Helping Adults Cultivate Healthy Friendships

A recent article in the Washington Post by Ana Homayoun (https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../skills-friendship.../) laid out some rules to help parents encourage their children to develop good relationships with their peers. As I read it, I realized that the guidelines she laid out could also apply to adults. Why, you might ask, am I concerned about adults making friends? After all, don’t we already have them? Well, just like with children for whom making friends is a developmental task, as we … [Read more...]

Should We Always Be Afraid of Anxiety?

For most people, anxiety is a burden. It makes them feel as if they cannot control their lives and that they must endure a lot of distress when doing things that make them nervous. In the DSM V, the psychiatrist’s and psychologist’s diagnostic manual, there are 11 different anxiety “disorders.”  But, as a recent article by Christina Caron in the New York Times Wellness Advice section shows, there are times when anxiety can actually help us. She acknowledges that too much anxiety can be … [Read more...]

Coping with the “What If” of Anxious Thinking (Part 1)

    We all play the “what if” game at some time.  What if I miss the train, what if my mom forgets to pick me up, what if I fail my test, what if I don’t get asked to the prom.  At different ages, different kinds of “what if” thinking are more prominent. What if I don’t get the promotion, what if something bad happens to my children, what if I don’t count my bites of food and something happens to me. But when “what if “thinking paralyzes people, it keeps them from truly living their lives. When … [Read more...]

Advice for Living

Recently I read an article, originally written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which was adapted from her book My Own Words. She wrote about the advice she was given that helped her in her personal and professional life, and as I read it, I thought “She could have been a psychologist talking to a patient.” Or a parent talking to a child, or a teacher talking to a student.  Her words were directed at women and men and were full of common sense, yet focused enough to be inspiring.  Here is a … [Read more...]

Helping Anxious Kids During the Time of Coronavirus

Most of the time, children are resilient.  They bounce back pretty quickly.  Of course, there are always those kids who have a harder time with change or with difficult circumstances, kids that Dr. Thomas Boyce refers to as the “orchids” in the greenhouse They are the ones who are more sensitive to their environment than usual and require more attention than the average child.  Understanding the Orchid Child    Today, however, it may feel like every child is an orchid.  With the coronavirus … [Read more...]