For three decades I’ve been searching on and off for an article on what makes or  breaks relationships. Having never found it, I’m writing on the subject from what I recall. So, we’re not talking scientific studies here, but my recollection and interpretation of crucial relationship considerations.  If memory serves, the four areas to assess for successful relationships are values, lifestyles, personalities, and interests. Some areas require differences, while others flourish due to similarities. But, if areas that need to be the same are not, it’s highly likely the relationship ..read more

A friend in her late 70s just started to learn how to play canasta. She also learned to ski, ice-skate and ride a horse in the 50 years I’ve known her. And become a “normal” eater. In order to learn new things, we all start at the same place: not knowing how. As Peter Bregman says in “Learning Is Supposed to Feel Uncomfortable, “the secret to enjoying learning and sticking with an activity until you’ve mastered it is to become comfortable with being uncomfortable as in unskilled, inept, ignorant, and clueless..”  If you didn’t know that, you do now because who’s gong to argue with someone ..read more

Reviewed by:  Karen R. Koenig  In Feel-Good Productivity, UK-based author, physician, and entrepreneur Ali Abdaal shows us that the key to successfully completing tasks we perceive as tedious, boring or just plain onerous is to connect with our positive feelings about them. Frustrated and disappointed in himself as a professional struggling with poor task management skills, he transformed himself through research and trial-and-error to become “the world’s most followed productivity expert” with 4.5 million subscribers and over 93 million total views on his YouTube channel. How many o ..read more

You Hurt My Feelings, a Prime video movie, raises serious questions about how honest to be with people. When we see intimates doing things that harm them, don’t we need to hurt their feelings a bit to help them? If we have a friend who drinks too much then engages in risky behavior, don’t we owe it to them to burst their bubble and share our fears of what dangers might befall them? If a parent needs to go into a nursing home because they can’t care for themselves, isn’t our role to keep them safe even if taking away their autonomy means wounding their pride in being self-sufficient?  Beca ..read more

Are you a “procrastin-eator”—someone who heads for the refrigerator when they’re not hungry to avoid doing a task you don’t want to do? Many dysregulated eaters use food as a way to put off off-putting activities rather than dig in and get them done.  The internet abounds with instructions for ending procrastination, yet it remains a major problem for many folks, especially those who carry an ADHD diagnosis. Not that you need to have ADHD to procrastinate. It’s characterized by: “Having uncertain goals, feeling overwhelmed, experiencing difficulty concentrating, holding onto negative beli ..read more

People get confused by what it means to understand versus accept someone’s behavior. Sometimes understanding does move us toward acceptance and other times it makes no difference. That is, understanding doesn’t necessarily mean acceptance. For example, an elderly parent or grandparent who has some form of dementia may repeatedly ask you questions, forget what you asked them, or blurt out things inappropriately. Stepping back you can understand what’s happening with them, including that they mean no harm, and then decide if their behavior is acceptable. It’s likely that you would find it tolera ..read more

It’s hard getting clients to say positive things to themselves. Super hard. You’d think they’d be eager to engage in self-encouragement, as in, “Boy, it’s great to stop saying all those negative things to myself. All they ever did was bum me out. Being my own cheerleader makes all these wonderful feelings bubble up inside me and that makes me feel so good. Why would anyone want to say downer things to themselves?” Why indeed? How can you not feel awful when you say awful things to yourself? Some folks say faking it til they make isn’t right because it’s, well, not true. But, that’s the whole p ..read more

(Originally published at NYJB)  For a slim book of 62 pages, All That Happiness Is packs a wallop. Full of insights into what this prized state is—and isn’t—Adam Gopnik’s reflections teach us how to free ourselves from the chains of expectations and let happiness find us. A long-time staff writer at The New Yorker, prize-winning essayist, and prolific author, he writes with wit and compassion and parses his theory of happiness down to the nitty gritty. Gopnik starts out by pondering whether the crux of our nation’s fixation on happiness might be that our Declaration of ..read more

I confess, I was a bit of a daydreamer from childhood through early adulthood. Mostly, my daydreams were about romantic relationships. As I grew older and had more control over my life (and more knowledge about love), those daydreams mostly subsided. I do recall both loving and hating them. Loving the hits of dopamine conjured up by happy endings and hating that my real life wasn’t living up to my fantasy one. I hadn’t thought much about daydreams until I read Daydreaming’s dark side: the compulsive, complex fantasy disorder that dominates some people’s daily lives, and started thinking a ..read more

When we’re hurt or upset we may see other people as the enemy, that is, as viewing us with hostile intent. When we feel invalidated, vulnerable, unheard, unseen or helpless, we may try to relieve these feelings by lashing out. We attack because we feel attacked. After all, as the saying goes, hurt people hurt people. Take my client Celine who grew up in a family that made her feel less than because of their high expectations of her coupled with neglect. She was shamed and humiliated by two younger brothers who ganged up on her and teased her till she cried. Her parents were busy with their job ..read more