PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY
Felix Vikhman practices an integrative form of psychotherapy primarily based in attachment theory and family systems theory. Both theories hold that it is our primary relationships through the course of a lifetime of development that provide the scaffolding for healthy and mature functioning. Or, for so many seeking help through therapy, those relationships develop maladaptive emotional, thinking and behavioural patterns that cause psychological distress and impairment in life functioning. Of course, other life events can be the cause or the catalysts of much distress and impairment. But it is how we have learned to cope with adversity and face life's challenges that is the core of how we feel and function through the chaos of existance.
Felix believes the most effective and long-lasting coping skills are "acceptance" and "whimsy," two concepts that could be best explained through the artistic expressions below.
THE GUEST HOUSE
Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes as an
unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
ON PAIN
Kahlil Gibran
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous
than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters
of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.
"You might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof. Trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck."
- Spoken by Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof
- Image by Marc Chagall, The Green Fiddler