Men and women sometimes don’t seem to be speaking the same language, and this is certainly true when it comes to discussing emotions. A young woman we have been coaching was thinking about a conversation she needed to have with her father about something that she was sure was going to be very upsetting to him… but she also knew …
Stress, Distress and Eustress
We met this afternoon with a delightful young man who said he was having more anxiety and depression because of all of the stressful things that he had to deal with. He gave us a list, and, perhaps because we are natural skeptics, we started to wonder whether that list really explained what was going on. For one thing, as …
Loving Kindness or Metta
Love is something that if you give it away, give it away, you’ll end up having more… Last Sunday at church there was a children’s chorus singing, and this was one of the songs. It seemed very familiar… The cultivation of loving-kindness (mettā bhāvanā) is a popular form of meditation in Buddhism. In some Buddhist traditions, the meditator begins cultivating loving-kindness …
Parenting and Oxytocin
Those of us who have been parents probably remember moments of incredible attachment to our children. Times when we were happy to just hold them while they were sleeping, and nothing else in the world seemed important. It is a state that is somewhat like the experience of new love. Recent research suggests that part of what creates that state …
Dynamic Balance
We were talking to a young woman trying to figure out how to maintain more of a balance in her life. She knows that one of the challenges with energized moods is that they can lead to becoming over-committed. On the other hand, one of the great things about that energy is that it often results in getting a lot done. So how do you find …
Making Good Relationships: 4 Behaviors Predictive of Divorce
In a previous post we talked about our view that what is most important in successful long term relationships is not so much who we choose but how we build the relationship (of course, if you choose someone without morals or who is seriously disturbed, this doesn’t probably apply to you). But we deferred discussing what it takes to make …
Stress Eating
Weight gain may be not only a psychological (“I hate how I look, it makes me depressed”) but also a biological (overweight people have elevated levels of inflammation that may increase depression) factor worsening depression. Great, but what to do about this? Most of us already knew that we should lose weight, and more guilt doesn’t help. One very interesting …
Bipolar Brains
After years of trying, a group of researchers down at UCLA (led by Lori Altshuler) may have succeeded in identifying important changes in brain function that are associated with bipolar moods. They have found two specific areas of the brain that show pretty consistent changes associated with bipolar. One area (the orbitofrontal cortex) is generally less activated in bipolar, no …
NAC (n-acetyl-cysteine)
We were impressed by a recent study of n-acetyl cysteine as a treatment for marijuana dependence. It was a well designed study from a very reputable research group and the results were significant: the number of clean urines in the group getting NAC was twice as high as in the placebo group. It got us more interested in the agent …
How to Change Your Sleep Pattern
One of the best studied and fastest treatments for depression is not a medication, it is waking up earlier and get bright light exposure… We will write at a another time about the evidence for this, and maybe even why it works. But for now let’s talk about the practical question. How do I change when I get up? First I …
Buy or Make: Theories of Romantic Relationships
Every once in a while we find ourselves reflecting on lessons learned in a lifetime of coaching and counseling people. How we might have lived our lives differently had we known then what we know now. This afternoon, talking to a young man about romantic relationships, we found ourselves thinking about our own relationships, and the relationships of the many …
Learned Helplessness
This is an animal model of the human experience of depression. In the learned helplessness model an animal is repeatedly placed in a situation where it has no ability to avoid a painful outcome After a while the animal begins to look depressed (listless, passive). At that point if you place the animal in a situation where it could escape …
Vulnerability
Recent research points to vulnerability as an important component of deep, meaningful connection to others and to life. But, for some, just hearing the word can conjure up strong feelings of fear. But what is vulnerability exactly? What is its relationship to mood? And, if it is such a good thing, what is the fear about? Vulnerability can be simply defined as taking an emotional …
Resilience
Why are some people able to move through difficult situations, and others seem to get stuck in them? A lot of what distinguishes people who lead successful lives from those who struggle has to do with how much we are affected by negative events. There isn’t really much we can do to avoid setbacks (even the fabulously successful people have …
Medications
Getting the right medicine, medication side effects, fear of being dependent on a medication, medications that stop working mysteriously… psychiatric medications evoke in us as many reactions as do psychiatric disorders… and psychiatrists. What we propose to do on this page is to try to collect and organize information that we have found helpful in thinking about psychiatric medications. As …
Self Compassion
I once worked with a lovely woman who had a personal assistant who yelled at her all day. She hurled insult after insult, screaming loudly in her ear things like—You’ll never get that done! There you go again, you idiot! Give it up, you’re never going to amount to anything! This is pointless, you may as well throw in the towel! …
Procrastination
Getting things done can be a real struggle when you are experiencing low mood. When we are depressed, we lack the energy and sense of pleasure or mastery that makes it possible to get essential tasks done. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, we often postpone getting things done until we feel like doing them. If you are feeling tired …
Doctors Part 2
Once you have found a good doctor (see Doctors Part 1 for thoughts on finding doctors), how can you make sure that you get the best help from that doctor (or doctors). Here are a few thoughts collected from our experiences working with many people over the years – 1. Plan ahead. It is almost always a good idea to …
Vitamin D
Vitamin D is one of the fat soluble vitamins, and along with other fat soluble vitamins, it is possible to take too little, but it is also possible to take too much. And taking too much can have negative health effects, just as taking too little can. For many of us we get enough vitamin D naturally from exposure to …
Supplements – Overview
Supplements are drugs that are found in nature (note: supplements don’t have to be any more “natural” in terms of how they are made than prescription drugs). Because they are found in nature they are not, in the United States, subject to review and approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Also, because they are found in nature, they tend …