You’ve hiked to the top of the hill, and the vista spread out before you is breathtaking. Full of endorphins, you’re overcome with a speechless appreciation of beauty. You suddenly know without a doubt that all is right with the world and your place in it, and you’re in touch with a magnificence way beyond your finite self. The moment changes you forever. Some people call this an experience of God; transpersonal psychologists call it a 
Loneliness is on the rise. The most recent US data studied by John Cacioppo, a social neuroscientist at the University of Chicago, found that almost a quarter of people today are plagued by frequent loneliness, regardless of gender, race, or education levels. A 2010 AARP survey found that of the people age 45 and up who participated in their study, 35% reported chronic loneliness compared with 20% ten years ago.This disturbing trend reflects the fact that increasing numbers of people are living alone, added to the decrease in people joining
I visited my sister and her family during the year in London her husband pursued graduate work in play directing. My nephews hated British school, their American ways considered freakish and weird by the other kids. It was hard to eat well there as the produce offered in the grocery stores was at least a week old, but I loved visiting the places I’d dreamed of: Buckingham Palace, the Tate Modern, wherever it was the Bloomsbury crowd hung out, and Carnaby Street, the center of ‘60’s fashion. I cried at Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey seeing the memorials of Chaucer, Blake, Keats, and other great literary figures, comparing the reverence paid
The pain in their eyes is chilling. The baby monkeys cling desperately to their mothers-made-of-wire for up to eighteen hours a day. They barely have appetite for food; they are starving for affection and warmth. If you search YouTube for “Harlow monkeys,” you can view the old videos from the 50s and see what I mean.When Dr. Harry Harlow began his work in the 1930s, he set out to conduct experiments on the nature of love. Child-rearing 
The young woman sitting in front of me in my psychotherapy office is articulate, intelligent, well groomed and attractive. Jessica has also thrown up her food three times a day, every day, since puberty. “I have to be prettier,” she says. “I just can’t go on looking like this.”We might think Jessica’s anxiety is all in her head, but a disturbing 
“Why didn’t I say something? I was so stupid! Why didn’t I stop the abuse?” Emily is crying as she recounts a painful memory that affects the way she relates to men in the present.Often, my patients who are involved in processing painful wounds from childhood have trouble forgiving 
It was hot that summer, hotter than four kids from the chilly Pacific Northwest could comprehend. Our dad had gotten a math scholarship for six weeks in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, so he and Mom had piled all us kids into the Volkswagen van and headed off cross country to a planet 
We were talking about Ezra Pound in my writing group the other week - about how he revolutionized poetry and writing in general by his idea that it’s all about the image rather than storytelling. I’d read that he’d spent thirteen years in a mental hospital so I said, “Of course, he could see things differently - he was mentally ill.”The others in the group recoiled. They thought I was making a value judgment and being mean, but I’m around mental illness all day when I’m working as a therapist so it doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me. Also, for twelve years
The rate of depression increased every year of the last decade after showing a dramatic spike upward in the 1990s. According to the 2011 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, eleven percent of Americans are taking antidepressant medication, which
The gorgeous stranger across the room is returning your seductive smile. A warm glow and tingling sense of anticipation run through your body. The air seems electric, the atmosphere more alive. It’s here! -- love at first sight, irresistible attraction, the stuff movies are made of. The sexual chemistry is sizzling.When that happens, run the other way as fast as you can, says Terry Gorski, noted addiction specialist. What we call “chemistry” is often not what we think. “Chemistry” canNotifications