Where Are Your (K)nots?: Getting Unstuck in Your Life

By Jerry Finkelstein, PhD.

Where Are Your (K)nots? asks you to ponder a fundamental question: Where the hell am I and how the hell did I get here? It asks you to be curious about where you are stuck in your life and the experiences, from the way you were parented to life's events, that lead to emotional and psychological knots. It explores how these, often unexamined knots, inhibit you from living life more fully.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667856452

Book preview

Where Are Your (K)nots?

Title

Copyright © 2022 by Jerry Finkelstein

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-66785-645-2 (digital)

Designed by Jack Harrison

Printed and bound by BookBaby

This project is the culmination of years of work as a psychologist. There are so many people who have had an impact on my professional development over the years and it is impossible to thank them all. Thanks to my inspiring trainee, Firouz Ardalan, for encouraging and challenging me to write this book. Thanks specifically to the readers (you know who you are), whose feedback and encouragement convinced me to go forward with this project. Thanks to Jack Harrison, whose wise counsel and book design talents, made a daunting process feel seamless. I want to thank my family, my wife Nancy, daughter Carrie and son Daniel, who are steadfast in their support of my creative endeavors, tolerating my foibles at every turn. Most of all, I want to thank the many people I have had the privilege to treat over the years, as you were my greatest teachers and inspiration.

Grace to be born and live as variously as possible.

FRANK O’HARA

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Where the Hell Am I and How the

Hell Did I Get Here?

CHAPTER ONE

Developing a Framework

CHAPTER TWO

A Deeper Dive

CHAPTER THREE

Where the Hell Do I Go From Here?

ADDENDUM

Three Vignettes

Where Are Your (K)nots?

Introduction

Where the Hell am I and

How the Hell Did I Get Here?

This book attempts to create a framework for understanding how and why people develop the psychological and emotional challenges they face. It doesn’t offer answers, but a paradigm for asking questions. The hope is that it will open new ways of thinking that can lead to making changes in your life.

Let’s start with a question: Where the hell am I and how the hell did I get here?

That is the question this book tries to address.

During my thirty-five years of clinical experience and supervision of trainees and therapists, I have always returned to a fundamental question: Where are the knots?

Another way of asking that question is: "What are the nots?"

Together they become: How do the knots we carry with us through our life lead to us not living our lives fully.

What is a knot?

A knot is formed when a life experience proves too painful to tolerate and process emotionally.

No one is exempt from developing knots. Knots can form from single events, or in many cases, develop over time. Identifying them is the first essential step to change;