Fancy a bit of good reading? Perhaps for yourself or a friend?
Check out this new publication (as titled) by two homegrown Clinical Psychologists, Drs. Sam and Eric Tan, now based in Australia. Benefit from their years of experience and wisdom as they penned their latest musings and thoughts crammed into this humble reference.
About the Book
Have you ever wondered how some people appear to burst with vitality and some people seem to be lifeless or stilted? Well, vitality is innate in us. However, along the way, most of us would have developed blocks against vitality. Learning to tap into our emotions directly using the ideas developed by Eugene Gendlin and other great thinkers helps us resolve these blocks and access our natural vitality. As the blocks resolve and vitality is accessed, you might start to access newer, more dynamic emotions and be at ease with yourself. You might see old emotional and life patterns change and experience a feeling of freedom. So, we invite you to explore the interesting world of your emotions today and experience vitality.
Check the spanking new book out now by clicking on the book art, or here. We've invited both authors to share some of their thoughts and to give our thepsychpractice readers a personal message each. #yourneedsarekeptinmind
Dear Readers,
There is a sense that we as a society have moved in the direction of favouring our logical capacities to the detriment of our emotional and social intelligences. Many of us fear our emotions because they are ironically foreign to us. They also may us uncomfortable and more importantly, we do not have the know-how to take them apart and make sense of them. So we take the high road and avoid our emotions. I think this is particularly so in Asian society where stoicism and logical capabilities are the gold standard to which all else is pegged.
Yet, our emotional life is a wellspring of valuable information about ourselves, our world, our relationships with others and the World around us. It provides us with information about our past and present and our identities. In line with the psychodynamic ideas that this blog’s owner (Dr Shawn Ee) has introduced to you, making a concerted effort to tap into our emotions would help us meet our emotional needs, become more aware of ourselves, strip ourselves of unnecessary trappings and ultimately make us more comfortable with ourselves and with others.
Our new book A Little Book on Being Naturally Joyful draws on ideas of great contemporary psychological thinkers and introduces you to a series of steps to help explore and make sense of the emotional parts of your psyche. We invite you to take time to read our book, together with Shawn’s blog posts and to explore your emotions, at your own pace and experience your emotions in a different light.
Happy reading!
Dr Sam Tan (Wee Hong), Clinical Psychologist
Personal Message For the Book
From: Eric Tan
Have you ever felt that something is missing in your life, or that your life could somehow be deeper or richer without changing anything material?
I have a deep belief based on my work as a clinical psychologist and my own experience as a psychotherapy client that we are all born with a natural capacity to experience life more deeply and fully.
One of the keys is to allow ourselves to experience the fullness of all our emotions. To be able to do so unfettered means to be fully and authentically alive. Just observe children around you. When they are happy, the nearly roll over from laughter. When sad, they bawl their eyes out without reservation. There is such a natural flow to their emotions that it is breath-taking!
It is only through the rough and tumble of life experiences that we’ve learnt to develop fetters within ourselves. While they help us survive our lives, they also bind us and prevent us from experiencing life as richly as we can. For instance, a common example is that men are uncomfortable expressing their emotions and heavens-forbid, to cry openly. They would be shamed, and many have been, for doing so. Consequently, they would hold back these emotions, become task-oriented, joke, keep an emotional distance from people or become extremely rational. Or they might express their emotion with other more acceptable ones like anger.
Take some time to reflect on your own experiences.
- What are some of the areas in your life that you struggle to be free emotionally? How are your emotions fettered specifically?
- What are some emotions that you find harder to allow? What makes it so?
- Conversely, when are some of the times when you can open up and be willingly vulnerable? What is it about these situations that make it easier for you to open up?
It is my hope that people who read our practical little book – “A Little Book On Being Naturally Joyful”- can tap into their natural capacity to be emotionally unfettered and so live deeper and fuller lives. That to me is true joyfulness.
I have also just co-authored with Sam Tan a book on social anxiety, using the ideas in “A Little Book On Being Naturally Joyful” people to help move beyond social anxiety towards building deep human connections. Deepening human connections is another key to deepening our lives. Find the other book here – Dying To Connect But Scared to Death: Moving Beyond Social Anxiety
Dr Eric Tan, Clinical Psychologist
Update:
This just in: We were just informed that their next book was just published!
For your convenience, here's their other book. Click on the book art for more.
Dying To Connect But Scared To Death
Moving Beyond Social Anxiety
by Eric Tan, Sam Tan
About the Book
Always hiding in a corner? Too shy to speak with people? Feeling invisible in a social situation? Like a person but daren't approach them? Then this book is for you. It shows you a system to overcome this fear of social interaction, and build deep connections with people.
Check out this new book by two homegrown Clinical Psychologists!