So I’m driving to work the other day (which feels like years ago, but has only been a few weeks) and I feel something come over me, like a wet blanket. It’s a mood alright and it feels like an odorless tasteless gas has completely enveloped me. I hear myself saying “So what’s the point
It’s 2:30 AM and Jack is wide awake. He can’t turn his mind off. He’s thinking thinking thinking about everything he has to do and hasn’t done; that comment his boss made yesterday accusing him of slacking off, his girlfriend is pushing to get married and yet all he wants is sleep. He can’t get
“The only thing that holds true happiness is that moment when you are in it. Nothing can be controlled.” Eliza Doolittle “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung The eternal question, what is happiness and where does it come from? Like the fountain
Most everyone has a myriad of expectations. We expect good manners, we want people to call us back when we call them, we expect our family to give us presents at holidays and birthdays, or we expect our mate will love us unconditionally. We may expect ourselves to be perfect or expect that our mate
One explanation is that as we are descended from hunters and are therefore aggressive, and because we don’t expend that energy hunting we take it out on ourselves and those we live with. Another clue to this natural antagonism may be that we have not learned how to sublimate enough of our aggression into culturally
We have all seen the Wizard of Oz and remember the scene when Toto pulled back the curtain revealing instead of The Great Oz, a man who was pulling levers. This short scene from this classic film is to a greater or lesser extent all of us. We live our lives behind our curtain. It
From working with couple’s for over 30 years some disturbing trends have evolved that appear like a train wreck in the making. When couples go off the rails being right by one or both partner is usually somewhere in the mix. Being right is a roadblock, it cuts off communication and causes the process to
Jake came to my office with fear in his eyes. What was getting himself into? Not unusual, so I start by soothing his hesitations and helping him to see that it’s a process that starts by building trust and I must be trustworthy. I cajoled him with how anxiety-producing it must be to spill your
“Shame is the most powerful master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.” Brene Brown. The challenge for Jake was to unravel his shame cycle, not only to ease his personal pain but to neutralize the toxic nature of it so his anxiety and depression could be alleviated. We started with self-criticism because
After being married for over 30 years, what seems apparent to me is that it’s not so much what we can see about what is going on between us but what we cannot. My wife asks me to do something and I snap at her. Why? I try to tell her something that is important to