In the world of addiction, recovery and therapy in NYC, it is common to hear people say: “What other people think of me is none of my business.” Reminding yourself of this can be a helpful antidote to the pernicious habit of obsessing about what other people are thinking about you. Of course we should… Read More…

Codependency is a term often used to name some of the self-defeating ways that human beings can participate in relationships, the major characteristics of which include being overly controlling and/or overly compliant. For today I’m thinking about the latter, that corrosive habit of engaging in excessive approval seeking and people pleasing that is usually followed… Read More…

It is generally assumed in our culture that negative emotions are, well, negative. Unwanted. Garbage. Don’t talk about them. Deny them. Have another drink. Eat more food. Make more money. Have more sex. Just get rid of the feelings. And increasingly, pharmaceutical companies are exacerbating the situation by way of those disturbing commercials that depict… Read More…

If we want to achieve emotional balance and peace of mind in our lives, we need to make friends with the darkness. And by that I mean both the darkness in the world as well as the darkness within each of us. Are you saying I should joyfully accept poverty, war and oppression as well… Read More…

Most of us are in the midst of a permanent identity crisis…and thank goodness for that. Excuse me? Go with me on this for a moment. But before I explain what is good about a permanent identity crisis, let’s look more closely at the idea itself. Sociologists Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner write… Read More…