Barn Life Blog
Weekly Theme: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Can Happen to Anyone Continuing with the idea that we are not our diagnoses, we want to discuss post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) this week. PTSD has gone by many names: shell shock, soldier’s heart, combat fatigue, and war neurosis,...
Weekly Theme: Psychosis and Schizophrenia
What is Psychosis? Psychosis is sensory perceptions and abnormal thinking experienced by an individual struggling with a schizophrenia spectrum or other psychotic-based disorder. Reminder! We are not here to judge you or label you. We are here to help you manage these...
Weekly Theme: Depression and Negative Belief Systems
A New Way of Thinking For some, "depression" is a scary word that carries a connotation of weakness and shame. For others, it’s a warm blanket to withdraw into over and over again despite knowing the suffocating ramifications. We may be fearful of it, comfortable with...
Weekly Theme: Anxiety is a Teacher
Don’t Shoot the Messenger!! Extreme and constant emotional states (i.e. mania, anger, fear, sorrow, grief, and worry) lead to serious mental health disorders (i.e. anxiety, depression, PTSD, etc). Anxiety, for example, is a normal reaction to stress and certain life...
Weekly Theme: You Are Not Your Diagnosis
Navigating the Sea of Modern Mental Health Diagnosis Our themes from this week forward are going to be a general overview of mental health diagnosis. However, we want to do it in a systematic order week by week. We will start with the root and move outward towards the...
Weekly Theme: Transformation
Manifesting Real Transformation Have you ever thought, I would like to be a little less crazy? Or, I would like to be a little more tolerant of ignorance, or I would like to stop drinking so much. Or, I would like to begin learning Aikido. Get into better physical and...
A Holistic Approach to Mental Health Treatment
The Relationship Between the Parts People misuse the word, "holistic". This week, we are going to bring it all back home. Bring it back down to the grassroots, to its intended meaning and purpose. Note, we can also write "holistic" as "wholistic," even though your...
Weekly Theme: Poseidon
The Unpredictable Waters Within In my years as a clinical therapist and program director, I have encountered many Poseidon problems. Clients express that they feel over-possessed by the unpredictable waters within them, overcome by the surfacing and powerful waves of...
Weekly Theme: Intro to Parent Models
Images of Healthy Parent Models Today we begin a new series on images of healthy parent models. It’s no real stretch to suggest that how we were parented influences who we become. From Freud to now, psychology has been dominated in large part by the reconciliation of...
Weekly Theme: the Third Eye Chakra
I stood upon a high place And saw, below, many devils Running, leaping, And carousing in sin. One looked up, grinning, And said: “Comrade! Brother!” -Stephen Crane The Center of Consciousness Undoubtedly you have heard of the third eye chakra. In large part, we might...
Weekly Theme: the Heart Chakra
Song of a man who has come through Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me! A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time. If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me! [...] If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge Driven by...
Weekly Theme: the Solar Plexus Chakra
Curiosity, Respect, Compassion, and Trust Early in our work with the psyche and soma connection, we introduced the concept that the interrelationship between the body and mind is a primary factor in the individuation of one's personality. For example, we approach a...
Weekly Theme: the Sacral Chakra
“Ultimately, to acknowledge the life of the body, and to affirm our solidarity with this physical form, is to acknowledge our existence as one of the earth's animals” – David Abram Vegetal, Instinctual, and Rational Aristotle once wrote that the human soul is a...
Weekly Theme: The Root Chakra
How will you hold the rare and perilous given you? Dawn begins in the bones – Risa Kaparo The Connection Between the Psyche and the Soma We are not just physical bodies, nor are we the untouchable substance of our thoughts and feelings. Somewhere in the...
Weekly Theme: Suicide and the Soul, Part 2
The Dwindling Attention Span Is it a common occurrence for you to pay attention? How much of your day is spent in the here and now? Add up the countless hours of television, mindless tasks, ruminating thoughts, and mind-filled wonderings. It can illuminate just how...
Introduction to Dream Work
Personal and Reflective of the Collective Unconscious This week we will be starting a 4-week series on dream work and dream tending. Freud and Jung both played a significant role in the depth psychological emphasis on the importance of dreams and dream work. However,...
Typology: Archetypal Insight and Interpersonal Understanding
Opening the Darkened Caverns In Integrity In Depth, Jungian Analyst and Typology Specialist John Beebe suggests that therapy engages typological functions of both the therapist and the patient. When we use typology and work with the 8 functions to understand ourselves...
Nurturing the Unique Genius of the Soul
… All I did was give him a look of confident expectation. An infant learning to walk, you know he can learn to walk, but the infant doesn’t know. You give the infant the confident support of your expectation. – Milton Erickson Trust only movement. Life happens at the...