Feelings of the Wildfires
I really don’t know what to say about how shocked I have been to see the devastation playing out in Los Angeles. I grew up, lived, and worked in the Santa Monica / Pacific Palisades area, and my last home was literally a mile south of all the devastation. This past week I have found myself trying to sort out my feelings before traveling there to see the devastation firsthand. One of my...Learn More
Battling the Blahs
If you wake up in the morning, have no energy, no motivation, and no direction, these can be signs of depression. It is normal for people to have ups and downs but if these symptoms happen on a daily basis, and keep you from work, school, social interactions, or the things you normally do, then getting professional treatment would be important. Depression has many causes. It could be...Learn More
Down and Out, Up and Out
Lack of motivation can be a normal way of life for many people. It usually takes place when the physical body has no energy and the heart has no desire. What generally contributes to this level of blah is our level of fitness, our diet, the amount of daily exercise, and whether we are following our doctor’s orders by ingesting the proper medication. Taking care of your physical needs may be...Learn More
Self Care
Most people think of self-care as taking care of our physical body. The focus is mainly on getting enough exercise, eating the perfect diet, and going for a treatment at the spa. Well, yes, this is a portion of self-care but it is not the full picture. To ultimately take care of ourselves we have to consider our whole self. This was news to me when I entered graduate school. I was so focused...Learn More
Relationships 101
Psychology is basically the science of relationships. One of my licenses is for Marriage, Family Therapy. As you can see it deals with the relationships between two or more people, however, our relationships with others is a reflection of how we are with ourselves. Therefore, we need to improve our relationship with ourselves to see improvements with other people in our life. Let’s face...Learn More
Relapse – A Slip in Reasoning
Since 1994 I entered this industry in hopes of making some sort of impact. My first internship was at Tarzana Treatment Center in southern California, a 12 Step facility that housed over 100 people. It taught a combination of the 12 Steps and what they termed “I.T.” or industrial therapy. Industrial therapy was basically having the clients mop, clean, cook, and serve the meals. If clients were...Learn More
Getting Motivated
Do you feel stuck? Do you lack the energy to do much of anything? Is living day to day boring and predictable, or too difficult to deal with? These are the tell-tale signs of Depression. How to break through depression can be a breeze if you choose to change. The first part of any change is the desire to do so. Yes, it will take effort, but the interesting thing is that when you take the...Learn More
Boosting Your Immunity
After recently traveling and being with a lot of people, it was a different experience from my familiar distancing, masking up, and isolating. For me, like many, the Covid experience was a lot of isolating and the social thing was an adjustment. It seems that the reports I was hearing was being around others was life-threatening, but after getting Covid and now having the antibodies has...Learn More
Breaking an Addiction
Beyond all the theoretical approaches, the social support networks, the medication, the paraprofessionals, friends, and family, the thing that will get you through addiction is your determination. Psychologists explain addiction as a hard-wired pattern that is hard to break. When a stimulus happens, for example the desire to use, it is hard-wired to respond by using. Any attempt to stop this...Learn More