The 10 Best Ways to Find New Friends

The 10 Best Ways to Find New Friends

Once your children have grown and left you, their schools and extracurricular activities are no longer a good bet for meeting similarly situated adults. You may prefer not to rub shoulders with coworkers once the workday is done. Whether you are looking for a BFF, a...
The Feeling of Being

The Feeling of Being

Maybe it’s just because I take extra time off for the Christmas holidays. Or maybe it’s a sign of advancing age. Whatever the reason, I find myself increasingly savoring small things. These days I notice my senses more and the news they bring me. I relish the thrust...
The Best Gift of the Holidays

The Best Gift of the Holidays

The end-of-year holidays form a kind of time tunnel linking the present with the past and the future. When they roll around, we take stock. What do they mean this year? How are things different from last year? We may nostalgically remember times past, before Mom died...
How to Talk to Children About Calamities

How to Talk to Children About Calamities

How do you give really bad news to children? What should you say when a natural disaster hits or when someone important dies? How can you parse a divorce for a child—or bankruptcy or foreclosure or drug addiction or crime? This world has so many kinds of adversity....
When Your Child Is Out of Control

When Your Child Is Out of Control

“My child is out of control!” I have heard this heartfelt cry so many times from parents who are frustrated at not being obeyed. But the problem is not simply a matter of exacting compliance. Let’s start by considering the complaint. When you say “out of control,” you...
Lighthearted Ways to Manage Your Child’s Behavior

Lighthearted Ways to Manage Your Child’s Behavior

It’s great when parents can correct a young child without provoking tension, conflict, and a power struggle. One way of doing this is to use some form of playful humor to make your point.  Some of the examples below work well in families with several children. ...
How to Find a Better Job

How to Find a Better Job

In America, one of the first questions adults ask one another is, “What kind of work do you do?” For most of us, our jobs are part of who we are. So how do you find something you enjoy doing that will be a good fit financially and in other respects as...
How Can I Ever Forgive You?

How Can I Ever Forgive You?

Carol and Eric, married for twenty years and with children at home, came to see me on the brink of divorce. Carol was seething with a cold rage. Eric was penitent, in obvious pain, desperate to save their marriage. Carol said, “We both know we had a sacred agreement....
Do You Know How to Discipline Your Child?

Do You Know How to Discipline Your Child?

Back in the Dark Ages when I was about five years old, I can remember lying on my bed and sobbing, then hearing my father’s angry voice—“I’m not going to put up with this!”—and his footsteps coming swiftly down the hall toward my room. I got a spanking that day and on...
Offsetting the Legacy of Adversity

Offsetting the Legacy of Adversity

Children are like recent immigrants. They arrive with little or no command of the language or knowledge of the local customs and depend on the natives for survival. As they learn to fend for themselves, they rely heavily on their senses and their powers of...
On Risks, Resilience, and Cell Phones

On Risks, Resilience, and Cell Phones

A woman who sees me for counseling spoke recently about chatting with a man she met on an online dating site. After their initial contact he wanted to connect with her by phone or text. Noticing that he lived in a nearby town, she suggested that they meet for coffee....
Should I Get a Divorce?

Should I Get a Divorce?

Many unhappy couples go to counselors together before calling it quits. Many of the counselors believe that their job as professionals is to save the partnership. Dr. Phil is an example. “You know you’re ready for a divorce when you can walk out the door...
Anger and Trauma

Anger and Trauma

Anger, judiciously expressed and directed at a proposal rather than a person, can be helpful in negotiations, according to some research. On the home front, however, how much or how little your anger achieves will have a lot to do with the listeners’ back story....
Think You’re Not a Hypocrite?  Think Again

Think You’re Not a Hypocrite? Think Again

Usually when we speak of hypocrisy, it’s to scold someone. Practice what you preach! we say righteously. What business does anyone have doing things that he or she disapproves of others’ doing? Isn’t this the pot calling the kettle black? But not so fast. Often the...
How to Feel Less Alone

How to Feel Less Alone

As a therapist, I find that my biggest single job is help people connect with themselves and each other. In fact, you will have trouble connecting with anyone else if you cannot connect with yourself. You must be able to touch base with your heart, your mind, and all...
Cats, Catastrophe, and Catharsis

