Marriage: In pleasure and in pain
Happily ever after doesn’t do justice to anyone’s experience of marriage. A former professor of mine dedicated ...
The No Surprises Act of 2022: What it means for psychologists
The No Surprises Act of 2022 (H.R. 133) and the Good Faith Estimate (GFE) are important changes in how patients are ...
Relationship Mindset: How implicit beliefs affect romantic relationships
Like the proverbial moth to a flame, we are drawn to the intense experience of romantic passion. In popular culture, ...
Psychotherapy in the Virtual Space: How teletherapy has changed the way we give and get care
How the pandemic changed the way psychologists work and clients get care. Psychologists help people cope with change in ...
Passion, Sex, and Romance in Long-term Relationships
It is not uncommon to have romantic fantasies about people other than your partner. It’s not just normal; it can even ...
Bittersweet and Everything In Between
Being able to hold opposing emotions is one of the hallmarks of good mental health. Something can be both bitter and ...
What to Do After a Fight and How to Repair
One of the most important skills you can learn to better manage conflict is how to make a repair AFTER you’ve had a ...
Understanding Suicide: Why do people kill themselves?
The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide On the surface, suicide seems incomprehensible, ...
When Strong Emotions Derail You: How to manage
How do emotions get us into trouble? Some strong emotions are enjoyable, but some can knock us off balance. ...
Social Anxiety Disorder: (SAD) Looking at life from the outside
Nothing could be more fundamental than wanting to be liked. It is what leads us to seek and maintain relationships, and ...
The Emotional Benefits of Decluttering and Why It’s Hard
How Clutter Becomes Us Originally published as Tidying Up? Why It's Harder Than 'Does This Spark Joy?' in ...
When a Beloved Pet Dies
My clients often feel ashamed of their grief following the death of a pet because it’s “only” a dog or a cat (or bird, ...
The Benefits of Cultivating Forgiveness
It’s impossible to get through life emotionally unscathed. We’ve all been hurt at some time or another, and not just by ...
How Anxiety and Worry Affect Memory
Have you noticed that you forget things in times of particular stress? This is both common and normal. Cascading ...
The Very Real Grief of Miscarriage
Early in a wanted pregnancy, we become attached to the growing baby—imagining who this little creature will be, how ...
What is ‘Micro-Cheating’? And Is It Really Cheating?
In a committed relationship, cheating comes in many forms. It can be as big as a long-term affair with one’s best ...
Using Softened Startup in Conflict Discussions
Dirty Dishes in the Sink, Smelly Socks on the Floor Sometimes the things that drive us most crazy in a marriage are the ...
Anxiety Knows No Age Limits: Each moment is all we really ever have
We all get anxious from time to time. Even mild panic that’s morphed from mere anxiety is normal. Most often, though, ...
Sex and Romance in Long Term Relationships
Harboring fantasies about someone else while happily coupled isn’t unusual. In most relationships, whether of two years, ...
Working with Emotions: How mindfulness and awareness help
Bringing the hidden to light is an important part of psychotherapy, sometimes achieved through focus on intellectual ...
How to Be Sad: Acceptance and difficulty
There's a plethora of information about happiness. My literature search on this subject yielded over 13,000 scholarly ...
Psychologists Need Self-Care Too: Professional ethics
Who Helps the Helper? Self-care and Professional Ethics Most psychologists get into this profession because we get ...
How to Keep Your Marriage Healthy While Coping with Chronic Illness
Most marriages will be confronted with challenges. How we cope, make meaning from, and find benefit in challenges ...
Expressing Fondness and Admiration for a Strong Foundation in Marriage
Healthy relationships are built on a strong foundation. In Northern California, where I live, houses are constructed on ...
Suffering, Compassion, and a Skate Ramp: How mindfulness and acceptance help
Last summer my neighbor’s son built a huge skate ramp right next to our property line. (We’re on different streets, so ...
Waking up on the Grumpy Side of the Bed: Coping with difficult moods
“Yesterday all day a small gardenia was a great consolation.” Thomas Merton A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily ...
Remaking Love: When did you stop dancing?
Taking Down the Walls to Intimacy Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all ...
Look Into My Eyes: The crucial role of eye contact in relationships
People are innately attracted to faces, especially eyes. The human face is associated with our identity; we are ...
The Elusive Muse: Reclaiming creativity and focus
For three months, I’ve resisted writing. I sat at my desk or the kitchen table—my favorite place to write—to compose an ...
Facebook’s False Face: Comparing our insides to other people’s outsides
We seldom deliberately present a bad face on social media. Selfie stick in hand, we depict ourselves smiling before an ...
Implacable Grandeur: Mindfulness and Change
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and ...
