What Is Your Normal?
When somebody comes in for therapy, my first question is, “What brings you here?” I am grateful for the mere fact that they are willing enough to let me in. With myself, when I first went into therapy, I was guarded, minimized my symptoms, because I was trained by my family to pretend and tell everybody that I was great, which I was far from. I learned in therapy to let down my guard, let...Learn More
New Year’s Top 10 Mental Health Tips
Another new year, another new start – well that’s if we want it. Each morning we open our eyes afresh and we are the ones that hold onto the mindsets from the day before. Are they good or bad? Only you can tell. If the bad outweighs the good, here are the top ways you can put those nasty thoughts behind you and start to enjoy the unfolding of each and every day. Intentions Without a goal we...Learn More
The Start of a New Year
With the start of a new year our thoughts can go one of two ways: To grow, adapt, and be a better person, or to drag the familiar past with us. How do you envision your new year? Are you hopeless or hopeful? To me, life has always been a battle to remain positive. It seems as if there are so many forces in the world, trying to bring us down. It isn’t that hard to see the suffering, the anger,...Learn More
Fix Me Doc – The Basics of Change
When I went to therapy for the first time I was petrified. Having an anxiety disorder had me nervous about everything. I mustered up all the courage that I had and went into the counselor’s office to get that thing that would make me better in that instant! Fortunately, it didn’t happen that way, nor does it. In repeatedly showing up for sessions, I let my guard down, discovered who I was...Learn More
Holiday Memories
What do you think about Christmas? For many, it fosters great memories, for others only pain. Our wish is for you to see this holiday with new eyes, letting go of the past, so you can make of it what you like. This letting go of the past takes some effort. Processing through our pain is the key to experiencing a happy holiday. To do so, it may be as simple as putting pen to paper. If you find...Learn More
When You’re Down
I’ve written a lot of articles in my career and when I drew a blank today I grabbed a box of Kleenex. In grad school, whenever we were blocked, we knew that something really important would come to the surface. And whalla it did. I was fooling around with a friend recently and they said, “When you are down people kick you.” Have you ever heard that phrase, “When you are down they will kick...Learn More
An Illusion – External Locus of Control
Locus of control is a fancy term for who we believe is in control of us. If you are the type of person who focuses all of your attention on what other people are doing now, what they have done in the past, and what you think that they will do, you have an “External Locus of Control”. In our practice, probably 90% of those we treat are focused on the external or what we also refer to as – “The...Learn More
Woundology – Bonding in Our Wounds
The theme of this last week has been on people imagining the worst-case scenarios. You know, “What is the worst thing that can happen?” It is almost as if we were weaned on this. How often have you focused on the worst thing? The surprising thing is that when we fantasize about something, reality and fantasy register the same in the brain, and a thought can feel like something is really...Learn More
Coping with Anxiety
At the University of Santa Monica, where I studied Spiritual Psychology, they believed that applying love to anxiety made it fade away and we would truly heal. On paper and in real life it has been a difficult task. I entered therapy to tackle my problems with anxiety and the mere task of addressing anxiety – which was something I had avoided like the plague, has caused me even more anxiety....Learn More