The Flip Side

You can't spell "joy" without the "oy"

by Mindy Greenstein, Ph.D.

When the Psychologist Is Also the Patient

When I was contacted about giving a workshop on managing the fear of recurrence at a conference of breast cancer survivors, I knew I would have a lot to offer. As a psycho-oncologist and breast cancer survivor myself, I could talk both from the heart and brain. Little did I know that I would have even more to offer than that. Read More

Want to, Don't Want to: The Psychology of Craving

What does it mean to crave something? Despite the fact that the feeling of craving lies at the heart of the addiction experience, we know very little about how it works. As recently as 2005, Alan Marlatt and Katie Witkiewitz described craving as "possibly the most widely studied and the most poorly understood concept in the study of drug addiction" (p. 18). Read More

The "Oy" in "Joy"

When my dental hygienist asked me if any new medical conditions had popped up since my last visit, I thought nothing of telling her about my recent breast cancer diagnosis. I was soon very sorry I did. Read More

Why We Write

What do books do for us, exactly? Read More

Suffering, Meaning, Hope

In his famous memory study, Frederic Bartlett found that memory was an act of reconstruction: subjects unconsciously changed the material, for example, by supplying missing rationalizations for the characters' behavior, changing causal connections and imposing a more western order on the material. Read More

The Clock on the Wall: On Dying, Denying, and the Search for Hope

"Shoot. Shoulda taken my Altoids," Joe would say whenever I asked about his smoking. "Look," he'd protest, "I don't have cancer, I'm not in chemotherapy and I'm certainly not sittin' here talking to you." Of course, Joe Sullivan would have been the first to say he was full of it. "Yeah, I'm in denial. Who wouldn't be?" Read More

Boy Mom

I don't know too many moms of girls who've had to issue such pronouncements as, No farting at the dinner table, or who suddenly yell out, Hey, who's been peeing on the toilet seat in the powder room?" It wasn't a role that came naturally to me at first; I was slowly seduced into the world of boys. Read More

A Good Laugh

Humor is serious business. How serious? Eminent psychiatrist Viktor Frankl once gave someone humor homework-the man had to tell a funny story every day. Both Frankl and his "patient" were inmates of Auschwitz at the time! Read More

The Evening of Life: A Question for Adult Children of Aging Parents

For a long time, I felt like a henchman, an emotional assassin hired by my mother to keep my father in line. He's 88 and she's 76, and she wants him around as long as possible. "He wants to eat latkes! Tell him to stop!!!" My father has diabetes, and deep fried potato latkes are not exactly what the doctor ordered. Read More

Tomorrow's Pain

It was the size of the needle that made the biggest impression on me. Cindy Sanderson, a clinical psychologist in her mid-40s, was delivering a lecture to the psychiatry service of the cancer hospital where I was training. She didn't offer the usual research on this or that psychiatric issue; instead, Sanderson described coping with her own advanced breast cancer. Read More

Life's Long, Lovely Afternoon: The Psychology of Middle Age

If life were the Brady Bunch—a television show known to many of my generation—we middle agers would be Jan, the middle child, less interesting than Marcia, the eldest, less cute than Cindy, the youngest. For many years, researchers thought that nothing interesting happened in midlife. I beg to differ. Read More

Shock and Awe: The First Psychological Phase of Coping with Cancer

"I have always known that at last I would take this road. But yesterday, I did not know it would be today." Read More

Cancer Series II: The First Question, or, What Not to Say to a Cancer Patient

Words without context are meaningless. "You'll be fine" may feel heartening one day, and dismissive another. Read More

What Do I Say When Someone I Care About Gets Cancer?

Mortality is one of the few attributes we share with every single other person in the world. And yet when we're dealing with it ourselves, it's the loneliest feeling there is. Read More

Doggerel: About a Dog

This is how much I didn't want a dog.... Read More

Motherhood: The Invisible Profession

In the course of my life as a psychologist, I've worked with drug dealers, gang leaders and heroin abusers; people who were suicidal, homicidal, psychotic or all three; AIDS and cancer patients fighting for their lives. But, without question, the hardest job I have ever had is being a mother to my two boys. Read More

Coming Home

Our king-size bed used to be such a symbol of fun for me, and not just for the reason you might think. Read More

Chemo-worthy TV

I love television. There was a time when I would have been embarrassed to admit that to my more intellectual friends, or to mothers or colleagues who'd be horrified at my relaxed attitude towards my children's watching habits. But not anymore. Read More

Mindy Greenstein, Ph.D., is a psycho-oncologist and author of The House on Crash Corner and Other Unavoidable Calamities.

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About The Flip Side

The Flip Side is about stuff. Life is complicated, whether you're dealing with heartache, cancer, kids, or happiness (or about the pressure to be feeling happy!). The Flip Side looks at the issues of life with the depth, seriousness, and sense of humor they deserve.