Blog
-
Relationship Rifts: What Happens When Partners Have Divergent Socio-Political Views?
When people take their wedding vows and commit to loving each other ‘for better or worse,’ it’s not likely that they consider the ‘worse’ to involve partisan politics. As people are dating, the question of what each party’s political affiliation and views are has become increasingly prevalent and relevant in the past seven years since…
-
Why Is Polarization An All-Too-Common Human Experience?
As human beings, we have multiple commonalities. We need air, water, food, clothing, shelter, nurturing, education, and safety. We have skin hunger — the biological need for human touch — that is as essential as all of those aforementioned items. Without these, we fail to thrive. All of that being true, why are we so…
-
Internet Gaming: Harmless Habit or Addiction?
A therapist friend of mine who sees young clients ages five through adolescence has described to me the stories heard from parents in her office. They tell her that internet gaming has become a major point of contention in their home. Either their child plays for hours at a time, to the exclusion of other…
-
How Do You Know When It Is Time To Be In Therapy?
Let’s get real. The world as it is at the moment, can be overwhelming, with change occurring at a rapid pace. Nothing seems certain. A pandemic, wars, violence in the streets and political upheaval scream from the headlines and broadcast from radios and televisions. It’s enough to make the most seemingly emotionally balanced person want…
-
A Valentine’s Day Gift To Yourself
“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”-Dr. Seuss What’s sweeter than chocolate and longer lasting than chocolate? The adoration of the person who gazes back at you when you look in a mirror. While we are accustomed to thinking of Valentine’s Day as…
-
Organizing Your Life in the New Year
As you look around your environs, do you see piles of papers, a tower of books, dust bunnies peeking out from under the bed, heaps of laundry, dishes in the sink and on counter tops? If you are like most people, there is at least one room in your home that is messy. What would…
-
How Weeding Your Inner Garden Can Make Way For a Bountiful Harvest
Imagine the most exquisite garden, overflowing with rainbow hued flowers that attract buzzing bees, succulent fruits, and luscious vegetables that you are eager to sample. It is a feast for all the senses. You stand back and drink in the beauty, sighing with delight. The truth is, that garden of earthly delights exists within you….
-
The Empty Chair at the Table at the Holidays
The heart holds memories, and we can relive them at our whim. There are times when we avoid turning back the pages when what we recall brings up images of people we will never see again in this lifetime. There is no statute of limitations on grief. No cookie cutter way to cope with sorrow….
-
Do You Have Creative Constipation?
Do you believe that creativity is something you are born with or that it needs to be cultivated, or sweated and strained over as if it was an ordeal? What if imagination came as part and parcel of this human existence? According to Sir Ken Robinson, an author and speaker whose TEDtalk “Do Schools Kill…
-
Can You Ever Do Enough, Be Enough or Have Enough?
Look in the mirror and what do you see? A person who is striving for perfection or one who can accept themselves as is? Someone who isn’t tall enough, thin enough, attractive enough, smart enough, wealthy enough, or one who is, as Baby Bear might have put it, ‘just right’? A therapist tells the story…
-
Opening the Time Capsule
Imagine opening a time capsule in the year 3020 and reading about a world changing event that occurred 1000 years earlier. It contains a roll of toilet paper, a mask, a container of hand sanitizer, gloves, photos of people who lost their lives unnecessarily, and a scroll that explains the devastation that occurred that the…
-
Being Single During the Covid Crisis
Being single and living alone has its challenges even under normal circumstances. But it is particularly difficult during the Covid pandemic with the necessity to socially distance and shelter in place. For single people, these continuing restrictions disrupt regular human interactions that we all take for granted: being with family and friends, dating and intimacy….