If you’re like many people, accessing self-compassion can be a bit like searching your desk for reading glasses that are dangling over your chest. You didn’t lose your lenses, you just needed to know where to look. It’s possible to see challenging life chapters as personal growth adventures by writing about the obstacles you face […]
Healing the Wounds That Bind and Why They Don’t Define Us
The path to wholeness begins by embracing our "broken" places
Dana was in tears. Once again, she had engaged in scheduling acrobatics to meet a new friend for a romantic getaway, only to find herself alone in a hotel room with unanswered text messages and her self-destructive history with men. “I feel like I have a hole inside me,” she said, as we began her therapy session. […]
Are You Carrying Baggage That Doesn’t Belong to You?
The difference between caring and caretaking
Imagine you’re walking down a path when you encounter a stranger carrying a boulder. Suppose the person bemoans their aching back and offers a litany of reasons why they can’t put the rock down. Feeling your heart tug, you might point to the slab of granite in your own arms and say, “So sorry. I […]
Speaking about the power of narrative in Real Simple Magazine
My Interview on “Your Winning Life Podcast”
A New Chapter in the Hudson Valley
A little over a year ago, in the height of the pandemic, I stepped out of my story and began a new chapter in the beautiful Hudson Valley. I had no clear, long-term vision. In fact, I’ve stopped sticking to plans, as they rarely stick to me. Instead, when I get the itch to shake […]
Believe It or Not, Your Anxiety Loves You
Like an over-protective parent, it just wants you to be safe
Imagine you grew up in a castle. Maybe you felt relatively safe until, one day, the King and Queen left the drawbridge down and a hungry hooligan snuck into your room and stole your favorite lollipop. Or maybe you were constantly being over-run by starving hooligans, and nobody noticed or cared that you were scared […]
Searching for Hope on the Dark Side
Destruction, rebirth and other lessons from the abyss
Lately, I’ve been plumbing the depths of the underworld for clues about how to navigate a global pandemic and national cataclysm. No, I’m not holding seances or sticking pins in effigies of megalomaniacs, tempting as that may be. But rather, I’m turning to stories and symbols of human encounters with the forces of destruction in […]
How to Reframe Your Narrative About Challenging Relationships
Imagine your nemesis as the personal trainer of your emotional muscle workout
Every human relationship, whether familial, romantic, or platonic, is more or less an ambitious, hopeful, but potentially hazardous psycho-chemistry experiment. When you combine two unique sets of genetics, backgrounds, and life experiences, you never know whether you’ll get sparks, combustion, or something in between. Most of us aspire to the sparks and “in between,” anticipating the […]
Projection as Protection
How to stop taking things personally that have nothing to do with you
Sometimes, despite your good intentions and clear communication, you can still get blamed for something that isn’t your fault. Once you’ve reflected on your possible role in the situation, it’s important not to take on emotional baggage that isn’t yours, lest it weigh you down. For a variety of self-protective reasons, some people are simply […]
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