Psychotherapy • Consultation • EMDR
One of the great secrets of life, and a central insight of cognitive therapy, was summed up in a simple way two thousand years ago by the Stoic philosopher, Epictetus: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.” Most of us assume, most of the time, that when…
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Q: I’ve been dogged by times of really intense depression for most of my life. Anti-depressants have helped some, and I’ve been in and out of therapy for years, but it’s still a struggle. I know you’ve written about meditation in the past. Do you think it could help me with my depression? I’ve tried…
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Q: I’ve been with my husband for almost fifteen years. We don’t have any major problems like physical abuse, or cheating, or drugs. I really love him and I know he loves me, But I keep wishing he would be different than he is. I find myself resenting him all the time for little ways…
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Stan has come into therapy to decide whether to break up with his boyfriend, Michael. He loves Michael, and feels loved in return, but he’s finding so many imperfections in him that he’s afraid that he’s “settling.” Michael isn’t well-read, he’s politically naïve, his tastes in music are limited, and so on. Stan suspects that…
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In September 1944, Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist in Vienna, was transported to Auschwitz along with his pregnant wife and parents. By the time the camp was liberated, they had been murdered, but he had survived. Soon after being freed, he spent nine days writing an account of his experiences and what he’d learned…
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In the last few months a number of people have told me that they’re taking breaks from Facebook (or other social media) because they believe that it’s making them increasingly unhappy; and I’ve been looking into what the research says about the effects these media have on emotional well-being. The studies show that when we…
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Valentine’s Day is almost here again, a day that is pretty tough for a lot of single people. So many of us have uncritically bought into the notion, almost universally assumed in popular movies, music, and books, that romantic love is the One True Road to happiness. Life doesn’t really begin until you meet your…
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Blake Spears and Lanz Lowen have been together in an open relationship for over 40 years, and in past columns I’ve reported on their in-depth research on the viability of long-term open relationships. In the past, they write, most research on gay male couples has shown that approximately two-thirds of long-term male couples who have…
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“I’ve always had a lot of casual and anonymous sex. Does that make me a sex addict?” “Isn’t the whole concept of sex addiction just another way of shaming gay men about their sexuality?” “Who says I’m addicted? Maybe I’m just a guy who likes to have a lot of sex!” When I discuss the…
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Last time I talked about the brain’s negativity bias, the innate tendency of our primitive threat systems to focus on problems and dangers (both imagined and real). But our brains are also equipped with reward centers, also relatively primitive, which focus on short-term gratification and basic pleasures, such as eating, drinking, and having sex. These…
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