Cats, Catastrophe, and Catharsis

A few weeks ago, after my dear old cat died, I looked for a new one. Enter BosBos (pronounced BoesBoes), almost two years old. Half Egyptian Mau and half Arabian Mau, he suffered abuse in the streets of Egypt before being flown to an Egyptian cat rescue last year....
Great Games for Grownups, No Computer Needed

Great Games for Grownups, No Computer Needed

Throughout history, games have offered people relief from the stresses of the everyday world.  Play lets you fool around and have fun in a make-believe universe where risks and consequences aren’t a problem.  Good games also have some not-so-obvious benefits....
Teaching Your Child About Responsibility

Teaching Your Child About Responsibility

When a child breaks household rules, many parents invoke consequences. “Okay, that’s it,” they say. “No cell phone. No computer. No iPad.  No Wii.” Sometimes kids are grounded for months. Consequences of this sort are really just ordinary punishment, which usually...
Turning Therapy Inside Out

Turning Therapy Inside Out

What is therapy anyhow? When I put this question to clients, they usually mention talking, personal problems, and solutions, which everyone seems to assume lie within you. The insurance companies that pay me would ratchet up the definition to specify medical problems...
Ten Bad Habits That Can Ruin Friendships

Ten Bad Habits That Can Ruin Friendships

Many people—including some therapists!— don’t know how to express negative feelings and are afraid of doing so. Some prefer to say only things that seem likely to please their listeners. Everyone feels sadness, disappointment, shame, embarrassment, anger, and anxiety...
How to Make Music Like Yo-Yo Ma

How to Make Music Like Yo-Yo Ma

When I was about ten years old, my mother bought me piano lessons. It was the mid-1950s, and we were living in Washington, D.C., in those days still a sleepy town. My mother would drop me off at the teacher’s ranch house in Chevy Chase. Helen Jenks was a lonely...
What to Do About Cheating

What to Do About Cheating

He’s married, and he looks at another woman. She, with a husband and two kids, lunches alone with a single male coworker. Does this behavior amount to cheating? What about text messages and phone calls? In the television series Orange Is the New Black, Piper has sex...
Getting Married?  Read This First!

Getting Married? Read This First!

Most people think getting married is procedurally pretty simple. You connect with someone you like and find attractive. You date for a while. You meet the folks and the friends. You compare notes: living and working where? how many kids? You affirm your love....
How to Have Better Sex

How to Have Better Sex

When I was a kid, back in prehistoric times, someone published a book with answers to all the questions people had about sex (so the title proclaimed) but were afraid to ask. Nowadays no one seems to be afraid of asking anything, but sex is still a bugaboo. He doesn’t...
You Aren’t Listening!

You Aren’t Listening!

When I see couples for therapy, the problem is always the same: communication is blocked. It’s my job to ensure that both people speak and that both feel heard. In sessions with individuals I help clients probe their thoughts and feelings, but with couples I become a...
Tips to Exterminate Tantrums

Tips to Exterminate Tantrums

One of my child clients, a smart, pretty redhead we’ll call Marcy, comes to see me after graduating from an extended day treatment program at a local clinic. Marcy, age nine, is healthy, strong, and stubborn. She is an unenthusiastic student at school, where she...
Do You Belong Here?

Do You Belong Here?

Friends may be the family we choose, but they can unfriend us and not just on Facebook. Once they do, we feel excluded, rejected. Family, on the other hand, stays the same no matter what even if some relatives aren’t on speaking terms. The mere fact of blood ties is...
Payback?

Payback?

It is tempting to go for payback when someone disses you. If you cut me dead on the street last week, or failed to respond when I as a neighbor asked for your help, the angry part of me might have wanted to hurt you. How could you do this to me? I probably wondered. A...
Psychotherapy, Coaching, and Skateboards

Psychotherapy, Coaching, and Skateboards

Recently an alternative healer suggested that further training as a personal development coach could make me a far more effective therapist. This well-intentioned advice puzzled me, especially since the healer did not know my work.  How does what I do differ from...
How Do I Know I Can Trust You?

How Do I Know I Can Trust You?

