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“We are all multiple personalities, in a sense, and to be healthy mentally, I think, learning what those multiple personalities are and inviting them in your life is really important.” — Sally Field, actress and trauma survivor
We think of personalities as people, not just attitudes or presentations. Most of the time there isn’t much more to us than our attitudes and behavior. If you stop right now and look at what ideas are guiding you, you might find one. More likely, you won’t find any. We rarely think thoughts of any consequence. Our fleeting thoughts arrive with no explanation.
Disconnection
Disconnection between thoughts and feelings lies at the root of many people’s inability to act or change. They’ll claim to know what needs to be done, yet they’ll want something else. As a result they take no action, excuse themselves, and argue they’re doing the right thing.
This morning my ex-wife claimed, “I’m a nice person.” I thought, “Is being nice something one claims for oneself?” I recalled the serial killer Normal Bates, in the final scene in the movie Psycho, asserting his piety as he says to himself, “They’ll see…They’ll say, ‘She wouldn’t even harm a fly.’”
And then there’s the strategy of contradicting another person’s reality in an effort to make them question their sanity, otherwise known as gaslighting. There is also reverse gaslighting, the strategy of asserting a delusion in an effort to get other people to endorse it.
Is my ex-wife a nice person? Are you a nice person? Is being nice an attribute one assigns to oneself? “I'm a much nicer person than people would think,” Donald Trump has said. Assigning oneself the attribute of niceness is like smiling at yourself in the mirror. It makes no sense.
People can reasonably disagree on factual matters, but emotional matters represent different versions of reality. When a person says they’re motivated to one end but their actions lead to another, who is in charge? What about the case when a person’s consistent acts and attitudes at one time contradict their contrary but otherwise consistent acts and attitudes at another?
When Presentation Conflicts With Reality
We all have these two personalities. They manage different worlds and largely stay out of each other’s way. The parent who loves their child and the parent who beats their child are usually the same person. The 1996 movie Shine is about a father, Peter Helfgott, who obsessively protects his family while simultaneously destroying it. Peter and Norman have the same mental disability differing only in the degree. Both are pathological and delusional.
My mother used to tell me, “Be nice!” as she fashioned herself to be. The fact that she was both nice and an inadequate mother never bothered her, but it caused me distress. She was nice but absent; a nonresponsive robot.
Now, as a therapist, I have little use for being nice, and suspect as dishonest anyone who looks for credit in being nice. I find fabricating an image of being nice is often a screen beyond which bridges are burned and bodies buried.
Be careful about the virtue you claim for yourself. Don’t confuse self respect, which is a right, with self virtue, which is a fantasy.
Honesty of Facts and Honesty of Feelings
If honesty is what is true, then there is one world of true facts and another of true feelings. Truth of fact enables you to build reliable bridges; truth of feelings enables you to build reliable relationships. These are different bridges to different destinations.
Facts are elusive and interpretations uncertain. Simple honesty is the world of facts, with accommodations made for uncertainty. You’re considered honest if you tell the truth or think you do. You don’t have to be right, you just have to be sincere in wanting to be.
Little kids are honest even when their facts are wrong. I have a client who is certain I’ve said things completely unlike anything I’ve ever said or would say, but she believes I said these things. She’s wrong but honest.
Emotional honesty can’t be judged objectively. You’re the only person who knows what you feel. This does not mean all you claim to feel is honest, as your actions must support your claim. If you claim to be kind but destroy people, then you’re either lying or unwell.
It is a common misconception that brutal threats create progress. This “spare the rod and spoil the child” attitude seems to be making a comeback. It’s particularly stupid, yet we see it flourishing in both democratic and anti-democratic politics. Don’t blame the politicians or the ideologues, they just exploit peoples’ attitudes.
Consensus in Communication
Scientific facts can only be established to a degree. Specific details are fuzzy when examined carefully, and they rarely are. It’s enough to get things mostly right. We believe that it’s your intention that is the key. This attitude prevails even in cases of complete b******t.
Consider Attention Deficit Disorder. This diagnosis appeared 50 years ago and the percent of the population to whom it has been applied has more than doubled in the last 20 years. 25% of teenage boys are now diagnosed with ADHD and can be given long-term prescriptions for amphetamines, which are addictive drugs that are known to cause brain damage.
“National population surveys reflect an increase in the prevalence from 6.1% to 10.2% in the 20-year period from 1997 to 2016 and experts continue to debate and disagree on the causes for this trend.” — Abdelnour, Jansen, and Gold (2022), psychologists
I analyzed the fallacious nature of this diagnosis ten years ago (Stoller 2014) but only now is it becoming fashionable to question it (Kushner 2025, Tough 2025). ADHD does not exist, it’s just a description. What exists are brain states, but diagnosticians don’t know anything about those.
