THE VALUE OF LISTENING…REALLY LISTENING
I have very frequently seen that choosing to listen to others without our personal reactions to what we are hearing is a very good way to be with someone and feel a connection to them. It often is confusing at first as we have been influenced by a commonly held belief that we should react…
Read MoreBeing True to Yourself Can Make a Difference
Many of my patients tell me that they feel that there is nothing that they can do to make a difference in the world. I encourage them to [just] be themselves and do what they believe is right. Over and over I have seen that how people live their lives and the choices that they…
Read MoreWe Really Do Need Each Other
The recent Beta Theta Pi magazine has an article about preventing suicide and refers to a Harvard study [The Harvard Study of Adult Development] and comments from the study’s fourth director Robert Waldinger, M.D. [who is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School] who concludes that friendships and relationships in general are highly correlated…
Read MoreWhy Frightening Us Doesn’t Work
I have previously written about the problem of allowing ourselves to become frightened and/or anxious by watching the news on TV as it is often about negative events with no information about what can be done positively to help stop or reduce the frequency of the event or similar events. Seeing these events on the…
Read MoreEverything in Moderation?!
I have previously written about the importance of we [humans] being aware of doing things in a moderate way. Now that doesn’t mean much unless it is defined and it’s meaning clarified. One way that I have thought about this idea of moderation recently relates to what seems to be a problem in that important…
Read MoreIs It Ok to Talk About Your Suicide Attempt?
A recent opinion pieceby Benedict Carey in the April 14, 2014 New York Times national edition, talked about suicide prevention efforts now beginning to include input from the close to one million adults in the USA who have attempted suicide. [About 38,000 americans do kill themselves every year]. Mr. Carey reports that previously, talking about…
Read MoreChurches Providing Psychiatric Services?!
A recent opinion piece in the New York Times by T.M. Luhrmann reported on an initiative to involve members of church congregations in the care of people with serious mental illnesses. Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church, has joined with the local Roman Catholic Diocese and the local National Alliance for the Mentally Ill…
Read MoreBeing Haunted by Old Traumatic Experiences
Recently I stopped assessing and treating children and adolescents who were hospitalized on the Copestone Child and Adolescent Inpatient Programs on the St.Joseph Campus of Mission Hospitals. I had planned to do this for over a year and thought that I was ready and well prepared for this change and transition in my life. Some…
Read MoreIt Takes a Neighborhood to Change a Speed Limit
When my children were preschool age and a number of our neighbors also had preschool age children, I felt that the speed limit on our street was too fast. So, I called the city traffic engineer and explained my concern about the safety of our children and why I wanted the speed limit lowered. He…
Read MoreBuddha’s Brain
I recently listened to a lecture presented at Google by Rick Hanson, the author with Daniel Seigel of Buddha’s Brain. I am also now reading the book. The lecture focused on the reality of our brains being highly reactive to percieved threats and that this keeps us feeling stressed, compromises our immune sytems and leads to unhappiness…
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