Teletherapy–One Year Later
Psychologists help people cope with change in ways that enlarge and nourish them. Perhaps the most important thing we do ...
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 ...
Third Ear Listening: Ethics and Teletherapy in Quarantine
Social distancing due to COVID-19 has caused a radical shift in our work as psychologists. In talking with other ...
Working with Emotions: How mindfulness and awareness help
Bringing the hidden to light is an important part of psychotherapy, sometimes achieved through focus on intellectual ...
How to Be Sad
There's a plethora of information about happiness. My literature search on this subject yielded over 13,000 scholarly ...
Psychologists Need Self-Care Too
Who Helps the Helper? Self-care and Professional Ethics Most psychologists get into this profession because ...
Suffering, Compassion, and a Skate Ramp
Last summer my neighbor’s son built a huge skate ramp right next to our property line. (We’re on different ...
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 may times have you gone to bed thinking that you hate your partner, fantasizing how you would live on your own? Your ...
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, persistent ...
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 ...
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
Research reported in the respected journal Science, in an article titled “Just think: The challenges of the disengaged ...
How Wisdom Emerges from Body-Scan Meditation
Mindfulness Meditation: Using the Body Scan as a Focus Body-scan meditation focuses deliberate attention ...
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 ...
How Anger Hurts Relationships
Getting angry...is easy and everyone can do it; but doing it . . . in the right amount, at the right time, and for the ...
Finding Happiness: You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness. – Mill Grasping ...
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 ...
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. ...
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
When your iPad or smartphone is having issues—unresponsive, randomly crashing, or just running sluggishly—it’s time to ...
Do Opposites Attract? 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, Blogging, and Mindfulness
I just returned from Rhinebeck, NY, where I took an intensive professional training course in Mindfulness-Based ...
The College Transition: Things to Talk About
College is a rite of passage, a transition into adulthood. It’s a transition for parents, too, who can no longer ...
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 ...
