We’ve all heard the saying there are bumps in the road, but when does a road have so many of them that we begin to view it as a bumpy road and no longer want to stay on it? That’s the question that came up in one of my sessions and it’s a useful one to ponder, though harder to sort out than we’d like to think. Alan, in his early 40s, came to see me because he felt he was putting way more into his marriage and family life than his wife Letitia was. On top of being a stay-at-home Dad with two kids, he was also taking online courses for a master’s degree, while Letitia worked a 9-to-5 job that gave her lots of free time after work and on weekends. They’d had some upheaval in their marriage when Letitia lost her previous job because her company closed down...

We may not realize how being bombarded daily by articles on longevity and wellness distorts our view of what is actually possible—a recent article count for longevity was 440,000,000 and for wellness it was 997,000,000. Article after article leads us to think that actions we take or don’t take will almost certainly assure us a long, healthy life.  But what happens when you do everything—or even most things—right and still develop medical conditions that keep you in constant or chronic pain, destroy your ability to function optimally, and drag your spirits down? This radical mental shift from wellness to illness makes me think of a quote attributed to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who died from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer. She’s reputed to have said, “If I’d known I was going to get cancer, I wouldn’t have done all those push-ups.”  That’s one way of dealing with illness and, indeed, many...

I’ve written a lot about primary emotions but little about secondary emotions. Simply put, secondary emotions are the affective response we have to our first feelings. I was speaking about this subject with a client the other day who said she felt helpless, panicky, and distraught in a particular situation and then was ashamed she’d felt these feelings. The first set of feelings were primary and the shame was secondary. Get it? According to Primary vs. Secondary Emotions: A Deeper Dive, “Primary emotions are instinctive and immediate responses to events. These emotions arise before our brain has had time to analyze or interpret what’s happening. The most recognized primary emotions are: sadness, happiness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust. Secondary emotions develop after the initial emotional response. These are shaped by our thoughts and interpretations of what we felt first.” Often, when we feel piercingly difficult feelings that are hard to cope...

When you listen to someone or watch a show or movie that upsets you, do you relate or react? I hadn’t thought much about the striking difference between the two until a client shared that she—a recovering trauma victim— had watched a movie about a woman being abused and said, “You know, I could relate to what she was going through and all the bad things that happened to her, but I didn’t go crazy inside. I mean, I didn’t fall down the rabbit hole and start reliving what I went through.” Wow. I was impressed. I told her she was getting healthier by relating to the person in the show and not experiencing a triggering reaction. Some people shut down when what they see or hear feels too much like what happened to them. For example, one of my clients was viewed as aloof and uncaring in her women’s support...

So many of my clients (not to mention friends and family) suffer from anxiety. But even when they recognize that it’s rooted in hurtful past situations, they can’t figure out how to hold onto the memories without the powerful, negative emotions that emanate from them and ruin their lives. Neuroscience Says this Is How you Can Turn a Bad Memory Into a Good (and Useful) Memory has some useful ideas on managing these memories. “Neuroscientists call the process of linking feelings with a memory valence assignment. Once we experience something, our brains associate it with a positive or negative feeling, or valence, which helps us know whether to seek it or avoid it in the future.” However, we’re only beginning to understand how valence assignment occurs, that is, exactly how one memory gets a negative assignment and another gets a positive one.  Studies show that removing a gene called neurotensin from...

Most of us understand the concept of retraining our bodies: you’re out of shape and therefore do exercises to get fitter. According to Mental Fitness: Train Your Mind Like You Train Your Body, we can use the same concept for our minds.  The article defines mental fitness as “the ability to maintain a healthy, resilient and adaptable mindset that helps you navigate challenges, manage stress and perform at your best in everyday life. At its core, mental fitness is about strengthening the brain’s ability to focus, stay positive, regulate emotions and recover from setbacks.” Consider your aptitude in each of these mental fitness categories and you’ll know which ones require attention. Let’s start with your ability to focus. If you have Attention Deficit Disorder, staying focused may be especially difficult. That’s just the way your brain works, and it has strengths those without ADD may not have. Don’t get stuck on...

