Therapy Stories

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Emancipation

What if the life you’re living is not the same as the life that wants to live in you?  Emancipation is a loaded word, a serious often traumatic term to describe oppression, whether the captivity of one nation over another, one gender by the other, or as in the African-American experience, slavery by color. Emancipation […]

The Time Limited Nature Of The Growing Up Process

“The best inheritance parents can leave to their children is some of their each day.” ~author unknown During a recent television interview the host asked what I thought the number one challenge facing the American Family Today? My response was, “Confusion regarding the time limited nature of the growing up process.” For most of us […]

The Death Of Certainty

Remember the monkey bars in childhood, you had to let go if you wanted to move forward. Someday very soon we’ll be able to claim, we were survivors of immeasurable events. This is what living through history feels like. Your today and yesterday are the stuff of which history is made of. If you appreciate […]

An Unreported Confession In An Over-reported Crisis

“There are decades when not much happens, then there are weeks when decades happen.” ~ V. llyich Lenin There are moments in my life that are so sweet, living on the earth seems like a blessing and a privilege – when I first set eyes on my newborn child; when I’m lying in my lover’s […]

The Masquerade of Love

Bill and Steve are discussing the possibility of love. “I thought I was in love three times.  Three years ago, I cared very deeply for a woman who wanted nothing to do with me.  Was that love,” Steve asked? “No, that was obsession,” Bill explained. “Then two years ago, I fell for an attractive woman […]

Food Addiction – The Unreal Hope

  There is so much to say about the subject I am about to introduce that I could begin this article from any number of directions. I believe there are stories and there are dynamics. I want to draw your attention away from the charismatic thrill of the story and invite you to look more […]

How To Be Better in The Bedroom

Some readers of my Second Opinion articles have characterized my posts as mature. Others have said my posts are not likely to be appropriate for young readers. I’ll let you be the judge, but if the truth is to be written, both genders worry about how they will perform, and getting it right in the bedroom undeniably […]

Life in the 21st Century: What’s Required To Keep Pace?

Science has established beyond reasonable doubt that the polar ice caps are melting, the oceans are rising, and the earth is in fact warming due to the burning of hydrocarbons – The “Greenhouse Effect.” The scientific community reported recently that an asteroid nearly collided with the earth. It missed doing so by only 500,000 miles. […]

Parental Influence: Do as I Do

  Parenting is full of contradiction. “Do as I say not as I do.” Regretfully, this ill-conceived advice is still being modeled by those who intended better than they practiced. The by-product of this double standard generation raised more than children. Liberated from childhood’s restrictions, our generation exercised its freedom by ushering in the most […]

Imaginative Intelligence

Recently I served on a faculty committee of a progressive university organized around the essential question: “What must the university do to stimulate the development of creativity in the minds of our future student?” I offered this second opinion. Creativity is one byproduct of Imagination. The terms are used interchangeably, yet one gives birth to […]

Mass Communication Fatigue Syndrome

You are moving too fast for a world that is round. Sooner or later you will catch up with yourself in a great rear-end collision. How much information do you need, and what are the repercussions? Are you prepared to know too much? Mass communication fatigue is on the verge of becoming the newest public […]

The Quiet Mind

“If you want things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become different yourself.” Norman Vincent Peale From brain imaging research we now know the average person has between 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts per day, 90% of which will be repeated tomorrow. Students of life realize they won’t be making much progress if they […]

“Do You Believe in Mother?”

“I crave thought experiments the way some people crave carbs.”   Since the Industrial Revolution shifted the world into high gear, the cult of speed has pushed us into an ever-accelerating breathless relationship with time. Most of us live on the edge of exhaustion few of us recognize. Our minds and bodies pay an unrecoverable […]

How Old Are We, Really?

People say, Age is an attitude, that it isn’t how old you are, but how you are old. I’ve also heard, Age is a matter of mind; if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. Others advise us that, Age is just a number. Yet my accountant reminds me, numbers count. So what’s the number? How […]

How To Affair Proof Your Relationship

On the Home page of my website, you’ll find a welcoming introduction to the pilgrimage of psychotherapy. As I reread this introduction, I saw something I hadn’t seen before. I invite you to read the following paragraph of my introduction and substitute the word marriage, or however you term your committed relationship for the word […]

Affairs of the Heart – Affairs in the Making

Although our relationships “take place” in public, outsiders know little about the intimate environment we create with another person. No one has continuous access to our intimate relationships, not our closest friends, relatives, or many times even the children who live with us. What’s more, we actively generate privacy by giving our various publics only […]

