A Tribute to Peter
Last week my father-in-law passed away. The tricky thing was he lived 30 miles away from the nearest neighbor, just north of Joshua Tree National Forest in California, and all by himself. It was a miracle a delivery person found his body or his dog Max would have been lost too. Peter was a young 82-year-old, who walked 5 miles a day but had a problem with smoking. The desert oasis he lived...Learn More
Special Memory #8
There are some interesting experiences as a therapist, which have aided me in being the best therapist I can be. When life and death situations presented themselves in my practice, I wasn’t that prepared to deal with them. As a college intern, my first placement was at Tarzana Treatment Center, a facility just north of Los Angeles. My position was counseling individuals suffering from HIV...Learn More
The Spirituality of Psychology
I’ve hesitated for years on presenting this topic due to the fact that when I entered this industry my coworkers looked down on my approach. In graduate school, we all spoke the same language and had one thing in common – a belief that there was a higher purpose in life than eating, getting married, and creating a replacement for yourself. To us that seemed so pointless. We were on a search...Learn More
Life and Loss
We had a common theme this past week at Basic Steps Mental Health and that was with loss. The subject of loss has many facets. There is loss of life, loss of a relationship, loss of health, and loss of purpose – as with retirement – to name a few. When we go through an abrupt change it can be startling. There is the classic Kubler-Ross stages of grief that can be used as a guide, in which I...Learn More
Have Hope, Dare to Dream
If you have the opportunity, a great book to read is “Love, Miracles, and Medicine” by Dr. Bernie Segal. He helped people with advanced cases of cancer heal and sometimes without medical interventions. He advocated having the desire to live. There aren’t a lot of clinical books on the value of hope, but with hope, we can suffer through a lot and make it to the other side. In the book, “Man’s...Learn More