Just the prospect of having to spend time with that family member over the holidays fills some of you with dread—so much so that you’re considering “having other plans” in order to not attend your family gathering this Christmas. But it doesn’t have to be that way, even with under-the-surface conflict that may be many […]
When you’ve suffered a scar—whether that’s a physical, emotional, or relational wound—you’re naturally not going to want to place yourself in the same kind of situation to where you’d get hurt again. Your fight-or-flight response kicks in, and if given the option, you’ll fly away from the person or circumstance that may try to hurt […]
Sometimes, answering a phone call can be painful. You learn of a loved one’s passing. Your child didn’t get accepted into the college of their choice. You receive confirmation that your company is downsizing. Live long enough and you’re bound to get calls like these. It’s a part of being human and living in a […]
The stories we tell ourselves are comprised of a wide variety of scripts we’ve picked up along the pathways of our lives, from what we learn from our parents to what we see on TV and in the movies. For Steve and Lauren, part of the stories they’d been telling themselves involved what they had […]
In The Stories We Tell Ourselves, I share fictional stories throughout the book based on a made-up couple, Steve and Lauren. However, these stories are based on reality and the hundreds of clients I’ve seen and counseled over the last decade. In Chapter 7, “Stories in the Dark,” I describe how Steve grew up watching […]
When screenwriters compose a script, they also have to formulate what’s known as a logline, a one-sentence description of the entire movie. In The Stories We Tell Ourselves, I presented this list of loglines from the Internet Movie Database. See if you can guess each film: “Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, […]
Netflix’s company profile begins by touting its impressive numbers: “Netflix is the world’s leading Internet television network with over 69 million members in over 60 countries enjoying more than 100 million hours of TV shows and movies per day ….” Let me put that last number into perspective for you. 100 million hours equals almost […]
Throughout the last month, I focused on the stories we tell ourselves based on who raised us and the scripts we picked up from their words and actions (or non-actions, as the case may be). Let’s shift gears now and discuss another source for the scripts we use to navigate the world: actual scripts. What […]
Over the last few weeks on my blog, I’ve focused on the stories we tell ourselves based on the scripts we hear and pick up as children from the people who raised us. For the most part, the posts have been somewhat negative, as if every person’s childhood was fraught with some major issue caused […]
Not everyone wrestles with problems in their present because of what their parents did (or didn’t do) in their past—but many of us do. And that’s not something to feel ashamed about or discouraged by. Carrying wounds from our respective childhoods is part of the human experience. But whether we choose to allow those wounds […]
Dr. R. Scott Gornto, PHD, MDIV, LMFT, EMDR holds a PhD in Psychotherapy, Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy and is a trained psychotherapist, counselor and peak performance coach. He is a Licensed Psychotherapist (Individual, Marriage and Family in Texas and Arizona), a EMDR Trained Trauma Therapist and has extensive training in the behavioral sciences and personal development. Dr. Gornto is in private practice and has been practicing in North Texas since 1999. He works with individuals, couples, adolescents (12 yrs old and up), families, groups, entrepreneurs/leaders and businesses from Plano, Frisco, McKinney, Allen, Prosper and Dallas and the surrounding areas. Dr. Gornto is the author of The Stories We Tell Ourselves™ and is a columnist for the Huffington Post and Psychology Today.