The Therapist Is In

Everything you need to know about psychotherapy.

Mark Sichel is a psychotherapist in New York City and the author of Healing from Family Rifts. See full bio

November 25, 2009

10 Tips to Beat the Holiday Blues

As we approach Thanksgiving, we're starting a five-week period called "the holidays." We're supposed to look forward to the holidays and hope that they will be a time of happiness, friendliness, fellowship, and harmony. Yet often our anticipation and excitement turns into feelings of depression, commonly called holiday blues. Symptoms can include headaches, insomnia, uneasiness, anxiety, sadness, intestinal problems, and unnecessary conflict with family and friends. Read More

October 26, 2009

Poisonous Parents: Should You Cut Them Off?

Dr. Richard A. Friedman writes an excellent article in the NY Times called “When Parents Are Too Toxic to Tolerate.” The most valuable point he makes is that therapists have a bias to salvage family relationships, even when the relationship is abusive and hurtful to our patients. I am a therapist who has worked with many people in this situation as well as having experienced a family rift myself. Many years ago I was also a therapy patient and experienced exactly what Dr. Friedman is talking about. Read More

October 14, 2009

Use Your Ego Wisely: Humble Men and Confident Women are More Successful in Work and Love

The humble man and the confident woman are the two people you'll find when you encounter a couple that has survived and thrived together over time. Humility is difficult for men, easily confused with weakness. Confidence is challenging for women, even those who would appear to be sure of themselves. I, like most men, have had to fight my own battles against a well-defended and groundless arrogance. Finding and sustaining the elusive balance between pride and self-confidence has been a challenge for me both as a therapist and a husband. In my work with clients, I try to help everyone who comes to see me become more balanced: humble yet confident, modest yet proud.

October 6, 2009

Upload Character When You're Hard-Wired to Worry

As you can see in the picture, "Anxiety," is the title of this past Sunday's New York Times magazine cover story. The thought bubble above the woman's head is not legible but it says, "Am I going to be laid off? If the black and white picture of the worried woman with the yellow background and bold title weren't enough to catch my attention, the woman's thought rang true for sure: it's a fear I'm hearing in my therapy practice every day now. Underneath the headline in smaller black lettering the author invites us to explore whether anxiety is reactive or simply reflective of our brain wiring. Read More

June 7, 2009

Why Women Want Their Man To Be A Caring Caveman

In reality, a strong man is tolerant, flexible, generous, faithful, and competent without believing he's omnipotent, and more interested in being close than being worshipped. Women may fall and fall hard for a bad boy with a big ego, but are then devastated when that man is not protective and reliable, fun and funny, kind and accessible. What women really want is a "Caring Caveman," a man like Denzel Washington Read More

April 30, 2009

Yes WE Can Therapy

Any collaborative relationship, whether it be a therapist and patient, a close loving intimate relationship, a business or a nation, requires all parties to be in what therapists call "a working alliance." A working alliance is, in effect, an agreement between two or more people who have made a clear-cut commitment to working toward the benefit of the relationship, the WE. Read More

April 16, 2009

The Resilient Relationship: Is Money the New Sex?

Since the near collapse of the U.S. economy money problems seem to dominate and endanger relationships. Love, romance, and sex have become secondary presenting problems of new patients and emerge as symptoms of breaches in a couple's financial partnership. The two biggest issues again are quality and quantity but of money, not sex and financial infidelity. Read More

April 1, 2009

When You're in Love, Words are Not Always What they Seem

When I see couples in therapy, at some point I will invariably hear: "no one has ever spoken to me as hurtfully as she did last night." Or "He says such horrible mean things to me. No one's ever talked to me like that and I won't put up with it." Variations on this theme abound. Sometimes people acknowledge the behavior within themselves, and with horror: "I can't believe I spoke to her that way. Read More

March 12, 2009

Once a Parent, Always a Parent: One Mother’s Resignation by Literary Defamation

Children are, in my book, off limits when writing about personal experiences. This week I was shocked and appalled by a story in a British newspaper about an acclaimed writer named Julie Myerson who decided to write the story of her decision to cut off all ties with her 17 year old son. Because he refused treatment and became unmanageable to live with, she took the advice offered by drug abuse experts to throw him out of their home and in effect, to disown him. To put it another way, she resigned from her job as Jake’s mother.

February 24, 2009

Turn In the Hate Card and Find Your Better Self

The day after I saw protestors picketing Jane Fonda on Broadway Sean Penn eloquently expressed himself about the anti-gay protestors at the Oscars. A reporter asked Penn what he would say if he had a chance to talk to those protesters. "I'd tell them to turn in their hate card and find their better self, you know. I think that these are largely taught limitations and ignorances," he explained. "It's very sad in a way, because it's a demonstration of such emotional cowardice to be so afraid to be extending the same rights to a fellow man as you would want for yourself." Read More

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