From Loneliness To a Sense of Community
If you are experiencing loneliness, you’re not unusual. The pandemic lockdowns and the consequent surge of working remotely led many people to feel isolated, especially those living alone. The customary ways that people connected with others were changed.
“Meet Me Where I Am”: About Grief
People are often impatient for someone to finish grieving after the death of a loved one. “How long is my sister going to grieve?” they may ask, eager for the person to get over the death and get back to normal. How long does grief take?
“How long is the person going to be dead?” David Kessler, one of the experts featured in “Meet Me Where I Am” asks. “Because if they’re going to be dead for a long time, you’re going to grieve a long time.” This quote is one of many powerful ones in Grant Garry’s thoughtful documentary film about grief, “Meet Me Where I Am.”
Another expert, Ron Marasco, says, “You think that their death is the worst thing that happens. Then they stay dead.” Making sense of that is a Herculean feat.
Holiday Gatherings: Fun, or Frustration?
With the holiday season ahead, you may be making plans, drawing up a guest list, planning your flights, wrapping up work projects, testing new recipes for your festive meal, all of the things to ensure a fun and relaxing gathering for yourself, family, and friends.
Some of us have close and loving relationships with our families. Some have strained family relationships and lots of tension. Others have walked away from abusive families and have warm relationships with friends that they consider family by choice.
Parenting Lessons from the Barbie Movie
We’ve got another Barbie movie post: this one about the relationship between the teenage daughter and her mom, who works at Mattel. The daughter is trying to establish herself as her own person, and in doing so, pushes her mom away. The mom misses the closeness of their relationship when the daughter was younger and the mom was a more central figure in the daughter’s life.
Couples Lessons from the Barbie Movie
Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” is a fun romp of a summer movie that also tackles the impossibility of society’s contradictory demands of women, the futility of defining oneself through one’s relationship with another person, what it is when one gender holds most of the power in society, difficulties between a teenage daughter and her mom, and what it means to embrace the imperfections of an authentic human experience—among many other themes.
6 Reasons You May Find It Difficult To Get Help After Trauma
If you’ve experienced trauma, you may find it difficult to seek help. Why? There are many possible reasons why. Let’s explore just a few.
How to foster connections with adult children
Fostering connections with our adult children starts when they are infants! If we give our children the message throughout their lives that they are loved and lovable, that we are interested in their thoughts and feelings, that we’re curious about their interests, and that we accept them for who they are, we have a great foundation to continue building a lifelong relationship.
Where to find the small pleasures of life
This post has some resources to help you find some of the small pleasures in life. The previous post discussed the importance of appreciating them.
Sweat the Small Stuff? Appreciate the Small Pleasures!
Many times the small details make all the difference. Maybe it’s a particular seemingly unimportant ingredient or mixing method in a recipe that makes the difference between a delicious dish or an inedible one
“Succession” and Ambivalent Loss
“The king is dead, long live the king!” is a phrase we’ve heard throughout history to announce the death of one monarch and the upcoming coronation of the next.
Mark Twain and Hyperbole
Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” It’s an interesting observation and gets to the idea of hyperbole
Risk and resilience
The German intellectual Goethe is quoted as saying “The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.” How’s that for an interesting paradox?!
What’s the Role of Worry and Anxiety in Your Life?
Did you grow up in a family that was calm, or one where people second-guessed, catastrophized, fantasized doom and gloom scenarios, or worried about what friends—or even strangers—thought of them?
How Much Is Enough?
How much is enough to be happy? I recently read an anecdote about authors Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. They were both at a party hosted by a billionaire on Shelter Island.
Winning Is Everything! Or Is it?
Do you ever find yourself in a disagreement with your partner or someone else about something completely trivial and you just want to win?
HBO’s ”Succession”: What Can We Learn from These Flawed Characters?
One of my favorite series in recent years is HBO’s drama “Succession,” about the Roy family, led by the hugely flawed and highly successful aging patriarch Logan Roy.
Abracadabra: Poof! It’s Magical Thinking!
I met the 12-year-old son of a friend many years ago. I tried to engage him in conversation and asked him what he liked to do when he wasn’t in school. Hang out with his younger brother. Play with his cat. Cook with his mom.
The Value of Friendship
This blog post is the second one inspired by Kerri Grote, a woman who died of brain cancer.
Running Toward Life or Away From Death?
A good friend from high school recently sent me a FaceBook post about someone, Kerri Grote, who died of brain cancer and left a note for her surviving family and friends
The Importance of Therapy for Therapists
Sigmund Freud once said: “Anyone who wishes to practice analysis should first submit to be analyzed himself by a competent person.” This is not to suggest that only good therapists go to therapy. However, it does highlight an important concept. Since everyone struggles from time to time, why would a therapist be immune from this reality?