The Many Reasons Why Therapy Clients Cry
How can both joyful and tragic events elicit tears? This question puzzles many clinicians, including some who are considered experts in the field of emotional expression. The problem is that few of us...
View ArticleKetamine: Leading the New Wave of Antidepressants?
Since it was introduced as an anesthetic in the 1970s, ketamine has occupied an uncertain pharmacological status. It’s been used as both a Vietnam-era battlefield painkiller and an illicit party drug,...
View ArticleCoping with a Genetic Disposition for Depression
My family is haunted by depression. My mother can trace it back in her family at least six generations and it's in my father's family, too. When it hits, it hits hard. Understanding the legacy of...
View ArticleBreaking the Cycle: OCD Treatment that Works
Many people with OCD aren’t easy to diagnose or treat. Clients with OCD can present as panicky, depressed, and agoraphobic, as well as with a wide range of personality problems and relationship issues....
View ArticleUncovering the Source of Suicidality with Brain Science
“My mother died today. Or perhaps it was yesterday,” says Victoria Arango. She’s a tall, lean, handsome woman, who happens to be one of the world’s most productive neuroscientists. She’s just quoted...
View ArticleA Breathing Exercise Regimen for Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety is not only ever-present, it is ever-threatening. It is a phantom that steals people’s freedom. Living with panic attacks is like belonging to a street gang: one must always be on the alert for...
View ArticleThe Anxious Client Reconsidered
Several years ago, my wife and I were at the end of a rather long line waiting to be seated in a popular local restaurant. Tired of standing, we took a seat in an alcove secluded by a large pillar. As...
View ArticleHypnotic Language in the Consulting Room
I first learned my permissive approach watching Milton Erickson’s work in the late 1970s, particularly the way Erickson used hypnosis and challenged standard ideas about hypnotic techniques and...
View ArticleOvercoming Depression Using a Mind-Body Approach
Mindfulness isn’t a skill that comes naturally. If you want to anchor your attention to what’s happening in the present moment, you must actively engage your mind’s natural tendency to fly all over the...
View ArticleThe Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Nearly a decade ago, I treated a man named Abel, who was severely obsessive. He taught in a college communications program and loved words, but he’d become so obsessed with how human beings communicate...
View ArticleThe Rise of Therapy’s Positive Psychology Movement
Martin Seligman reports spending much of his life as a “walking nimbus cloud enduring mostly wet weather in my soul.” Former president of the American Psychological Association and about as famous as...
View ArticleCoping with Anxiety by Welcoming Stress
As I tell this story, you can ask yourself, “What’s this have to do with the practice of therapy?” I’ll answer, I promise—after the story. I visit the bathroom to discover the toilet is plugged up. I...
View ArticleFacing Our Worst Fears
As I tell this story, you can ask yourself, “What’s this have to do with the practice of therapy?” I’ll answer, I promise—after the story. It’s Monday morning, and I’ve set aside several hours to work...
View ArticleAnxiety: A Modern Phenomenon?
In April 1869, a young doctor in New York named George Miller Beard, writing in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, coined a term for what he believed to be a new and distinctively American...
View ArticlePositive Psychology Revisits Depression Therapy
If Thomas Jefferson were a psychology graduate student today, he’d probably think of himself as a positive psychologist. It was Jefferson, after all, who began the Declaration of Independence with the...
View ArticleCognitive Behavioral Therapy Redefines Mental Health
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is arguably the most successful therapy ever developed. In only about 40 years, it’s gone from the almost accidental innovations of two disenchanted psychoanalysts to...
View ArticleBreaking the Cycle: OCD Treatment that Works
Q: As a therapist trained in traditional talk therapy, I find work with OCD clients difficult and frustrating. Can you offer guidelines about the principles of effective treatment? A: The past 3...
View ArticleShould Depression Be Treated as a Chronic Condition?
Martha is terminating therapy again. This woman, who’s dealt with depression throughout her life, has been my client on and off for 10 years. Her pattern has been to work with me for a year or more and...
View ArticleEscaping the Trance of Depression
When I was a psychology student, I learned about a phenomenon called “state-dependent learning,” based on the idea that our brains associate certain memories with specific environments, sensory...
View ArticleCan Mood Science Save Us from the Depression Epidemic?
Depression is among the most common problems encountered in clinical practice, yet most psychotherapists still accept the cultural assumption that it’s primarily a problem of the individual. Best...
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