self-awareness
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The Only Mental Health Diagnosis
I am amazed how frequently people talk about various mental health diagnoses. It is common to hear people talking about their “anxiety,” “panic disorder,” “ADHD” or other things, so much so that I hear such conversations while waiting in a cashier’s line. Of course, it is even more common in my business. I regularly do…
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Crazy is Contagious
I heard the statement, “crazy is contagious” from a colleague of mine when I told him about an experience I had recently had with a patient. It got me thinking. “Crazy” is not by any means a part of my vocabulary, nor are other typical terms when we think of the challenges that people have…
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Intention and Production
It is important to produce. It is equally important to intend to produce. But these two ways of engaging the world are profoundly different, a difference we might call spiritual. I conceive of these elements of psychological life on a spectrum with purpose in the center of the spectrum, something like this: Intention…………..……….……Purpose…………………………..Production ______________________________________________________________________________ This…
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Patience
I am not, by nature, a very patient person, which means that I tend to jump before I think and talk before I think. However, this lack of “thinking” is not the real essence of patience. Patience is much about feeling. If you have followed our recent blogs, specifically over the past year, you have…
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Dealing Effectively with Challenges: The Four A’s
We can effectively meet the challenges of the day, of the year, or of one’s life. Likewise, there are four ineffective ways of facing the challenges of life, which are Avoidance Anxiety Anger Accommodation I will briefly describe each of these ways that people frequently deal with the challenges they face in their…
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It’s The War
Deb and I really enjoy Masterpiece Theater, which comes on PBS pretty regularly. Actually, we don’t watch any other channels aside from the three PBS channels we get over the air. We’ve had “air only” TV forever. Occasionally, however, when we happen to be in a motel where there are 600 cable channels, we waste…
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The H’end of the Road
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by
This is actually an interlude from my previous and forthcoming blogs on “the end of” series. There is a similarity to the “end of” to this blog, but it is a different twist.I’m going to have a little fun before I get to the meat of this blog, the essence of which I think is…
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Good for Me; Bad for Me VI: Complexities
This is the sixth in a series of “good for me; bad for me,” namely things that are, quite simply good for me or bad for me. The pronoun “me” could be “you”, but the point is the many things are those that enhance one’s life while other things depreciate one’s life. Importantly, I have…