Psychotherapy • Consultation • EMDR
1. Definition: Forgiveness is a conscious, deliberate decision to let go of anger and the desire for vengeance toward those who have harmed us, regardless of whether or not we believe they actually deserve it. It is really three practices: forgiving others who have caused me suffering; being open to, or seeking out, forgiveness from…
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Anxiety is a fact of life. It evolved to protect us from danger and is built into the nervous system. That means that we cannot prevent ourselves from experiencing some anxiety in our lives. We cannot achieve complete control over it. When we try to control it or stop it we usually wind up making…
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It’s hard to believe that I’ve been writing this column, twice a month, for more than three decades. While at 71 I remain healthy and not quite ready to retire, I’ve also come to realize that I have said all that is in me to say, and that it’s time to let go. Endings can…
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In his insightful new book, Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men’s Lives, clinical psychologist Walt Odets begins by asking “Are gay men homosexuals?” Who are we as gay men, and what happens when we identify ourselves as “homosexuals?” Gay men have been called “homosexuals” since the late nineteenth century, when the previously little-used term…
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Dr. Walt Odets, a clinical psychologist in Berkeley, has been doing psychotherapy with gay men for thirty years. His new book, Out of the Shadows, is a distillation of what he’s learned from us. It is a deeply thoughtful and insightful book, and I strongly recommend it. In his account of the last half-century, there…
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Since 2016 I’ve noticed a marked increase in the number of people calling to inquire about therapy as self-described “children of narcissistic parents” (CONP’s). This is probably a consequence of the rise of the Trump cult. Until he arrived on the political stage, it was common to think of a narcissist as just “a self-centered…
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All human beings create mental maps which tell us who we are and what we can expect from life and from other people. Unfortunately, most of the content of our maps form fairly early in childhood, when our brains aren’t fully developed and we aren’t capable of comprehending the complexities and subtleties of life. That’s…
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Q: When I read your columns on attachment theory [3/2/2019 4/07/2019 4/18/2019,] I realized that your description of the avoidant attachment style fits my boyfriend exactly. I completely love him, but I do have to put up with his “time outs”, and his need for “space”, and the fact that he’ll sometimes take days to…
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Recently I watched an interview in which a celebrity said something that lots of people will support. He boasted that he had “zero regrets” about anything that he’d done in the past. Many self-help gurus will also approve of this approach; they’ll tell you that harboring regrets about the past is useless and self-destructive, and…
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If there is one thing that virtually all of the LGBTQ folks that I’ve ever known have in common, it is the experience of having been bullied in childhood. All of the research shows that LGBTQ youth are bullied at much higher rates than their straight counterparts (who already deal with too much of it…
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