Training Your Inner Puppy
Are you feeling lonelier these days? Is the pandemic exacerbating those feelings? Luckily, the physical state of being alone has very little to do with [...]
“Please Pass the Salt”: A Guide to Healthy Assertiveness
When you’re having a meal with someone, it’s easy to say: “Please pass the salt”. You calmly ask for what you want: no big deal. [...]
Premarital Counseling? Now?
Premarital Counseling? Now? With COVID-19 hanging around so long, it’s tempting to believe that all-too-many aspects of daily life have changed. However, one thing hasn’t [...]
DABDA: the five stages of grief
“You know the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance?” asked Dr. Emily Landon, a coronavirus expert at the University of Chicago [...]
Your Mental Health
With COVID-19 spikes, quarantining, telecommuting, home schooling, unemployment, Trump’s latest stupidity, local businesses forced to shut down and an ever-present sense of doom, your mental [...]
The Great Reassessment
How do you talk about a global pandemic when you’re in the midst of it? And what can you – should you - do about [...]
How to Have Safe Sex: Now
As things continue to “open up”, what about sex? When will that “open up”? I am not an epidemiologist, but I’ve been reading a lot [...]
ALOR: Acceptable Levels of Risk
These days, a lot of my conversations with clients and friends include talking about acceptable levels of risk (aka, “ALOR”). As things open back up, [...]
Love in the Time of COVID
The title of this column was inspired by the novel “Love in the Time of Cholera”, written by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, first published [...]
The New Normal
In a pandemic, our old ideas about how life works no longer apply. We don’t know when or how this time of quarantining will end. [...]
Where’s the “silver lining”? What we can learn from the pandemic.
If the pandemic is a huge, dark cloud, then where’s the "silver lining"? I am not a Pollyanna, but when life deals me a bad [...]
How to create your own “Action Plan” for getting through the pandemic.
These are scary times: we’re living with much uncertainty and many unknowns. As a psychotherapist, my clients, friends and family frequently ask me: “I’m scared. [...]