Anxious people fret. Depressed people brood. Anxious people worry about what may happen, while depressed people ruminate about what has already happened. In each case, life becomes more and more constricted. Sometimes the two conditions may look similar because both use avoidance as a coping strategy. Think of avoidance as going back to bed and […]
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 other than their own happiness. – Mill Judging by the huge number of psychological and self-help books claiming to know the secret to happiness and how people can increase it, we have become a nation […]
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 Psychologist featured an article on how mental health professionals significantly underestimate how unhealthy or missing lifestyle factors—for instance, nutrition and diet, or service to others— contribute to many emotional health problems. It also discussed how […]
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 left the relationship. They lead parallel lives. The focus is on the kids, or their work or friends, but not each other. During the first session of couples counseling, I take a history of the relationship and ask them to […]
How Mindfulness Can Reduce Stress
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction In 1979, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School—the oldest academic medical center-based stress reduction program in the west. In response to inquiries about the clinic’s eight-week course, Dr. Kabat-Zinn wrote Full Catastrophe Living (1990), the seminal book on mindfulness practice that has spawned […]
