The People’s Therapist is of course strictly non-partisan. It is hardly my place to take sides in political matters, and I am loathe to betray a hint of bias in these pages. However. How could anyone NOT admire our magnificent President, Barack Obama, as he faced down those ignorant Republican hacks in Baltimore last week? [...]
Archive for January, 2010
Obama, O-calma and the Buddha’s refusals
Posted in Current Events, Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged Baltimore, Buddha, gay, healthcare, immigrants, lesbian, LGBT, meditation, O-calma, Obama, Ocalma, Republicans, Three refusals on January 31, 2010 | 8 Comments »
What IS co-dependency, anyway?
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged care-giving, care-taking, co-dependence, co-dependency, codependence, codependent on January 30, 2010 | 6 Comments »
That word, “co-dependent,” gets batted around a lot. I have patients who confidently alert me to the fact that one of their friend’s is “co-dependent” because she’s too needy and can’t leave her boyfriend alone. Or because he seems to need a relationship in order to feel good about himself. Or because she keeps breaking [...]
Stop burning bridges! Enforce boundaries instead.
Posted in Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged burning bridges, commitment, direct communication, enforcing boundaries on January 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
My patient was beside himself. The younger woman he’d been dating was jerking him around, he fumed. Last week, when he was finally out on a date with someone else, starting to enjoy himself, she’d left him an open-ended text message, asking what he was up to and whether he wanted to get together sometime. [...]
Just. Leave.
Posted in Current Events, Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged abuser, assault, Charlie Sheen, Domestic Violence, order of protection, police on January 28, 2010 | 1 Comment »
The recent arrest of the actor, Charlie Sheen, on domestic violence charges will make for a very brief, very important post. I have no idea if Mr. Sheen is guilty of these charges, or what actually happened during this incident. I only mention it in order to raise the vital issue of domestic violence. Violence [...]
This is your brain. This is your brain on psychotherapy.
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged brain, evolution, lizard, mammal, psychotherapy on January 27, 2010 | 4 Comments »
How does psychotherapy actually work? Good question. The answer is interesting and has to do with how your brain works. The basic idea of psychotherapy is that you take emotional content from a primitive part of the brain and bring it to another more sophisticated, thinking part, where it can be examined and understood. Here’s [...]
Sex addict? What’s a sex addict?
Posted in Current Events, Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged 12-step, alcohol, anonymous sex, cruising online, drugs, fellowship, food, intervention, marijuana, rehab center, sex, sex addict, sexual addiction, sexual hook-ups, Tiger Woods on January 27, 2010 | 1 Comment »
We found out last week that Tiger Woods has checked himself into a posh rehab center for sex addicts. This raises the issue of whether sexual addiction really exists. I think it is a fair question. After all, we’re all sex addicts, to some degree – sex is a normal, necessary human drive. Sex also [...]
Dear Brangelina (& Madge)
Posted in Current Events, Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged adopted child, adoption, adoptive parent, Angelina Jolie, birth parent, Brad Pitt, hyper-compliant behavior, Madonna, testing behavior on January 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Dear and Brad and Angie and Madge: I think it’s great you have chosen to adopt children who needed homes. But I want to make sure you know what you are getting into, so you can do it right. Here are some pointers on adoption. First of all – please do not fall for the [...]
It’s all the rage
Posted in Current Events, Thoughts and Musings, tagged Boxer Rebellion, Chairman Mao, Hitler, Iraq, lynching, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Twain, Martin Luther King, Muslim world, Rage, Taiping Rebellion on January 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Rage is helpless anger. If anger finds a productive outlet, it can achieve great things (See Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, et al.) King and Gandhi believed their words could be effective agents for change. There was a receptive audience somewhere – white Northerners, the British public – who would listen, and perhaps embrace a [...]
Don’t fall in love like a kid – do it like an adult
Posted in Current Events, Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged adult, Alice B. Toklas, attraction, child, Gertrude Stein, John Lennon, Josephine, love, monogamy, Napoleon, partnership, religion, respect, romantic relationship, trust, Yoko Ono on January 24, 2010 | 3 Comments »
A patient told me she couldn’t get over a guy she’d been seeing. He was no good for her. He didn’t even seem to want to go out with her. But she couldn’t let go. “But I love him,” she explained. Well, in a manner of speaking. She was in love with him like a [...]
