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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
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. ...
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 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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
