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