Why Our Minds Wander
The default-mode network in the brain is online when your mind is wandering off-task, a habit of the human mind that occurs frequently throughout our waking hours. While attending and focusing is...
View ArticleDepression—New Ways to Treat?
Treatment of depression often slumps into a sterile debate of psychotherapy versus antidepressants. Because prevention of depression is hardly given lip service and depressive treatment is often...
View ArticleThe Heart is a Drum Machine: Drumming as Therapy
Drumming has the potential to be a therapeutic technique that provides both relaxation and energy to the emotionally wounded. read more
View ArticleSimple Solutions Won't Solve Children's Complex Problems
When children have complex needs that require help from both parents and many different service providers (e.g., special education, mental health, child welfare or corrections), no simple solution like...
View Article"You Want Me to Lick What?!"
OCD therapists have been accused of being extreme. When are extreme measures called for? Where should we draw the line? And does exposure therapy really involve licking toilet seats?read more
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Anger Is Its Own Beast, whose Bark Is as Bad as Its Bite
GrrrrGregg Henriques has written an interesting and thoughtful response to my 10 Tips for Reducing Anger post. Many of his points represent quite common objections and I welcome the opportunity to...
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Others All Good or All Bad: A Splitting Headache
In my blog post of December 8, I described what I believe to be an absurdity that has been promulgated by the mental health profession about patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). These...
View ArticleWhen Therapy Doesn't Work
For many people, therapy is a treatment of last resort. A depressed person, for instance, might delay therapy for months or even years, only to give in when his symptoms become so terrible that...
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Why Swimming Is Sublime
Wading into the sublimeMidsummer Melbourne. After almost three hours sitting on trains and buses, and then a walk along a shadeless highway, we made it to the nursing home. Ruth—my wife—and our two...
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Binge Eating in Men
Binge Eating in MenIn the past, men enjoyed a much broader range of “acceptable” body shapes and sizes than women. Societal messages implored women to be stick-thin in order to be sexy or desirable,...
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Why Our Minds Wander
Kids in school are often reprimanded for day-dreaming, so many of us grow up believing that day-dreaming, or mind-wandering, is something to be guarded against if we want to achieve and do well in...
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Depression—New Ways to Treat?
An Expensive Illness Depression costs. It’s generally ranked among the top three illnesses in the world in cumulative economic carnage. Depressed people don’t work well and often get physically...
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The Heart is a Drum Machine: Drumming as Therapy
We moderns are the last people on the planet to uncover what older cultures have known for thousands of years: The act of drumming contains a therapeutic potential to relax the tense, energize the...
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Simple Solutions Won't Solve Children's Complex Problems
I’m a silo buster. I have spent the past 12 years understanding what makes children, families, and communities resilient and discovered that no individual, family, social service, or community can...
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'You Want Me to Lick What?!'
As I noted in my previous post, the best-tested treatment for OCD is exposure and response prevention (ERP). OCD says that a person has to avoid things that cause obsessions and do compulsions to...
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Aristotle Meets Managed Care
Similar to virtuous tobacco company publicist, virtuous used car salesman, and virtuous bill collector, virtuous is the last word that might come to mind when thinking of a psychopharmacologist....
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Nine Ways You May Be Making Your Relationship Toxic!
Toxic thoughts destroy relationships. As described in my book, Why Can't You Read My Mind?, the tragic part of this painful story is that these toxic thoughts often occur out of our awareness.How many...
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How To Make Social Media Work In Romantic Relationships
You’d think that living in the city with thousands of people in close proximity that urbanites might be on social networking sites a lot less. But, in fact, the opposite is true. City dwellers use...
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The Deep Dark Secret of Feeling Shy
Out of breath running around the never-ending city blocks, Elizabeth was now perched delicately on the edge of my office couch, grey-blue eyes offset by high cheek-bones, sandy pony tail, and earnest...
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