Repeating the Past
(This is a summary of a more comprehensive article in Psychology Today) Why would you repeat the past? Why would you date or marry someone just like the father or mother who was most problematic for you? It seems to happen quite often, even though it would make more sense to look for a partner […]
Couples Loving Each Other
Couples Loving Each Other I just finished The 5 Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman, an extremely popular self-help book that has inspired couples since 1992. The idea of it is that the key to revitalization and repair of any relationship is to pay attention to how each person likes to be loved. The challenge is that […]
Cultivating Mindfulness
Mindfulness has emerged in the past few decades as a powerful tool to maintain our equilibrium as we deal with difficult emotions. It’s a state of active, open attention to the present, that involves observing one’s thoughts and feelings without making judgements. It is rooted in Hindu and Buddhist teachings but became more formally studied […]
Facing Challenges
Ten Principles to Guide You It’s easy to feel lost and confused when faced with a fresh challenge in life. In working with hundreds of people over the years, I have found that these ten principles apply to a wide array of problems, setbacks, and losses, and provide an extremely useful way of seeing things […]
The Mind-Body Connection: Physical Symptoms Can Be Clues to Hidden Feelings
Often, it’s hard to tune in to how you feel about someone or something. One of the very best ways to do it is to understand your mind-body connection and heed Shakira’s advice to “Read the signs of your body.” Physical Symptoms Physical symptoms, like breaking out into a sweat, feeling your heart pound, or […]
Self-Talk and Improved Mood
When you take responsibility for feelings rather than blame people or circumstances beyond your control, you seize the power to change and grow and make your life better. What you say to yourself about a situation often has more impact on your mood than anything else. So if you can become more aware of your […]
The Good News about Personal Responsibility
Don’t you just hate having to take responsibility for things? Isn’t it so much easier to blame the person you’re with or chalk it up to circumstances beyond your control? As I like to say: If something happens once, it’s because of that other jerk. If it happens twice, it’s really bad luck. And if […]
How to Build Self-Esteem
To have self-esteem means to think well of yourself, based on a kind but realistic assessment of your strengths and weaknesses. Feeling good about yourself can make you feel happier, more worthy of good things, and more secure in the face of setbacks.If you’ve never had great self-esteem or your self-esteem has been hurt by […]
Our Habits: What Is Too Much of a Good Thing?
When it comes to our habits, What is too much of a good thing? How do you know when you drink too much? And for that matter, how do you know when you smoke pot, watch porn, shop, or use social media too much? If you have a guilty pleasure (or complicated way of coping) is it […]
Recommended Self-Help Books and Sites
I encourage the people to learn as much as possible about their mental health and the particular issues on their plate. Often you can get a lot more out of psychotherapy when you’re willing to work on your issues in between sessions as well as during your sessions. That way, you continue to be the motivating […]
Couples Handling Conflict
Every couple has conflicts, those topics that seem to turn you into instant adversaries. And whenever anyone brings one of them up, someone’s feelings end up getting hurt. Well, today’s post is for couples handling just such conflicts. Here is how to get started. Don’t bring up complicated topics, like her spending or his mom coming […]
How to Fight Depression
When we feel sad or blue about something, we say that we’re depressed. But when we’re depressed and drained of all drive to do anything about it, then we have depression. Depression is a medical condition that affects over 20% of people at one point or another in their lifetime. The odds are that sometime in […]
Coping Strategies as Psychological Defenses
When we get hit with a piece of bad news, it can stress us out and make us feel anxious, sad, angry, or ashamed, sometimes in ways that we’re not even aware of. Some of these feelings can be outright overwhelming or unacceptable. Whoa! Imagine you’re a wealthy woman who discovers her husband married her […]
Tips for Better Sleep
If you suffer from insomnia, don’t just reach for a pill. Try these tips for better sleep. Minimize noise, light, and excessive temperatures when you’re sleeping. Try using an eye mask, earplugs, white noise maker, air filter or air conditioning. Consider using a weighted blanket. They have been shown to be especially helpful for anxious sleepers. […]
Inner Compass: Tuning In To Your Feelings
As we learned in my last post Inner Compass: Your Feelings Point the Way, emotions can help us make choices by giving us a vital compass that tells us where to go and who to get involved with. If we follow the directions of our inner compass, then we can make choices that feel authentic, […]
Inner Compass: Your Feelings Point the Way
Emotions can help us make choices by giving us a vital compass that tells us where to go and who to get involved with. If we follow the directions of our inner compass, then we can make choices that feel authentic, enthusiastic, and sustainable. Imagine the difference between a life full of “I’m doing this […]
Inner Compass: Emotions
Emotions are feelings that represent an instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances or relationships with others. Stress, or pain, is a signal that something is wrong, and it comes in many unpleasant but helpful flavors. Pleasure is a signal that something is right, and it also comes in many flavors. These flavors are all […]
Drinks, Drugs, Complicated Coping Strategies
In contrast to my post about Ten Great Coping Strategies, today I’d like to talk about a glass of wine and other coping strategies that can be very comforting and useful in moderation but can cause whole new problems in excess. Remember there are two fundamentally different ways to deal with stress in our lives: […]
Ten Great Coping Strategies
Today I’d like to talk about the range of things that people do to cope with stress, and specifically those tough realities that just aren’t going to go away no matter how hard we try. Let’s look at the many ways people seek “the serenity to accept what they cannot change,” and maybe you’ll get […]
What to Do About Stress
Like pain, stress is a signal that something is wrong or that something needs to be taken care of, and it comes in many forms, from worry and fear to sadness, guilt, boredom and more. Though some people prefer to stay oblivious to stress and just drink more or shop more—and I do appreciate the […]
Stress: It’s Like Pain
I find mental health to be very similar to physical health, and in fact two parts to the same big picture of you and how you are living your life. From a physical standpoint, when we’re out being busy and active, we expose ourselves to many hazards. To name a simple few, we may wear […]
