Browse published articles attributed to Daniel Benor, with full-archive search.
Clinical Explorations When I learned about psychotherapy as a teenager, I knew that was what I wanted to do. I couldn't imagine anyone actually getting paid to do something so fascinating. I studied psychology as my undergraduate pre-med major, endured the challenges of medical school, with a ...
Have you ever felt your anger boil over to the point that it spilled out in ways you wished it hadn’t? Has your blood pressure ever risen when someone offended you and you could not respond? Have you ever clenched your teeth, biting back your words till your jaws ached or you got a headache? This can easily happen when the bucket of anger we carry around with us gets full to overflowing.
Clinical Explorations When I learned about psychotherapy as a teenager, I knew that was what I wanted to do. I couldn't imagine anyone actually getting paid to do something so fascinating. I studied psychology as my undergraduate pre-med major, endured the challenges of medical school, with a ...
We are often taught to ignore and bury our problems and upsets and to 'be strong.' This is a temporary solution for distress that has serious drawbacks. Learning to identify and release our feelings are much better ways of handling them. Varieties of self-treatment methods enable us to do this, with excellent results, including the release of anxieties about having problems in the first place.
A recent study revealed that positive affirmations may actually make some people feel worse instead of better. Psychologists Joanne V. Wood and John W. Lee from the University of Waterloo, and W.Q. Elaine Perunovic from the University of New Brunswick found that people with low self esteem who recite affirmations such as "I am a lovable perso " or "I will succeed" may end up feeling less lovable or less likely to succeed.
The body may participate in memories in several ways. If your back (or other body part) is injured or tense at the time of a traumatic experience, the emotional memory of that experience may become imprinted in that part of your body. This seems to happen more often when you don't allow ...
Healing opens us to our spirituality. Spirituality is an awareness that has atrophied in our society. Western culture is something of an aberration when compared to the majority of other cultures, where the spiritual dimensions are experienced and conceptualized as normal parts of existence -- not paranormal, mystical, or to be rejected. Again we must clarify our terminology.
How can we understand healing, which seems to occur through intention and subtle energies? Albert Einstein pointed out, earlier in this century, that matter and energy are interchangeable. Quantum physics has amply confirmed his theory. Conventional, Newtonian medicine continues to address the body primarily as matter. Healers have been saying for a long time that they are addressing the energy body when they do healings. Allopathic and energy medicine approaches simply represent the two sides of Einstein's equation, E = mc2.
In our reductionistic Western world we are taught that reality is "objective." We are led to believe that there is a constancy to the world and that it is consistently measurable by reliable scientific instruments. I will address these beliefs from the perspective of more than a dozen years of research in psi healing (commonly termed spiritual, mental, faith, shamanistic, bioenergetic, subtle energy, vibrational, psychic, divine, or unconventional healing).
The pursuit of the truth shall set you free - even if you never catch up with it.rn - Clarence Darrow We all aspire to know and express truth in one way or another. We want to base our life decisions and actions, minor and major, on the best information possible. The difficulty is that in many cases it is challenging to know what is the truth.
If you've got love in your heart, whatever you do from that moment out is likely to be right. If you've got that one true note ringing inside you, then whatever you do is going to be OK. It's love, always love. - Ken Kesey On Valentine's Day we focus on amorous love, seeking those special ways to express to someone close to us that we care for them. Oddly, loving and caring for others is often easier for many of us than feeling love and caring for ourselves.
There is much unexplored potential in each human being. We are not just flesh and bone or an amalgamation of conditionings. If this were so, our future on this planet would not be very bright. But there is infinitely more to life, and each passionate being who dares to explore beyond the fragmentary and superficial into the mystery of totality helps all humanity perceive what it is to be fully human. Revolution, total revolution, implies experimenting with the impossible.
Remediesr A common sense, Cost vs. Benefit Analysis (CBA) of your situation while under stress will often point to obvious changes you can make in order to change and improve the situation. For instance, working fewer hours is permitted! If you are exhausted, you will be less than fully effective and may unintentionally even become a burden or a liability yourself to the caregiving endeavors. Taking some time off for a break, to recharge your batteries and restore your healing perspective may be advisable.
Unspoken words are rarely silent in their effects. They may influence us quite powerfully in many ways. Unexpressed emotions that festerr We may hesitate to say something that could lead to hurt or anger, often when we are experiencing these same feelings ourselves. If my boss is asking me to stay late when I have family obligations, my emphatic response of outrage might be better off toned down, lest I lose my job. If I am feeling such emotions, it is likely that others I interact with are too.
Can you picture to yourself a world in which we are able to trust each other, without doubts or hesitations? Hard to imagine such a thing, isn’t it? Yet there are clear, readily available steps we can each take to start to make our personal world much less a place of anxieties, fears and worries and much more a place of peacefulness and enjoyment. This would be a world where we each grew up having enough so that seeking and striving to accumulate ever more ‘stuff’ was not the goal of our existence.
