Benevolence

It’s been a hectic week. I will be updating you on some of the exciting new developments that we’ll be rolling out this summer on the website, but, last night, the perfect cap on a crazy week was getting a phone call about a relative who was having panic attacks because he had stopped his medication and now he couldn’t find a …

Gratitude

Recently it seems that many people have been talking about the idea of gratitude as a practice that enhances psychological health. I was intrigued to run across a recent post by Disorderly Chickadee (a woman with a WordPress blog about bipolar) on the topic of her gratitude journal and the reasons she has discovered for gratitude. And then I started …

The Facts are Friendly

We have found ourselves wrestling with a couple of situations where patients seem to be trying to help us come to the “right” conclusion about their problems.  For example, one young woman is very adamant about the fact that she does not have bipolar disorder.  She has a family history of bipolar moods (her mother was bipolar) and the idea …

The Search for Meaning

When three people independently send you an article and urge you to read it, there is something very important contained in that article. A New York Times article by a woman with bipolar elicited that kind of response from people who know me. The article talks about the struggle of a woman who discovers that she has bipolar, struggles to …

The Future without Me

One of the really great things about my job is that I am continually challenged to think about my own life in new ways. I started this blog almost exactly a year ago as a result of a bicycle accident that caused me to change in some significant ways my thoughts and feelings about the future.  It was a wake-up …

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 …

Stress and Your Brain

Stress has a major affect on our bodies and our brain. The release of catecholamines (adrenaline and related chemicals) and cortisol causes significant changes throughout our body that are designed to prepare us for “fight or flight.” By shutting down all non-essential functions the stress response system prepares us for a life and death struggle Nowadays there are no life …

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 …

Awareness and Acceptance

The New York Times has had a series of well written articles on the topic of mindfulness. The most recent article notes that brain scans show that mindfulness can change the way our brains function, and help us improve attention, reduce stress hormones and even bounce back faster from negative information. The increased ability to bounce back from negative information that comes from …

The Gift of Hope

I have never been able to find the short article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that talked about a miraculous treatment for many ailments of the human mind and body… The article was about “hope.” When we have it there is hardly any problem we can’t tackle, and when we lack it every challenge seems insurmountable. This …

On the Borderline

I am writing a presentation for the UCSF Bipolar Program on the topic of the relationship between Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder and I thought I would jot down some of my thoughts in a quick post. Borderline personality disorder involves a “pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity” which begins by early adulthood …

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 …

Small Rewards

A young woman who was scheduled to go on a big trek in the Himalayas was not doing the training she needed to in order to have a good experience. She had been depressed for the last few months and this was probably a manifestation of that mood. She told me that she felt she “should be doing much more.” …

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 …

A Protest

So many of us have to deal with things that are not fair – depression, unsupporting spouses, financial reversals, weight gain, etcetera, it can be tempting to launch a protest of some kind against the unfairness. These protest actions don’t have to be obvious at all, but they can have powerful effects, nonetheless. A few women recently told me, “I …

Needing to be Perfect

The need to be perfect is one of the “dangerous ideas” that can destroy a life. It often comes from the fear of abandonment that all of us have, and which can be easily activated in childhood by a mismatch in personality with one’s parent. A wonderful, smart, attractive, funny, energetic woman talked with us about her experience of this. …