Intentions are not enough. What you think you’re doing and why are poor explanations. People have explanations for the most dangerous ideas. For example, consider the deranged explanations of Donald Trump, who is a classic psychopath. We would all be better off if we were less cocksure and less gullible.
I’d be happy to help you become more of who you are, schedule a free, short zoom appointment in my web-based calendar:
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“We always think with the world. So when you go inside your head you’re arranging all those things you have already picked up into some kind of order which makes sense for you. That allows you to see structure in the world you have experienced.”—David Amerland
This is the first interview that I’ve hosted but, in fact, it played out similarly to all dialogs I’ve had. It reinforced my view that the best interviews are between people who are interested in the same things.
I chose to interview David because he and I have much in common: our athletic background, our isolation growing up, and our role as counselor (me) and consultant (David).
We hardly talked about what we do. Instead, we talked about how we feel about what we’re doing, and how we developed into who we’ve become. We talked about ourselves, our goals, and what makes us tick. And that’s good because we know about these things!
Find David and his social links at https://davidamerland.com/
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Fractals: The fractal nature of your personality consists of all the things you think are true, and all the habits you repeat...
Resonance: Your personality is a resonance between past associations, actions in the present, and plans for the future...
“My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back, I see a pattern.”— Benoît Mandelbrot, mathematician
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Moods are more subtle than emotions. You will not commit violence or marriage just because of your mood. In spite of their differences moods and emotions are connected: if you move one, you’ll move the other.
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Join psychotherapist Lincoln Stoller as he delves into the intricacies of performance and personal satisfaction in life. Whether you’re a high achiever constantly chasing the next milestone or someone feeling overwhelmed by societal pressures, Lincoln offers profound insights into how we can navigate these challenges.
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Once you become adept at remembering dreams, you start to have dreams in which you go to places you’ve never been, meet conversants you’ve never before encountered, and receive messages that are unexpected. As a person trained in the hard sciences, I have no trouble accepting things that are completely strange and make no sense.
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Let me guide you through my protocol for a Past Life Regression session. You’ll find many steps familiar and the whole project to be free of contrivance and showmanship. I hope it’s something you could explore without embarrassment...
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"I'd rather be dead than sing 'Satisfaction' when I'm 45."— Mick Jagger. Still singing satisfaction at age 81.
I am stubborn and patient. The curse of stubborn and patient people is to die unsatisfied. I don’t want to... I look to role models to help guide my life, but most stubborn and patient role models are defeated in this regard...
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“There is an old-fashioned word for the body of skills that emotional intelligence represents: character.”― Daniel Goleman
Daniel Goleman defines the four dimensions of emotional intelligence as, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
To be a self, social, or relationship adept you need emotional intelligence, but to be a physicist, engineer, or mathematician you do not. None of these play a large role in one’s analytic ability divorced, as it is, from the realm of human relations.
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“Your subconscious mind is trying to help you all the time.”— Jim Harrison, poet and novelist
Discussions about the unconscious have grown from Freud and Jung’s work of 100 years ago. It’s been reinterpreted by therapists but it’s disregarded in social conversation. We rarely talk about it and it hasn’t moved our thinking forward.
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I talk with Natasha Williams on her podcast Spiritual Warrior Journey.
I explore the way our brains work in a combination of scientific and metaphysical discussion, sharing insights on plant medicine, native tribes, dreams, and insanity.
Natasha says, “A truly interesting take on life, that deviates from the norm.”
Lincoln is a clinical counselor, hypnotherapist, with experience in physics, software, consulting, neurology, brain training, sleep, dreams, and altered states.
Natasha Williams is an author, spiritual coach and entrepreneur. She has helped thousands of women find confidence and belief in themselves. As a lightworker, she is deeply moved towards personal growth and helping raise the vibration on the planet.
Find Natasha Williams at:
https://www.spiritualwarriorjourney.com
INSTAGRAM @spiritualwarriorjourney
FACEBOOK: @spiritualwarriorjourney
TIKTOK: @spiritualwarriorjourney
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Looking for hidden messages, especially those to be revealed by experts, makes dreamwork less rewarding and casts it as a kind of work. This is why few people do it and, perhaps, why few people remember their dreams. Freud, the father of dream interpretation, famously disrespected your point of view, and the interpretive approach to dreams retains something of this flavor.
When dreamwork is welcomed as a form of conceptual play it becomes recreational. You don’t have to share dreams, endure dreams, or reveal them. See your dreams as explorations of all the relevant things that don’t make sense. Take that attitude and you’ll feel relieved and rewarded.
