No Pain, No Gain: Psychotherapy and Mental Health Recovery Takes Time
Quick, would you prefer 100 million dollars right now or a penny that that doubles every day for a year? Next question, would you like to be cured of your depression, relationship problems, eating disorder, or addiction immediately or would you like to work on it?
On first glance, the answer to both questions seems obvious. I'll take the $100 million and I want to be cured of my mental illness, marital discord, and alcohol abuse, thank you.
Now do the math. If you take a penny and double it every day you'll have 5 million dollars in the first month. You'll have a billion dollars before the... Read More
Okay, the holidays are over and it is the beginning of a New Year and you want to work on the new you. You have created an idea of how you want to move forward with your exercise plan and have bought a membership to your local gym or fitness studio. What could possibly go wrong? Well, a lot could go wrong if you are not aware of the imbalances in your life.
Many people start off by having the goal of attaining a certain fitness milestone and make the commitment to themselves that they will work hard at keeping that resolution. The imbalance occurs when the commitment to exercise crosses the... 
Exercise dependence is a form of 
I just read in a newspaper article that health clubs see a nice jump in membership at this time of year, due to all those New Year’s resolutions to lose weight. Of course, many new members will make a concerted effort for a month or two, and then slowly drift away.
Why is so hard to change or break bad habits? For instance: snacking or nibbling in a way we know is not the healthiest for us but have trouble stopping (I’m guilty of this myself).
First, notice the word “guilty”. Why guilty? Is this a trial? What, exactly, am I guilty of? I imagine a giant finger wagging at me from above,... 
Casual gamblers and 
In many ways it would appear that breaking up is similar to falling in love. I know what you are thinking, and you are right - it’s not quite the same thing. However, in terms of the physiological effects that it has on your mind, psyche and body, it would appear to have quite a significant effect as it can potentially turn your world upside down.
Breakups can throw our worlds into a chaos similar to falling in love, I would suggest. Dr. Helen Fisher wrote a book called Why We Love, and in her book she discussed the chemical changes that actually take place in the human brain and body when... 
Adolescents who have thrill-seeking personalities are more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol. “Among risk factors in the individual domain, sensation seeking consistently has been identified as a positive predictor of health risk behaviors (Zuckerman, 2006), including 
Adolescents who enter treatment for 
Eating problems, such as 
Last month I discussed the dilemma of a psychologically wounded person who feels torn between a yearning to get his deepest needs met – a need for connection, safety and love – and a terror that those needs will be rejected (subtly or otherwise), leading to a traumatic abandonment, or re-abandonment in most cases. This creates dueling goals: to be loved and to maintain connection through inevitable “bumps” on the relational road, which in the person’s life has proven impossible. Thus the faith that lasting relational intimacy can be found is slim to none, assuming it exists at all.
Those... 
Adolescents who exhibit mild psychotic episodes will rarely go on to develop full blown clinical psychosis. “Longitudinal studies in general population samples, using follow-up intervals from 6 months to 8 years, have shown that, in most adolescents, psychotic experiences disappear over time and do not persist into adulthood,” said J.T. Wigman of the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. “However, in a minority of adolescents, subclinical psychotic experiences progress to clinical psychotic illness.” In an attempt to determine what... 
Numerous studies have proven that physical exercise can improve both physical and mental health. The most commonly used tool for gauging decreases in 
Work and family problems often cause people who have quit smoking to relapse. Many people who smoke, or have recently quit, believe that smoking relieves 
My 17-year-old son asked me the other day, “Why do people get depressed around the holidays? This time of year is full of great food, presents, music, lights, families being together, time off—it’s great. What’s there to be depressed about?”
I was heartened to know that he had such a positive experience of the holiday season that he couldn’t even imagine why someone wouldn’t. Maybe it’s occupational hazard, but most of the people I talk to all day have painful feelings around the holidays—many feel depressed, or more depressed if they already were depressed.
So I explained... 
