Vancouver Psychologist Dr. Gordon Reid

  “Alexithymia” is a term coined to describe patients who have so successfully buried their emotional problems that they no longer have any capacity for genuine insight. These patients present as being “emotionally illiterate” such that they have great difficulty in expressing or describing their feelings. Because their capacity to intellectualize and rationalize can be highly developed they often have very strong and rigid opinions about themselves and their life, making two-way communication about these very important issues very difficult and frustrating.  

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Several years ago I was seeing a young woman in my practice who was struggling with depression following the recent death of her mother. In spite of how sad and distressed she looked, she seemed to be struggling to let herself cry. 

When I commented that she seemed to be having difficulties accepting her feelings, she responded that this was not actually the problem for her.  Rather, she was concerned that if she truly expressed what she was feeling, other people in the building would hear her and wonder if something was wrong, if perhaps she was being attacked. Read More

Most people tell themselves (or they are told), that they need to somehow control their behaviour, to just get a hold of themselves and simply stop being something (angry, jealous, anxious, depressed etc…).  But the simple truth is we cannot successfully “force” our self into changing. That is simply an application of destructive energy and misguided thinking and it will only lead to further negative consequences.

Perhaps 95% of the people I see in individual therapy are suffering from this difficulty one way or another. Read More

I often see adults in my practice who cannot tell me what they are experiencing. Inquiring into the nature of their depression, anxiety, or stress is like asking them to close their eyes, stick their hand into a bag and tell me what they think is there. Their answers often sound like guesses. Or, they might say they are sad but smile and chuckle as they describe their thoughts and feelings. Others seem to have a relatively good idea of what is going on, but are too afraid or embarrassed to say. As a psychologist, I am very curious as to what may have happened in the lives of these individuals to create such uncertainty and/or discomfort in being able to talk about themselves. This article looks at one of those possibilities. Read More

Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. Sooner or later we will ask ourself a question such as , “What am I doing here?’, or “What is my life about” or the big one “Who am I”. Are we trying to make as much money as possible, find security, be happy, just get by? Understand that we are quite capable of living each day of our life working hard, accomplishing things, expending huge amounts of energy and yet have no real idea why we are doing it. But if we have never reflected on our life and our motivations then what exactly is guiding our life from day to day? Read More

“A world that can be explained even with bad
reasons is a familiar world”. (Camus)

People seek the guidance of a therapist when there is disruption and distress in their lives and their usual self-limiting, risk-avoiding way of operating are not paying off. Such patients arrive full of fear, pain, and turmoil expressing strong and genuine wishes to deal with their situation. As surprising at it may seem however, most of these people are not truly serious about actually doing something to change. Rather, their primary motivation is to get the pain to stop.

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We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!Shape without form, shade without colour
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;…
(”The Hollow Men”, T.S. Elliot)

Across the years of offering psychotherapy with thousands of patients, I have been continuously struck by one remarkable and puzzling phenomenon. Almost without exception, psychotherapy patients seem to have tremendous difficulty in presenting the subjective experiences associated with their reported problems. For example, they might say they are sad, but they smile; they say they are angry but they cry. At first glance, this may seem to suggest an intentional hiding or distorting of what they actually feel, a willful attempt to disguise or hold back. In fact, this is not the case.

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