The older we get, the more likely we are to have been betrayed in the past. Particularly when betrayal comes early in life, and certainly when it happens repeatedly, it haunts us. We work frantically to prevent a recurrence. This is where distrust begins. Betrayal...
Troubleshooting Love

Troubleshooting Love

The couples who come to see me have reached an impasse. Often they can’t talk without yelling and insulting each other. Sometimes they can’t keep house in a way that satisfies them both. Often one feels burdened and believes the other is not doing enough. Always the...
Please Just Stop

Please Just Stop

Because of the authority that we as a society vest in doctors, medicine is a useful place to start thinking about the many ways in which we all try to make decisions for other people.  The problem has to do with differences in point of view. In medicine,...
Priceless Games

Priceless Games

Back in the days when fathers burned autumn leaves after raking them, when schools and churches kept their doors unlocked, and when term papers were produced on typewriters, not all games were packed in plastic and sold in stores. Sure, you could buy games. But back...
What You Really Must Know

What You Really Must Know

As the end of the school year approaches, American kids are groaning about tests and exams. Parents worry. Will Sally flunk history? Will Jason scrape by in biology? What about their grade point averages and college applications? I remember it well. In high school...
Mapping the Known World

Mapping the Known World

Daniel Boorstin, the eminent American historian and Librarian of Congress, collected old maps. One wall of his home in suburban Maryland held a replica of a colored map of Africa drawn in perhaps the thirteenth century. In addition to some predictable geographical...
Doctors and Discomfort

Doctors and Discomfort

The professional hierarchy, at least in America, places physicians at the top and lawyers in the middle while everyone else jockeys for position somewhere below. You might dispute your lawyer’s advice, but if you lived during the last two centuries, you probably...
Hope and Memory

Hope and Memory

In my daily work as a psychotherapist I see that hopelessness and stress often produce despair.  I wonder whether we can conquer these problems at least some of the time by viewing them from a different vantage point. Can we beat the stress by retelling our stories so...
The Secret Remedy for Chaos and Confusion

The Secret Remedy for Chaos and Confusion

If you’d like your days to exhibit a little more order and stability, stop to take stock of the seasonal events that help you orient yourself. What is your favorite time of year? What do you like about it? What rituals do you look forward to? Holidays and seasonal...
How to Beat the Fear of Success

How to Beat the Fear of Success

We all want to succeed, right? Sure! At least theoretically. But have you ever had the experience of hoping for something good and big, having it suddenly handed to you, and then finding yourself freaking out, overwhelmed? Therapists often say that there’s positive...
How to Beat the Fear of Failure

How to Beat the Fear of Failure

Losses accumulate over a lifetime. It is said that people worry about finances and finding the right relationship more than anything else. This article presupposes that you have a goal, a plan, and steps to reach it, but you shy away from the work to be done like a...
Online Dating Do’s and Don’ts

Online Dating Do’s and Don’ts

As a way of meeting a long-term partner, online dating sites are now second only to meeting through friends. This short guide includes some extra information to help older daters feel more comfortable with this still relatively new way of finding a companion. If...
Ten Ways to Make Good Things Happen

Ten Ways to Make Good Things Happen

Some people argue that you shape your own reality, that your mind determines what you get in life. Evidence for this proposition has been put forth by various writers approaching the question from differing perspectives. Pam Grout writes experiments that let you prove...
Do You Know These Ten Top Strategies of Supermoms?

Do You Know These Ten Top Strategies of Supermoms?

Ever wonder why some kids seem to have it all? Some children succeed in school, have lots of friends, and look confident. In a group they appear connected to others and seem to be having fun. On their own, they take pride in their talents and achievements. They are...
What You Must Do to Recover from Your Divorce

What You Must Do to Recover from Your Divorce

Divorce forces you to figure out who you are without the other person. This statement sounds obvious and simple, right? Still, if the two of you have been married for many years, perhaps raising children together, it can be anything but. You are accustomed to allowing...
You Can’t Say Yes If You Can’t Say No

You Can’t Say Yes If You Can’t Say No

From time to time I see clients who say they have an anger management problem. When I ask about it, they tell me stories of frustration. A middle-aged music teacher with a private practice in the evenings becomes enraged when her boyfriend routinely calls her after...
Is This Money Problem Yours?

