Teamwork and the trust it’s built on . . .
When we meet, trust will be fundamental to the good working relationship that needs to be forged. In order for me to be as effective as possible in guiding you to get to know and understand yourself better, I need access to the subjective and highly sensitive and personal information that you alone are privy to. But in order for you to feel emotionally safe to fully share yourself with me, I must prove myself worthy of being trusted. So at first the approach to the work is cautious until you sense that I “get you,” which occurs when you “get” that I’m an intuitive, careful, and competent psychotherapist who truly cares, but which will be up to you to decide.
Not only is it necessary that I “get you,” but in order to be of most help it’s also necessary that I “get it,” which I already do. What I mean is that my ability to “get you” isn’t just due to 35+ years of professional experience on top of many years of schooling and training. For throughout the entirety of my life I’ve had setbacks. These setbacks led to crises in which I felt beset at different times with distress, confusion, depression, conflict, or anxiety. In response to those setbacks, I continued on in quest of more self-knowledge and personal growth. With the great help and support I received at different times as a patient in my own therapy, as well as from considerable soul searching, self-reflecting, and incessantly questing for better answers that could stand the test of time, I came through each of the troublesome dark periods in ways that led to greater self-knowledge and more connectedness with myself and others. So not only am I able to “get you,” but I also I “get it,” that is, I “get” what it feels like to need and get help from a therapist. If I need such help again I will undoubtedly avail myself once more of a therapist’s support and wisdom.
For the reasons mentioned above related to my “getting you” and “getting it,” I expect I’ll be able to guide you, as I have many others, towards bettering your intuitive understanding of yourself so that through greater insight you could more readily make personal changes or improvements that are pending. My positive expectations also are inspired by two epiphanies that transformed my understanding of what it means to be true to myself and how to best go about it.
Epiphany One:
Prior to this epiphany, I believed my character was flawed because of out of fears of failure and rejection I cowardly avoided taking chances that could lead me to appear inadequate and worsen my already shaky self-identity. From the first epiphany I was delighted and relieved to discover that actually I didn’t have a character flaw; I was just unwilling to try my best and chance falling short, which I hadn’t realized before then. I realized too that the setbacks weren’t the result of cowardice, but were due to my feeling powerless and insipid since I hadn’t been “owning” my intent to be unwilling.
As a result, I felt duly intimidated by challenges to and criticisms of my self-identity because in being disconnected from a key aspect of my activity I experienced too little ego strength. But once I “owned” my intent to be unwilling, which is one in the same as being more conscious of it from a subjective standpoint, and experienced myself intentionally being unwilling, I felt empowered. Soon afterwards I spontaneously decided to be intent on being more true to myself because it was apparent that it was in my overall best interest to. Although at first I mistook my intents to be unwilling and then willing as manifestations of free will, I nevertheless took a significant leap in the direction of generating an alternate means besides self-idealization to inspire and empower myself.
Epiphany Two: Years later I experienced a second epiphany after being enlightened by Arthur Schopenhauer’s metaphysical views on what we can and can’t know about ourselves. His enlightening philosophical viewpoint advances the idea that we are endowed by our common nervous system with just two limited ways of acquiring knowledge, conceptualizing and intuiting, and therefore, we’re prevented from ever knowing ourselves or reality in any true, direct, or complete way. The second epiphany revealed that just like everyone else who’s biased by our culture’s conceptually based views of what existence fundamentally is comprised of and all about, I went along for many years with letting the conceptual way of knowing and judging both myself and my surroundings dominate my view of reality. To me the view I had become long accustomed to always seemed as if it was absolutely objective and valid. At the same time, subjective knowledge, which I am informed of through intuition, was subsumed by false beliefs about an inner self with free will.
Consequently, subjective knowledge of myself obtained through intuition was incorrectly represented as just private information about my inner self. Until the second epiphany, I had no sense of misrepresenting realty or that I could never know anything, including myself, in and of itself. After the epiphany, and ever since, I’ve recognized that the two ways of knowing just naturally coincide to form a perfectly appearing 3-D like perceptual experience of myself in the world with an inner self, or I, appearing at its center who in principle seems capable of taking charge. Additionally, the epiphany brought my attention to the subjective vantage point from which I am conscious of the activity of intending. At that point I experienced myself deciding to intend the responses I made simply because I felt inspired by the understanding that it was in my best interest. Essentially I had “owned” the activity of intending at the forefront of the will to live, which from a subjective standpoint revealed that I'm at one with it. Such direct and immediate (subjective) knowledge of myself made it possible to redirect, vary, or sustain the level of intentness of my responses if they felt like the right actions to take under the circumstances.
The second epiphany led to another and more significant leap in the direction of generating an alternate and much more reliable means than self-idealization to inspire and empower myself. This is because it enabled me to act with passion towards what I understood was in my overall best interest even when it deviated from the more narrow but more immediately tempting, self-centric view of the greater good. Above all, this leap forward led me to intuitively appreciate that while I don’t have free will the choice I opt for always is born out of my in-the-moment self-centric or holistic understanding of what’s in my best interest. This means that when I’m truthful with myself about what changes or improvements are for the overall greater good for my existence, I can quickly decide to be intent on bringing them about to the best of my ability. Even when I feel distressed I can be intent on generating the effort that’s required to bring about what matters most. The intuitive know-how that makes this capability possible, which you could discover in yourself too, also self-evidently informed me how to make these changes or improvements last, just as it could for you as well. My aim and hope is that through our teamwork and the trust that grows from it, you will gain similar insights into your inner nature that reveal your inherent connection with the will to live so that you could gain as much from this revelation as I have, and which I still do.
