Episodes
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The Cynic's Lament
Behind a cynic's simmering scowl there is someone who deeply cares but can no longer afford to pay caring's price.
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Haunted Houses . . . Haunted Heads
As children, we imagine that what most frightens us is “out there” waiting in the darkness. Only later, as adults, do we realize that actual demons and ghosts often live within the dusty corners of our psyches.
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Under the Microscope
Some folks feel constantly scrutinized by others. It's a tough way to live.
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Want to Enhance Your Creativity? Move
There is an easy and accessible way to enhance your creativity.
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We're Being Poisoned
There’s not a human on the planet devoid of microplastics and, in many instances, forever chemicals, among many other toxins, and there is growing evidence these poisons are impacting our mental health.
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On Being Impulsive
Impulsivity can prove dangerous, but it has an upside as well.
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Age and Marriage
Is there something inherently dysfunctional about marrying someone much older or younger than oneself?
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When Rose-Colored Glasses Shatter
It’s said it’s better to go through life wearing rose-colored glasses than to spend time searching for demons. But sometimes the demons find us.
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Who Owned Your Childhood?
In America today, most children are heavily supervised, scheduled and monitored by parents or e-devices, missing the essential experience that allows them to truly possess their childhood years.
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Intimacy
One of life’s greatest gifts is to deeply know and be known by another person. And one of its greater disappointments is to discover that a loved one is actually a mere acquaintance.
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Funless
Those pursuing mental and physical well-being sometimes overlook an essential component.
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Behind Anger’s Mask
Often, anger hides what’s really going on emotionally in someone’s life.
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Mindfulness or Hopefulness?
During emotionally challenging times, which self-care method is most beneficial? Mindfulness or hopefulness?
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A Different Kind of Attention Deficit Disorder
The absence of genuine, meaningful attention from others creates its own kind of emotional deficit.
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Secrets, Honesty and Love
One couple’s reluctance to share their erotic fantasies illustrates how secrets and honesty influence emotional intimacy.
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Cry, Wail, Pout
Adults are supposed to express their wants and needs in a direct and transparent manner rather than pull peoples' chains with woeful whines, pouts, and long faces.
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Better Off Single or Coupled?
Unless one’s marriage or partnering is what psychologists call “high quality,” you may be better off single.
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Privacy Deprivation
For most of us, the world demands far too much of our attention.
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Thinking Less, Feeling More
Sometimes, too much thinking and self-analysis get in the way of learning from our emotions.
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That Face in the Mirror
Have you accepted the idea that young is attractive and old is not? Are you certain this is true?
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Psychological Prostitution
Too often, people trade away their dreams, passions, autonomy and principles for promises of money, security and success, small comforts that rarely compensate for losing or repressing key elements of one's character and identity.
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Good Accidents
In your darkest moments, you may not feel hope, but somewhere in your future there may be a good accident waiting to happen.
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In the Grip of Thanatos
In Freudian psychology it’s called “Thanatos,” or what is colloquially referred to as “the death wish.”
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Hypnosis: Now, Repeat After Me . . .
It’s a bonafide therapeutic tool in the right hands and unadulterated snake oil in the wrong ones.
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Finding the Right One
Those who struggle to find “the right one” often question if it’s something about them, when it might just be bad luck.
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Messages from Your Dream Maker
The dream makers in our minds tell us things no one else will or can. They know who we are in a way even our closest friends may not.
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What We Get to Keep
A struggling single mom’s advice: No matter how much stuff we make or buy, there are only a few things we truly keep.
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Talking Too Much
We are drowning in a flood of blah, blah, blah.
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Betraying Our First Mother
When it comes to Mother Earth, we humans prove heavy on the take and miniscule on the give.
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Affirmations Anyone? It Depends
Trying to dilute negative self-talk with its positive counterpart may actually make us feel worse, not better.
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Stress Everywhere All the Time
There’s the climate disaster, the rise of oligarchy, Orwellian propaganda, needless wars... We’re drowning in a toxic mental soup of disheartening news, and many are struggling to come up for air.
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The Curious Nature of Profanity
Each of us harbors our own unspoken set of rules about when and with whom swearing is acceptable.
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Afraid of People
“Social anxiety disorder” is a label, like many diagnostic ones, that tends to gloss over the many individual differences among those who feel an aversion to human contact.
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Marital Decoys
Couples who feel that unhappy truth closing in may rush to distract themselves with a new baby or house or another “look there, not here” diversion.
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A Story About Race
Studies show that, upon meeting someone new, their race is the first thing we notice. Some claim this is a tribal tendency encoded in our genetic lineage, but I don’t buy it.
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On Being Naked
Some observations on the behavioral psychology of being naked.
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What, Me Worry?
Unless you are blissfully enlightened, mentally checked out or a “What, me worry?” type, chances are you spend a hunk of time gnashing your psychological teeth. What can one do about that?
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Are You a Big or Little Chunker?
“Chunking” is a powerful but often poorly understood dynamic in couples communication.
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Living Without Purpose
Some of us are plagued by the suspicion that our daily labors are meaningless, or that we're missing whatever “right fit” there could be between our nature and the roles, vocations and avocations one can occupy in this world.
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A Heart Once Closed May Never Reopen
When spurned in love, some of us close up like a flower on a cold night, afraid to unfold in a new day's warmth for fear of another frost.
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Bad Parents or Bad Fit?
Most of us, shrinks and non-shrinks alike, tacitly agree that a troubled present is indicative of a troubled past. But sometimes it’s more nuanced than that.
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When Your Advice Falls Flat
How do we increase the chances someone will heed our well-meaning counsel?
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When All Else Fails
Sometimes, conflict management calls for a unique approach.
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Drinking Himself Dry
In conjunction with so-called “dry January,” I offer a cautionary tale about alcohol.
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Who Are You Changing For?
Often, New Years resolutions do more harm than good. Why?
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Is That You, God?
Messages from God can come in strange packages.
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Are You Afraid of Joy?
Too many of us hide from joy, frightened by the prospect of losing ourselves in the rapture of dance, music, lovemaking, spiritual reverie, awe and wonder, laughter or intimate sharing.
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Christmas Awaits Our Return
We are the Grinch who stole Christmas.
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Holding on for Dear Life
When someone tells me they're afraid of the dark, usually, they are missing the mark. What scares them is not the blackness, but the horrors their imagination projects into it.
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Giving Whatever You've Got
When life has beaten us down and we don't have any thanks to give, we can still give whatever we've got.