This article introduces a series of Web
pages for lay and clinical human-service
providers who work with
troubled people and groups. The series is based on my full-time professional study and clinical experience
since 1979 as a family-systems and trauma-recovery therapist with over 1,000
international clients and students.
"Clinical human-service providers" includes student
and experienced...
-
psychologists, social workers,
and pastoral counselors;
-
individual, marital,
and family therapists; and...
-
medical professionals including
psychiatrists;
Lay providers
include teachers, counselors, life coaches,
mentors, human-resource advisors, and similar vocations.
This series applies to direct-service (face-to-face) providers and the professionals who train, hire, license, evaluate,
supervise, support, and regulate them.
Contents
This introduction provides
The next page is a
link-map of the main topics in this series.
Background
I am
a 77-year old systems engineer,
researcher, educator, author, and
veteran
therapist. I've
had a life-long passion to understand human development, behavior, and
relationships, and to help people resolve - and avoid - personal and social
"problems." I'm one of a very few "mental-health" professionals with formal
engineering and systems training and experience.
In 1986
(at age 48), I discovered that I was the son of two functional alcoholics, and
had survived a very low-nurturance (dysfunctional) childhood
family. Until then, I
had thought my childhood and family were "normal." I now know that I
six major psychological
and
from my well-intentioned parents - just like they did from their ancestors.
The road to discovering this followed my multi-year study of
four groups of respected theoreticians and veteran human-service
professionals:
-
Human-development and
family-system pioneers, principally Erik Erickson, Virginia Satir,
Murray Bowen, Carl Rogers, Jay Haley, Patricia Papp, Salvador Minuchin, Carl Rogers,
Carl Whitaker, John Gardner, Nathaniel Branden, Celia Falacov, Judith Wallerstein,
Steven Covey, Froma Walsh, and the "Milan Group" - Palazzoli, Boscolo,
Checchin, and Prata;
-
Intrapsychic, communication, and clinical-hypnosis pioneers, including
Abraham Maslow, Gregory Bateson, Milton Erickson, Francis Barber, Paul
Watzlawick, John Weakland, Richard Fish, Eric Berne, Claude Steiner,
Neale Walsch, Anne Moir, Jeffery Zeig, Thomas Harris, Hal and Sidra Stone,
Alexander Lowen, Larry Dossey, John Masterson,
Fritz Perls, Steven Gilligan, Harville Hendrix, Roberto Assagioli, John
Rowan, Deborah Tannen, Robert Bolton, and many others;
-
Childhood-trauma recovery pioneers,
including Bill Wilson et. al., Claudia Black, John Bradshaw, Sharon Wegsheider-Cruse, Janet
Woititz, Charles Whitfield, John and Linda Friel, Rokelle Lerner, Alice
Miller, Jane Middleton-Moz, Robert Ackerman, Anne Smith, Richard Schwartz, John Rowan,
James Masterson, Mary Jo Barrett, Patricia
O'Gorman, Philip Oliver-Diaz, Anne Wilson Shaef, Julia Cameron, Robert
Subby, Charles Whitfield, Pia Melody, and many others; and...
-
Pioneer stepfamily
sociologists, researchers and clinicians, including Andrew Cherlin,
A. J. Norton, Larry Bumpass, Jeffrey Larson, Paul Glick, J. A.
Sweet, Esther Wald, John and Emily Visher, Cliff
Sager et. al, Kay Pasley, Marilyn Ihinger-Tallman, and more recently John Bray, Margaret Newman,
Elizabeth Einstein, Patricia Papernow, and many others.
Note that except for
Dr. Richard Schwartz, none of the experts above
included ideas on normal personality subselves and wounds into their paradigms.
Through obsessive research and clinical experience with well over 1.000
average individuals, couples, and families since 1986, I now believe that most people are unaware of
a mix of the
same psychological wounds my parents and I did. Hundreds of spontaneous global responses to my educational
YouTube videos suggest that this unseen
lethal inheritance
of [wounds + unawareness] is world-wide.
Alerting people to this inheritance and proposing how to stop it
has become a life mission for me. This free educational Web site and
related guide books and videos are three results.