When we meet, trust will be fundamental to the good working relationship that needs to be forged. In order for me to be as effective as possible in guiding you to get to know and understand yourself better, I need access to the subjective and highly sensitive and personal information that you alone are privy to. But in order for you to feel emotionally safe to fully share yourself with me, I must prove myself worthy of being trusted. So at first the approach to the work is cautious until you sense that I “get you,” which occurs when you “get” that I’m an intuitive, careful, and competent psychotherapist who truly cares, but which will be up to you to decide.
Not only is it necessary that I “get you,” but in order to be of most help it’s also necessary that I “get it,” which I already do. What I mean is that my ability to “get you” isn’t just due to 35+ years of professional experience on top of many years of schooling and training. For throughout the entirety of my life I’ve had setbacks. These setbacks led to crises in which I felt beset at different times with distress, confusion, depression, conflict, or anxiety. In response to those setbacks, I continued on in quest of more self-knowledge and personal growth. With the great help and support I received at different times as a patient in my own therapy, as well as from considerable soul searching, self-reflecting, and incessantly questing for better answers that could stand the test of time, I came through each of the troublesome dark periods in ways that led to greater self-knowledge and more connectedness with myself and others. So not only am I able to “get you,” but I also I “get it,” that is, I “get” what it feels like to need and get help from a therapist. If I need such help again I will undoubtedly avail myself once more of a therapist’s support and wisdom.
For the reasons mentioned above related to my “getting you” and “getting it,” I expect I’ll be able to guide you, as I have many others, towards bettering your intuitive understanding of yourself so that through greater insight you could more readily make personal changes or improvements that are pending. My positive expectations also are inspired by two epiphanies that transformed my understanding of what it means to be true to myself and how to best go about it.
Epiphany One:
Prior to this epiphany, I believed my character was flawed because of out of fears of failure and rejection I cowardly avoided taking chances that could lead me to appear inadequate and worsen my already shaky self-identity. From the first epiphany I was delighted and relieved to discover that actually I didn’t have a character flaw; I was just unwilling to try my best and chance falling short, which I hadn’t realized before then. I realized too that the setbacks weren’t the result of cowardice, but were due to my feeling powerless and insipid since I hadn’t been “owning” my intent to be unwilling.
As a result, I felt duly intimidated by challenges to and criticisms of my self-identity because in being disconnected from a key aspect of my activity I experienced too little ego strength. But once I “owned” my intent to be unwilling, which is one in the same as being more conscious of it from a subjective standpoint, and experienced myself intentionally being unwilling, I felt empowered. Soon afterwards I spontaneously decided to be intent on being more true to myself because it was apparent that it was in my overall best interest to. Although at first I mistook my intents to be unwilling and then willing as manifestations of free will, I nevertheless took a significant leap in the direction of generating an alternate means besides self-idealization to inspire and empower myself.
Epiphany Two: Years later I experienced a second epiphany after being enlightened by Arthur Schopenhauer’s metaphysical views on what we can and can’t know about ourselves. His enlightening philosophical viewpoint advances the idea that we are endowed by our common nervous system with just two limited ways of acquiring knowledge, conceptualizing and intuiting, and therefore, we’re prevented from ever knowing ourselves or reality in any true, direct, or complete way. The second epiphany revealed that just like everyone else who’s biased by our culture’s conceptually based views of what existence fundamentally is comprised of and all about, I went along for many years with letting the conceptual way of knowing and judging both myself and my surroundings dominate my view of reality. To me the view I had become long accustomed to always seemed as if it was absolutely objective and valid. At the same time, subjective knowledge, which I am informed of through intuition, was subsumed by false beliefs about an inner self with free will.
Consequently, subjective knowledge of myself obtained through intuition was incorrectly represented as just private information about my inner self. Until the second epiphany, I had no sense of misrepresenting realty or that I could never know anything, including myself, in and of itself. After the epiphany, and ever since, I’ve recognized that the two ways of knowing just naturally coincide to form a perfectly appearing 3-D like perceptual experience of myself in the world with an inner self, or I, appearing at its center who in principle seems capable of taking charge. Additionally, the epiphany brought my attention to the subjective vantage point from which I am conscious of the activity of intending. At that point I experienced myself deciding to intend the responses I made simply because I felt inspired by the understanding that it was in my best interest. Essentially I had “owned” the activity of intending at the forefront of the will to live, which from a subjective standpoint revealed that I'm at one with it. Such direct and immediate (subjective) knowledge of myself made it possible to redirect, vary, or sustain the level of intentness of my responses if they felt like the right actions to take under the circumstances.
The second epiphany led to another and more significant leap in the direction of generating an alternate and much more reliable means than self-idealization to inspire and empower myself. This is because it enabled me to act with passion towards what I understood was in my overall best interest even when it deviated from the more narrow but more immediately tempting, self-centric view of the greater good. Above all, this leap forward led me to intuitively appreciate that while I don’t have free will the choice I opt for always is born out of my in-the-moment self-centric or holistic understanding of what’s in my best interest. This means that when I’m truthful with myself about what changes or improvements are for the overall greater good for my existence, I can quickly decide to be intent on bringing them about to the best of my ability. Even when I feel distressed I can be intent on generating the effort that’s required to bring about what matters most. The intuitive know-how that makes this capability possible, which you could discover in yourself too, also self-evidently informed me how to make these changes or improvements last, just as it could for you as well. My aim and hope is that through our teamwork and the trust that grows from it, you will gain similar insights into your inner nature that reveal your inherent connection with the will to live so that you could gain as much from this revelation as I have, and which I still do.