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
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
My patient and I were talking about the latest revelations of sexual misconduct in the news and she described an incident that she explained was not unusual. She was stopped at a light and absentmindedly looked over at the car next to her. A man looked back. What ensued was a chase right out of
“Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.” -Albert Schweitzer “The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It’s not that we seize them, but that they seize us.” -Ashley Montigue “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of, you will never live
We rode past the horse ranches, the fields of corn, cabbage, orange and walnut trees. We crossed the one paved street and shagged in and out of the wash, eucalyptus trees and shrubs to the road that led up into the mountains. There were small rolling hills, green from the winter rains, trees that looked
My friend Brett shot me an email and suggested lunch. Of course I jumped at the chance as we’ve been friends for several years and we always have a great time joking and talking about everything under sun. We frequently bring up stories about our lives to embellish whatever subject we are talking about. As