Thinking Outloud

Nice to see that MFTs are coming into the mainstream, although I still think we are a wonderful bunch of iconoclasts, and proud of it! Best Careers 2011: Marriage and Family Therapist - US News and World Report

Yes, if purity of faith is what you're looking for, eventually you will be very - VERY - disappointed. Even the scandalous, unique aspects of faith eventually become part of culture. "All religions are mash-ups," writes Stephen Prothero, religion scholar at Boston University. My Take: Who owns Jesus? Who owns yoga? – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs

What's the difference between friendly advice and therapy? A lot. Compassionate boundaries of respect and limits, for a start. Therapy Issues: Discerning the Professional from the Personal

The good people at www.GoodTherapy.com have made me a Topic Expert in Family Therapy. I write a column monthly - here's the latest: It may be the idealized image of television shows, or perfect, ever-present pictures in advertising in newspapers and magazines, or just the plan hopefulness with which we all start our families. But most of us don’t plan to include chronic, life-long health problems in our family plan. Our bodies are quite amazing creations, able to fight off disease, recover from injury, grow, age and change every day. We aren’t minds that have bodies attached, but we are instead bodies that think. We must eat, move, think, rest, work and love with our physical selves in mind. And for the most part, this natural rhythm of self-care makes life work. But life isn’t smooth, and our physical systems aren’t perfect. Some of us will encounter injury, disease or disability that does not respond to time and care. For many of us, that process comes quite late

     For generations, family members have noted the differences that naturally arise in children raised in the same family. How is it that John, the first born and only boy, seems to have such different personality characteristics than his younger brother, raised in the same house by the same parents just two years apart?  Good question!      Theories of personality abound. You may be familiar with some of the more popular models, often used in work or educational settings. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), based on the four major personality styles described by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, is a favorite. The Enneagram, a model developed in religious communities and often used in spiritual direction, and other forms of personal discovery, is another.  These are models that seek to describe common types of personalities. Other models, such as the Big Five theory, attempt to describe personalities using the idea of common traits shared by human beings across the wo