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, fish, rabbit…). Yet companion animals can provide us with love and devotion in a way that’s different from, and can even exceed, what we feel from a family member or friend. […]
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 allows us to fully develop who we are in the world. But for people with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) the ability to engage fully in life takes a drastic detour. People with social anxiety—also […]
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 research articles and over one thousand books. Advice about how to be happy floods the internet daily with simplistic listicles and click-bait articles that make it all seem so easy. But their advice, like telling a sad person […]
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 deep satisfaction from helping people. But who helps the helpers? What about us, anyway? We sit for hour after hour, year after year, listening to our patients’ troubles. We help them make sense of what brings them to our office. […]
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 I’d never met him or his family.) First sawing, then drills, and eventually it was finished. I was glad for the wild Toyon bushes that grew high along a chain-link fence, blocking the view—but […]