While listening to a client describe her fear of sharing untoward things about her family with outsiders due to potential repercussions or retaliation, the term brainwashed popped into my head. Isn’t that what families do to us when we don’t even realize it? Most families don’t think of their actions as brainwashing (except for those who intentionally try to control and manipulate), but it happens, nevertheless.  Cambridge Dictionary defines brainwashing as “making someone believe something by repeatedly telling them that it is true and preventing other information from reaching them.” I’ll take the liberty of broadening this narrow definition a bit. Sometimes parents don’t come right out and tell you if something is right or wrong about you but imply it through words and actions via role modeling. When they say, “Oh, don’t share so much with your friends. I don’t want them to think badly of us,” isn’t that an...

Clients sometimes say things that cast them in a mentally unhealthy light and are surprised when I flag them as such. Here are phrases it’s best to avoid: Saying I’m sorry as if something’s your fault when it isn’t. Habitual apology is a sign someone feels they are or have done something wrong and it’s rooted in adaptation from childhood when family members, especially parents, “are never wrong” and must point the finger at others to avoid feeling shame.  However, saying “I’m sorry” automatically when something isn’t your fault or to prevent people who’re in the wrong from feeling badly, makes you look weak and like a pushover. Healthy people apologize easily when it’s appropriate and expect others to do the same. They don’t want or presume that others will take the blame for them. Saying I’m not perfect is a tip off to people who know no one’s perfect, giving...

Think all of your memories function the same way? Think again because some memories are explicit and some are implicit. “Explicit memory refers to the conscious retrieval of past information or experiences, whereas implicit memory refers to an unintentional or nonconscious form of retrieval.” Okay, you might be saying to yourself, I get there’s a difference, but so what? World renowned psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel explains in Healing Dissociative Identity Disorder that there’s a critical divide between these two types of memories and distinguishing between them leads to greater emotional regulation. He tells us that, “When we retrieve an implicit memory, we don’t know it’s from our past. It comes in the form of perceptions, emotions, beliefs, and sensations. The awareness of the memory is very much in conscious awareness, but that it is from the past is not.”  That is, when implicit or unrecognized memories drive our reactions, we’re out...

It’s obviously important to think before we act, but thinking too much before (and after) taking action cannot only prevent us from making wise decisions, but it can drive up anxiety, indecision, second-guessing and self-doubt. If you stress yourself out overthinking, read on to learn how to break this pattern. The first time Christos came into my office, he spent most of the session explaining how he wasn’t sure if he needed therapy or not. He’d even brought a list of pros and cons for meeting with me. When I tried to steer him away from obsessing about his decision, he ignored my questions and simply returned to his internal debate. When I mentioned that all the work he was doing trying decide about therapy seemed to be stressing him out, he agreed but added that he wanted to be careful and make the right decision. After deciding he’d give therapy...

Which would you rather feel, fear or courage? It’s an easy question to answer in the abstract, but how many times do you stick with fear rather than face challenges and opt for embracing courage? Fear is meant for one thing only: to prevent us from making decisions that inhibit us from surviving and thriving. Each time we feel it, we need to determine if fearful memories are still of predictive value. If not, they’re useless—or worse, because they prevent us from doing what’s best for us in the present. There are myriad reasons to feel fear aside from actual life-threatening events: rejection and abandonment, being judged, failure, etc. But remember, though these situations might be devastating for a child, they’re generally not for an adult. Make a list of your fears, then pause and generate some more. When you’re done, think about whether you still need to have those fears...

Because we’re not all-seeing and all-knowing beings, it makes sense we’d occasionally miss some relational red flags, especially if they’re not obviously unhealthy. We might not recognize them as dysfunctional attitudes or behaviors or may feel certain we can eradicate them through love or persuasion. Here are some subtle red flags—call them pink flags if you will—I’ve noticed. Pay attention when someone: Is unable or unwilling to share or talk about feelings. People who were brought up in families that avoided talk of emotions may lack skills to identify what they’re feeling, be fearful of experiencing or expressing emotions, or assume you may have no interest in learning what’s going on inside them. They’ll gladly tell you what they’re thinking or doing, but dodge questions involving emotions or believe they’re telling you what they feel when they’re instead saying what they think. That is, you may ask how someone’s feeling about their...

I could swear I wrote a blog about overexplaining, but since I can’t find it, here’s my take on the subject. I have quite a few clients who engage in providing far more explanation on almost any topic than they need to and have been exploring with them why that is, how they feel about the behavior, and how to tighten up verbal interactions. People who overexplain believe they have to work hard to be heard and understood, a pattern which developed in childhood for several reasons. They may have had a hard time convincing their parents of their needs and believed the more details they provided, the more valid their concerns would seem. This happens when parents don’t make their children feel heard or valued and fail to validate them sufficiently. My client Yvette likes to feel certain people understand and accept her, even with the most obvious issues. She’ll...

