Client Centered Therapy
An Excerpt From Little Boy Blue Alpha

Caroline told me that you made an unexpected detour to the Window Rock. Perhaps it wasn't an accident. It may have been the Great Spirit's way of welcoming you to our village. I spend most of my time here, though my office is in Albuquerque, and I only spend a day or two a month there, talking with friends who have visited here.

I don't see myself as a traditional therapist, but rather as a guide, helping people to find the center-force of their life-giving energy-the soul that is often overwhelmed with worries infected by the outside world.

The problem with traditional therapy is that it's like being interrogated by the police, then analyzed by someone according to their viewpoint, and their observations are further obscured by the requirement of placing people in categories defined by the authority of the American Psychiatric Association.

I am your friend, not some expert with a stop watch in her hand. I'll never tell you that your hour's up: come back next week. We'll live through this experience together, seeking balance and harmony, and we will both grow spiritually. Stay as long as you need to stay and pay me what you will.

Copyright ©2012 Michael Jackson Smith

Overview of The Road To Fort Worth

Jack Wendell's rite of passage into adulthood began three hours before midnight on the eve of his twenty-first birthday. On his stroll across campus, he watched one foot follow the other in a rhythmic pattern and thought about time. As he stepped from the past into the future, he was stunned by the realization that the present moment was so fleeting that it couldn't exist. His breathing became shallow and feelings of horror flushed through his body in spasms, like waves crashing on the shoreline, retreating, then returning in another blow. He was convinced that he had entered a portal into hell, and he endured the agony of the next three hours. When the clock struck midnight, he entered a bar, ordered a glass of whiskey, and the elixir washed away his panic with three magic bends of his elbow.

This was only the beginning of Wendell's long love affair with booze, his only relief from the anxiety attacks that haunted him in an era when little was known about the disorder. He couldn't function with the anxiety that possessed him and drank in an attempt to control his horrifying feelings, but couldn't work in a perpetual state of intoxication. On his journey, he encountered a host of unlikely companions and circumstances, including rehabs, institutions, therapists and a horde of dysfunctional people who would harbor him for a time, yet, sooner or later, he was forced onto the street again in search of another haven, where he could drink to his heart's content.

The Road To Fort Worth is a long overdue novel about a man suffering from panic disorder and alcoholism. It could be seen as a continuation of Charles R. Jackson's classic novel, The Lost Weekend. It's the story of a life on the rocks with a twist of lemon. It's the story of how one man learned to untie the inextricable knot binding two debilitating disorders that so many people have been unable to unravel. -Michael Jackson Smith

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

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