Therapist. Gangsta.
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged 2Pac, Allen Ginsberg, choosing a therapist, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Frank Zappa, gangsta, gangsta rappers, gangsta therapist, Jeff Koons, John Cage, Lena Furgeri, Lil' Kim, N.W.A., non-conformist, Sam Kinison, Slick Rick, Snoop Dogg, The Notorious B.I.G., the Wu-Tang Clan, Theodor Reik on January 22, 2010 | 1 Comment »
How can you choose a therapist who’s right for you? Here’s what to look for: 1. Your therapist should be actively engaged. I was surprised, years ago, when I read an account by Theodor Reik, an early psychoanalyst, of his analysis with Freud. The founder of psychoanalysis didn’t just sit there, stroking his beard like [...]
Why the people you’re into aren’t into you, and the people you aren’t into are
Posted in Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged child within, drill sergeant, just not that into you, pleasing, rejection, seductive-withholding love object on January 20, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Groucho Marx once said he would never join a club that would have him as a member. That’s how one of my patients seems to run her romantic life. Somehow she always seems to chase the guys who don’t want her – but has no time for the guys who do. This is a common [...]
You’re starting to scare me
Posted in Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged fear, hyper-alert, hypochondriac, hypochondriasis, PTSD, scared on January 20, 2010 | 1 Comment »
This week a patient complained he wasn’t sleeping well. He said he was feeling like a hypochondriac – obsessively worrying about his health. He’s young, and perfectly well, but suddenly every little ache and pain was bubonic plague. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is usually effective for anxiety, so we did a little CBT exercise together, in [...]
It’s even complicated for Stevie Wonder
Posted in Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged fun, happiness, it's complicated, longevity, partnership, relationships, Stevie Wonder on January 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The People’s Therapist is a big Stevie Wonder fan. Here’s one of my favorite songs, “I Believe (When I Fall in Love),” from the legendary 1972 album “Talking Book”: You can see what makes it a classic. First – it’s Stevie Wonder. Second – who can resist a song whose chief lyric is “I believe [...]
Here comes your 19th nervous breakdown
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged abandonment, adult, child, collapse fantasy, infancy, infant, nervous breakdown, regression, solitude, unconscious on January 19, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Pretend for a moment that you have been captured by terrorists. They shackle you up in their torture chamber, where you are confronted by their fiendish leader. “So,” he sneers, “Are you going to cooperate? Or are we going to have to make you cooperate?” And he emits an evil cackle. At this juncture, you [...]
Rub my belly
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged Buddha, Buddhism, Freud, Gautama Buddha, India, Journey to the West, People's Therapist, psychotherapy, Siddhartha, Silk Road, Xuanzang on January 18, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Two famous pilgrimages: The Journey to the West – the legendary voyage of the Buddhist monk, Xuanzang, to India to bring the Sutras back to China and establish Buddhism there. Another, less celebrated Journey from the East – Freud’s parents, Ostjuden (Eastern Jews), emigrating in a horse cart from the ghettoes of East Galicia to [...]
You have never been dumped
Posted in Thoughts and Musings, tagged child within, dumped, love yourself, partnership, relationship on January 17, 2010 | 3 Comments »
One of my patients came to me last week looking like he’d just been through a war. He plopped down in a chair and began to weep. It didn’t take me long to realize he’d been “dumped.” At least, that’s how he characterized it. But I don’t believe getting “dumped” exists. Here’s why: First, the [...]
The last thing you do
Posted in Intriguing Patients, Thoughts and Musings, tagged Art of the Fugue, Bach, fugue, meaning in life, unfinished fugue, work on January 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The clip at the bottom of this post is a performance of an excerpt from the Art of the Fugue, by Johann Sebastian Bach. There are a few reasons why this music opens emotional floodgates. This piece was written under astonishing circumstances that speak to the essence of what it means to work and to [...]
Dr. King and old people
Posted in Current Events, Thoughts and Musings, tagged Ageism, Dr. King, ethnicity, gay, homophobia, lesbian, LGBT, Martin Luther King, racism, sexism, transference on January 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Dr. King would have turned 81 this week – an excellent opportunity to discuss ageism, an insidious form of discrimination. The starting point in any discussion of discrimination is why difference is an issue at all. Some of your discomfort with difference derives from sheer inexperience. It has been proven that a witness in a [...]
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