Dr. James Hollis

I'm what is wanting to be expressed in my life through me.

To get a person to that place takes some time and repetition, frankly.

You know, the two hardest things I ever learned as a therapist, and I still don't like either one of them, is patience.

You have to sit with it over time.

You have to sort and sift and sort and sift and hold this over time until something else emerges.

And secondly, powerlessness.

I can't

fix anybody, right?

But we can try to promote the attitudes and behaviors that will allow that person to find what is right from within them.

Because something in each of us always knows what is right for us.

If we pay attention and if we are willing to honor what emerges and have enough courage to address that, then we can live in a different way.

And it's very tough in the face of substantial abuse, for example.

Because it was so intrusive and so devastating, it's cleared out a space in which the self seems to find no room.

But that's the task then, is the recovery of a sense of self and purpose that's independent of what happened to oneself.

Yeah, that's why I said one has to have a larger story than what happened to you, right?

One has to have a larger story than the story that one's culture gives you or your family of origin gives you.

What is that story?

That's why I said my instructions and my models were to stay home and stay safe, right?

Something in me hungered, and I honor my teachers to this day.

I honor a local librarian who showed me any book.