Accepting Life’s Turbulence: Fasten Your Seatbelt
This dramatic cumulonimbus was captured at 37,000 feet over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Pilots know to avoid going ...
Psychotherapy: A Safe and Sheltered Space
One size does not fit all when it comes to finding a good therapist. Many variables influence the extent to which people ...
Division of labor in relationships: How to make it work
Conflict is inevitable in marriage, and how to divvy up chores is one of the most common conflicts. Virtually every ...
Yoga Nidra and Sleep: Resting in the Lap of Mother Earth
Each night during our sleep we re-create the world. Stories and pictures dance through our minds even if we are unaware. ...
Learning to Notice What is Already There: The Rose Itself
Behavior therapists have long used a technique to distract clients from their difficult thoughts. The client wears a ...
Marriage and Parenting: Balancing everyone’s needs
Work-life Balance -- Making Time for Yourself When I was born, my father’s colleagues congratulated him with the ...
Maintaining Composure as a Parent and Householder
Maintaining a graceful composure when performing life’s demanding household and child-raising chores can take a toll, ...
Better Sex through Non-Sexual Touching
Two people rarely have the exact same sex drive. One person might be happy with daily sex, another with monthly. Besides ...
Parenting: Playing the Hand You’re Dealt
As parents, most of us make terrible fortune-tellers. When my daughter Eileen was a first-grader, she was sent to the ...
We Fear What We Cannot Control: Acknowledging Pain and Suffering
The German airplane crash by a suicidal pilot, the Florida shootings, the Boston bombings. Every week, we read about ...
Psychotherapy, Love, and Healing
Nothing is more natural than the urge to be held and comforted by someone who understands our suffering. ...
“I’d be better off single”: Distress-maintaining thinking
How many times have you gone to bed thinking that you hate your partner, fantasizing how you would live on your own? ...
Standing Behind the Waterfall: Learning to Change Distorted Thinking with Mindfulness
Thoughts are not facts. When we’re upset, our thoughts seem valid—yet it’s exactly when our emotions get stirred up that ...
Building and Keeping a Strong Relationship After Having Kids
Marital conflict is bad for kids. While every marriage has conflict, especially after the first baby, ...
The Effect of Having Kids on a Marriage
Marriage is Strained After Having Children Being a parent is hard. But being a parent is really hard on a marriage. ...
Meditations on Humpback Whales: Mindfulness of Sights and Sounds
On a recent trip to Africa, I climb the bluff from which, I’d been told, I could see whales breaching. I have the strand ...
The Church of the Backyard: Finding Comfort in Nature
For many years I have met with a group of women one Friday morning a month. Around our kitchen tables, we light a ...
Falling in Love Again with Your Partner: Love Maps, Friendship, and Staying Connected
When love is new, we ask questions to get to know our partner well. As Mandy Len Catron wrote for The New York Times in ...
The New Year: Rebirth and obstacles
By the third or fourth week of January, many of us are reevaluating our lives. We’ve either made resolutions (and ...
Every Ornament Tells a Story: Coping with holiday stress
Two weeks into December, and I had no holiday spirit. I had no desire to decorate or to do what I have done for the last ...
Turning Toward Each Other Every Day: You Don’t Have to Wait for Date Night
Building closeness doesn’t happen only on date night, the subject of my previous two posts. Turning toward each other ...
Five Excuses Couples Use to Avoid Date Night
1. “Hiring a sitter is too expensive.” There are ways to minimize the expense of hiring a babysitter. A neighborhood ...
Date Night: Making Time Together
Couples need time to be together without other couples, family, kids, TV, and the endless distractions of a digital ...
Why Soul Mate is a Setup for Disappointment
In my practice, I often treat couples who have highly idealistic expectations about marriage. Does that sound ...
Procrastination: Scratching Items off the Mental To-Do List
A lot of our stress comes from holding our undone tasks in mind; the more we have, the more they weigh upon us. ...
Chronic Pain: Talking About Pain
Treating pain is difficult for several reasons. Narcotic painkillers bring with them addiction and other problems, but ...
The Present Moment and Transformation: Mindfulness and change
Research reported in the respected journal Science, in an article titled “Just think: The challenges of the disengaged ...
Marriage & Acceptance: Crooked Timbers
Perfectionism is a personality trait that can have positive results: perfectionists work hard to get ...
Happiness and Pleasure Born of Reverie and Reflection
When I was little and living in lush, sweaty Georgia, my mother would take me and my brother out to the lawn and we’d ...
How Wisdom Emerges from Body-Scan Meditation
Mindfulness Meditation: Using the Body Scan as a Focus Body-scan meditation focuses deliberate attention on ...
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Post-traumatic Stress Injury
Responding to First Responders: PTSD and PTSI in First Responders Psychologists sometimes treat first ...
