This seems to have been the week for discussions about loneliness. We have been talking about the experience of loneliness with a number of people in different situations: A married woman whose husband is away on business, A widowed professional man, A woman who recently ended a two year relationship. What has been interesting in these conversations is that they start …
Appreciating Depression?
We are indebted to Tom Wootton for his observation that the key to living creatively with bipolar is accepting and making use of depression. Tom wrote a book about depression (The Depression Advantage) that was one of the first things he wrote about bipolar (for more, see his website, Bipolar Advantage). He noted that it was a difficult book to …
Knowledge is Power
We spent some time this morning trying to summarize the things that we would like to know about someone with mood cycles before coming up with a plan for moodsurfing. We would like to know the answers to these questions about their moods – Are there any seasonal patterns? Many people have characteristic shifts in mood at different times of …
Healthy Pleasures
Sometimes we can be so overwhelmed, or so depressed, that we forget what it is that gives, or used to give, us pleasure. This list is adapted from Peter Lewinsohn’s Pleasant Events Schedule. You won’t enjoy many of these things, but you should find a number that are somewhat pleasurable (or would have been if you were not depressed) and …
Therapists Can Be So Annoying: Feeling Like You’re On Celebrity Roast
Therapists Have you ever found yourself all of a sudden the guest of honor at celebrity roast special. Sometimes that is what it is like being a therapist…. or husband… or wife… employee… boss…. or you name it… What do you do? You probably know that being defensive is not going to work. But how can you sit there and listen …
Chronic Anger Kills
Anger is a necessary emotion. It can motivate to change things for the better, to protect ourselves from evil, to re-shape our lives in better and more satisfying ways. But chronic anger, especially chronic anger about things that can’t be changed because they are in the distant past, is a life-destroying emotion. Occasionally we meet with people who are out …
Fire of Anxiety: Stop, Drop and Roll
Remember those Public Service Announcements about how to protect yourself in a fire? I can hear it in my head now–STOP, DROP, AND ROLL. That PSA must have been on heavy rotation when I was a child because any time I even see a hint of a fire, I can hear the narrator’s voice in my head telling me what …
The Uncertainty Principle
In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle is the principle that there is a fundamental limit to our ability to know things about a particle. If you know precisely where it is, you can’t know how fast it is moving, and if you know how fast it is moving you can’t know exactly where it is, and so on. The original …
Performance Anxiety
Fear of public speaking and performance anxiety are very common things. Probably almost all of us have had the experience of desperately wishing to relax before a presentation. This may be a situation where you should be careful of what you wish for. When I was younger I had a terrible fear of speaking in public. And my first job …
When the Pressure Builds
We all have stress. It is a natural part of life. The level of stress in your life may vary from moment to moment. Some folks are more sensitive to stress and others may shrug it off, choosing to find contentment with whatever hand they are dealt in a happy-go-lucky fashion. Whatever your stress management style, it’s important to just …
Bad Memories
Unstable moods and bad memories seem to go together. In the clinic where many of us work we have noticed how often it is that folks who we see with bipolar have had traumatic experiences in childhood. Why that happens is speculation. But we do know that dealing with those experiences can be very, very hard, and, potentially, life transforming. …
Fallow Fields
Farmers will sometimes leave a field “fallow” – they won’t plant anything in it but rather let native plants grow in it – as a way of rejuvenating the land. Then when they do plant the field it is often very productive. We were talking with one of our clients this morning about the topic of seasonal variability in mood …
Productivity: Hiding Things You Have to Do
The key to being productive (and managing anxiety) is using tools to keep track of things that you have to do… and, most important, hiding things that you will have to do at some future time but don’t need to do now. We think that one of the reasons we have this state called “anxiety” is because in human history …
The Heart of Evil
We have had the experience of feeling that we were in the presence of evil. A sense of foreboding, a shiver that involuntarily runs down the spine. An awareness that our expectations of rational behavior in others may be misplaced. As we have experienced it evil may be clever, but it is not creative. At its heart lies fear. Fear …
Negative Emotions
We’ve all been there. Maybe we’ve noticed feeling impatient while driving in traffic, or expressing anger towards the barista who didn’t leave you room for milk in your coffee. Whenever we express our dissatisfaction towards the mundane events that don’t go our way, we are more than likely misplacing anxiety, fear, anger, or hurt that stems from one of the …
Money: Having Enough
These are hard times for many people. And the future doesn’t look all that bright. Naturally this leads to anxiety. Will we have enough? Perhaps because we live in a world that constantly sends us confusing messages about what “enough” is, and confusing messages about how to achieve happiness (the entire advertising industry is more or less based on telling …
Francine Shapiro: EMDR – A Crazy Idea that Works
As a young psychiatrist I was interested in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD – psychological reactions to severe traumatic events) and did a research fellowship on the subject with Charles Marmar at the San Francisco VA Hospital. One Thursday morning, during our regular clinical case conference, we had a woman come in to tell us about her recently discovered technique for …
Starbucks Therapy
We aren’t sure how we feel about the spread of Starbucks into every corner of America. But it does allow us to suggest a kind of intervention that may help you if you are depressed. It is based on Interpersonal Social Rhythm Therapy – which is one of the best validated psychotherapies for people with bipolar moods. Every morning, at …
Running a Bit Late
This has been a super busy week and for the first time since we started this website we missed a couple of days of posts. That, plus the experience of waiting for someone to show up for coaching, made me think back on when I used to always be late for events and appointments. I was an absolutely incurable late …
Breathing Techniques
One of the oldest “self help” practices is based on breathing, changing how we breathe in order to reduce stress and to achieve a sense of connection with the world around us: Pranayama Yoga. Prana is the Sanskrit word for “breath” and also means “life.” Therefore, prana can be translated as “the breath of life” or “life energy.” Yama means …