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“If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time.”— Marcel Proust
Thinking DifferentlyDreams involve a different way of thinking. We don’t get far by applying conscious thinking, which is linear, causal, and rational, to the holistic presentation that dreams employ.
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We all have personal vulnerabilities, and this is normal. We all experience trauma and deal with depression. We complain about the bad things but not the good things. Are these good things real, or are they excursions into unsustainable positive emotion?
While there is nothing wrong with needing to breath, there is something wrong when you’re desperate for breath. What you need should be a regular part of your life, not an ecstatic or occasional experience. What makes you happy?
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I met Stefan Deutsch online and sent him my Operating Manual for Enlightenment. He sent me his Love Decoded: Getting the Love You Deserve. Here are his “Nine Laws for Fulfilling Relationships,” taken from the introduction, along with my comments.
1. Love that has to be earned isn’t love...
2. Become aware of your own and others’ unloving, conditional behaviors as well as loving, unconditional behaviors...
3. Never reject others’ loving energy. It hurts them...
4. Never allow others to behave unlovingly without consequence. It hurts you...
5. Do not assume that there is any intentionality behind any act that hurts, disappoints, or angers you...
6. Assume all people, like you, are always doing the best they can...
7. Loving energy is real, nourishing, and visceral. Everyone needs to give and receive it in all our relationships, not just a few...
8. Loving energy is not to be confused with automatic, physical, and sexual energy...
9. The act of giving love must involve a conscious decision to be unconditionally loving even when you are upset with another person...
What I Consider Important...
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In a wide ranging discussion, Daniel and I talk about the intersections of life and growth, health and sanity, parenting and education, creativity and architecture.
Daniel Thomas, a British transplant living in Germany by way of Australia, is a versatile storyteller, writer, actor, and filmmaker. He has been featured in commercials, TV & Film & has written & directed his own shorts. He also hosts & produces podcasts that showcase his creative range & passion for meaningful & collaborative storytelling.
Lincoln Stoller, an American transplant living in Canada, is a physicist and psychotherapist, with a focus on learning, healing, and growth, exploring connections between culture, heritage, and the mind. Lincoln’s work challenges institutional knowledge, emphasizing emotion, intuition, and insight. Through his books and speaking, he aims to expand perspectives by integrating learning, healing, and invention.
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Gratitude is a combination of things, primarily two: a thought and an emotion.
Selfish gratitude is needy. You are grateful for what you’re getting. It’s contingent and dependent.
Gratitude offered with appreciation asks for no reward. And while gratitude so offered feels nourishing it can also feel empty.
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Lincoln Stoller is a former mountaineer who now specializes in psycho-, hypno-, and neurofeedback therapy, in tandem with numerous other counseling and coaching services.
Lincoln lives well outside of the bounds of normalcy. He says we should “just keep doing out-of-the-box stuff. And if people aren’t calling you a little crazy or a little nutty, then you probably aren’t exploring enough of the boundaries.”
Today’s conversation revolves around the high-risk potential of hard-charging performers and achievers, whether they exist in sports, business, or other areas of life.
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I’m in the minds business; I’m also in the programming business. I sometimes think of therapy as a programming problem. That’s not a bad idea, but you can’t take it literally.
Taken literally, “to program” creates a series of steps that always choose between right and wrong. Programming requires such steps to exist, that you can discern them, choose between them, and follow them to the end of the path. None of these requirements are met in the minds of real people, but we can still talk about those rare situations when they are. The right steps are often called “good ideas.”
As a therapist, my job is not to come up with good ideas so much as help people learn how to find them. I avoid the word “teach” because the process of finding good ideas is not taught. I can show a person how they’re sabotaging themselves, how to relax, and experiment, but there is no formula for finding good ideas...
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“Life is the balance between holding on and letting go.”— Rumi
I felt it important to respond to a journalist who asked what people might expect at their first therapy session. Many come to me who are ambivalent about beginning therapy, and I’ve been to a few therapists myself.
I’ve not felt good about these first sessions with other therapists. A good therapist is wise but ignorant, and makes no attempt to hide it. No therapist is an expert because no two clients are the same.
An honest therapist knows as little about what to expect as you do. When I make my ignorance clear, everything goes beautifully because it’s you who guides me. I’ve never met a therapist as comfortable with their ignorance as I.
The journalist’s seven questions concern protocol, method, and service, but this is not what therapy is about. If you’re inviting someone to “therapise” you, you’ve lost your way at the start. No one is going to figure or straighten you out. You do this yourself, or else it doesn’t happen.
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