My story:Decades ago, I saw how early trauma patients avoided recalling their most terrible experiences, but when they finally brought them into their sessions, healing was rapid and permanent...
Dr. Smith's Latest Articles
Avoidant Attachment
A Reader Asked: “You write a lot about people that are conscious of their attachment to their therapist …what about those that avoid…” [photo by Alexander Dummer, Pexels.com, supplied by...
Interpersonal Testing Revisited
In commenting on an earlier post entitled “Trust: How Avoiding Risk Damages Us” Joy poses two questions: In your paragraph titled “Destructive Testing, at the end you say, “Inevitably, sooner...
The Affect Avoidance Model 2018
A CBT therapist wonders why the client is so adamant about letting go of unhealthy core values. A psychodynamically trained therapist wonders if might be acceptable to assign homework. How can each...
Attachment to Therapist: A Primer
This very long post is intended to replace the previous one on transference disasters and give clients and therapists a sense of how attachment to one’s therapist can come about and what to...
Addiction
Do We Have Free Will?
I read something recently suggesting that most of our decisions are made outside of consciousness...
Trust: How Avoiding Risk Damages Us
How We Avoid Risk Let’s consider the damaging things we humans do for “safety” and to...
Mindfulness
Working With the Inner Child
Many of the questions that have come up recently around attachment to your therapist boil down to...
A Guide to Personal Change
Dear Readers, my new book, How We Heal and Grow: The Power of Facing Your Feelings is available...