Is This Money Problem Yours?

Money means different things to different people. It may be a scarce commodity, pursued like a sort of Holy Grail, or it may be the reliable source of treats—a fancy cell phone, prestige wheels, or a glamorous vacation.  Money may be gratifying in the present but...
The Upside of Anxiety

The Upside of Anxiety

The passage from winter into spring can be a tough time: problems at work, family with cabin fever, hostile winter weather clasping the earth in a viselike grip, and the approach of April 15, the dreaded deadline for Americans’ filing of income taxes—all hard, bad...
On Becoming a Psychotherapist

On Becoming a Psychotherapist

As a psychotherapist in solo private practice, I don’t see too many people outside of work. It’s not that I’m socially phobic or antisocial—I’d be in the wrong profession if I were—but that I work at times when other people play. When evenings and Saturdays roll...
Learning How to Say Goodbye

Learning How to Say Goodbye

As we move from ice and snow into the blooming time here in the Northeast, it’s easy to say goodbye to winter. We can hardly wait for the gentle breezes, the bird songs, and the feel of soft cotton against our skin. Other goodbyes are harder. We have trouble with them...
How to Listen Persuasively

How to Listen Persuasively

People often need to work out their differences. George wants one thing. Sue wants another. Whether they are coworkers or spouses or in some other sort of relationship, eventually they will have to negotiate a solution so that they can move on. We are all deeply...
The Hidden Relationship Builder We All Need

The Hidden Relationship Builder We All Need

Apologies are a sticky wicket for many of us. We often disown responsibility when other people’s feelings are hurt. But apologies have an amazing power to restore relationships and strengthen social ties. Most of us would rather not be wrong. It feels ever so much...
What Your Child Says Without Speaking

What Your Child Says Without Speaking

Most of what I know about children I have learned by observing them. What children say is only a small part of the story. How they look, act, and respond to their immediate environment—as well as to you and me—is far more important. The longer you look, and the more...
How You Can Help Your Child Make Friends

How You Can Help Your Child Make Friends

Some children struggle to make and keep friends. You can use this list of pointers to help your child develop social skills. The conversation can also be a springboard for discussion of the many ways of enjoying other people’s company. Let someone know you’d like to...
How to Find a Heavenly Mate Right Here on Earth

How to Find a Heavenly Mate Right Here on Earth

Another relationship went south and you ask yourself why. You found this great guy (or gal). Your eyes met across a crowded room, and—wow! Heaven and earth moved. You just knew that this was The One. The two of you got acquainted on a couple of heady dates and hopped...
Anxiety, Control, and Taking Charge

Anxiety, Control, and Taking Charge

Many people come to see me in hopes that I can help them get rid of their anxiety. But as Irvin Yalom wrote in his wonderful book Existential Psychotherapy, anxiety comes with being human. You can’t erase it. You can manage it. In fact we all do so—by finding ways to...
Talk Therapy: Who’s on First?

Talk Therapy: Who’s on First?

What do people want from therapy? Any solution depends on how the problem is defined, of course. The question you ask determines the answer you get.  We therapists must all assess before we treat. When they take a history, social workers factor in each person’s life...
140 Priceless Ways to Tell Me You Love Me

140 Priceless Ways to Tell Me You Love Me

It has never been easier to send chocolates and flowers on Valentine’s Day. A click and a few keyboarded numbers will do the job. But how genuine and heartfelt is a gesture that involves so little real thought and effort? There’s a better way. The suggestions below...
I Can’t Help It

I Can’t Help It

As a psychotherapist, I work in a “helping profession.” It’s a label that many people swallow whole, without chewing. But what does it even mean? Most people think professional caregivers focus not on making money but on serving others. Still, help is in the eye of...
How to Know If It’s Over

How to Know If It’s Over

Often people ask me to tell them if a relationship is over. Mostly they want me to read someone else’s behavior, to say how I think the other person may be feeling and whether or not she (or he) will ever change.  So what would I say if you asked me these questions?...
How to Feel Better About Yourself

How to Feel Better About Yourself

When I was twelve, my mother died of cancer. She had been ill for seven years. A beautiful redhead in her youth, she increasingly isolated as the disease ravaged her. Over time, I became her sole companion. Now, as a child I could hardly be held responsible for...
What My Clients Have Taught Me

What My Clients Have Taught Me

I chose psychotherapy as my work in the world because it lets me imagine how it might have felt to be born as someone else. I feel privileged to hear other people talk about their lives. My hours of listening have taught me many things. Most of us licensed therapists...
When Do Habits Become Bad?