The biggest problem some clients have with exercise is starting a regimen with great enthusiasm, then losing interest and sticking with their program only intermittently, until they finally give it up. As one of the major incentives for exercises has been weight loss, what if exercise doesn’t actually help you lose the weight you want? What then?  According to Want to lose weight? Here’s why exercise probably won’t help, our expectations of exercise related to the scale are too high. “Large studies show that exercise alone usually produces modest weight loss, often just a few pounds over six months. That’s because your body will ‘correct’ for the extra activity by increasing your appetite or by lowering the calories burned for other bodily functions.” Additionally, aging causes muscle loss, so “we have to exercise for longer or more intensely—to the point that it may become unrealistic—to achieve a calorie deficit substantial enough...

Over the years, I’ve had many clients with a long history of dating people who were hurtful to them tell me they’ve finally found Ms. or Mr. Right who allows them to do whatever they want, rarely challenges them, isn’t demanding, and makes them feel like a king or queen. Of course, I’m delighted for them but sometimes sense an underlying, unhealthy dynamic going on—and am sadly often right. My client Laz grew up with two older sisters who teased and taunted him. His single mother worked long hours and left Laz to suffer in their charge. Unsurprisingly, the women Laz dated were abusive to him in some way. When he started telling me about Diana, who seemed to care about him and treat him respectfully, I crossed my fingers.  They quickly moved in together and the relationship went swimmingly until he found empty wine bottles stuffed in a cupboard, evidence...

As the saying goes, “it’s déjà vu all over again.” During my lifetime, most of societal focus has been on losing weight rather than engaging in regulated eating. That is, shedding weight was always the prize and eating was about finding a winning strategy. Then came the intuitive eating movement which focused on improving eating skills and specifically not on losing weight. But here we are back again at everyone talking about the weight they’ve lost on GLP-1 drugs and only secondarily about how good it feels to be eating in more attunement with their bodies. There’s not one client I have on weight-loss drugs who doesn’t spend more time talking about the weight they lost than how they’re now eating from appetite cues and enjoying being a more “normal” eater. Granted, much of their talk is about being able to be more physically active and feeling less self-conscious at a...

Can we agree that friends, lovers, and mates generally don’t just fall into our laps, so to speak? And that it’s work to find compatible, emotionally healthy people, a process which doesn’t change throughout a lifetime. You check out who’s in your first-grade class and you keep seeking kinship in your new senior living facility. Finding and making friends is a life skill, not simply happenstance. Recently I’ve been thinking about making friends for two reasons. One, it’s come up a good deal in client sessions as they grow healthier, shed people in their lives who aren’t healthy matches for them, and seek new friends or lovers. Two, many of my friends who used to come to Florida seasonally are, due to aging, staying up north. Sure, we still connect in all sorts of ways through technology, but one day I glanced at my social calendar and realized I wanted more...

One of the worst feelings humans experience is rejection. It cuts to the core and can, if we let it, cause us to feel worthless, defective, and unlovable. But rejection is an integral part of existence—saying yes or no to people and things, choosing one avenue over another, moving toward or away from something or someone.    Unhealthy qualities or behaviors rightly put people off, such as overdrinking or taking drugs illegally or addictively; vaping or smoking cigarettes; addictions to pornography, work, gambling, etc; displaying uncontrollable anger; being narcissistic; being overly dependent or letting people walk all over you (aka being too nice at your own expense).  But often people are just plain incompatible, not a great match. With potential friends or lovers we may have crucial differences in politics, values, religious beliefs (or lack thereof), or lifestyle and personality traits. There’s nothing wrong with preferring a friend or partner who’s...

A neighbor was describing some trouble her son, Jack, was having with his son, Foster, and told me, “Jack needs to tell Foster he needs to pull up his grades or lose phone privileges.” What’s wrong with my neighbor’s wording? If you said she’d be better off not telling Jack what he “needs” or what Foster “needs” to do, you’d be right.  How do you feel when people tell you what you “need to” or “should” do? Being told what I “need” to do makes me feel like a child, as if someone’s trying to exert power or authority over me and boss me around. Being told “you should” makes me feel like someone’s judging me or thinks they know what’s best for me better than I do.  “Need” and “should” are shaming words to avoid when talking to ourselves or others. As I’ve blogged before, should, need to, have to,...

