Compassion Matters

How to save a life

by Lisa Firestone, Ph.D.

7 Steps to Living the Life You Imagined

How can we identify and overcome the old characteristics and attitudes within ourselves that hurt us in our lives today? How can we separate what is us and what is a repetition of someone else? Here are some fundamental ways to become differentiated. Read More

4 Ways to Overcome Your Inner Critic

Our "critical inner voice" can sabotage our successes or our relationships, preventing us from living the lives we want to lead and being the people we seek to be. So how can we challenge this inner voice? How can we recognize its commentary and differentiate from its directives? Read More

The Internet: A Game Changer for Mental Health

The Internet is becoming a go-to resource for millions seeking mental health information. New media allows mental health professionals the unique opportunity to provide valuable resources to a larger audience than ever before and to encourage millions of individuals to get the treatment they may need. Read More

6 Tips for a Happy Wedding

While we may think of a wedding as a purely joyous occasion, there are psychological factors at play that also arise as we approach this major life transition. As practicalities and details pile up, it's so important for couples to focus on the big-picture and keep certain values close to their heart. Read More

The Dangers of Narcissistic Parents

Most of us can relate, on some level, to ways our parents over-connected or lived through us, as a reflection of them. But when dealing with a narcissistic parent day in and day out throughout one’s childhood, the impact can be devastating. Read More

Advantages of Dating After 40

There are certain real advantages of dating after 40, 50, or any age in which you are willing and able to reflect on your years of experience and genuinely learn from your past. Read More

Become a Better Parent

How our parents related to us has a heavy influence on how we relate to our kids. Traumatic incidents from our childhood are commonly stirred up when we experience similar scenarios with our own kids. That moment when we "lose it" is often an over-reaction based on feelings that have been awakened within us from our own early life experiences. Read More

Benefits of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is an incredible tool to help people understand, tolerate, and deal with their emotions in healthy ways. It helps us to alter our habitual responses by taking pause and choosing how we act. Read More

Leaving Your Childhood Behind to Become a Better Parent

As parents, it’s incredibly important not to project our own negative life experiences onto our children. How can we recognize our kids as the independent individuals they are and resist repeating hurtful patterns from our past? Read More

What is a Mentally Healthy Person?

I asked my father, Dr. Robert Firestone, who’s spent the past 40 years working as a psychologist, theorist, and author, how he would define an emotionally healthy individual. He responded by describing what his goals would be for a person as an outcome of successful psychotherapy. Read More

How to Create a More Meaningful Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is an occasion to exercise patience, humor, passion, and kindness. But why limit these actions to just one day? How can we learn to express love on a daily basis in a way that is uniquely sensitive to our partner? What patterns should we avoid that take away from our romantic feelings? Read More

The Upside of Negative Emotions

It turns out we expend much more energy avoiding the pains of our existence than we do when we actually face our feelings. Often, we cause ourselves much more misery through our attempts to defend against our unpleasant emotions. Going toward the pain allows us to feel it and move on. Plus, it enables us to be more emotionally adaptable. Read More

Stop the Blame Game in Your Relationship

When we stop placing blame in our relationship, we shift our focus inward. We can take charge and start to differentiate from destructive behaviors that are holding us back from getting closer to the people we love. Read More

How to Identify Your Critical Inner Voice

Millions of self-critical thoughts circle our minds everyday, leaving us miserable, discouraged and held back from going after what we want. Identifying these thoughts as mean-spirited, external points of view can free us from that destructive critical inner voice. Read More

Five Tips for Maintaining Lifelong Friends

Keeping close friends is an essential part of life that gives us meaning and fulfillment. Holding yourself to these five standards will expand your potential to grow meaningful friendships throughout your life. Read More

Be Your Own Couples Therapist

To achieve lasting love is an act of differentiation, a therapeutic process of identifying the ways we were hurt in our past that lead us to hurt ourselves and those close to us in the present. Here, I offer, six tips on how you can become your best self, overcome obstacles and maintain closeness in your relationship. Read More

Five Questions for a Better New Year

How can the lessons of 2012 help us to achieve a more fulfilling 2013? Here are five essential questions that can be of immeasurable value when setting forth on a new and better year. Read More

5 Reachable Resolutions for a Healthy Mind

Filtering our personal goals through a self-critical lens only sets us up for failure. With that in mind, I propose a new list of deeply rewarding and reachable resolutions. These activities have been proven to benefit us on every level, increasing both the quality and length of our lives. Read More

5 Ways to Beat the Holiday Blues

Whether you’re among the millions who struggle with mild to severe cases of “winter blues” or you merely find yourself falling into bad moods over the holidays, here are some tips on how to counter some of the seasonal hurdles that may be dragging you down. Read More

Is Cynicism Ruining Your Life?

Like an ill-fitting sweater, cynicism can be easy to slip into, yet difficult to shake off. But what are the risks of indulging in cynical attitudes? How does cynicism negatively shape our lives and what can we do to counter it? Read More

Are You Parenting Like Your Parent?

As you may imagine, scenarios that are reminiscent of our childhood are increasingly likely to arise when we ourselves become parents. The good news is, by noticing these traits inside ourselves, by identifying where they come from, and by altering our behavior to match our own standards and principles, we can differentiate from negative programming from our past. Read More

Is Social Media to Blame For the Rise In Narcissism?

Over the last couple years, a plethora of research has been pouring in that makes connections between Facebook and narcissism. Social media websites encourage self-promotion, as users utilize Facebook and other platforms "gain attention" and "look important." Read More

7 Tips to Raising an Emotionally Healthy Child

As parents in today's culture, we find ourselves encouraged to center our daily lives on our kids. Yet as we focus our attention on carpools, homework and play dates, we run the risk of becoming dangerously distracted from what's most important: how our children feel. Read More

Risks to the Mental Health of Athletes

The physical strain athletes undergo is well-documented and commonly discussed. But what about the serious mental struggles athletes face? Read More

Why Do Women Act Catty?

Women sometimes inadvertently strengthen false notions of gender norms by failing to face their competitive feelings directly or to learn to deal with these feelings in a positive way. Read More

5 Ways to Deal with a Partner’s Fear of Intimacy

Many people have developed defenses that make them intolerant of too much love, attention or affection. In this blog, I want to offer a few ways to work on overcoming a fear of intimacy that may exist in our partners and even in ourselves. Read More

Stop Bad Habits by Breaking from Your Inner Critic

As the holiday season and new year approaches, it is invaluable to take the time to look at why we are so self-deprecating and what we can do to rid ourselves of our distorted self-perceptions. By doing so, we give ourselves the opportunity to achieve our goals. Read More

How to Date Outside Your Comfort Zone

We don't always fall for someone because their positive qualities complement our own but also because their negative traits fit ours so well. So how do we improve our process of selection and choose people who will make us happy in the long run? Read More

Six Tips to Keep Long-Term Relationships Exciting

The idea that the excitement of a relationship is sentenced to only the first months or even years a couple is together is completely false. When it comes to a long-term relationship, we can maintain the thrill of being in love and deepen our feelings of passion and intimacy. Read More