The Mentalization Journal: 30 Days of Mentalization-Informed Journaling to Master Your Mentalization Competencies (Mastering Mentalization Series) - Softcover
Synopsis
This is the first journal specifically designed to help you monitor and enhance your mentalization competencies. The format provides a concise and comprehensive framework for recording and evaluating even your most complex social interactions. The journaling concepts are based on the Mastering Mentalization Series and cover all three levels of mentalization: Basic Mentalizing, Affective Mentalizing and Strategic Mentalizing. Mentalization lies at the core of the key processes that we use to interpret and guide social behavior.
In our daily lives we tend to operate without a clear understanding of the mental states that underlie behavior, both our own and that of others. This lack of understanding is a breeding ground for misunderstanding, miscommunication and missed opportunities. Understanding complex social interaction requires a mentalization-informed perspective of each stakeholder’s mental state derived from a true mentalistic approach.
The ability to mentalize about ourselves and others provides us with:
- Agentic power, which is the highest level of personal competence and power. Through mentalization we are more conscious of our behavior, and we can take responsibility for our own actions. It enables us to monitor and perform goal-directed behavior and achieve our goals.
- Social connectedness and embeddedness, a core psychological need, essential to feeling satisfied with your life. Mentalization is critical to successful affiliation and cooperation with others. Mentalization is also critical to quickly detecting whether someone is trustworthy and competent.
- Personal psychological safety, making you less dependent upon others. This type of safety is built upon the acceptance that nobody is perfect, the relinquishment of self-judgment and judgment of others. People with a secure sense of personal psychological safety have resilience and grit, and are able to reject isolation when things go wrong, instead asking for support from others.
- A positive and effective communication style to achieve your goals. Mentalization is key to intentional communication, for instance, teaching a person something, persuading somebody, sharing a topic of attention, plans and goals, and repairing failed communication and interpersonal conflict.
In this journal you will describe and examine events, situations and experiences in a systematic and detailed manner, with the aim of explaining and interpreting your own behavior and that of others on the basis of mentalization-informed inferences. Additionally, you will be tracking your mentalization progress.
Journaling is one of the most powerful self-improvement activities that you can do in your own time and at your own pace. People who have taken to journaling feel less stressed, less anxious and less confused after writing down their experiences and processing them cognitively and affectively. To the experienced journaling practitioner the world becomes clearer, more predictable and more manageable.
A journal is typically a space for personal reflections, thoughts, and experiences. If you are looking for workbook-style exercises, we have created online assessments to help identify mentalization strengths and weaknesses, as well as training modules for practice (go to appliedtom).
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Other books in the Mastering Mentalization Series available on Amazon:
Mastering Mentalization: Complete Volume
Mastering Mentalization: Volume I, Basic Mentalizing
Mastering Mentalization: Volume II, Affective Mentalizing
Mastering Mentalization: Volume III, Strategic Mentalizing
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