Why are we shocked when things go wrong? Why the tailspin whenever something goes amiss or causes us agita? We think, “I had a great day and now I have to deal with this” or “Today was bad enough, and now this happens. Why can’t things just go right?” For example, you have a lovely time puttering in the garden, pot-lucking with friends, finishing a riveting book, or visiting favorite family members, and that night or the next day the washing machine breaks down, your boss upbraids you about a project that didn’t go well, you notice more than a few gray hairs, or your child breaks a leg skiing.  We’re taken aback when things go sideways because our magical thinking and denial shield us from the fact that “bad” things happen no matter how clever, rich, healthy, wise, smart, or kind we are. Truth: life consists of ups and downs,...

Too often people who haven’t made a practice of standing up for themselves build up a deep reservoir of anger and resentment along the way but are afraid to let it out. Then along comes someone, often a therapist, who validates their anger and tells them it’s okay—even more than okay—to express anger as a way of taking care of themselves. And kaboom all that held back sense of injustice explodes. Some people have felt like victims their entire lives and, when they realize they don’t have to put up with being hurt by others, they lack the life skills to express themselves appropriately. What comes out of them then is raw, unfiltered rage. Although it’s understandable that suppressed anger would lead to lashing out, such behavior neither fosters well-being nor enhances relationships. In fact, the opposite often occurs: after “letting it all out,” people feel ashamed and the person on...

In supervision at my first job as a social worker, I commented on a client not doing something he’d set as a goal. I must have said, “He says he can’t do it,” because my supervisor jumped in with the question, “can’t or won’t?” I’ve struggled with the correct answer to will not versus cannot ever since. Is it that you won’t give up disordered eating or drinking or that you can’t? After all, there’s a vast divide between the two. We think of cannot or can’t as inability to do something and won’t or will not as lacking desire to do it. But is life really that clear-cut that we can easily distinguish between one motivation and another?  Not in my personal or professional experience because this is a more complex subject than we’d like to believe. After all, I think we’d all agree we can possess desire and still...

Talking with a client who asked how she could manage her unwanted thoughts and feelings better, she expressed hope that someday she wouldn’t have them at all. I told her that, sadly, in my experience of 79 years on earth, unwanted thoughts and feelings have never completely gone away and I didn’t expect they would for her, me, or anyone.  Then I went on to explain the concept of first thoughts and feelings, describing them as things that pop into your mind. One minute there’s no thought or feeling and, boom, the next an idea or emotion is trying to take hold of you. You didn’t will it or invite it in, but there it is anyway flashing away on your mental screen or burrowing into your heart. Note: These firsts are there to be examined not followed. Too many people believe they’re truths and act on them as if they...

I’ve been touting the benefits of gray rocking for years and am finally getting around to blogging about it. It’s a simple technique to markedly improve your relationships and your life. Because it’s easy to use and learn, anyone can enjoy its rewards.  According to Medical News Today, Gray rocking, or the grey rock method, “is a tactic some people use to deal with abusive or manipulative behavior. It involves becoming as uninteresting and unengaged as possible so that the other person loses interest. The idea behind the technique is that abusive people, especially those with narcissistic tendencies, enjoy getting a reaction from their victims. Refusing to give them this reaction makes interactions less rewarding.” It’s a tried-and-true method developed by a mental health blogger named Skylar in 2012 and has been popularized by psychotherapists and social media ever since.  When you gray rock someone, you feign disinterest in what they’re...

Carolyn Hax, advice giver extraordinaire, has many instructive things to say about setting boundaries, a subject which arises frequently in eating disorder therapy and a skill that takes ongoing practice. I often blog about boundaries because it’s tricky to learn how to get really good at setting them and addressing them when they’re broken. Hax maintains, “A request is something you want or need from someone else, which is a very different thing from the self-contained boundary.” She reminds us (because humans so often forget!) that other people have free will and the absolute right to refuse to go along with our request or demand or even ignore it. That’s their prerogative. Repeat, that’s their prerogative.  Wishing someone would “allow” you to do or not do something isn’t setting a boundary. “A boundary is yours only—it’s what you will and won’t accept in a relationship with someone. No one else has...

