by David Bowman, LMFT | May 1, 2018 | Recovery, Recovery Journal, Therapy
Jungian therapists see the roots of addiction growing in the need to escape the loneliness of human existence. In “The Art of Loving,” Erich Fromm show us how we manufacture romance, and even love, as palliatives for the pain and anguish of being alone in...
by David Bowman, LMFT | Apr 15, 2018 | LGBT, Relationships, Sex, Therapy
It was a frightening realization of my early 30s that had I not moved away from my family and my hometown when I did, I would already have been dead. I have no doubt that I would have committed suicide by the time I was 25, I felt so alone and ashamed and afraid of my...
by David Bowman, LMFT | Mar 18, 2018 | LGBT, Therapy
Both coming out of the closet earlier in life and professional and personal self-actualization (living your true self) later in life require the bravery to stand up for your convictions. In both cases you are standing up for yourself despite the consequences....
by David Bowman, LMFT | Feb 27, 2018 | Men's Issues, Therapy, Women's Issues
“I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.” ― C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul...
by David Bowman, LMFT | Jan 31, 2018 | Therapy
You’ve realized that your friends’ advice is more about them than it is about you. You’ve thought so much about your issue that you’ve thought yourself into a state of paralysis. You know what needs to be done but you can’t seem to put it into action. You’re having...
by David Bowman, LMFT | Jan 30, 2018 | Therapy
Depression can sometimes be one of those creeping states of mind, body, and spirit that you don’t realize has come over you until you’re deep into the muck of it. Digging yourself out at that point is certainly possible—but who can think of such things when you’re...
by David Bowman, LMFT | Jan 15, 2018 | Men's Issues, Therapy, Women's Issues
Going to therapy means going on a shared journey with your therapist. For you, as the client, the focus is on finding relief, understanding, resolution, and perhaps, ultimately, change. For me, as the therapist, the focus is on providing you some guidelines, so you...
by David Bowman, LMFT | Dec 15, 2017 | Recovery, Recovery Journal, Therapy
“Relapse is part of recovery,” goes the saying. Not that we welcome relapse … but shit happens. For myself, and for many of my clients, a relapse after three years of sobriety, or five years of sobriety, is a vastly different affair from our initial climb out of the...
by David Bowman, LMFT | Dec 1, 2017 | Family, LGBT, Men's Issues
Many men, not only gay men, have issues with their fathers. Dozens of books have been written on the way that mid-century North American male culture de-emphasized emotional relationships between fathers and sons, and instead focused on competition, stoicism, and...
by David Bowman, LMFT | Nov 15, 2017 | Couples, Therapy
Conventional wisdom among therapists is that couples tend to wait to do couples’ counseling until it’s too late to save the relationship. That may or may not be true, but it misses the point. Whether the relationship can or should be saved, dissolved, or morphed...
