Interdisciplinary Psychology:

            What I’m about to share is somewhat personal, but it’s what I have been processing for the past week or so, so I thought I would take chance and be authentic.

Recently I have rekindled a relationship with a girl named Eli who I had been seeing at the beginning of the year.  Though we have a really wonderful connection together the status of our relationship has always been somewhat undefined.  Anyhow, last week Eli broke her clavicle (collar bone) doing handstands on the green and three days later had to get corrective surgery.

             

 

Yesterday, Monday March 3 was perhaps the most fulfilling day of the year for me thus far. 

I woke up knowing that I had to get this beautiful day project “out of the way”, so in that sense I truthfully had low expectations for the exercise.  But what transpired was one of those very rare “seamless days” where one positive experience led flawlessly to the next, steadily gaining momentum.  Halfway through my day I could help but feel that the whole universe was conspiring for my happiness and wellbeing.  Because of my affinity for detail and superfluous flowery descriptions, I skip the play by play rendition and bullet point the main positive events in chronological order.

Reflections on the EMP field Trip

 

I had a blast on our field trip. The first thing that I really enjoyed was connecting with Sue-Marie on the car ride to Seattle. Despite it still being early morning, we spontaneously slipped into a very authentic disclosure of our lives and our dreams for the future. This started things out on a great note.

When we first got to the museum I had a lot of fun snapping pictures of Delwin, Walter and John. I also enjoyed our tour guide Juan’s cordial group introduction to EMP.

 Normally I despise the phrase/paradigm “Self-Help Book” however, I was surprised to discover Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte’s The Resilience Factor is one of the few books I have read of its genre that has left a considerable and profound imprint on my consciousness.One of the thing that was rare about this book for me was that I found the book’s initial resilience intakes to have been very skillfully constructed.  The questions were presented in a highly specialized framework that forced me to take a hard, closer look at the core beliefs that shape my worldview, how my unique worldview gets translated into my relationships and how my current coping strategies have both served and limited my overall resilience.               In taking the tests I was shocked to find that I was slightly below average in some of the resilience skills—namely impulse control and emotional regulation.  Having respect for the manner in which the questions were presented, the results came as a rude wake-up call (for emotional regulation I projected that I would be in at least 70-80 percentile), but it succeeded in hooking me into the material and got me emotionally and intellectually invested in the learning the techniques.            Having been in Mark’s Theories of Counseling class last quarter—which focused heavily on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy—I found myself appreciating the authors for being able to concisely articulate the nuances of CBT which forms the backbone of their  approach to resilience (i.e.

 Normally I despise the phrase/paradigm “Self-Help Book” however, I was surprised to discover Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte’s The Resilience Factor is one of the few books I have read of its genre that has left a considerable and profound imprint on my consciousness.One of the thing that was rare about this book for me was that I found the book’s initial resilience intakes to have been very skillfully constructed.  The questions were presented in a highly specialized framework that forced me to take a hard, closer look at the core beliefs that shape my worldview, how my unique worldview gets translated into my relationships and how my current coping strategies have both served and limited my overall resilience.               In taking the tests I was shocked to find that I was slightly below average in some of the resilience skills—namely impulse control and emotional regulation.  Having respect for the manner in which the questions were presented, the results came as a rude wake-up call (for emotional regulation I projected that I would be in at least 70-80 percentile), but it succeeded in hooking me into the material and got me emotionally and intellectually invested in the learning the techniques.            Having been in Mark’s Theories of Counseling class last quarter—which focused heavily on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy—I found myself appreciating the authors for being able to concisely articulate the nuances of CBT which forms the backbone of their  approach to resilience (i.e.