Sublime

whatever authority we hold, we hold it for the good of the entire group, not for our own sense of self.

When we encounter ourselves on the shore of the unreal, together we implement new habits of self and communal compassion, and patience, and inclusion, so that we can safely travel into what we really think and feel. It requires that we tell the truth—or rather, what we believe to be true in the season of life we are in. Even if our voices are shaki

Parts are intrinsically either protectors or exiles, depending on whether they are in pain or protecting against pain. Either one of these can also be a target part.

“I can’t let you hurt people,” she told me, “but I want to help you work through this and find ways to express what you’re feeling while keeping everyone else safe.” And then she cried with me. Love sought to understand and communicate. Instead of lashing out in frustration at what I’d done, my mom had sought to reach me with love—without sacrifici

Here we examine not just our patients but ourselves in relation to our patients. In our group, Andrea can say to me, “That patient sounds like your brother. That’s why you’re responding that way.” I can help Ian manage his feelings about the patient who begins her sessions by reporting her horoscope (“I can’t stand this woo-woo shit,” he says). Gro

I know all of you on Earth very well, and I could see that even though you had pain and suffering, you had to learn for yourselves why sacrifice, or denial of yourself in favor of others, does not work.

In standard psychological language, these protectors are called “defenses.”

His concern was to state the primacy of faith in relation to reason on matters of theological discourse. We have another concern and thus must rephrase that question in the light of our cultural history, asking: “What has Africa to do with Jerusalem, and what difference does Jesus make for African people oppressed in North America?” As Gerard Bissa