It doesn’t feel like you’re going to survive. Maybe there are moments when not surviving seems preferable. You soldier on, though, but you’re not sure how. You get out of bed. You put one foot in front of the other and, somehow, you make it through another day. Grief can seem to suck the life […]
One hundred and fifty million cards will be sent this Mother’s Day. The celebration of maternal love and devotion ranks behind only Christmas in the number of flowers sent. We love our mothers, even if we don’t always like them and we’re not sure they like us. “She’s always yelling at me. She doesn’t like […]
Denise feels horrible her marriage fell apart. It’s all her fault, she’ll state sadly. She didn’t love him enough. She harped at him too much and she was too hard to live with. It was all her, not him. Marco knows his 20 year-old son is struggling in college because he can’t seem to motivate […]
When you and your current squeeze break-up, what’s the first thing you do? Head to the gym? Get a new haircut and wardrobe? Start going out more? Are you immediately shopping for someone new? This is how we deal with grief. Dog die? Buy a new puppy. Get a divorce? Register on Match.com or some […]
Screwing up on a project…or blowing a proposal…or earning a D on a paper can make us feel like worthless losers, but each one of these failures brings us valuable information. We actually need to learn to process failure and rejection. This sounds so wrong! Failure should be avoided at all costs, shouldn’t it? Rejection […]
Depression feels horrible, but it may have a purpose. Emotions have their own peculiar rationality and are one of the most intriguing aspects of being human. There’s a reason why you feel what you feel. For the last decade or so, pharmaceutical companies have been selling the idea that mood is merely a fluke of […]
Only a few choices seem big at the moment you’re making them. You look down a long aisle of a church and see the person you’re marrying–that’s a big choice. You look down at the contract you’re about to sign for a thirty-year mortgage on a house. That seems big, too, even though you can […]
It seems so obvious, I mean, who doesn’t care about someone? But this is more difficult than it looks. Love is hard, just ask the newly-divorced. It hurts, and who wants to hurt? You could decide to be an island and not care for anyone, but that’s not a great option either. You live an […]
Perfectionism is tempting, even though being consumed by the drive to be perfect is bad for you. We may try to be a perfect mother or ideal mate, but we don’t necessarily love those who seem to be without flaws. Everyone wants Martha Stewart’s soufflé to fall. We tend to resent perfection even as we […]
Life can be rough. Work situations can leave you feeling wrung out. Traffic is hell. Your relationship might have land mines you don’t know how to avoid. At the end of the day, you can feel frazzled and stressed. You’ve been battered and your soul needs some comfort. Maybe you’ve had a fight with your […]