Seeing How Childhood Patterns Affect Marriage
When Mark and Judy came to see me for couples therapy, Judy felt frustrated by her husband’s constant ...
Finding Tranquility in Meditation Despite the Inevitable Storms
Buddha Sheltered by Muchalinda: Finding Tranquility in Meditation Despite the Inevitable Storms One of the stories from ...
Six Ground Rules for Introducing a New Girlfriend or Boyfriend to Your Kids
When is it okay to introduce your kids to a date after divorce or separation? This is a common question for newly ...
How Couples Counseling Can Guide a Divorce That’s Better for the Kids
Staying Together for the Kids: Why This Isn't a Good Idea In my work as a counselor, I approach every couple with the ...
Ways to Increase Fondness and Admiration
The Sound Relationship House Part 3: Ways to Increase Fondness and Admiration We use many of these tools for ...
The Sound Relationship House: Sharing Fondness and Admiration
In the previous post, I described the first foundation level of the Sound Relationship House: friendship and ...
The Sound Relationship House: Friendship and Appreciation
The Sound Relationship: Part 1 A great marriage needs a strong foundation. Remember the story of the three little pigs? ...
Sex and Kissing in Relationships
Have you stopped kissing your partner? In new relationships, kissing is frequent, often as a prelude to ...
Passion and Romance in Marriage: How it Goes Sour
Would you choose gelato over non-fat frozen yogurt? Most of us would say gelato, even knowing that it is an unhealthy ...
How to Survive a Rip Current of the Mind When Practicing Mindfulness Meditation
Ruminations and Worry Make Meditation and CBT Difficult Recently during a visit to Hawaii, I read a pamphlet on ocean ...
A Lesson In Mindfulness: Blackberry Picking
Being mindful when doing daily tasks is a lesson in informal meditation practice. The Great Irish ...
Relationships and Vacations
A weekend away can bring back romance and intimacy For many couples, a vacation brings a return to romance. But ...
Are you texting your partner too much? 6 Ways Texting Can Be Inappropriate in Your Relationship
With smartphones, our partner is just a text away. That’s not always a good thing. Sure, texting is a great way of ...
The Tree of Life: Vrikasana Pose
Tree Pose: Vriksasana The tree is a symbol of rootedness and reach, of sturdiness and balance. Trees find nourishment ...
Hamsa meditation
The Sanskrit word Hamsa translates as a swan. In yoga, the word breath is also known as Hamsa. One method of using the ...
Marriage Takes Work, Care, and Attention
“Marriage, the Job: The Hard Work in ‘Before Midnight,’ Amour’ and Other Films and Shows,” A.O. Scott points out that in ...
Alternative & Complementary Treatment for Emotional and Physical Health
With changes in health care following the Affordable Care Act, providers will soon emphasize health promotion over ...
Hatha Yoga and Mindful Movement
The yoga that most people are familiar with is Hatha yoga. Hatha yoga involves postures or poses referred to as ...
Depressed, anxious, or both? Part Two
Depression is a Treatable Illness According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 17 million adult ...
Anxious, depressed, or both?
Anxious people fret. Depressed people brood. Anxious people worry about what may happen, while depressed people ...
Yoga Poses to Counter the Effects of Sitting
You are only as young as your spine We live in a sedentary culture. With the abundance of email, social media, iPads, ...
Attitudes Toward the World –Yamas
In all spiritual traditions, ethics are central and provide a foundation for practice. The first limb of Pantanjali's ...
Niyamas (Observances)
The Six Niyamas: Shaucha (purity). Cleanliness of the body and purity of the mind. External Cleanliness of ...
Coping with Stress with Acceptance
Stress is Part of Life Stress is ubiquitous and unavoidable. Some stress is self-imposed due to our beliefs and ...
No Mud, No Lotus: Growing into our fullness
No Mud, No Lotus, Thich Nhat Hanh Many yoga practitioners are familiar with the lotus position, a classic meditation ...
Finding Your Inner Ganesha to Remove Obstacles
Ganesh, the son of Shiva and Parvati, is considered to be the remover of obstacles. The symbolism attached to Ganesh as ...
Staying Grounded During Meditation–Earth Touching Mudra
In meditation, we notice thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations, and then return our focus to the breath. This ...
How Anger Hurts Relationships
Getting angry...is easy and everyone can do it; but doing it . . . in the right amount, at the right time, and for the ...
Finding Happiness: You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Grasping for Happiness may Lead to Depression Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object ...
How Lifestyle Changes Can Be Therapeutic—And What To Do When They’re Just Too Hard
How Lifestyle Changes Can Be Therapeutic—And What To Do When They’re Just Too Hard The October 2011 issue of American ...
