Eckhart Tolle, in his modern classic, The Power of Now, writes: “You have probably come across ‘mad’ people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that’s not much different from what you and all other ‘normal’ people do, except that you don’t do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares,…
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Henry has been feeling down for days, and is afraid that he may be sliding into another severe depression. His last bout, his third, was paralyzing and debilitating, and cost him his boyfriend. He’s fighting his mood by alternately trying to suppress it and struggling to think his way out of it, mostly through rumination…
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I’ve said before that most psychological self-help books aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. But once in a while a book comes along that really has the power to change our lives for the better. One such book is Just One Thing, by Rick Hanson. Rick is both a neuropsychologist and a meditation teacher,…
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When I left home at age eighteen, my first independent act was to look for a psychiatrist to cure me of being gay. I found one, too — not in Mississippi, not in Kansas — but right here in progressive San Francisco. It was 1967, and “reparative therapy” – now discredited as quackery — was…
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Eric has been single for five years. As a relationship-oriented guy he longs to connect with someone new, but he won’t let himself do it because he believes he isn’t “ready.” “Until I’m completely secure and whole in myself, and not dependent on anyone else to complete me, I won’t be able to be healthy…
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