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Overreacting So, what if I started with something a little provocative? (What’s new, Ellis?) But really, I have a thought that… …there is no such thing as overreaction. What’s your reaction to THAT? 🙂 What I mean when I say this, or how I follow it up with clients, is that if you think you… Continue reading Overreacting →

Telehealth Arriving Rituals So, we know there are benefits to in-person work over telehealth (at least if we’re doing anything more than coaching/psychoeducation, and probably even then!). But we also know telehealth isn’t going anywhere. If you haven’t read the Teletherapy Rant, you might want to. Or you might want to skip that but look… Continue reading Telehealth Arriving Rituals →

Prioritizing for Numbers People (of which I am not!)  Ok, I don’t make decisions like this. I’m much more of a Gendlin “felt sense” kind of chooser, or I’ll use my “Verb-ed To Do List” to decide based on what kind of energy I seem to have at the moment. But, sometimes I’m challenged in… Continue reading Prioritizing for Numbers People →

Four Existential Givens (and the implied responses) So, Yalom (e.g., 1980) talks about the four “existential givens” or “ultimate concerns”: Death (i.e., death anxiety) Freedom Isolation Meaninglessness  And I’m surprised how rarely (or if ever?) I find someone cogently and overtly expressing that the implied responses to each of these ultimate concerns are the bedrock… Continue reading Four Existential Givens →

Deranged, Disgusting, or Inhuman In other words, deserving of your contempt. (If you haven’t read Crazy, Stupid, or Awful, you might want to read that one first. Crazy, Stupid, Awful means you probably are thinking of your partner as a “Them” instead of thinking about the two of you as a “We” or an “Us,”… Continue reading Deranged, Inhuman, Disgusting →

Reversal Theory Workbook And here’s the other reason that I was on a bit of a hiatus from blogging… Probably if you spend any time on the Ellis Tangents blog, you know about Diligent Page Publications by now.  Diligent Page Publications exists to give the therapy gifts that are possible to deliver just in words.… Continue reading Reversal Theory Workbook →

Start School Later I know it’s been awhile since I last posted, and it’s because I’ve been working on two pretty big projects. I thought I’d announce the first one here, as it’s ready to at least begin… Soon, I’ll be starting a public education project to share the research about the benefits of starting… Continue reading Start School Later →

They might be an alien… If you haven’t read the Crazy, Stupid, Awful blog, go ahead and do that first.  . . . . . .  For fun, to help a couple who has a deeply difficult time understanding the other’s internal logic, I gave them an assignment to watch a sci-fi or fantasy movie… Continue reading They might be an alien… →