When most people are asked how they relax, replenish or de-stress, they will usually either say 'I don't know' or 'have a glass of wine'/some form of self-medicating behavior (followed by a laugh). Now ask yourself, How do I de-stress? Do you work at 'Replenishing the Well' at the end of a hard work week [...]
Regardless of your political allegiance, there is a great deal that can be learned about effective communication by watching how the presidential candidates interacted with each other this election year. More importantly, the way in which many ideas that candidates expressed were invalidated by their political opponents gives us valuable information on the importance of [...]
There are many versions to this tale. However, here is a summary of the one I prefer, whose author, unfortunately, is not known. Three hungry soldiers came upon a small village, but the villagers had nothing to offer them since they had a very poor harvest that year and didn’t want to share what little [...]
Now that the winter season is ending, there is much we can learn from it about factors that impact our emotional health. In the winter, the temperatures are (generally) low, there’s less sunlight and often people are required to stay inside for longer periods of time. As a result, we can sometimes find our emotions [...]
Transitions are something that can happen at any stage of your life, and often you look back on the last time you had to deal with a big change in order to get you through the next one. However, there is one year, in particular, that is typically the first transition of such significance that [...]
Welcome to September, kids are back in school, summer vacations are over, quarterly work stresses start building, and then your car breaks down. You find you just want to scream or cry because you are feeling so stressed and overwhelmed. Welcome to life in America where we honor achievement and success even when it is [...]
It can be very easy as a therapist to get frustrated when you’ve been working with someone and you haven’t seen any real progress, even after week after week of offering several suggestions that you know would be helpful. Then one day, as sudden as a flip of a switch, something happens. This person has [...]
No, I’m not going to start quoting the song, "Be My Guest" from Beauty and the Beast, although that movie could be a topic for a whole other blog entry. I’m simply offering an open invitation to every emotion that exists. Extending this invitation is something I often suggest to the people with whom I [...]
Anxiety disorders are the most common form of mental illness in America, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. The condition affects 40 million adults in the United States. That’s 18 percent of the U.S. population. Despite this, people with anxiety disorders still live with a stigma often associated with invisible conditions. Many people [...]
Many people enter therapy hoping to find a comfortable place to promote making positive changes in their lives. I feel that a part of my responsibility in encouraging this change involves making people as uncomfortable as possible, especially when so many people are comfortable with unhealthy things. We’ve all heard the expression, “Life begins outside [...]
