Jim Foley, Psychotherapist

I have been conveying this reframe more often to my clients, sometimes helped by waving one of two books in front of them: “the loving push” about meeting the challenge of autism, and “embrace the suck” about finding satisfaction in enduring a difficult effort.

True, although if my body is telling me at 4:00 AM that it is time to get up, is it time to get up?

Important work!

You might find that it detracts from the scholarliness, seriousness, validity, and LESSON of this research

to post this material along with an AI-generated image with contentedly smiling younger generations.

I guess I just enjoy entering other people’s mental states and helping guide them from there to a more peaceful state of mind and more successful way of interfacing with the world.

Wondering why I enjoy working with people experiencing autism and ADHD, I thought it might be because I share their way of thinking, but I just now realized that I also enjoy working with people struggling with psychosis, intrusive thoughts, persistent worrying, which is less like me. Hmm.

More evidence that for many people, the structure of their belief in God is modeled after their ideal relationship with a father or general parent figure.
It’s all there: Attachment, seeking protection and guidance, obligation to show gratitude/respect/worship, etc.

Just read that about 6 years ago. I love the way, as with a lot of Chinese writing, insights come out intuitively through stories, in a way that logical narrative can’t convey.

Wittgenstein comes to mind for his challenge to my discipline of thought even as I challenge some of his extrapolations (which is where I part ways with almost any thinker, as they overextend and overapply their insights and conceptual tools).

US based, and I found an ordering link.

Photo of a book, by Victoria Honeybourne THE NEURODIVERSE WORKPLACE An Employer's Guide to Managing and Working with Neurodivergent Employees, Clients and Customers

I wish I had found your book sooner, I’m giving a talk on this topic on Monday! I’m wondering how your book compares to this one, which came out just before the pandemic and is grounded in United Kingdom policies.
Now I’m gonna figure out how to order your book!

Good thing you have Leviathan there in the center kind of anchoring everything together…

Having grown up not far from some Superfund sites, I remember hearing that slogan in HS and tweaking it slightly as I wrote on my notebook during biology class:

“Without our chemicals, life itself would be possible.”

Swearing is an act of disinhibition that apparently gives us more strength, social connection, and pain tolerance.
So when it feels necessary, let it happen!
[Substituting nonsense words doesn’t have the same effect, maybe because you’re still inhibited.]

www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/202...

Interesting for Scott Miller to make this statement, since he markets therapy tools; at least his model focuses on assessing therapy effectiveness rather than promising miracle cures from rigid therapy protocols. He respects and empowers the client rather than the therapy model.

Essential to monetizing therapy models is a Name Brand ™️ ©️ made either of Two Words or a three or four letter acronym usually ending with “T”. Then it HAS to be valid, right? It has those initials that obviously stand for something systematic (robotic) and important (promoted).

Essential to monetizing therapy models is a Name Brand ™️ ©️ made either of Two Words or a three or four letter acronym usually ending with “T”. Then it HAS to be valid, right? It has those initials that obviously stand for something systematic (robotic) and important (promoted).

Models are an income source for therapist-writers who overgeneralize their success with a particular client into “evidence-based practice” by having some grad students try it on other people, selling it to therapists as a training and selling it to clients as a miracle cure.

Good one. I have always thought that Fred was concentrating and determined in that facial expression, but perhaps he was demanding appreciation and concessions from the people he was helping. Sad! 🇺🇦

Once clients see the convictions, associations, habits, assumptions underlying their need to test for safety, we need to help them disrupt those links and patterns and form a new foundation for feeling secure, to move on from hesitance and vigilance to engagement and living. — Jim Foley 2025

It’s too bad that even though you clearly indicated that the first quote was part one of two, apparently many people didn’t click through to see this important addition.
Therapists need to do more than be good listeners. There is actually a need for a part three:

Why the trade-off? There are both environmental and genetic contributors to cancer, and yet we still treat cancer and individuals along with managing carcinogens.
I treat individuals and families with attention to their social and cultural context as well as diet, genes, history, thoughts, needs..

I hope this Medieval Antivax book has an appendix about goofy fun things to do with whale heads and bear carcasses.

Most importantly, I hope to learn his mantra, “if you’re going to inject something, let it be heroin.”

#RFKJr #BrainWorm

Good summary of my long winded explanations. Also good point about needing such strategies in these turbulent anxiety-provoking times.

Diagram of four different ways of describing the autism experience: “suffers from autism” “on the spectrum,” “person with autism,” or “autistic person.” #Autism #Neurodiversity #Neurodivergent

I’m preparing to give a talk on neurodiversity in the workplace, and on helping managers work with neurodivergence; right there are two different ways of thinking about people, in this age where talking about diversity is controversial.
Here is another controversy that might come up: autism labels

And I realized that my tendency to label myself that way is based on one experience with one client 20 years ago in which I pushed too hard for change; I let her take the lead more (and ironically, more change happened!). I shifted my strategies, but apparently not my view of myself.

For years I have labeled myself as a pushy meddlesome therapist, compared to “how was your week” therapists, but this week I was very delicate with people who were reactive to any suggestions.

Maybe it’s more accurate to say that at times I lead people to the edge of their comfort zone.

For some reason there seem to be more general shock and numbness this time around, maybe with more people like my client paralyzed about trying to find some action that will feel actually effective.

2) “realistic strategizing”: anxiety generates worst case scenarios: I help clients start from possible scenarios and think through how they would react, then what would happen next, continuing/extending this chain of possible actions and reactions until they get to the mundane part of the story.

1). “Accurate observing”: anxiety-driven hypervigilance ironically misses seeing actual danger because of the constant visualization of imagined dangers; I encourage clients to ground themselves in current sensory information and picture options for action and reaction.

2) “realistic strategizing”: anxiety generates worst case scenarios: I help clients start from possible scenarios and think through how they would react, then what would happen next, continuing/extending this chain of possible actions and reactions until they get to the mundane part of the story.