These articles for human-service providers build on seven free online self-improvement
designed to help average people - specially parents and grandparents
- stop this toxic cycle.
For more on my background, see this.
Prepare: Study and Apply the Basics
My
professional experience since 1979 suggests that most human-service providers
(like you) get
little or no comprehensive training in the
in this Web site. They
what they don't know, and neither do their trainers, supervisors, employers, colleagues,
and clients.
To get the most from these pages,
complete these preparation steps in order. Expect this to take several weeks or
months. The steps will help you protect your family and serve your clients better by
gaining didactic and experiential knowledge of "the human condition."
Option:
enhance your learning by keeping a log or journal of your thoughts and feelings
as you do these steps.
__ 1) Choose a multi-year outlook and
the open-minded curiosity of a student. Expect to learn something useful about
yourself, your family, your profession, and your clients, from these pages. Take your time.
Expect to discover that much of what you've learned previously about "human
problems" is superficial, incomplete, or wrong.
__ 2) (Re)read the
introduction to this ad-free Web site and the
premises underlying it. If you
disagree with many of the premises, these pages will probably not benefit you.
__ 3)
Invest time in
completing online lessons 1 thru 6 in this free self-education
Lesson 1 will reveal whether you've inherited significant psychological wounds
and may often be controlled by well-intentioned
If true, commit to high-priority personal
- particularly if you
nurture minor kids.
These lessons will...
-
alert you to whether the [wounds +
unawareness]
is harming you and your family and putting your descendents at risk,
and...
-
help you appreciate what typical coworkers
and clients are unaware of, and this study will...
-
give you authenticity, empathy, and reason
to recommend that your clients study these lessons ("Yes, I've studied
and applied them."). Reluctance to study this Break-the-Cycle! course
suggests that false selves control you.
__ 4)
Check to see if your true Self (capital
"S") is
as you do each of these next steps. If not, your learning will be skewed or
blocked.
More
preparation steps...
__ 5) Patiently
answer the questions in these
to see what you've learned from the course. Review the
Q&A article for each quiz you had significant trouble answering.
Half of the inherited cycle stressing your family members, clients, students,
and colleagues is
of this vital knowledge
Reflect on how typical
clients and co-workers would do with these quizzes. Then...
__ 6) See how you feel about these
five universal hazards that typical adults
(including you) face without knowing it. Ask yourself how many of your family
adults, clients, and co-workers could name and explain these hazards.
|
__ 7)
Assess each adult in your
family - including dead relatives and your mate and ex mate/s, if any - for
psychological wounds. Invite selected family adults and older kids to study
lesson 1 (wound discovery and recovery) and lesson 2 (effective communication
skills), and experience their (and your) reactions. Doing this will increase
your awareness of what typical clients might experience if they assess
themselves and their families for
wounds and unawareness.
|
If one or more
of your family adults seems to be a
(GWC), meditate on
if, how, and when to suggest that they study
- specially if the person is caring for young kids.
Recall
- these steps will prepare you to benefit fully from these pages for
human-service providers.
__ 9)
Assess the
(low to
high) of your work, school, and/or religious environment using
this and
this. If you're a GWC, you're probably working or studying, and
living, in a significantly-dysfunctional environment that may amplify your
wounds and hinder your healing. If you are in a toxic environment,
you can...
-
do nothing (a sure sign of a
disabled true Self); or...
-
seek a wholistically-healthier setting;
and/or...
-
learn how to recognize and protect yourself
from manipulative, dishonest, shaming, disrespectful, unempathic (i.e.
wounded) people Use
to do this. And you may choose to...
-
work proactively to
alert key people in your setting to the
of psychological wounds and unawareness, and to options for reducing them.
__ 10) Read
this description of the lethal [wounds + unawareness]
cycle that (I think) passes silently
down the generations. Evaluate
whether the cycle is influencing you and your relatives now, and try
including that question in assessing your clients.
+ + +
Taking these
ten
steps over time will prepare you to (1) heal any psychological wounds you've
inherited; (2) strengthen and protect your family; and (3) optimize the
human services you
provide,
The Web address of this
article is
https://sfhelp.org/pro/intro.htm 
NEXT - review the