I just met with a smart, funny, attractive graduate student who had a severely traumatic childhood. She came in looking obviously frazzled and announced that she had been crying continuously since she got a terrible haircut the previous day. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t feel the urge to reassure her. Especially because, in addition to all her …
The Loving Brain
Get ready, because the month of July has an exciting event coming up! Rick Hanson, Ph.D. is hosting a free interview series called the Loving Brain starting July 15. For the 8 following Mondays, experts will be giving talks on how to develop positive relationships with others and establish a healthy self image. If you happen to miss a speaker …
Odd Couple’s Therapy
I met today with two interesting people: they’re both attorneys. They have a remarkably different style and presentation. One of them is usually animated, energetic, and optimistic. However, he also has bipolar mood cycles. Sometimes his energized vibe may get a bit intense, while at other times he will be in a depressed state that makes it hard for him …
Depression: Bouncing Back
One of the factors that correlate with depression is a lack of resilience. With little resilience, we respond negatively when exposed to stress or trauma. This response then becomes a habit and is encoded in the brain. Thanks to neuroplasticity, the brain has the ability to rewire and make new connections. According to Linda Graham, MFT in her article Bouncing …
Cling Less and Love More
Right in the midst of working with a young woman who has been struggling with how to accept the possibility that a new relationship might have to end (her boyfriend is still caught up in thoughts and feeling evoked by his ex, who sounds like the kind of intense woman who can easily trap a young man in a prolonged …
Parallel Universes: The Duality of Hopelessness and Optimism
It’s hard to explain how it is possible to go from a state of complete hopelessness and a sense that the universe is profoundly hostile, to a state of optimism and and the experience of receiving support from the world and others within a single day. The fact of the matter is that it often seems as though there are …
The Big Fight
How is it that so many couples end up having knock down, drag out fights? How can seemingly rational people end up saying things that just don’t make any sense? Several people that I’ve seen recently have told me a similar story. As in every relationship, they have had certain long-standing issues in their relationships, areas where one or the …
Lowering Your Profile
This is the season (spring) when there is suddenly lots of energy around. I used to regularly run around a local lake. The run was peaceful and pleasant at all times of year except in the spring. In the spring the male geese suddenly felt that that had to make their presence known. They would flap their wings and attack …
New Spouse by Friday
I’ve been working with a very successful attorney who has been struggling to find a way of staying in his marriage for a couple of years. The heart of the problem is that his wife had a serious health problem (which is now resolved), but through the process of dealing with this health problem she became depressed and discouraged about her health and …
Compulsions, Addictions and Secrecy
I got an urgent call yesterday from somebody that I’ve been seeing for several years. His fiancee had just left him. They had been having problems for several months, problems mostly rooted in his ambivalence about commitment. She went on his cell phone and found evidence that he had been having flirtatious conversations with seven different woman over the last …
Creative Tension
I was inspired to write today’s post after watching a video sent out by a colleague as her “Valentine’s Day gift” to a group of mental health professionals interested in women’s issues. The video was from the TED series (strongly recommended) and had to do with the challenge of having a long-term passionate relationship. The author was a delightful, French …
Hot Button Issues in a Relationship
Dealing with a partner with emotional or psychological issues is tricky. We spent some time today trying to figure out an approach that would work for one woman and her partner. This is what we came up with. It may help you if you are navigating in turbulent waters in your relationship. The link will take you to the video …
Mistrust in Action
I was talking to one of my clients, a very bright and wonderful woman, mother of a delightful young girl, and usually one of my favorite people. This visit, however, I began to experience the cycle of mistrust. When she came in I was in a good mood, I smiled and said hello. She looked serious. The last time we …
The “Pause” Button
Do you know the feeling of desperate urgency in a conversation with a close friend or romantic partner? The sense that you have to defend yourself from attack, or make a very important point? This feeling is often a signal that it is a good time to use the “pause” button in the conversation. The “pause” button is a previously worked out …
Give Love
We really liked the recent post from Just One Thing on the practice of “giving love.” It resonated with research on how helping others (altruism) improves your mood, and also on the data that shows that one of the most effective antidotes for depression is to systematically try to act more in line with your deepest values. The post is …
Coming Out Can Help Your Health
We saw this article and thought it probably has a lot to say about the reasons to be direct with others about moods, and how they affect you. It is from Psychiatric News, January 29, 2013. The same reductions in stress hormone levels have been shown in a number of studies about disclosing potentially stigmatizing conditions. For more on the …
The Cycle of Disappointment
Today’s post revolves around the universal desire to find one or more other people who is perfectly attuned to our needs, and the resulting cycle of disappointment. A woman we have seen for years continually experiences a strong sense of disappointment and loss because her highly anxious mother was never really able to be attuned to her needs. She told …
Coming Out Bipolar
When and whether to tell people about a mood disorder is a topic of great interest to readers of this blog. Disorderly Chickadee is a very personal, and very well written, blog about living with bipolar. Yesterday’s post was all about coming out about bipolar – in this case it was about telling your boss. We think many of you …
Mismatched Energy
The wife of one of the people I work with sent me a short note saying that her husband was energized (not quite hypomanic), and she was finding it hard to cope with his constant animation and enthusiasm. It got me thinking about scale and how we constantly change the way we talk based on our audience. I am in …
Body Work
Several months ago a young attorney who I have been seeing for a couple of years came in and, reluctantly, told me that he and his wife had not had sex for the past year. It took two or three months to get him to consider going for couples counseling. I found a therapist who specialized in working with couples …