Being Playful Gives Freedom from the Restrictions we Put on Ourselves
Gerald Heard visited Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch in 1937. He had an interest in Eastern religions and metaphysics. ...
140 Characters or Less: The Three-Sentence Rule in Communication
Couples frequently come to therapy complaining of communication problems. Conflicts don’t get resolved. Intimacy has ...
How Mindfulness Can Reduce Stress
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction In 1979, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University ...
Powering off to reboot your internal drive
Irritability, Fatigue, Lack of Enthusiasm? Time to Power Off When your iPad or smartphone is having ...
The Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness in Nature
The Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness in Nature Research has consistently shown that time spent in nature helps people ...
Do Opposites Attract in Choosing a Mate: How what once attracted us can begin to repel
We Seek Wholeness in Ourselves When we Choose our Mate The adage “opposites attract” is often true before marriage and ...
Freeing the Trapped Spirit Within
In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, the spirit Ariel, living on a remote island, has been confined in a cloven ...
Honoring Each Other’s Dreams: Create Shared Meaning
For Greater Intimacy, Stay in Touch With Hopes and Dreams “Like everything which is not the involuntary result of ...
ADHD Medications in Childhood: Dependency and Addiction in Adulthood
ADHD Medications in Childhood: A Cautionary Tale The NY Times article ‘Drowned in a Stream of Prescriptions’ was all ...
Amour: Keeping Marriage Strong After a Stroke
The French film Amour is a touching, realistic window into the world of a committed marriage in which one partner has ...
10 Things Parents can do to Help Their Kids Engage in School
My daughter posted this photo and comment on her Facebook page after purchasing her textbooks for winter ...
Mindfulness in Everyday Life: Letting Everything Become Your Teacher
Sometimes we can’t ignore external signals to be mindful. My puppy is a reminder. When I am absorbed in a task, usually ...
Sleep and Romantic Relationships: How a Good Night’s Sleep Keeps Relationships Romantic
Research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, showed that poor sleep hurts relationships. “Poor sleep ...
Turning Toward Each Other to Maintain Your Relationship
The Magic Five and One-half Hours a Week: How to strengthen your relationship by turning toward each other every ...
The Buckeye: Intimations of Spring
Spring is still a ways away where I live in northern California. The air is fresh; the sunlight brightens the green ...
Psychotherapy and Choice :The Journey to the Self
I often hike the trails below Mt. Diablo and am not a stranger to seeing snakes on the path, and have been told that in ...
The Fourth Horseman: Stonewalling
Walking up the steep steps gave me a view of the entire countryside, but scaling a partner’s emotional wall isn’t that ...
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Shortcutting Criticism
In the biblical Book of Revelations, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse signal the end of the world through conquest, ...
Preventing infidelity: Open the sliding door to love
Dr. John Gottman sent me a complimentary copy of his latest book, What Makes Love Last? I read it with great interest. ...
The fullest experience of the adventure of life: Eleanor Roosevelt, writing, and mindfulness
I just returned from Rhinebeck, NY, where I took an intensive professional training course in Mindfulness-Based ...
The College Transition: Things to Talk About
College is a rite of passage, a transition into adulthood. It’s a transition for parents, too, who can no longer ...
Updating Your Love Maps—Keeping Friendship in Your Marriage
Love Maps —“You like tomato and I like tomahto” Last night I made a salad for dinner. I picked fresh lemon ...
Educational Engagement : Learning to Learn
Red Brick, Ivy, and Spiderwebs: Learning to Engage I spent my first two years as an undergraduate at a ...
Learning to Stay Calm During Difficult Discussions
By the time couples come to couples therapy, they have a built up a lot of tension around recurring problems. For ...
Summer Travels and Travails: Tips for Stress-free Vacations
Tips for Making Summer Vacations Stress-Proof: or at least stress-resistant By now, most of us have either taken the ...
Strains of Summer on Family Life
School is out. Swim season is in full swing. From my home, I hear the loud speaker blasting from the ...
Chronic Pain and Narcotics
A Behavioral Approach to Treating Chronic Pain and Medical Problems In the June 2 edition of The New York Times, the ...
Appreciating the Absence of Pain
You don’t appreciate not having a toothache until you have a toothache. Sitting in the endodontist's chair last ...
Empty Nest, Work-Life Balance, and Political Action
Anticipating an empty nest, I decided to join the Contra Costa Psychological Association’s Board of Directors. My ...
Psychotherapy and Change
I officially started my tenure as President of our association on January 1, but the gavel was passed at our annual ...
Our Evolving Field
Our Evolving Field For several years every spring I have spoken at Career Day at our local high school and middle ...
Writing About Our Work: Psychologists as Writers
Writing About Our Work: Psychologists as Writers The summer solstice has come and gone. I hope that the long ...