I recently went to a lecture on how religious trauma may affect the brain. “Religious trauma occurs when a person’s experience in their faith-based community is stressful, degrading, dangerous, abusive, or otherwise harmful. Many forms of religious trauma are not associated with specific events but instead accumulate over a long period of time through harmful messages enforced by their community.” Such indoctrination strongly may cause people to fear being greedy and gluttonous,  believe they desire too much, and that they’re undeserving of what they eat as well as of many life pleasures. Some highly religious women starve themselves in order to look perfect (aka culturally acceptably thin) to get or keep a husband. Mary Anne Cohen, LCSW, Director of the New York Center for Eating Disorders, explains that, “in highly religious homes with rigid rules, the best, cheapest, legal, socially sanctioned way of burying feelings is with overeating, bulimia, self-starvation, compulsive...

In spite of chuckling my way through I Like Me, the documentary about the life of the late Canadian comedian John Candy, I felt sad when it was over. Another tale of untreated trauma playing itself out in the worst way. Another life, like that of so many people who can’t detach enough from the past to change their future. Mostly the film got me thinking about how many clients are unable to envision a better life. And since they can’t imagine it, they’re unlikely to make it happen.  I may be wandering a bit from my theme here, but the fact is that Candy’s father died of heart disease when he was 35 and John was 5 years old. And Candy died when he was 43 from a coronary, leaving behind a 9 and a 14-year-old. From the film, it seemed John simply assumed he’d follow his father to an...

Aretha Franklin was right on when she sang these words in her hit song of the same name: “R E S P E C T, find out what it means to me.” It describes something we all yearn for but aren’t always sure how to make happen. Can you respect yourself if others don’t? And can you fail to respect yourself even when others do? I’ve been thinking about “respect” after discussing the subject in a few sessions with my middle-aged client, Bonnie. In one session, she reported that her mother asked her, “You don’t respect me, do you?” In another, Bonnie asked me, “Do you respect me?” Clearly there’s a link between the two queries. I suggested that Bonnie and her mother both were barking up the wrong tree because by asking people if they respect us, we’re making what they think of us of more value than what we...

After a session talking with a client about (finally) breaking up with her abusive boyfriend and hearing about the “great new guy” she’d found (not), I had a flash of her speeding down a highway in the wrong direction crashing into oncoming traffic. In my vision, while everyone was going north, she was going south and didn’t know it. Some onlookers were aghast or looked terrified, others were waving their arms and honking their horns trying to get her to see what was wrong, while still others looked stunned or shook their heads in wonder that a driver couldn’t see they were heading the wrong way. Catch my drift here? This is how my client lived her life—and not just her romantic one either—barreling down the road in the wrong direction. Lest you think I sound like I’m blaming her, I’m not. With her upbringing by two abusive parents who were...

I’ve known many clients who equate love with feeling emotional pain. That may sound bizarre to those who wouldn’t dream of pairing up the two but, sadly, I have a hunch this equation resonates for many readers, specifically those who habitually find relationships in which they’re treated poorly. Here’s how to shift this unhealthy paradigm. If, as a child, your parents told you they loved you but treated you in unloving ways that hurt you, you likely assumed that love involves emotional wounding. Physical/emotional neglect and emotional/sexual/physical abuse or any combination thereof all cause hurt and are not signs of love. Parents may even say they’re doing something because they love you that feels uncaring (and is) causing you to think love must equal emotional pain being inflicted upon you. Because this pattern is repeated over years or decades, you end up believing that feeling emotionally wounded means this is love....

Every time I read an article that describes the “right” approach to eating or the actions to take to do just about anything—balance your life, be successful, make and keep friends, etc—I cringe. Really, I do. Sure, there are things other people know that we don’t, but when it comes to knowledge about your wants and needs, only you have the answers. I also recognize that many of you don’t trust yourselves which comes from years of trying to trust yourself and failing spectacularly. So now you’re reluctant to listen to what your body says about when, what and how much to eat; when to go to sleep and awaken; how to balance work and play; and steps to take to enjoy life. Yes, there are best practices for many things which are based on proven science: smoking cigarettes isn’t healthy, nor is going without adequate sleep, isolating from friends and...

