“Why is it that we sometimes can't feel close to someone we've lived with for a long period of time?” This was the heartfelt question from a young woman and mother who was struggling in a relationship with her partner. The relationship had been going sideways for years, but she was reluctant to break up [...]
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, my mother used to tell me, as she watched me with some perplexity while I painstakingly painted Twiggy eyelashes around my eyes. “Oh mom,” I would sigh in my most grown-up voice at the venerable age of 16. What did she know about beauty? She who never [...]
Somewhere along the way, we westerners have wholeheartedly embraced the notion that the holidays are supposed to be about having wonderful, cozy, nurturing and loving times with our families. Holding onto that thought can be depressing. As if all the tension, stress and dysfunctionality that we may have experienced with various members [...]
Self-awareness is the bedrock of all therapy. The degree to which you are self aware will shape everything in your life – your relationships, how you handle challenges and obstacles, how you deal with failure, and whether or not you can rise from the ashes and recreate your life anew. A lack of self-awareness, on [...]
Animals can teach us a lot about relationships. They just seem to handle them so naturally and gracefully, with a minimum of fuss. Not so for we humans. All of life involves relationships of various sorts and they are central to our human lives. They are the alchemical vessels we are cooked in, changed [...]
Has anxiety always been so pervasive a problem as it is today in modern cultures? Are we just naming a problem which has in fact always crippled mankind? Or, is it in fact a byproduct of the fast changing, technology driven times in which we find ourselves? While in the past, the farmer, the warrior [...]
I have been reflecting on life and death these past weeks, which brought me to thinking about those mini births and deaths that make up part and parcel of our daily lives. The birth of something new is usually a joyous, affirming experience, but we tend to forget about the little deaths that preceded it [...]
Going into therapy, finding the right therapist - it's a risk. Why would anyone want to bare their soul to a stranger - does the thought make you feel hugely vulnerable, awkward? Isn't it extremely embarrassing, uncomfortable? Yes it can be, but the more dominant feeling of clients who walk over that bridge is one [...]
Recently I had a conversation over the internet with a young man who has been dealing with anxiety. This seems to be such a common problem, especially with young people who have so much uncertainty about the meaning of life, themselves, and their future. As I reread the text of our conversation, it occurred to [...]
I've been thinking about birth and death lately, as someone I know has been approaching death. It struck me the other day how these two big events, between which we live out our lives, have some meaningful opposites. If you think about the soul incarnating into a baby's body, I imagine it would feel terrified [...]
