Trevor Brown

The best boundary is to develop the capacity to maintain the awareness of being an emotionally separate person while relating to somebody who is very important to us and is going to affect us. There are physical boundaries and emotional/psychological boundaries. Physical boundaries are fairly cut and dry. They clearly distinguish me from you, and you from me. I can never "get inside of you" and experience what it is like to be you from the inside out. I can't physically merge with you to the point that my own self disappears.  Further, it is obvious when you violate my physical boundary, and it is obvious when I violate yours. If you do something to my body without my consent - or with my active dissent - you are violating my physical boundary. And, obviously, vice-versa. So, a physical boundary isn't necessarily something we do , it is something that simply  is . I have my body, and my physical boundary is where my body ends. If my body-boundary is at risk of being v...

A view to consider is that any emotional reactivity I experience is best related to as 100% about my relationship with my own core, life-long vulnerabilities. - Bruce Tift I love Taylor Swift. She has a lot of great songs. She also has at least one terrible one . The chorus to the atrocity in question goes something like, "Look what you made me do. Look what you just made me do. Look what you made me do. Look." It is very bad. But, it does illustrate (repeatedly and annoyingly) a pervasive attitude that plagues us moderns; namely, the view that other people make us feel and do whatever it is that we feel and do. "I didn't want to, I wasn't going to, I wouldn't have, but... Well... YOU. You did that thing, and now I have to do this thing. This thing that, by the way, I swear is very unlike me to do." It's dramatic. I guess it's compelling. And it certainly lets us off the hook. The moment I make you out to be responsible for my behavior, I can a...

Today, a couple of things happened that I didn't like. First, I had a difficult session with a couple I work with. Second, bitcoin surged and I was left on the sidelines. And when those things happened, I quickly went to the places that I go to when things happen like that. I had thoughts of whether I should be a therapist, of if I’d chosen the wrong career path, of what a sorry excuse for a person I must be, of everybody else in the world basking in the glory of bitcoin money while I stand sorry and empty-handed on the sidelines, of whether I should be living somewhere else. The usual.   And, this time, I saw that I went to those places. Those self-absorbed places that make the world small and turn me into the focus of the world and make me feel bad to boot.   You see, generally I don’t see that I go to those places.  I just go to them.  And then I live out of them. I live out of them without really realizing that I’m living out of them. And, if I do realize it, t...

A cacophony of stimulation. Hustle and bustle. Endless sounds. Bells and whistles.  Life.  Steaming, teeming life.  The relentless appearance of life from all angles, towards all aims, at all times. I have been overwhelmed by so many things. Overwhelmed with fascination, with awe, with inspiration, with mystery. Overwhelmed with stress, with claustrophobia, with the unknown. Overwhelmed with overwhelm.  Is that a problem? Of course not.  In Buddhism, this would all be seen as the manifestation of openness. Openness surrounds us, all of us, always. But most of us are so tied to the familiar - to our routines, to our beliefs, to our friendships, to our language, to our hobbies - that we are able to turn away from openness. We close ourselves down, hammer ourselves in, narrow our field of vision.  But then you come to a place like Istanbul. And you stay.  And you stay some more.  And the daily mystery arising out of openness appears without regard to...

We can only be as intimate with another person as we are willing to be intimate with ourselves. Life is triggering. Other people are triggering. The people closest to us trigger us the most.  What does it mean to get triggered? It means that a sensitive spot of mine - one that I have tried long and hard to forget about and leave behind - has been activated.  This sensitive spot had been lying dormant a moment before the triggering event. And then the triggering thing happened, rudely shocking it out of its slumber.  We can say that this sensitive spot wakes up with a fright. Frazzled, frantic, startled.  Naturally, we want nothing to do with this frightened, frazzled, frantic, startled part of ourselves.  And so we get away from it as quick as possible.  The first step in our urgent escape is to focus on something else entirely. Instead of keeping our attention at the level of our sensitivity, we redirect it towards the event, or person, that triggered it. ...