When Do Habits Become Bad?

No matter how you think or feel, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual seems ready to produce evidence that something is wrong with you. Obsessions and compulsions are a case in point. Ever find yourself plagued with a thought or a worry? It’s as if a bar of music had...
Psychotherapy as Education

Psychotherapy as Education

Traditional educational goals have never been under fire more than they are now in the age of the Internet. Cogent arguments have been made that rote learning is pointless. We need only to know where to find information. If so, what exactly should schools be doing? ...
A Psychotherapist, a Psychiatrist, or Both?

A Psychotherapist, a Psychiatrist, or Both?

Most people come to see me for help not with serious mental illness but with problems dished out by the school of hard knocks. On a first visit we scope the territory, I set up a mental database, and we set goals for our work together. No matter what the issues are,...
Proven Strategies for Dealing with Anger

Proven Strategies for Dealing with Anger

What emotion packs the biggest wallop? It’s anger, of course. When someone gets mad, we all watch out for yelling, hurtful words, and violence. Anger pumps people up, but observers often feel as helpless as if they were watching a volcano erupt. Before we look at...
How to Set Limits with People You Love

How to Set Limits with People You Love

We all long for independence even as we crave acceptance by other people, but our bodies and our psyches demand that we set limits as part of taking care of ourselves. Saying no sometimes helps us protect ourselves from threats. Often, though, we’re afraid that other...
Relationship Choices You Will Regret

Relationship Choices You Will Regret

What will happen if I flirt with this gal or guy? Could the nerd who winked at me online be The One? Should I give this chick another chance on a second date? How fast is too fast to hop into bed or move in together?  Everyone wants to love and feel loved by someone,...
How to Bring Out Your Inner Leonardo

How to Bring Out Your Inner Leonardo

Creativity is a fundamental part of human nature, something to which all of us can lay claim. Okay, you did not ghost write War and Peace, create the first flying machine, or paint Guernica.  But everyone experiences wonderful imaginative leaps in daily life at least...
How to Make or Break a Habit

How to Make or Break a Habit

Habits have lots of virtues. They add comforting structure to our lives and help us counteract chaos. They give us a safety net by letting us go on automatic pilot in times of crisis. In novel situations we rely on habits just because we gravitate wherever possible...
Ten Tips to Help You Listen from the Heart

Ten Tips to Help You Listen from the Heart

All of us have a deep-seated desire to be understood and accepted as we are. Nothing conveys respect and appreciation more than effective listening. Do you know how to listen so that other people feel heard? Practice these tips. They can work magic if you use them...
How to Read Your Child’s Mind

How to Read Your Child’s Mind

Speech is not as important to children as it is to adults. Children have a smaller vocabulary than grownups and don’t depend on words to express their feelings. If you’re a parent, you need to look at the big picture to know what’s going on with your kid. Therapists...
Sympathy and the Capacity for Empathy

Sympathy and the Capacity for Empathy

Judy Small is an Australian songwriter who has now set aside her guitar to be a federal court judge. I first heard her music in the 1980s, when I was editing books. One song in particular caught my attention. At the time I was working with an expert on the...
Noteworthy

Noteworthy

Did you know that your fingers talk to your brain?  They help you process feelings and ideas much as your teeth prepare mouthfuls of food for digestion. In front of the sofa in my office there is a coffee table with a few things on it, including a geode, a huge pine...
Why Good Thinking Is Not Enough

Why Good Thinking Is Not Enough

Therapists like to tell people to talk about their feelings. But why? And if it’s important to do this, why do a lot of people avoid it? One father earnestly told his child, “Nobody wants to know how you feel. They just want to know that you will act rationally.” If...
Advocate on Behalf of Your Troubled Child

Advocate on Behalf of Your Troubled Child

American families seeking mental health services for troubled children in the community today face a daunting challenge. Budgets are tight, resources are hard to access, and demand exceeds supply. Parents do well to become forceful advocates. Scarce benefits go to...
Behave Yourself Naturally

Behave Yourself Naturally

Did you know that exposure to the natural world is good for you? I bet you did even if you never thought about it until now. You don’t need a classroom to teach you this. As you move through each day, try asking yourself this question: how does nature inform your...
Do You Know How to Get Close to Someone?

