What constitutes trauma or adversity? Essentially anything that causes physical or psychological pain or injury. This includes personal illness or injury, witnessing the same in someone else, natural disasters, enduring abuse, the death of someone close to us, job loss, addiction, financial problems, relationship difficulties, and incarceration. The range and magnitude of trauma is vast. […]

There can often be a big gap between having good intentions and taking the associated steps to transform these intentions into action. We can get tripped up by not feeling like making a healthy breakfast (rather than eating fast food), going to the gym (rather than sleeping in), nor searching for a job (rather than […]

True recovery from an eating disorder, be it anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating, or “garden variety” (but no less damaging) compulsive overeating, requires recovery from perfectionism (which doesn’t have to be “perfect”, by the way). It’s so seductive to believe that once we reach the right weight, eat only organic foods, fit into a […]

Guest Post By Rob Feiner MS, LPCC, PPS “All I’ve ever known was competition, what the $#@$%*! am I going to do now?!”  My old training partner and friend lamented to me after leaving the orthopedic surgeon’s office on a sunny afternoon in the summer of 2006.  My friend had sustained his third ACL tear […]

When we think about the term “acceptance”, many people believe that this means either condoning a situation or behavior. Not so. Acceptance is not an excuse to be passive, to give up our rights in a matter, or resign ourselves to continued abuse. Quite the opposite. Acceptance is actually a proactive stance. Radical Acceptance, one […]

Years before COVID-19 emerged and quickly took over our society, I was conducting phone sessions as well as in-person office visits with clients. Mid-March of 2020, when it became clear that I could not in good conscience continue to see clients in person, possibly endangering their health and my own, I moved exclusively to phone […]

Very few of us are strangers to depression or anxiety in some form, whether it be a mild but unpleasant funk for a few days or a more serious mood disorder lasting months or even years. After all, just being alive usually means that we’ve ridden the emotional rollercoaster, be it due to a personal […]

Although the Thanksgiving holiday serves as a good reminder for us to pause and count our blessings, the truth is that gratitude represents an attitude and actions that we can seek to cultivate every day of the year. In addition to improving our relationships with others, expressing our thanks offers many other benefits. Some quotes […]

Most of us associate having the flu with not only coughing, sneezing, and sore throat, but also intense fatigue, apathy, brain fog, irritability, and loss of appetite. Being sick can wreak havoc with our emotions and throw us psychologically off-balance. It’s common to feel as if our “get up and go” has got up and […]

What if you could increase your happiness by doing a simple daily five-minute exercise? And if all you needed was a piece of paper and pen or your laptop computer? And what if you could feel the benefits of this exercise within a week or two? Research by Dr. Martin Seligman, the renowned psychologist known […]