An article on ways therapists could do a better job asking how clients are faring sexually made me wonder if I may be guilty of dodging the subject. I’ve posted several blogs that touch on sex, so I’ve put it out there for discussion. My point in bringing it up here is to say sexual health is part of well-being and may be an issue that bothers you which you don’t speak about, especially if you’re higher weight and/or have body shame. First off, as adults, let’s agree there’s nothing wrong with talking about sex or sexual health. It’s time to toss archaic religious views and teachings on the subject as taboo or nasty and look at sexual health and enjoyment as a birthright right along with mental, emotional, and physical health. It should not be a verboten subject as it often seems to be in our ostensibly advanced culture. Sex...

French philosopher, historian, author and political activist Paul-Michel Foucault espoused an ethic of self-care based upon “his broader philosophical views on power, knowledge, and the self.” He saw ethics as an outcome of our outer world as much as our inner one and viewed it as key to conscious living and mental and physical health—a far cry from our current one-size-fits-all, often oppressive self-care ideas and ideals.  Our ethics are the moral principles we (hopefully consciously) choose to guide our lives, the principles that make us do this and not that. Foucault argued that “modern societies have developed a form of power that operates through the regulation and normalization of individuals’ behaviours and identities. In this context, self-care becomes a crucial practice for individuals to resist and navigate these mechanisms of power.”  These overt and covert societal or cultural expectations dictate how we should be and act. Never underestimate the hold...

It used to be that we referred to people as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but now there are several types of narcissists beyond grandiose (overt), one of which is vulnerable (covert). Grandiose individuals are usually easy to spot and most of us know the traits they exhibit: being overbearing, self-important and entitled. What we often miss are the vulnerable or covert narcissists. They’re often the victim in their stories and the center of attention when it comes to pity parties. You may want to reach out to help them when they’re hurting but, somehow, they never seem to change. They can’t because if they did, how would they get their much-needed attention? They can make you feel as if the life is being sucked out of you due to their neediness because they possess so little sense of self. The Cleveland Clinic says “they have the same insecurities as an overt...

As the new year begins, some folks focus on what they’ve failed to do or where they’re closing in on perfection, while others put attention on what they’ve yet to achieve. This year, look neither backward nor forward and, instead, observe what you’re currently learning about yourself. Clients who make the most forward movement are the ones who notice their positive changes and are good with where they are now for now.   My client Lalita is relatively new to therapy, having begun it in her early 50s. Our initial sessions often focused on her dismay in having missed earlier in her life everything she was now learning. Initially, many of her sentences started with, “I can’t believe I didn’t know . . .” whatever idea she was now being introduced to. But once she learned how to compassionately observe her behavior, she was able to track her learning objectively. One...

I begged my parents to send me to therapy at age 14 in 1961. I’ve gone back since then for individual, family and couple’s work and it’s always been a great help. Which is why it’s been hard to wrap my mind around people not wanting to go to therapy.  As a seasoned therapist, I now get it and feel sad the experience doesn’t call to people as it did to me and that many refuse to go. Maybe they went once and nothing changed. Or they felt worse after sessions and were too impatient to hang in long enough to turn around their lives. Or they had a negative experience with an unskilled therapist or one who actually harmed them emotionally. Or maybe they just gave up on themselves. Then there’s the fact that even in this day and age, our culture sends out contradictory messages about psychological help. Some...

Some clients meander through life with no clear picture of who or how they wish to be. They say, “That’s so not me,” when I mention a characteristic or practice someone has or does. As if they could never imagine being anything other than exactly who they are now. Remember, we’re never stuck with being who we don’t want to be because we can model ourselves after people we admire. I admire people who: Are insightful/psychological/reflective. They work hard at knowing themselves and continue to change and grow throughout their lives. They’re curious, flexible, deep thinkers who can change their minds when new facts or insights arise. Take care of themselves. They take good care of themselves physically, mentally and emotionally. They seek medical and psychological care when needed, follow best evidence-based practices and the wisdom of science and academia, and enjoy depending on and being cared for by others.Take care of others. While...

We have varying reasons for interacting with people, that is, for opening our mouths and either asking a question or making a statement. But I’d wager that far more often than we’d like to admit, we speak off the cuff rather than knowing exactly why we’re saying what we’re saying. Such blatant ignorance of intention not only may harm others and our relationships with them (think children), but it’s a bad habit which does us no good. Some folks are often irrational and most of us are that way sometimes. Blame it on the human brain. When you’re interacting with others, you want to keep an eye not only on what’s going on within you, but what’s happening within them. Are you or they trying to win argument, be right, make the other person wrong, blame, shame, or cause pain, all of which are unhelpful tactics. These are overreactions, dysregulated emotions...

