Has Technology Killed Down-Time?
A woman I know is afraid to go to bed at night. She’s not afraid of the dark or of having a nightmare. She’s not afraid of someone breaking into her apartment or of dying in her sleep. What she’s afraid of is open time with herself, the down time/unfocused space that bedtime brings, when […]
Are You Feeding On Your Pain… Past Its Expiration Date?
Intimate relationships include pain, at least every intimate relationship I have ever been in or witnessed. And most, if we’re lucky, include pleasure too. We cannot change the fact that pain is included in intimacy, but how much pain we endure is, in part, up to us. As a therapist and a wife, I think […]
Loving A Narcissist Without Losing Yourself
My 10-year-old was invited to a party this weekend, a camp reunion sleepover, given by one of her closest friends. Unfortunately, this same weekend, she has an event that she can’t and doesn’t want to miss, a competition for which she has trained diligently and for many months. The other little girl is very angry […]
How to Practice Mindfulness With No Special Skills
Mindfulness is hot, and like all hot topics, it comes with a lot of truths and a lot of falsehoods. Teaching mindfulness, I hear the same questions arising time and again, misunderstandings really about what mindfulness is and what it means as a practice or way of life. Indeed, most of the obstacles that we […]
We Are Using The Same Words But Are We Speaking The Same Language?
I learn a lot from the comments I receive on my blogs. I learn not only about what resonates and is helpful for people, but also about who we are and how we think, communication itself, which then teaches me more about what might be helpful going forward. There are some teachings that I re-learn […]
Why Our Thoughts Are Not Real
Did you ever realize that everything going on in your mind, every thought, feeling, sensation, everything you are aware of, is in fact happening only in your private internal world? Your thoughts appear only to you, and are not being heard by anyone else whatsoever. There is one physical world here on earth, but billions […]
Prescription for Happiness: Living WithOUT Intention
We are a culture of doers. “What can I do?” “What should I do?” And the double do… “What do I do?” We are conditioned to believe that we need to do something to be happy and really, just to be okay. We need to do something in order to get the something or someone […]
The Most Important Question Of All: How Can I Help?
Something amazing happened to me. It was a very small event, but an event that is disappearing from our world, growing extinct. Because of how much it moved and surprised me, I find that I can’t stop thinking about it. And so, I write this blog today to honor a practice that is now the […]
Our Phones Are Getting Smarter But Are We Getting Dumber?
Nearly 100 years ago, Albert Einstein wrote the following: “I fear the day when technology will surpass our human interaction. We will have a generation of idiots.” As anyone who knows my blog knows, I also worry about what technology is doing to us as a species. And lately, I worry specifically about how our […]
How to Ask a Friend for What You REALLY Need
We all go through hard times now and again. And when the hard times come, we need good friends to help us through. I have been hearing a lot of stories about friendship lately, and it has gotten me thinking about what we really want and need from our friends, particularly when we are in […]