A few months ago my cousin came to our house to review and discuss the family history my husband had been writing. After reviewing the material, he made one request – leave out the part about his father’s bipolar disorder. In fact he didn’t want any discussion in the history of the mental illness that… Read more »
This is the season of gift giving and receiving. And right about now I’m usually thinking about what to get, how much to spend, and how will I ever get it there on time. For a procrastinator who doesn’t like to shop, my season of gifts can be daunting. However, it is also a time… Read more »
So many people get stuck when it comes to comforting someone who is grieving. They don’t know what to say. They don’t know what to do. So they send flowers, they bring over a casserole for the already filled-to-the-brim freezer, they send a sweet card, or they sometimes just avoid the issue entirely, thinking maybe… Read more »
The day my son Paul died I couldn’t even put my underpants on right side out, and in the days that followed I had to retrain myself to do what I needed to do just to appear alive. I had to walk myself through the steps – get up, go to the bathroom, brush teeth,… Read more »
In Psychological Defenses in Everyday Life, (1989), I described a patient who complained that her husband was habitually late for dinner. Dinner was ready at 6:30, but he often came in as late as 8:30 without calling to let her know that he would be late. She asked me, “Is that right?” in a tone that… Read more »
All right, so that title is probably a tad misleading. But how many of you thought, “Really? Great! Sign me up!” I did, and I wrote it. Recently, success has been on my mind. Not so much the I’m-going-to-strike-it-rich-quick variety, but the how-can-I-feel-most-fulfilled-in-the-life-I-am-leading sort. As a single mom, building a private practice in psychotherapy (during… Read more »
Using Everyday Life as a Gateway to Healing Part II: Understanding the Elements of Mindfulness Mindfulness: The Non Judgmental Awareness of the Present Moment. In Part I we explored how to find more choice versus reaction in daily moments of stress, beginning with understanding the first element of Mindfulness: Non-Judgment First Step for practice was learning how to… Read more »
How to use Everyday Life as a Gateway to Your Healing There is so much talk about Mindfulness these days. It has become trendy–this ancient, over 2000 year old practice of attuning to the present moment. Trends don’t last but real wisdom can seep into our everyday lives and become, as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “A… Read more »
It’s an interesting irony, I think, that in our modern day and age of convenience and streamlining, we are under more stress than ever before. If asked, I think most of us could agree that our ancestors endured true hardship, including immigrating to a new land, travelling under uncomfortable and even dangerous conditions, surviving diseases… Read more »
The term depression tends to be slung about carelessly these days. We wake up in a funk, things didn’t go well at work today or we missed the most recent episode of Mad Men and we’re “depressed.” Technically, we’re not depressed. If we want to be nit-picky, we would clarify that we feel disappointed or… Read more »