During one week, two clients changed right in front of my eyes. Though for privacy reasons, I changed some details about them here, I tried to stay true to their epiphanies. As I’ve been working with both for several years, I know their accomplishments weren’t fly-by-night transformations.  Client 1, Raul, a 35-year-old man with PTSD from childhood and military service shared this: “So, maybe my life change is happening because I recognize my PTSD, anxiety, etc. I mean I see it when it’s happening. I’m now able to share my feelings, even cry, or stand up for myself in an adult way. Ok, so really I am finally allowing myself to feel, and I agree with the feeling. One of those feelings is I love myself. I really do.” Raul has gone from being a trauma victim to trauma survivor and is now enjoying post-traumatic growth. He’s still a bit wary...

Recently I’ve seen a spate of clients who can’t for the life of them comprehend why other people aren’t as nice as they are. “How can people be so nasty and mean?” or “I don’t understand what anyone gets out of hurting others,” they ask me. And I wonder why they can’t grasp that people have reasons for becoming and being hurtful.  Several years ago, when this subject came up with clients, I blogged about why someone’s personal history makes it hard to confront someone’s unkindness which often contributes to their noxious behavior worsening. I guess I still haven’t hit upon the right answer, because here I am blogging on the subject again. Several theories come to mind. One is that many clients with such naïveté about others’ abusiveness had abusive parents themselves. If not outright abusive, their parents were seriously self-involved, parent-centered, aloof or unempathic. Perhaps being mistreated as adults...

I’m not talking science fiction here when I tell you there’s another life you could be living—right now, today, tomorrow and for the rest of your life. I’m talking about the one you create by making healthy large and small decisions every minute of every day.  Mary Louise, in her sixties, is married to a man who’s been abusive since their early days together. She had a traumatic childhood in which she was neglected and abused and chose the same kind of relationship in each of her three marriages. Aside from her choice in men, she’s a wonderful, smart, kind, caring, curious, funny, lovely woman. But every day she rises and takes care of her misery of an ungrateful, mean husband.  This need not be the case. She could leave him. Money would be tight, but it’s tight now. On her own, she’d be free at last to take care of...

One of the saddest aspects of client work is watching many of you drift through life. Maybe you used to feel passion and purpose but have become so mired in eating problems, depression or anxiety, you’ve lost all desire to make something of yourself or be part of making the world a better place. Or, maybe due to trauma or always putting others’ needs before your own, you’ve never given thought to why you’re on this earth. Of course, we’re here because we were birthed onto the planet and had no choice about it. And by asking why, I don’t mean why you’re here in a spiritual way, though that view is fine, but the fact that you are a unique being and no one who has lived or will live (cloning aside) will lead your particular life ever again. You see the world in a certain way and have special...

Food noise. How often do we hear the term these days? Although it’s not generally  accompanied by a definition, we instinctively sense what it means—the whirlwind of thoughts about food that plague our minds seemingly 24/7. They’re like a bad headache, sometimes dull and sometimes pounding, but never quite gone.  According to “Food noise: definition, measurement, and future research directions,” food noise is “persistent thoughts about food that are perceived by the individual as being unwanted and/or dysphoric and may cause harm to the individual, including social, mental, or physical problems. Food noise is distinguished from routine food-related thoughts by its intensity and intrusiveness, resembling rumination.” Food noise isn’t the same for everyone but is commonly experienced as unpleasant and unwanted. It generally involves self-judgment about what, when and how much to eat, pressure to make “the right” decisions, intrusiveness into and distraction from other thoughts, feelings and activities, focusing on...

      When I wrote The Rules of “Normal” Eating, a colleague advised against using the word “rules” in the title because it was too diet-like and external sounding, while my view was on using internal guidelines for eating. This complex issue often arises in treating eating problems. Clients who were raised in rules-bound households commonly have difficulty letting go of the do-this-not that mentality. While chafing at the bit to break dieting rules, they’re also terrified they’ll start a free-for-all they won’t be able to stop.  This was the internal conflict for my client, Claudette. While her mother was a stickler for rules, bordering on the obsessive, her father laid out a litany of them he never bothered to follow, such as telling Claudette she should always be nice to people and not argue, while he was a confrontational, my-way-or-the-highway guy. Consequently, when it came to rules, especially around...

