Want to Eat Healthier and Feel Better on Your Skin?

For years, people thought of me as healthy because I rarely ate meat or desserts. But it was more that I was desperate to stay thin, and I consumed tons of processed food and sugary candy because I could eat them without gaining weight. Now that I’m older, and especially since I have children, I’m […]

Can “Self-Love” Undermine Personal Growth?

It’s hard to avoid mentions of self-love these days. Social media inundates us with jargon about achieving self-love by knowing our attachment styles and “re-parenting ourselves,” while assessing others for red flags so we can cleanse our lives of toxic people. This builds on decades of self-help literature that shifted our focus to self-optimization at […]

The Art and Value of Paying Attention

Your attention is a crucial asset and resource. Its proper application can be a differentiating factor in your life and work, in distinguishing you in relation to other people and, crucially, in what you can offer to the world that artificial intelligence/AI can’t. Attention can also be a valuable component of self-development. Thinking of attention […]

Can Self-Compassion Change the Way You See Society?

Ever since I was introduced to mindfulness, I have contemplated the image of the monk spending his days meditating in a cave deep in the foothills of the Himalayas. It seems like enlightenment might be slightly more attainable without the daily annoyances of traffic, parking tickets, taxes, and endless commercials. For most of us, however, […]

How Growing Up in a Traumatic Family Shapes Us

These days, it feels like the word “trauma” is everywhere—on social media, in everyday conversations, and especially in therapy rooms. But even as awareness grows, healing from trauma can still feel just as hard—sometimes even harder. Knowing what happened doesn’t always make it easier to move forward. Week after week, I support clients suffering in […]

When A Parent or Adolescent Uses Wounding Words

Of course, that old saying, “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me,” is wrong. Particularly between people who are caringly connected, like parent and adolescent for example, unhappy feelings expressed through hasty words can do a lot of damage. Thoughtlessly spoken, they are emotionally driven. Some relationships are particularly […]

Can Literature Help Save Democracy?

Michael Fischer’s recent book, How Books Can Save Democracy, is a worthwhile and timely short read for psychiatrists, therapists, and the general public. Fischer is the Dicke Professor in Public Humanities at Trinity University. He argues that reading fiction and non-fiction can promote relational, cognitive, and emotional qualities that would improve democratic dialogue and bring […]

Evolution, Schedules, and the Quiet Cost to Mental Health

For much of our existence, clocks and calendars did not exist to mark time. Instead, we lived according to the cycle of day and night. Weather, hunger, or seasons dictated when we ate, slept, and moved season to season continuing to survive. As humans, we have always lived spontaneously, in tune with natural rhythms, not […]

How to Move From Harm to Healing in Schools

It’s Friday afternoon, and as you watch the last students file onto the bus, your mind races. There’s talk of an off-campus fight involving several of your students—a conflict that began long before you met them, but now intrudes on your classroom, your lessons, and even your sense of safety in certain moments. You’ve tried […]

Teen Sleep Is Affected Not Just by Parenting, but by Policy

Australia recently announced a ban on social media use for kids under 16, citing concerns about Mental health and online safety. But there’s another issue at stake—sleep. Teenagers’ late-night screen use has quietly become one of the biggest barriers to healthy development. The consequences of teen sleep loss are serious Sleep-deprived teens face higher risks […]