The experience of integrating spiritual healing with conventional medicine in England is instructive. In the mid 1970s British healers formed a healing organization that lobbied the government to allow healers to treat patients in National Health Service hospitals. With one governmental decision, 1,500 hospitals were opened to healers. In the early 1980s, healers joined in organizations that standardized a code of conduct. The code of conduct was sent to various medical, nursing and midwifery associations for review and was given their approval.
There are fears around the planet about the financial crises now threatening every country in the world. The hasty governmental responses of throwing paper money at the problems that were created by irresponsible investments of banks is not going to solve these problems. Printing more money without anything to back it is going to create much worse inflation. This is not going to happen some time in the distant future. It is happening very quickly, right now.
Overviewr The recent tsunami in Asia and major earthquake in Pakistan have highlighted problems long recognized in the helping professions. Caregivers have known well the potentially draining experiences of compassion fatigue – from experiences of policemen, firefighters, paramedics and other emergency and rescue personnel, through doctors, nurses, psychotherapists and counselors, and not to overlook the family members and volunteers who come forward to help in individual challenges and collective disasters.
Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules. -- Ashleigh Brilliant I find that life is a series of lessons. As a psychiatric psychotherapist, I have been helping people for 40 years to sort out their issues that get them in up tight and in trouble. I have also been exploring my own issues for 50 years. My experience is that this is like peeling an onion, with lots of layers and frequent tears.
Many people with acute pain simply want to be rid of it, without giving it much of a second thought. A pain pill does the trick and they move on with their lives. They see no reason to poke about and ask whether there are any deeper understandings to be had about the pain. Most of the time, a painkiller for acute pain is a benign remedy for whatever hurts. Sometimes, however, it might be insufficient or even dangerous.
Healing opens us to our spirituality. Spirituality is an awareness that has atrophied in our society. Western culture is something of an aberration when compared to the majority of other cultures, where the spiritual dimensions are experienced and conceptualized as normal parts of existence -- not paranormal, mystical, or to be rejected. Again we must clarify our terminology.
Health and healing are not what we have been led to believe they are. Modern Western medicine and science tell us that disease is a scourge and that the primary goal of treatment is to cure it. In order to achieve cures, we fight illnesses with drugs; remove diseased parts; replace worn out parts; and are engaged in wars on cancer, heart disease and other ailments. Prevention of illness is also an accepted approach, but one that in many instances is overlooked or ignored in Western medicine.
Pain is a burden not only to those who suffer it, but also to family members, co-workers and employers. Self-treatment for pain is effective, immediately available when needed, and very cost-effective. A person who is laid up with serious backaches, neck pain, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, premenstrual and other pains often requires assistance from family members. Thus, the strains of dealing with pain extend beyond the pain sufferers themselves. Case Example: George was a 35 year old divorced machine tool worker who slipped and injured his back on the job.
The Can of Peaches (Email passalong): An 80 year old woman was arrested for shop lifting. When she went before the judge in Cincinnati he asked her, "What did you steal?" She replied, "A can of peaches." The judge then asked her why she had stolen the can of peaches, and she replied that she was hungry. The judge then asked her how many peaches were in the can. She replied, "6." The judge said, "Then I will give you 6 days in jail." Before the judge could conclude the trial, the woman's husband spoke up and asked the judge if he could say something.
A considerable body of research shows that spiritual healing (as in Therapeutic Touch, Healing Touch, Reiki and Prayer healing) is an effective treatment. This article reports on how healing is finding applications in clinical practice. Anecdotes abound on the benefits of spiritual healing in acute and chronic conditions of all sorts (Benor, 1993; Krieger, 1979). Healers find that most patients will relax very quickly with healing. Acute and chronic pains of all causes are relieved, often within minutes.
*** When parents separate or divorce, children are usually stressed. Even when parents separate amicably, children end up having to adjust to living part-time in each of two households. Single parents often note that children have problems with their attitudes, emotions and behaviors in the day ...
Fibromyalgia (FM) is an illness syndrome that includes aches and pains all over the body; severe fatigue; mental unclarity and difficulty focusing (often called ‘brain fog’); depression; insomnia; digestive disorders (vague pains, diarrhea); and multiple allergies to foods and other items. ...
There are fears around the planet about the financial crises now threatening every country in the world. The hasty governmental responses of throwing paper money at the problems that were created by irresponsible investments of banks is not going to solve these problems. Printing more money ...
Health and healing are not what we have been led to believe they are. Modern Western medicine and science tell us that disease is a scourge and that the primary goal of treatment is to cure it. In order to achieve cures, we fight illnesses with drugs; remove diseased parts; replace worn out parts; and are engaged in wars on cancer, heart disease and other ailments. Prevention of illness is also an accepted approach, but one that in many instances is overlooked or ignored in Western medicine.