Milton, my middle-aged client is smart and curious about himself, others and the world while other family members—Mom, Dad, and Brother—are not. Dad is narcissistic, Mom has a good deal of baggage as an Adult Child of an Alcoholic (ACOA), and she and Milton’s brother (and his wife) are heavy drinkers. But who do you think gets the finger pointed at them as the problem in the family? Why, Milton, of course. Therapists call Milton the “symptom bearer,” aka the “identified patient,” “black sheep” and sometimes the “scapegoat” in a dysfunctional family. At first glance, his problem label makes sense: Mom, Dad and Brother appear far more functional and mentally healthy than Milton. Mom is touted as the brave family leader after Dad left her/them for another woman, and Dad and Brother, are both “happily” married businessmen.  Milton, who’s lived with his mother since his last psychiatric hospitalization decades ago, is...

In one week, two clients shared a painful secret with me: they’ve always been afraid. “Martha” said she was full of fear since she was six years old. “Rosa” doesn’t recall a time when she wasn’t afraid. In their 50s, both still fear challenging or upsetting their mothers. One might think these women grew up terrorized by their parents, endured severe physical or sexual abuse, or suffered horrific family trauma.  Not true. Rosa told me her mother threw something at her once but there was barely any physical contact with her parents, while Martha said there was no sexual or physical abuse in her family. However, in both families there was an abundance of overt and covert emotional abuse and, for Rosa, enough neglect to derail emotional development. Because we don’t need to have experienced severe or obvious trauma to live in fear, their admissions made me wonder how many people...

Far too often, clients replay upsetting and often unspeakable emotional crimes done to them in childhood and more recently, triggering high voltage feelings. No matter how far back a memory goes—10, 30, 70 years ago—they start to drown in feelings generated by whatever despicable things happened to them. Clients dredge up personal facts they’re well aware are part of their history, such as assault, betrayal, humiliation, or neglect, and talk about them as if they just happened yesterday.  Why this misery-inducing behavior? Part of the answer relates to survival and how DNA etches threats to self into our brains, so we’ll avoid them in the future. Does this mean that every awful thing embedded in memory as a threat has to elbow its way into the present? I don’t think so.  So often when clients get suckered into the pain of the past they tell me about it as if it’s...

Why do we seem so surprised when things pop up that are a pain in the butt or a knife in the heart? Why is it such a shock to the system? We think, “Honestly, after having such a great day, now I have to deal with this (whatever this is). Why can’t things just go right?” We’re taken aback when things go wrong because we don’t dare believe “bad” things happen no matter how healthy, rich, wise, smart, or good we are.  For example, you enjoy a lovely day working in the garden, pot-lucking with friends, finishing a riveting book, or visiting with favorite family members and that night or the next day the washing machine breaks down, your boss calls you into their office to discuss a project of yours that didn’t go well, or your child falls and breaks a leg.  Life consists of ups and downs, good...

Imagine for a moment throwing together a dozen or so people with disparate personal histories, values, personalities, experiences, quirks, ideologies, and temperaments. You expect they’ll get along swimmingly, right? Of course not. Well, then, if you think about family as described above—a bunch of different people tossed together like ingredients in a salad—can we really expect a perfectly blended product? Often, I find client expectations about family relationships sadly naïve. If Saul knows he grew up in a dysfunctional family, how can he not see his sister did too? If Shay’s maternal grandparents were more interested in partying than parenting, why would she assume her mother, who doted on Shay, would relate to people as well as she does? If Diana’s father were raised middle class and his brother grew up after the family went bankrupt and sunk into poverty, would you expect they’d have the same worldview? Catch my drift?...

I was talking with a client who’s learned how to explore and experience painful feelings without falling down the rabbit hole and has started dating someone with a sunny disposition. She explained that he seems okay with her talking about upset and hurt and often tries to help her look on the bright side of life. We talked about why they’re compatible though they’re somewhat opposites, a natural, evolutionary phenomenon. I understand how she evolved from her family background and wondered with her how he became the way he is. It turns out he didn’t receive much comfort or recognition of his painful feelings from a depressed mother and absent father. He avoided his distress by soothing Mom’s upset and does the same thing with others—like my client—now.  One mental health goal is to recognize and experience emotions and not dwell on or deny them. That’s more or less the ideal...