Checklist for a Healthy Love Relationship

Relationships are like house plants. If you want them to flourish, you must tend them carefully. You must fertilize and water them, give them sunlight, pinch off the dead parts, and supply fresh soil from time to time. To check on the health of your romantic...
Anger and Trauma

Nine Red Flags in the Dating World

You have found this great guy or gal. This person is good-looking, and the sparks fly between you. Your relationship, shiny and new, is off and running. You both have stars in your eyes. Nevertheless, if you are hoping for a long-term commitment you will want to watch...
How to Make a Decision

How to Make a Decision

It can feel hard or easy to make a decision. Deciding that you want swordfish for dinner may be easy. Deciding whether to buy a new car or a used one may seem harder. It may be harder still to choose between going back to school and finding a full-time job. Whatever...
How I Do Therapy with Children

How I Do Therapy with Children

You are worried that something is wrong with your child. Perhaps worse, you doubt your own ability to fix it, and so you are bringing your child to see me, a therapist. It seems only fair, under the circumstances, that I should tell you up front what I can do for you...
Children as Medicine

Children as Medicine

Children as medicine?  No, I do not mean “children and medicine.”  I am not talking about how to raise them, and I am certainly not suggesting that you bring a child into this world so that you can heal yourself in some way. I have in mind the natural...
Of Dust Mice and Men

Of Dust Mice and Men

The couples who come to see me are often people who fight about housekeeping. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the plaintiff is the husband and the defendant the wife. Still, the roles are often reversed. Hubby Gerald argues that wife Sheila is impossibly...
How to Tell If You Are Ready for Love

How to Tell If You Are Ready for Love

If you are looking for a long-term partner, you want to be emotionally available. Huh? What is “emotionally available”? Isn’t it enough to be not married or not in a relationship with someone else? Not exactly. Let me explain. In the discussion below, disregard the...
Ten Reasons to Fire Your Therapist

Ten Reasons to Fire Your Therapist

Back in the days before I became a therapist, I went to see therapists. Lots of them. Over a period of decades. Most of them have all but vanished from memory. I got nothing out of most of the sessions. So why did I keep on going? My mother died when I was twelve. I...
How to Be a Stepparent

How to Be a Stepparent

I’ve been a stepparent, and I’ve had a stepparent. If this history doesn’t make me sound like an expert, let me say that as a psychotherapist I’ve listened to dozens of stepparents, their spouses, and their stepchildren. Stepparents have a tough job, but a few...
How to Have a Great Sex Life

How to Have a Great Sex Life

You can set the stage for romance in bed and elsewhere by following a few simple rules. No, I’m not talking about wine, candles, and roses. I’m talking about attitude. Some people think of sex simply as something to have or do. It’s easy to see how this mindset...
Little Ways to Make Yourself Feel Better

Little Ways to Make Yourself Feel Better

Feeling tired, stressed, irritable, or anxious? Modern life gives adults a tough row to hoe, particularly when the weather and world events look grim. If the daily grind seems out of control and almost more than you can bear, you might want to stop and take stock of...
How Healthy Are You?  Take This Quiz to Find Out

How Healthy Are You? Take This Quiz to Find Out

You and I know that we live in a high-tech world. We cope with problems, stress, and uncertainty on a daily basis. Even if your workplace, your home, and your neighborhood seem pretty safe and secure, just look at the plight of the wider world around us! To cope with...
I Am Killing You Because You Are Killing Me

Respect

The word “respect” stems from the Latin, “to look back,” or “to look again.”  The verb means, according to my crumbling Merriam Webster’s Third New International, “to consider worthy of esteem” or, as a noun,...