I was parked on the street in front of a cute little bungalow about to meet my real estate agent one fine summer afternoon. We were scouting out homes for a pending move my husband and I had decided to make in an effort to downsize. I was just swinging open the driver’s side car door when I saw a blue blur of a car race past me, ripping it right off the hinges as it went. Had I been swinging my legs to get out, they would have been gone too, along with the car door. Fortunately, that did not happen. Panic attacks stink. But in that millisecond, between seeing the blur and comprehending what ..read more

So what is clean pain vs. dirty pain? Recently I ran across this description of the ways couples typically interact that just rang true. This concept of pain describes both the perils and the possibilities that exist within our relationships. If you can agree that pain is a given at times with our partners, this will make a lot of sense to you. Obviously pain, like most things, is by degrees and has wide variations in its expression. You could be miffed that your lover failed to pick up milk OTW home from work as requested, or you could be caught in the devastation that follows when an affair ..read more

In addition to my degree in clinical social work, I have a masters degree in public health. One important goal of public health is to prevent disease from spreading. I want to help you see the costs to you of broken (or non-existent) boundaries by using the analogy of vaccines. First you need to understand that prevention is often invisible unless you look at the prevented costs. Here’s an example of that. There Is A Cost To You And Others Vaccines–they are a great example of this phenomenon. Statistics reported in the Journal of Infectious Diseases show that the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella ..read more

The worry box technique is a simple skill used to help you manage when and how you worry. This sounds simplistic, and on its face it is. However, the results can truly help you place and pace worry better than simply allowing the random worries to crawl around in your head in the unending, unresolved circular pattern they tend to create. The Worry Box Here’s How The Worry Box Technique Works The Concept Set aside a time for worrying. Your worries relate to real and practical problems in your life, so you cannot rid yourself of them altogether, but you can learn to control when and where you ..read more

Why Bother Using Coping Skills? If you aren’t practicing coping skills you learn in therapy regularly while calm, there’s a good chance a skill such as deep belly breathing won’t be as effective as you’d like. When the nervous system dysregulates quickly to fight or flight, instantly really, that lets me know you may need to work on stretching the threshold for your fight or flight response, which requires practicing coping skills when calm. If you are not practicing coping skills regularly when calm, here are some reasons why you should consider doing so: – “Practicing deep belly breathing r ..read more

Your OCD thoughts (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) are false alarms, and you have to treat them as such. What research from Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, UCLA School of Medicine shows: Bio-behavioral treatment works for retraining the brain that is stuck in OCD thought patterns. It’s not easy, but it is longer lasting and more permanently effective than relying on what he calls the “water wings” approach to treatment—that is meds only. There is no medication on the planet that will retrain your brain. Schwartz describes doing this training in the four steps below. There is no medication on the plan ..read more

How often do you dump your spam? If I asked you how often you get spam, I bet there would be a different answer. I could go to my spam folder daily and see dozens of useless offers, from site SEO “experts” to weirdo names like “instrut” or “esiff”, and many foreign language offers to do who knows what. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I never look at the content. Not looking at the content is a normal behavior for those who receive a lot of spam emails. But what about those of you who receive lots of unwanted spammy thoughts, intrusive thoughts that make you cringe, or ones where you genuinely ..read more

Solo travel lets you wander. There is no schedule, other people’s expectations, or anything keeping you from a nap. It’s just you and time. And even though I’m happily married, we let each other have this freedom, for many reasons. Hello Big Apple! Why Solo Travel? It’s easier when you travel solo to get into great restaurants, especially since you can often sit at the bar and dine, or enjoy their custom house specialty libations. You can select exactly the attractions that speak to you, without have to coordinate with others who may often lag behind or simply not like your choices, just lik ..read more

Sooo many times, we need to complete a task, and the first thought is “I don’t feel like it!” Thinking in opposites is a strategy I want to offer you to challenge this thought. Here’s why. My moods can drive me a little crazy at times. They can shift a fair amount, even though I’m generally a pretty even-keeled person. For example, I can feel super UP when a new client contacts me and it feels like a great fit. That’s a big dopamine hit for my little therapy brain. Then there are other times when the occasional isolation of running a solo private practice gets to me. I’m a person who loves co ..read more

Have you ever wondered why your partner triggers such an immediate response in you? Would you like to get curious not furious? Understanding your attachment style, or the way you related growing up to your primary caregiver, can provide a clue to the immediate, visceral reactions you have at times in your current relationships. Instead of getting furious, you can get curious! Curious Not Furious History Consider the four attachment styles we have from John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’s groundbreaking work. In 1949 Bowlby wrote a report on homeless children after the war that greatly increased ..read more