2025 has been quite a year and we are only halfway through it. We lost our home in the Palisades fires and then the whole world caught fire. Wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, and Israel, mass shootings and our president is pressing his authority like never before. There seems to be nowhere to turn in
The hero is not the person who is fearless. The hero is the person who knows the risk and moves forward anyway. This week I witnessed something that struck me as genuinely heroic. Veteran journalist Scott Pelley stood before executives at CBS and publicly challenged what he believed had happened to one of the most
When I work with couples the central problem lies in the way they treat one another and their inability to communicate or listen to each other. The lack of respect, the harsh words, and the hurtful things they say and do to one another destroy the love and connection that initially brought them together. It starts with what our parents taught us or what they failed to teach us. If we grew up in a home that was neglectful, violent, hateful, racist, or exclusive, it’s more than likely we will become a person who reflects those qualities. And if there were no other viable alternatives to that wounding environment in our young lives, we would naturally develop a deeply negative inner life. We identify with what we experience. If our experience lacks heart, so will we.
One day I’m in my office doing my thing waiting for a patient to call or come in. After about ten minutes I checked in. Are we on for today? Text comes back, “Oh sorry I got caught up, will call at 1:15.” Ok, I write back. Nothing. I send a question mark only. Nothing. That was it. There was also earlier in the day someone just didn’t show or call. Now, I’m not saying this happens a lot, it doesn’t, but right away I start thinking. Did I say something, what was the last session like? I can’t really think of anything. No bad words, no disclaimers, bad looks, comments, nothing that I can remember. What is this? I liked these people. We seemed to have a good working relationship. What is going on?
“At once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”–John Keats The poet John Keats in a letter to his
“Work and Love, these are the basics, without them there is neurosis.” -Theodore Reich “The neurotic is nailed to the cross of fiction.” -Alfred Adler We all hear the word neurotic but few of us really understand what it means. The fabled neurotic appears like an enigmatic Freudian malady, a throwback to a bygone era.
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
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
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
John F. Kennedy uttered the now famous words during his inaugural address “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” At the time (it was 1961) it hit me like a thunderbolt and many of my generation joined the crusade. I wanted a better life for