May 26
A Meditative Experience
Many therapists advocate the practice of meditation for their clients. The benefits of meditation have been well documented in articles and books. Meditation can assist an individual in controlling their breath, which helps to reduce anxiety by lowering heart rate and blood pressure. There are also chemical reactions in the brain observed in fMRIs which activate parts of the brain associated with relaxation. There has even been some documentation on lasting changes in the brains of those who meditate regularly.
Another way meditation is helpful is through distancing the individual from their thinking. Most therapists, at the very least, will focus to some extent …
April 1
Bottoms
As I mentioned in the beginning of the year, I plan on posting excerpts from the draft of the book I am writing about addiction recovery. The book combines my training in the field along with professional and personal experience to provide examples. This excerpt is from an early chapter and discusses bottoms. As always I welcome any feedback.
Whether an addict has to hit bottom or not is a topic of much debate. It is often heard when someone who has tried recovery briefly and failed that “they did not hit bottom yet.” Using this reasoning and …
February 6
Loneliness, The Death Instinct, and Human Connection
Recently someone requested I write an article about loneliness. I wasn’t sure what to write. Then I watched the first season of “Californication” and was feeling a little down myself and figured I could parlay that into an article.
First it is important to identify two types of loneliness. People can feel lonely because they are missing someone or are simply alone when they would prefer to be with someone else. The other type of loneliness is more pervasive and is felt even when in the company of many others. As both types can be distressing, this …
January 18
Escaping or Embracing Life
A recent topic in my groups has been whether group members are escaping or embracing life. It is difficult to differentiate at times which an individual might be doing. It is my contention that in a large number of cases it is more about the attitude than the activity.
The group where we have been having this discussion is for substance abusers. Recently I wrote a chapter in the book I’m working on about harm reduction and used a similar group as an example for that phenomenon. The reason I used that group as an example is because some …
January 8
Parenting and Addiction
As many of you know, I have been working on a book combining my education as a therapist, my experience in the field of addiction, and some personal experience to create a book about addiction recovery. You may also remember I recently promised to begin providing some excerpts from it in this new year. This is the first. I wrote this recently when finishing a chapter on family therapy. Although it addresses what a parent of someone addicted might …
December 23
Attraction
For weeks I have been talking about writing an article on attraction. It is one of my favorite topics in psychology. I often catch myself looking at couples and wondering why they are together, what their relationship is like. When I meet new couples I ask how they met. And of course I analyze my attraction to anyone I date, and even those I just find myself attracted to.
Most people would like to attribute attraction to some mystical force that brings people together. Even I do not want to completely deny the existence of some type of synchronicity in …
August 8
Honesty and Infidelity
A few months ago I wrote a review of “I Love You Man” and related it to dishonesty. At the time, I had caught several students cheating on an exam, and I wondered aloud (or in print) about what leads people to be dishonest. Now I want to revisit this topic, but adding in infidelity.
I think it might be important to define infidelity at this juncture, as I was once involved with a woman who believed having coffee with a woman without her knowledge (in other words hiding it) was cheating. Although this point has …
June 28
Is Marriage an Outdated Institution?
According to the most recent statistics, the divorce rate, often quoted (even by this author in psychology classes) as 50% of marriages, is actually closer to the low 40 percentile. (Divorce Rate: It’s Not as High as You Think, By Dan Hurley, The New York Times, April 19, 2005). But that does not negate the fact that the United States has the highest divorce rate in the world per capita. The fact that so many American marriages end in divorce leads to the question is marriage an outdated institution? I think the answer is dependent on some of …
June 5
Legalization and Motives Regarding Substance Use
There is a lot of discussion these days about the legalization of substances, especially marijuana. These discussions and articles focus on how it might improve the economy, to decriminalization resulting in fewer deaths and a drop in the growth of HIV cases, to medical benefits of marijuana. You might expect someone who witnesses the difficulties and occasional devastation that substances cause to be firmly against legalization. This is not necessarily the case. After all, consider alcohol and tobacco are legal, and yet they are listed as the most destructive substances to individuals and society currently. Then again, this might be a reason not to legalize other substances. In this article the focus is not …
May 16
The Psychopathology of Normal
“What we call normal in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don’t even notice it ordinarily.” This is a quote by Abraham Maslow, the theorist who gave us the idea of the hierarchy of needs (once your basic needs are met you begin to seek higher needs) and the idea of self-actualization.
Maslow’s point is that being normal, being average, although normally perceived as okay, is pathology. Pathology can be simply defined as disease or sickness. The free online dictionary’s definition of psychopathology is “The study of the …