38 years ago, when I did my first meditation retreat with Stephen Levine, we would do long OMs at the start of many other kinds of practice. Last night, 35 years after my last class, I started another meditation class, this time with Jamal Rahman, a Sufi teacher. With each of the nearly 40 OMs
Last night, I saw Dear Evan Hansen, the musical about an anxious, shame-filled high school senior. The play deals with broken families, suicide, OCD, social anxiety, and attachment. The music and the singing in this touring production was fantastic. I cried several times, and laughed a few. Still I was distressed with some serious problems:
Huge study in Sweden finds that CBT often doesn't work on anxiety and depression and can make the problems much worse: REVOLUTION IN SWEDISH MENTAL HEALTH PRACTICE: THE COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY MONOPOLY GIVES WAY Please don't flame me, I'm just reporting the study.
The New York Review of Books carried and a scathing and mostly right-on article about the medicalization and over-medication of mental illness by Marcia Angell. It's a review of three books about the history of psych meds, the power of the drug companies, and the minimization of psychotherapy. Read it here.
I was interviewed by Stan Emert on his cable TV show, "Public Exposure" a few weeks ago. Here is the YouTube link to the show: http://youtu.be/KsFoHFQxx4o Topics include trauma definitions, PTSD, EMDR, Ego State Therapy, and a minute of traumatic grief. Due to a neck injury, I've been unable to spend more than a few minutes
Some of the best therapy I've seen on screen is in a great new movie, The King's Speech. Geoffrey Rush plays Lionel Logue, an Australian speech therapist who tackles the debilitating anxiety-driven stammer of Colin Firth's, "Bertie", who become the king of England on the eve of World War II. The film shows the stifling lives
My copy of the new book arrived today. Here is what Diana Fosha says about it:"This is a thorough, accessible, and very practical book, filled with resources and sound ideas, filtered through the intelligence and experience of a savvy, compassionate, down-to-earth, and very experienced clinician. It is like a travel guide to the land of
A great hour of interviews about anxiety on one of best radio shows around. This one includes Patricia Pearson, author of A Brief History of Anxiety, Yours and Mine, and her own experience with anxiety medications and learning to self-soothe; Ethan Waters, talking about the globalization of American psychiatric diagnoses and pharmaceutical cures; Dr. Daniel Carlat,
Here is a sweet short song about being okay, "just fine" and breathing. Good for anyone. Chillout song from zefrank
A client has given me permission to post about her situation: the effects of Provigil, Prozac, and time on trauma processing: Round 1, 15 years ago: She was bright, effusive, and had the odd habits of jerking her head up to look around and writing down everything I said. We worked for eight months
Last Wednesday I flew down to Fresno, CA, and flew back up with an old friend who, after battling AIDS for 25 years, is losing the fight. R''s brother and a few other friends and I have been managing his care up in Seattle for the last week. R is one of my favorite flavors of
Mindfulness is a major goal of psychotherapy. We want our clients to be able to savor the moment free of intrusive memories or worries about the future: Right Now. There are many ways to bring a client to the present moment: teaching mindfulness meditation, body awareness, or playing what do you notice? ("Name 3 things
I recently took on several new clients and am on my 3rd session with several new people, I'm struck by how much temperment affects people's experience of trauma. Some people have iron constitutions. It's hard to scare these people. It takes a truly life-threatening trauma for them to experience PTSD symptoms. Others are traumatized by
More than half of my clients have mentioned the economy and/or the election in the last two weeks. Some of them are in real world trouble, having lost jobs or facing foreclosure or eviction due to the "downswing" Many are troubled by the divisive discourse in the political realm. What do we do when the real world intrudes on
According to Daniel Goleman, in Vital Lies, Simple Truths, (1995, Simon & Schuster), when we avoid thinking about or doing that which makes us anxious, our brains reinforce us with really pleasant chemicals. Thus we have epidemics of procrastination and avoidance. With this in mind, I've developed several strategies for my avoidant and procrastinating clients. I
http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2008/03/18/study-identifies-gene-x-environment-link-to-ptsd is a link to a website that discusses the connection between a stress-related gene and the likelihood of developing PTSD. The new issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association features an article by Dr. Kerry Ressler and several co-authors found that specific variations in the gene appeared to be influenced by child
My new favorite book is Instinct to Heal by David Servan-Schrieber (Rodale, 2003). It is simple enough for most clients and innovative and interesting enough for most clinicians. I recommend it to psychiatrists, any kind of physician or "alternative" medical practitioner and all psychotherapists. Why? Instinct to Heal gives clear explanations, references to good research