Life Process
We joked about enlightenment in graduate school. Many in our ranks bragged about reaching that state and our teacher said, “If you think you are enlightened, go home for the holidays.” Better face it, there will always be issues. Therefore, the only way to breeze through them is to create a good relationship with yourself. Yes, I’ve heard it for almost 29 years, that it is selfish or...Learn More
A Client Returns
A client I had seen five years ago came in for a court assessment. The case was pending since that time and this report was to bring it to a close. One thing for certain was the person had completely changed. As a therapist, you treat people, let them go, and in my case rarely see them again. If they return or call and say hi, it is a bonus. The key is to not get attached to the outcomes of...Learn More
A Tribute – Thank You for My Tears
I often call myself a dinosaur because I grew up in a different era where the social norms were much different. As a child, we only had a handful of television stations that came in fuzzy most of the time. Often I turned to the radio for entertainment and especially to listen to sporting events. You have to understand that we didn’t have the luxury of seeing every sporting event like they do...Learn More
The Law of Attraction
Do these statements look familiar? “When you’re down people kick you.” – Well, what happens when you are up? “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” – Well, why can’t we think of the best things? It is interesting how we have been trained to focus on the negatives. In our lives, this is how we create the negative things. It is called: The Law of Attraction. Why don’t we instead...Learn More
Relationship with You
Our relationships reflect back to our relationship with ourselves. This is what Sigmund Freud wrote about in the 1890s. He coined the term “Projections”. Since the film projector just came out, he could see somebody projecting all of their negativity onto another person – the screen. My dad always said, “When you point your finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back to you.” If you...Learn More
I Am Sorry
My father, who recently died, came to me in a dream last night. All he repeated was, “I am sorry.” I miss my father. He suffered from depression for the last few years of his life. At 91 he had a lengthy and mostly happy life until his vision and hearing went. “I am sorry” was hard to stomach. It reminded me of how I was trained to punish myself when I did something wrong. As a child, I had...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
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
My Battle with Covid
My have I changed. As a child, we never talked about the things that were going wrong with us. We put on the “I’m Fine” mask and pretended to be great. To my family, outward appearances were very important. When Covid first came on, a client came in, got the whole staff sick, and we didn’t know what it was but after 10 days were all better and things were, more or less, back in order. Then...Learn More