Announcing: Workshop on How to Develop Self-Compassion
Stop repeating anxiety-provoking habits of negative thinking and self-criticism! Learn how your mind and body can be harnessed to provide self-soothing. Develop meditation and mindfulness skills to be calm and manage your emotions and thoughts in healthy ways.
Trump’s Threats and Intimidation are Verbal Abuse
In early 2017, I was one of a group of experts on violence, psychopathology, and authoritarianism who wrote the bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Professionals Assess a President.” Dangerous is a word used...
How Parents Create Anxiety in a Child
So much of my time in family therapy is spent on parenting education about the inadvertent ways parents create anxiety in a child. As this article explains, through their communication and disciplining methods parents can make a child fearful. Most parents come to...
We Actually DO Know What Is Wrong With Trump’s Mental State
Ask just about anyone about Trump’s psychology, and they conclude that, like all bullies, he is a very insecure person. As many have noted: “You don’t need a fancy diploma to figure out what is wrong with Trump.” I would agree — even though I do have a degree in...
Psychological Explainer: Why Does Trump Incite Racist Hatred Among his Base?
Given Donald Trump’s low poll numbers, many political pundits have wondered: Why does Trump incite racist hatred among his base? This political strategy certainly seems to excite the most ardent followers in the Trump cult, who chant “send her back” at his rallies and...
Book Review – ‘Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy’
Book Review: "Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy" By Ian Hughes (Zero Books, 2018) Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao were not aberrations and America is not immune. This can happen any time a paranoid, sociopathic and narcissistic...
How to Talk to a Narcissist and Take Back Your Power
How to Talk to a Narcissist (Other-blamers) The first rule with Other-blamers is: Don’t talk to them if you don’t have to. Disconnect from the relationship physically if possible. If you must deal with a narcissist… Don’t start a conversation with a narcissist without...
The Spider and the Blame-Shifter or: How to Spot a Narcissist
I was recently reminded of an incident involving a spider that provides instructive wisdom on how to spot a narcissist, or what I call an Other-blamer. (Names are changed to protect the guilty parties.) A number of years ago a friend, Patty, called to ask if her...
How Children Express Shame
This blog on parenting is a nice description of an instance of how parents often misread a child's behavior. I recommend that parents always look for the deeper emotion beneath a child's actions or words, and the most powerful of these emotions are fear and shame. The...
Review: The Conscious Parent, by Shefali Tsabary, PhD
A number of years ago I read a blog by psychologist Shefali Tsabary, PhD, and liked it enough to include it on one of my parenting handouts on Reflective Listening. Just recently I stumbled upon Dr. Tsabary’s work again and realized she now has three bestselling books...