Psychotherapy • Consultation • EMDR
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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“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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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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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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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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The human brain didn’t evolve for dispassionately finding truth, but for ensuring our survival. It has built-in biases in the way it processes information, and neuroscience has identified specific ways in which it lies to us about what’s happening around us. These falsehoods create a lot of suffering for us. In this and the next…
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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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Aaron comes into therapy because he’s stymied by constant fear. He hates his job, but won’t look for a new one because he’s afraid of job interviews. Whenever he’s in a social situation and sees someone he’s attracted to, he avoids him completely for fear of being rejected. He wants to join a gym, but…
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(Written the week of the Pulse massacre in Orlando, Florida.) Maybe we’d become too complacent. I think I had. We’ve all known what it feels like to be unsafe in the world, and we’ve known how much it hurts to be “otherized” – to be evicted from the circle of “us” and to be treated…
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It probably won’t surprise anyone that an optimistic outlook is good for your physical and emotional well-being. Optimists react to problems with a sense of confidence in their ability to respond effectively to the challenges in their lives. They are hopeful about the future, and believe that their personal problems, as well as those of…
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