Experiential Therapies - Ep 651

Dr. Reedy explains the origins and function of resistance and defensiveness. He talks about how we can make it worse as parents, therapists, and spouses.

Dr. Reedy describes various forms of experiential therapy, including psychodrama - the primary type of therapy used in Finding You Programs’ Intensives. He explains why they work on the unconscious aspects of the psyche, and how healing can be accelerated with an experiential approach. He explains how experiential therapy bypasses resistance. He also explains how any therapy can be reparative and a “re-experiencing” of ourselves.

Dr. Reedy discusses Jung's concept of the Shadow, how to recognize it, and how to integrate it. He explains how this brings peace and freedom and lays the foundation for greater intimacy.

Dr. Reedy discusses how therapists and their clients can benefit from the therapist goin to therapy. He empowers clients to ask their therapists about their participation in therapy. He also explains the parallels between the client’s and the therapist’s resistance to therapy are mirror images of each other.

Dr. Reedy discusses the relationship principles that transcend through all relationships. He talks about how becoming who you are forms the basis for greater connection to others. He addresses the line between “can’t” and “won’t” when it comes to our children.

Dr. Reedy discusses Finding You’s method of therapy. Informed by psychoanalysis, this therapy is a way of being with people in such a fundamentally different way that the clients re-experiences themselves. He suggests that safety is the treatment and as the therapist is able to hold the client in patience, compassion, and non-judgment, the client is able to explore their untold stories.

Dr. Reedy discusses what to look for in a therapist. He also explores the pros and cons of individual work vs family work in therapy. He discusses the genetics and the trauma of our issues. He answers a question on making amends to our family members.

Finding Compassion - Ep 645 by Dr. Brad Reedy

Dr. Reedy discusses explains complicated and complex grief in the wake of the LA fires. He talks about how no two people are grieving the same thing in the same way. He talks about how when others can’t sit with us in our pain, we feel shameful and inadequate. Conversely, when people can hold our feelings, we can learn to feel and sit with them, and they move through us. He explains that our relationship to grief is our relationship to life. And the pain of our lives doesn’t shrink, we get larger and more capable of holding it.

Dr. Reedy discusses how we may feel humiliated when the distance between the false self and real self is exposed. Most often, the real self is exposed when we encounter difficulties or failures. He explains that the narcissistic wound, the wound of not being seen, of not having our whole self (in contrast to the “good” self) is rarely addressed without failures and humiliation. He explain that defenses don’t feel like defenses from the inside – they feel like, “they don’t understand me.”