Therapy

There is a distinctive kind of creative energy generated when people work in a group to create art. Call it synergy or collective flow; whatever you call it, it changes our perceptions of who we are and shows us how to get by with a little creative help from our friends. Read More

The Physical--and Cognitive--Toll of Anger

Another thing that makes anger--or perhaps I should say, unregulated, indiscriminate, or over-the-top anger--so dumb is that it uses up so much energy. Literally, it takes so much out of you. Anger is the one emotion that mobilizes every organ and muscle group in your body. After all, it's typically a response to something that, subjectively, is experienced as an imminent threat. . . . Read More

A little knowledge about your therapist can be a dangerous thing. Read More

An interview with Alan Gordon, LCSW, pain psychotherapist.  "Many of my clients bounced around from doctor to doctor for years, unable to find relief for their chronic pain. Usually they come upon the TMS diagnosis as a last resort, having exhausted every treatment from physical therapy to magnets to South American shamanism." Read More

I was once a member of the love addicts club. I too was in love with love. I have built my career on this issue, working with ordinary people who are lost when it comes to finding and sustaining a healthy relationship, stuck in a cycle of pain and disappointment in others and themselves. The good news is that it is possible to break this cycle!

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Depression and anxiety thrive on habitual negative thinking and beliefs. Changing these patterns is not a matter of will power, but of developing an objective and mindful relationship with the core emotions that empower negative thoughts and beliefs. Mindfulness gives us the tools to cultivate this quality of this inner relationship, and this lays the ground for significant change and transformation. In short, mindfulness restores plasticity at the emotional and perceptual levels and this is central to the healing process.

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***Warning: This blog entry is one big spoiler alert, so if you haven't seen "Shutter Island" but want to then please refrain from reading this until you've paid your ten dollars and fifty cents.

"Shutter Island" is one of those films that rips the rug out from under your expectations with the frequency and intensity of a magican's act. Initially, we think we are watching a well-intentioned U.S. Marshall named Teddy enter an insane asylum/prison hoping to uncover the whereabouts of a recently-disappeared patient/inmate. Later, our strangeness barometer begins to beep and we recalibrate our assumptions. Now we think we are witnessing a brave and bereaved soul searching for damning evidence that will expose Shutter Island as an expensive, cutting edge torture chamber. Only during the final act (unless you've connected the foreshadowing dots) do we realize that the narrative is really about tragic psychosis and elaborate role play. Read More

It's refreshing that focus on Tiger's only child status as a root cause of Tiger's actions has been absent.  Read More

All people are possessed to varying degrees by alien personalities and to that extent exist as divided selves. Read More