An Unconventional Path to Relieving Stress and Anxiety
What if you could reduce your stress and anxiety when dealing with difficult life situations by changing the way you think about the issue that is causing those negative feelings? Challenges are sometimes inescapable, but there is a set of questions drawn from the psychological discipline known as cognitive reframing, that has been shown to […]
How to Live a Joy-Filled Life with Chronic Illness
“Living with chronic illness isn’t a life half-lived; it’s an opportunity to redefine what it means to be truly alive, resilient, and whole.” ~Christopher Reynolds I have spent the past eleven years of my life in chronic pain. While this journey has been long, excruciatingly difficult, and deeply lonely, I am beginning to come to peace […]
Eldest Children Suffer Under Coercive Control Domestic Violence
Co-authored with Julie Nee All children suffer in families where one partner abuses and controls the other (Stark, 2023). In our work, we have seen that first-born child often suffer the most. In coercive control, one person dominates their partner through tactics including intimidation, isolation, and emotional, physical, sexual, and financial abuse (Fontes, 2015). Coercive […]
Levels of Care in a County Mental-Health System
My intention in writing these posts is to share the experiences that I went through with my son, starting with the first manifestation of his illness and our journey through numerous subsequent episodes. It’s also to provide commentary as a parent and psychiatrist on issues that these experiences bring up, such as how the diagnostic […]
Break the Cycle of Family Mental Illness
It is hard to understand why some people develop serious Mental health conditions while others do not. Research conducted across many decades has revealed that there is a genetic link to mental illnesses such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. Additionally, one in five children has a parent with a serious mental illness. This does […]
4 Reasons to Appreciate Hard Times and How to Cultivate Gratitude
“Thank you for all the challenges that built my character. Thank you for all the hard times that made me appreciate the good times.” ~Unknown Gratitude is often associated with joy, blessings, and moments that bring us happiness. But what about the times when life feels hard? Can we still find gratitude in the pain […]
What If SEL Were About Making the World a Better Place?
“M. K. Gandhi was harmful to the world,” one student wrote on his Instagram story, sharing a provocative video on Gandhi’s birth anniversary. When I asked why he posted such a video, the 15 year old replied, “It was to upset one of my classmates who admires Gandhi.” This classmate had ridiculed him for his […]
“Severance” Highlights Workplace Acts of Betrayal
Source: Photo by Ryan Chia on Unsplash There is a reason so many of us are hooked on the Apple TV+ science fiction show Severance, and it has to do with how uplifted we feel by the relationships formed between the central characters, offering one another hope, strength, and support from bonds of trust while […]
The Partition of 1947 and Intergenerational Trauma
Intergenerational trauma has become a buzzword over the last several years. It was first explored in the research of Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Rakoff and her colleagues in 1966. They found higher levels of distress among descendants of Holocaust survivors. This important finding helped provide a foundational understanding of this phenomenon. Studies in the 2000s examined […]
Choosing Reflection in Times of Change
Time moves slowly in the desert. Since relocating here in September, I wake with the light, like it or not. My closest local friend lives an hour and a half away. My husband and I have each other—thrilling in a second marriage in which we’ve never before lived alone without kids. Still, it’d been 30-plus […]