Enlightened Living

Meaning and mindfulness in everyday life

Michael J. Formica EdM, NCC, LPC

Grieving for an Emotionally Estranged Parent

No one person’s experience of grief is the same as another’s, particularly should we find ourselves grieving an emotionally estranged parent.

Love as Daily Practice

Feeling love is not as easy as loving yourself. You are deserving of love as you are and allowing someone to love you can help you practice love toward yourself.

Mechanisms of Misinformation

When a concept, idea, or belief is fed by lean, rather than critical, thinking we become bearers of falsehoods underlying a culture of misinformation.

Age Shaming, Failed Foresight and the Pandemic

Kids aren’t foolish or stupid—they just can’t see outcomes.

Increased Suicidality in the Face of the Pandemic

Suicidality, at its core, is a failure to see options. It is a cloying sense that "there is nothing more to do." But more pointedly: "There is nothing more I can do."

Social Distancing: What You’re Feeling Is Grief

While we are living in the Age of Anxiety and may be standing on the precipice of the Next Great Depression, we are, more poignantly, in the midst of the Great Grieving.

An Observation of Ignorance, Racism and Social Divisiveness

Misplaced aggression is about power and control and at the heart of our current climate of social divisiveness.

When Therapy Makes Things Worse, Pt. 2

Surfacing our demons, digging deep into our neuroses, exploring our habit patterns, and challenging our belief systems comes at a cost.

When Therapy Makes Things Worse, Pt. 1

Therapy is a place where we learn to be uncomfortable with ourselves, so we can, ultimately, become more comfortable with who we are and our place in the world.

The Neurotic Complement in Relationships

Most of us are familiar with the old saw about partnering with your parent, but that's not the whole story.

The Loneliest Time of the Year

The winter holiday experience for many of us can feel much like George Bailey in the throes of a life without himself.

Is Your Healthy Enabling Disabling?

Enabling typically gets a bad rap, because it’s typically associated with self-destructive behavior. Healthy enabling is, in fact, part of any sound interpersonal relationship.

Is There a Digital Divide in Your Relationship?

It’s no secret that our obsessional attachment to our devices can cause friction and provoke conflict in our relationships. What's the meaning behind not being present?

Helicopter Parenting is Good Parenting

Backing away from the helicopter parent dynamic and giving kids the gift of failure can help build healthy self-esteem and a sense of personal value they otherwise don't develop.

Self-Sabotaging Emotional Intelligence

When looking for the negative becomes married to poor self-perception or negative self-talk, it creates a cascade of emotions, dragging us down a rabbit hole of our own making.

The Yoga of Relationship

Conscious relationship is not something we engage in by default. More often than not, we fall into—and accept—relationships of convenience.

Transforming Toxic Relationships

Recognizing a toxic relationship can sometimes prove to be a bit elusive. That is in large measure because of what we bring to the table in terms of our own inner narrative.

What’s Really Behind the Curtain?

So, what happens when our social assumptions and expectations are misplaced? More to the point, what happens when we figure that out? We discover things aren't quite as they seem.

Leveling Up Your Emotional Intelligence

One of the hall marks of emotional intelligence is responding, rather than reacting. An even more subtle and nuanced aspect of emotional intelligence is reflecting.

Empowering Your Willingness to Change

When talking about creating change, empowerment quite literally means doing something—specifically doing something differently.

How’s Your Self-Relationship?

We work hard at our relationships, and, in of service them, we often overlook, or even neglect, our most important one—our relationship to ourselves.

How Others Judge You

The need for acceptance is fairly high on our list of social priorities. What's more important is how others see us, or how they receive us, and what they do with that.

Personal Empowerment Is More Than a Feeling

Personal empowerment is not something we feel, it’s something we do. Our sense of empowerment is a reflection of increased personal value and self-worth.

Emerging From the Veil of Addiction

When self-medication winds its way into compulsive dependence, we disappear behind a veil that leaves us in a sort of social and emotional suspended animation and, when we reemerge, we find we are right where we started.

Gas-lighting: Burning the Bridges of Truth

One of the more insidious forms of mental abuse has come to be referred to as gas-lighting. It refers to those who attempt to destroy another person’s sense of reality.

Getting Into Your Growth Zone

If we look closely, what we find nested inside our comfort zone is a little rabbit hole—our complacency zone.

Exploring Post Traumatic Growth

In recent years, we’ve heard a lot about post-traumatic stress, or PTSD, and the negative effects it can have on a person’s overall health and wellness. PTSD is triggered in response to either experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event, particularly if that event is life threatening

Exploring Existential Depression

From a clinical perspective, depression is typically categorized as psychological, situational or some combination of the two. What we often overlook is the spiritual aspect of depression, which is not clinical, but existential. This subtle, cloying sense of incompleteness doesn’t so much paralyze us as haunt us, ringing hollow in our deepest heart.

Selling the Couch: The Business of Psychotherapy

The business side of private practice is something that eludes many, if not most, mental health professionals. As an outgrowth of his practice, Philadelphia-area psychologist Melvin Varghese has created an iTunes podcast called Selling the Couch, which is an on-going series of interviews with thought leaders in practice building, marketing and social media.

Mindfulness and Cultivating Creativity

Creativity relies, in part, on the brain being in a state of unfocused, resting wakefulness, similar to that found in certain types of mediation and mindfulness practice. So, when you're at rest, are you actually working?

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