly or in tandem. Their use is softer than mine, too sweet and spiritual. I am saying that we need to go to our worst and stay with it, to run through the river and the fire – tears and rage – to end up stronger, barely movable in the face of enemies and disappointing and bad parents.

* Maybe for the blog’s next year, I will cease complaining about (contemptuously criticizing) the Cognitive therapies, which are blind to the fact that thinking is our distraction and escape from our true self. Then again, I may feel that readers (hello, clandestine audience of twenty to forty-five per day with the occasional mysterious spurt of hundreds) need to know about bad or time-wasting therapy. We’ll see.

* A few years ago I remarked on my bemusement that there are hardly ever – basically never – any comments or questions from readers. I receive no more than three or four a year. What could it be? Am I too boring? too heavy cream, too deep? too right? Are equal- and higher-licensed clinicians angry that I have these pretensions? My humble and confident complexity says: All five. Truth be told, though, I don’t know what comments would accomplish, unless people are seeking help. I can learn, but I don’t brook disagreement.

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Image is my recent comment to this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/opinion/military-suicides.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage.