“I know that when I do something wrong, I’ve been taught that I’ll be forgiven,” said Erik. “I believe it in my head, but I just can’t feel it in my heart. I still feel ‘bad.’ “
Knowing something in our heads does not always translate to...
In the alcoholic home, if a spouse chooses not to limit her drinking, this is their responsibility. However, other family members can set limits on how they will be affected by it. If an alcoholic continues to drink, the other spouse can only limit themselves, not the other person. They can say,...
An addiction is a compulsive physiological need for something, in other words, something that someone needs to survive. People are usually addicted to a specific substance, such as alcohol, cocaine, speed, or food. But people can also feel addicted to activities, such as sex, gambling, work,...
“My mother is a narcissist.”
I hear it a lot. I can understand why some people feel that way about their parents or others in their life who have left them hurt.
I’m going to keep using “mom” as an example here, but these are guidelines you can use with anyone in...
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said, referring to the grim financial realities he had been hiding.
“You never told me you were feeling alone,” he said, referring to her reason for getting involved with someone at work.
“I didn’t know you didn’t want...
Much of our identity comes from the positive assertions of who we are. We say things such as, “I love sports,” or “I love to travel.” We are asserting positive truths about who we are.
There are many people who aren’t in touch with their “not me”...
In each of our lives, there's one person who's always tearing us down, who recklessly spends our money and makes inexplicable decisions that cost us valuable time, and sometimes that person can let us down like no one else. Yep, I'm talking about myself. And you. And everyone who struggles to...
A woman complained to me about a coworker who would always interrupt her while she was trying to get her job done. She acted as if her tendency to be behind in her work was her coworker’s fault.
“Why do you talk to her?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” she replied.
...
There are two human drives. One is connection and the other is aggression. Aggression here does not mean anger. It means initiative and energy, which are used in the service of goals.
Everything we do is either relational or goal-directed—or, ideally, both. Basically, we are “lovers...
Have you ever had one of those moments where everything just seemed perfect? It never seems to last, does it?
What are those perfect moments? How do we create more of them?
We all have a perfect nature, and in a perfect world, every one of us would succeed beyond our wildest dreams. However, we...
After 30 years in the profession of helping people, I have come to understand something: we cause much of our pain by the people we choose. In every kind of clinical issue that psychologists deal with, relationships are a big part of the picture in some way. Consider these questions:
- Are you...
When you hit a point in your life where you don’t know what to do, you want to give up, and you don’t know where you’re going, I want you to keep something in mind: Any one thing you do is only a scene in a larger movie. To understand that action, you have to play it out all the...
