• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Dr. Susan O'Grady

Couples Counseling – Relationships – Mindfulness – Podcasts

  • Home
  • About
    • About Susan O’Grady
    • Policies
  • Therapies
    • Couples Counseling
      • The Gottman Relationship Checkup
    • Mindfulness-based Interventions
      • Mindfulness-based Emotional Balance
    • Individual Psychotherapy
  • Blog
    • Relationships
    • Mindfulness and Meditation
    • Wellbeing and Growth
    • Psychotherapy
    • Depression and Anxiety
  • Listen
    • Meditations
    • Audio Meditations
  • Contact
    • Contact Dr. Susan
    • Helpful Forms

Mindfulness and Meditation

 

Bittersweet and Everything In Between

June 24, 2020 By Susan J O'Grady Leave a Comment

Being able to hold opposing emotions is one of the hallmarks of good mental health. Something can be both bitter and ...

Read More →

Social Anxiety Disorder: (SAD) Looking at life from the outside

February 2, 2019 By Susan J O'Grady Leave a Comment

Nothing could be more fundamental than wanting to be liked. It is what leads us to seek and maintain relationships, and ...

Read More →

The Benefits of Cultivating Forgiveness

August 22, 2018 By Susan J O'Grady 2 Comments

It’s impossible to get through life emotionally unscathed. We’ve all been hurt at some time or another, and not just by ...

Read More →

How Anxiety and Worry Affect Memory

August 2, 2018 By Susan J O'Grady Leave a Comment

Have you noticed that you forget things in times of particular stress? This is both common and normal. Cascading ...

Read More →

hiding from emotions is never a good strategy

Working with Emotions: How mindfulness and awareness help

February 7, 2017 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 4 Comments

Bringing the hidden to light is an important part of psychotherapy, sometimes achieved through focus on intellectual ...

Read More →

Acceptance and suffering.

Suffering, Compassion, and a Skate Ramp: How mindfulness and acceptance help

August 2, 2016 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 4 Comments

Last summer my neighbor’s son built a huge skate ramp right next to our property line. (We’re on different streets, so ...

Read More →

Coping with depression and difficult emotions.

Waking up on the Grumpy Side of the Bed: Coping with difficult moods

February 23, 2016 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 4 Comments

“Yesterday all day a small gardenia was a great consolation.” Thomas Merton A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily ...

Read More →

Social media often contributes to feeling left out, leading to depression and social comparison.

Facebook’s False Face: Comparing our insides to other people’s outsides

October 28, 2015 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 3 Comments

We seldom deliberately present a bad face on social media. Selfie stick in hand, we depict ourselves smiling before an ...

Read More →

Learning to appreciate what you have.

Implacable Grandeur: Mindfulness and Change

September 9, 2015 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 9 Comments

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and ...

Read More →

Life brings ups and downs and finding a way through the stormy turbulence takes courage and grace.

Accepting Life’s Turbulence: Fasten Your Seatbelt

August 18, 2015 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 6 Comments

This dramatic cumulonimbus was captured at 37,000 feet over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Pilots know to avoid going ...

Read More →

Being aware of pleasant events is an important skill in mindfulness and Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.

Learning to Notice What is Already There: The Rose Itself

June 3, 2015 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 5 Comments

Behavior therapists have long used a technique to distract clients from their difficult thoughts. The client wears a ...

Read More →

Maintaining Composure as a Parent and Householder

May 12, 2015 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 1 Comment

Maintaining a graceful composure when performing life’s demanding household and child-raising chores can take a toll, ...

Read More →

We Fear What We Cannot Control: Acknowledging Pain and Suffering

April 15, 2015 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 2 Comments

The German airplane crash by a suicidal pilot, the Florida shootings, the Boston bombings. Every week, we read about ...

Read More →

MBCT exercise in confronting distorted thinking.

Standing Behind the Waterfall: Learning to Change Distorted Thinking with Mindfulness

February 24, 2015 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 7 Comments

Thoughts are not facts. When we’re upset, our thoughts seem valid—yet it’s exactly when our emotions get stirred up that ...

Read More →

Meditations on Humpback Whales: Mindfulness of Sights and Sounds

February 3, 2015 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 8 Comments

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 ...

Read More →

The Church of the Backyard: Finding Comfort in Nature

January 27, 2015 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 9 Comments

For many years I have met with a group of women one Friday morning a month. Around our kitchen tables, we light a ...

Read More →

The New Year: Rebirth and obstacles

January 12, 2015 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 3 Comments

By the third or fourth week of January, many of us are reevaluating our lives. We’ve either made resolutions (and ...

