Healing and growth from within – love matters, being a person matters
Riding Dragons
Our Journey Through Trauma to Love, Intimacy, and the Deep Self
Philip and Vellie Helfaer take us into the experience and sources of the joys and sorrows of the love relationship with searing honesty and impeccable integrity. Both authors document the painful effects of traumatic childhoods that created inner obstacles to fulfilling their longing for sexual love and intimacy. They committed themselves to working through their difficulties using self-study and an innovative set of therapeutic and healing practices. Their book is a testament to how two people in the face of serious difficulties can become equals living in sexual intimacy with enduring love.
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"Riding Dragons is a daring experiment, a fierce commitment to the self, to personal growth, and most of all, to the beloved other."
—Kathleen Spivack, Author of With Robert Lowell and His Circle, University Press of New England, 2012; Unspeakable Things, Alfred A. Knopf, 2016-17
Meet the Authors
Philip M Helfaer, PhD and Vellie Helfaer, BSN, MSN
We are a couple who are blessed to have shared a fulfilling life together for more than forty years. We both have quests that led us to paths of self-study, and we brought those paths into our relationship. Our chapters describe specific experiences emerging in the continuous flow of experience brought out by our self-study practices.
We write about our journey in overcoming inner obstacles to love, intimacy, and being a person. Our approach is unique: we each write our own chapters; each chapter describes immediate experience, without narrative or explanation.
Other works by Philip M. Helfaer
Sex and Self-Respect
The Quest for Personal Fulfillment
Seeking self-fulfillment is inherent to our biology. For many, the desire for sexual love and intimacy is at its core, and in this quest we find our greatest joy and frequently our deepest sorrows. For fulfillment, both sexuality and selfhood must be grounded in our bodily being. This is the meaning of self-respect. This book is a companion and guide for this quest, as well as a guide for respectful parenting.
The Psychology of Religious Doubt
Based on extensive research, this book breaks new ground in two areas: The demonstration that the religious belief system is an aspect of personality, providing support for the development and integration of various personality functions; and the exploration of the significance of religious doubt in life and development. Discussions and details of cases and interesting findings in these two areas makes this book well worth study.
