by Marcia | Jul 10, 2015 | Childrearing
One of my child clients, a smart, pretty redhead we’ll call Marcy, comes to see me after graduating from an extended day treatment program at a local clinic. Marcy, age nine, is healthy, strong, and stubborn. She is an unenthusiastic student at school, where she...
by Marcia | Jul 7, 2015 | Living Well, Relationship Skills
Friends may be the family we choose, but they can unfriend us and not just on Facebook. Once they do, we feel excluded, rejected. Family, on the other hand, stays the same no matter what even if some relatives aren’t on speaking terms. The mere fact of blood ties is...
by Marcia | Jun 30, 2015 | Anger Management, Relationship Skills
It is tempting to go for payback when someone disses you. If you cut me dead on the street last week, or failed to respond when I as a neighbor asked for your help, the angry part of me might have wanted to hurt you. How could you do this to me? I probably wondered. A...
by Marcia | Jun 26, 2015 | Mental Health
Recently an alternative healer suggested that further training as a personal development coach could make me a far more effective therapist. This well-intentioned advice puzzled me, especially since the healer did not know my work. How does what I do differ from...
by Marcia | Jun 23, 2015 | Anger Management, Relationship Skills
In the wake of the June 17 shooting at Charleston’s Emanuel A.M.E. Church, the nation’s journalists have expressed outrage, horror, and grief in words familiar from responses to past atrocities. Dylann Storm Roof, denounced as a terrorist and a racist madman, may be...
by Marcia | Jun 19, 2015 | Love & Marriage, Relationship Skills
The older we get, the more likely we are to have been betrayed in the past. Particularly when betrayal comes early in life, and certainly when it happens repeatedly, it haunts us. We work frantically to prevent a recurrence. This is where distrust begins. Betrayal...
by Marcia | Jun 16, 2015 | Love & Marriage, Relationship Skills
The couples who come to see me have reached an impasse. Often they can’t talk without yelling and insulting each other. Sometimes they can’t keep house in a way that satisfies them both. Often one feels burdened and believes the other is not doing enough. Always the...
by Marcia | Jun 9, 2015 | Relationship Skills
Because of the authority that we as a society vest in doctors, medicine is a useful place to start thinking about the many ways in which we all try to make decisions for other people. The problem has to do with differences in point of view. In medicine,...
by Marcia | Jun 5, 2015 | Learning, Living Well
Back in the days when fathers burned autumn leaves after raking them, when schools and churches kept their doors unlocked, and when term papers were produced on typewriters, not all games were packed in plastic and sold in stores. Sure, you could buy games. But back...
by Marcia | Jun 2, 2015 | Learning, Living Well
As the end of the school year approaches, American kids are groaning about tests and exams. Parents worry. Will Sally flunk history? Will Jason scrape by in biology? What about their grade point averages and college applications? I remember it well. In high school...
by Marcia | May 29, 2015 | Learning, Living Well
Daniel Boorstin, the eminent American historian and Librarian of Congress, collected old maps. One wall of his home in suburban Maryland held a replica of a colored map of Africa drawn in perhaps the thirteenth century. In addition to some predictable geographical...
by Marcia | May 26, 2015 | Living Well, Medical Care
The professional hierarchy, at least in America, places physicians at the top and lawyers in the middle while everyone else jockeys for position somewhere below. You might dispute your lawyer’s advice, but if you lived during the last two centuries, you probably...
by Marcia | May 22, 2015 | Healthy Aging, Living Well
In my daily work as a psychotherapist I see that hopelessness and stress often produce despair. I wonder whether we can conquer these problems at least some of the time by viewing them from a different vantage point. Can we beat the stress by retelling our stories so...
by Marcia | May 19, 2015 | Living Well
If you’d like your days to exhibit a little more order and stability, stop to take stock of the seasonal events that help you orient yourself. What is your favorite time of year? What do you like about it? What rituals do you look forward to? Holidays and seasonal...
by Marcia | May 15, 2015 | Learning, Living Well
We all want to succeed, right? Sure! At least theoretically. But have you ever had the experience of hoping for something good and big, having it suddenly handed to you, and then finding yourself freaking out, overwhelmed? Therapists often say that there’s positive...