Read More →

The Present Moment and Transformation: Mindfulness and change

July 29, 2014 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 4 Comments

Research reported in the respected journal Science, in an article titled “Just think: The challenges of the disengaged ...

Read More →

Happiness and Pleasure Born of Reverie and Reflection

July 1, 2014 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 2 Comments

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 ...

Read More →

Mindfulness

How Wisdom Emerges from Body-Scan Meditation

May 17, 2014 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 2 Comments

   Mindfulness Meditation: Using the Body Scan as a Focus Body-scan meditation focuses deliberate attention on ...

Read More →

Finding Tranquility in Meditation Despite the Inevitable Storms

February 4, 2014 By Dr. Susan O'Grady Leave a Comment

Buddha Sheltered by Muchalinda: Finding Tranquility in Meditation Despite the Inevitable Storms One of the stories from ...

Read More →

Mindfulness Meditation

How to Survive a Rip Current of the Mind When Practicing Mindfulness Meditation

September 21, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 1 Comment

Ruminations and Worry Make Meditation and CBT Difficult Recently during a visit to Hawaii, I read a pamphlet on ocean ...

Read More →

A Lesson In Mindfulness: Blackberry Picking

August 31, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady Leave a Comment

    Being mindful when doing daily tasks is a lesson in informal meditation practice.  The Great Irish ...

Read More →

Hamsa meditation

July 10, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady Leave a Comment

The Sanskrit word Hamsa translates as a swan. In yoga, the word breath is also known as Hamsa. One method of using the ...

Read More →

Alternative & Complementary Treatment for Emotional and Physical Health

June 29, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady Leave a Comment

With changes in health care following the Affordable Care Act, providers will soon emphasize health promotion over ...

Read More →

No Mud, No Lotus: Growing into our fullness

June 13, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady Leave a Comment

No Mud, No Lotus, Thich Nhat Hanh Many yoga practitioners are familiar with the lotus position, a classic meditation ...

Read More →

Staying Grounded During Meditation–Earth Touching Mudra

May 25, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady Leave a Comment

In meditation, we notice thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations, and then return our focus to the breath. This ...

Read More →

Finding Happiness: You Can’t Always Get What You Want

May 21, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 2 Comments

  Grasping for Happiness may Lead to Depression Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object ...

Read More →

Finding your playfulness again

Being Playful Gives Freedom from the Restrictions we Put on Ourselves

May 7, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady Leave a Comment

Gerald Heard visited Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch in 1937. He had an interest in Eastern religions and metaphysics. ...

Read More →

How Mindfulness Can Reduce Stress

May 4, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady Leave a Comment

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction In 1979, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University ...

Read More →

Powering off to reboot your internal drive

May 3, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady Leave a Comment

Irritability, Fatigue, Lack of Enthusiasm? Time to Power Off When your iPad or smartphone is having ...

Read More →

The Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness in Nature

May 2, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 3 Comments

The Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness in Nature Research has consistently shown that time spent in nature helps people ...

Read More →

Increasing Joy

Freeing the Trapped Spirit Within

April 27, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady Leave a Comment

  In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, the spirit Ariel, living on a remote island, has been confined in a cloven ...

Read More →

Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Mindfulness in Everyday Life: Letting Everything Become Your Teacher

March 13, 2013 By Dr. Susan O'Grady Leave a Comment

Sometimes we can’t ignore external signals to be mindful. My puppy is a reminder. When I am absorbed in a task, usually ...

Read More →

The fullest experience of the adventure of life: Eleanor Roosevelt, writing, and mindfulness

August 29, 2012 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 3 Comments

I just returned from Rhinebeck, NY, where I took an intensive professional training course in Mindfulness-Based ...

Read More →

Appreciating the Absence of Pain

May 19, 2012 By Dr. Susan O'Grady 1 Comment

You don’t appreciate not having a toothache until you have a toothache.  Sitting in the endodontist's chair last ...

Read More →

More Posts from this Category

View Custom Post Type Archive

 

Dr. Susan J. O’Grady is a Certified Gottman Couples Therapist

Learn more about marriage counseling and couples therapy »


Learn more about the Gottman Relationship Checkup »

Mindfulness-based Emotional Balance Class

  • Wednesdays,  5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
  • $250 sliding scale available
  • 1600 South Main Street, Ste. 177, Walnut Creek
  • To Sign Up, email: susanogradyphd@gmail.com
  • Also please see: https://ogradywellbeing.com

Connect with Dr. Susan on Social Media

  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube

Join My Email List

We will NEVER share your personal information with anyone, period.

Privacy Policy

Please read our updated Privacy Policy here.

Copyright © 2023 • Dr. Susan O'Grady • All Rights Reserved