Smart People, Dumb Choices

If you have trouble reading other people you may find yourself confessing at some later date,  “I wish I had known then what I know now?”  Read this outloud, “It was knowable then, where were you?” Lasting and fulfilling relationships have this in common, true information.  The more reliable the information, the less likely we […]

The Sixth Sense

In the 13th century a now famous Sufi poet – Jelaluddin Rumi wrote a poem entitled The Guest House in which he claimed that “This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.” Rumi went on to encourage […]

Uncommon Sense

Modern affluent societies provide a paradox of choices. More choices make us not freer, but more paralyzed, not happier, but more dissatisfied. More is less.   Practical wisdom is an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. Rules often fail us, incentives often backfire. It will take practical, everyday wisdom to rebuild our world. […]

The Stone Cold Truth About Friendship

Tis the season to be jolly, so lift your glass, or bow your heads, the Holiday Season is an intimate time for family and dear friends. By the time you read this article we’ll all be deep in Holiday preparations. Invitations to join in the gaity will be arriving. For those to whom the season […]

Time Limited Nature of the Growing Up Process

During a recent television interview the host asked what I thought the number one challenge facing the American Family today? My response was, “Confusion regarding the time limited nature of the growing up process.” For most of us it is easy to have children; the challenge is raising them. As almost every parent will admit, […]

Today Is Your Life

The most important part of life is living. And the most valuable day of your entire life is today. The value of today is exceedingly high because you have waited all your life for this day. If you are 57 years old, you’ve waited 57 years for this day, today. Life is not what’s to […]

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Poking Holes In the Darkness

The tragic recent events of Robin William’s life cause us to pause and realize, those that often entertain us are not entertained. Robin gave us all the things he would have wanted to have for himself. He was comic relief, but he was not relieved. The 1947 Frank Capra Classic, It’s A Wonderful Life, a movie […]

X Marks The Spot

Charles Steinmetz was known as the “Electrical Wizard” at General Electric during the early days of the twentieth century. On one occasion after his retirement when the other engineers at GE were utterly baffled by the breakdown of a complex machine, they asked Steinmetz if he would come back and pinpoint the problem. Steinmetz spent […]

The Perils of Liberty

You live almost twice as long on Earth than the typical person did at the beginning of the twentieth century. You have an unlimited food supply at affordable prices, never the slightest worry about shortages, unlimited variety, so much to eat that overindulgence now plagues, not just the well-off, but the poor; the poor being […]

Trust

In last month’s article, I reconfirmed there were no better minds than yours; and that it is not safe to assume otherwise in light of fall-out in confidence surrounding the loss of Malyasian Flight 370. In today’s article I want to set the record straight about some of the misunderstanding surrounding who can you trust. […]

Malaysian Air 370 Confirms Helen Keller’s Axiom

In the shadow of the mysterious events surrounding Malaysian Flight 370, we would do well to remember the discomforting truth in what Helen Keller discovered and wrote: { The idea of } “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding […]

Broken Engagement

Last month, a New York court decided a case, Marshall v. Cassano, providing further legal precedence on less emotional grounds the legal characterization of an engagement ring, and the appropriate rules governing its ownership. John Marshall gave another woman, Delores Cassano, an $8,000 engagement ring.  Delores, in turn, promised to marry John.  John eventually broke […]

Don’t Believe Everything They Told You!

1500 years ago people told us the earth was the center of the universe.  A little over 500 years ago people told us the earth was flat.  Somebody, maybe you, came up with the idea that food was a friend, a reward, or a comfort.  Many of us still believe ice cream tastes good.  Ignorance […]

The Importance of Language

Anyone who is a fan of repartee and delicious dialogue is going to love HER, playing in theaters everywhere.  The movie explores our most basic human need to connect in order to belong.  HER explores the question of “How do you share your life with another?” Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with his operating […]

New Year Resolutions and the Strategies to Make Them Possible

It’s that time of year when people begin preparing their New Year’s Resolutions.  New Year’s Resolutions are essentially renunciations of old habits you have been trying to break unsuccessfully for at least the last twelve-months.  Before I provide you proven strategies to promote your success, I want to review some background on the dynamics of […]

The Five Commandments For Promoting Rapid Progress

There are no ten commandments for success in life.  Wouldn’t we prefer a few steps to follow than a process to understand?  In an attempt to simplify an otherwise complicated process, this thing known as personal growth, I have reduced my observations from over 35 years of private practice as a personal therapist down to […]