Ken Voorhees, LCSW - Psychotherapy

09/05/2025

09/05/2025

11/22/2020

The Internal Family Systems (IFS) view of the selves embraces what Neurologists view as a natural multiplicity of the mind. Simply stated, the Self is not a unitary thing or experience, but rather a systemic collection of parts, aspects of self or sub-personalities. The 13th century Persian, Sufi Poet Rumi captures this beautifully:
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’re 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 whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

07/18/2017

The Humanist Kurt Vonnegut.

03/05/2017

Welcome!!

02/23/2017

11/24/2016

The French Existentialist philosopher and journalist, Albert Camus, in his most famous novel "The Plague," wrote about a fictional Algerian city called Oran that experienced an outbreak of Plague. The city was then cordoned off from the world, leaving its citizens left isolated and alone at the cruel whims of the disease. Camus used "plague" as an analogy for people who unconsciously walk through life propelled mostly by habituation. In his view, human being uses the cultivation of habits to avoid dealing with the absurd realities of existence including 1) we are all essentially alone, 2) we will all die, and 3) the only real meaning in life is that which we create through CHOOSING our values and using them to guide our lives, every day, moment to moment, in an always conscious series of choices. This resonates with the new progressive movement and Black Lives Matter slogan: STAY WOKE. Living fully Conscious lives is fu***ng hard and brings us face to face with the brutal reality of Trump and Trumpism. Camus does not let us off the hook on this, insisting even Sisyphus, condemned by the Gods to roll a huge boulder up a mountain only to see it roll back down for all eternity, that during Sisyphus’ descent back down to the rock that HE HIMSELF FIND MEANING in his life. In “The Plague” he has his 2 central characters go for a swim in the Mediterranean in order to celebrate life even as people succumb to the plague all around them, before returning to their efforts to fight the plague. Like these two swimmers, we too must now find a way to celebrate life, even in the face of Trump. We must find our particular joy to replenish us, so that way may return to the fight with vigor, fully conscious that it will be hard. Otherwise, we will be like Trump voters living lives of non-thinking habituation, full of fear and dread, plague stricken.

08/23/2015

“Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories