Episodes
April 26, 2022
Making Confident Decisions
When making a decision, we form opinions and choose actions via mental processes which are influenced by biases, reason, emotions, and memories. The simple act of deciding supports the notion that we have free will. We weigh ...
April 19, 2022
What Happened to Common Sense?
For centuries scientists, science writers and philosophers have encouraged us to trust our common sense (Lilienfeld et al., 2010; Furnham, 1996). Common sense is a phrase that generally implies something everyone knows. One o...
April 5, 2022
Living with a Depressed Partner
There is a great deal of information available about depression. But when you live with a depressed person, it can be painfully difficult. Anti-depressants are the number-one prescribed medication in this country, but they ar...
March 29, 2022
The Effects of Childhood Abandonment
When children are raised with chronic loss, without the psychological or physical protection they need—and certainly deserve—it is most natural for them to internalize incredible fear. Not receiving the necessary psychologica...
March 22, 2022
Finding your "Soul Mate"
Relationship scientist Raymond Knee coined the terms “destiny beliefs” and “growth beliefs” to describe an individual’s general approach to seeking and maintaining romantic relationships. People with destiny beliefs assume th...
March 15, 2022
Raising Special Needs Children: Herding Squirrels
For anyone whose life revolves around caregiving, including the parents of special-needs children, there are inherent risks that can jeopardize both their own well-being and that of the people they care for. Insufficient mana...
March 8, 2022
Delusional People: Sold on Their Own Story
Delusional disorder, previously called paranoid disorder, is a type of serious mental illness — called a “psychosis”— in which a person cannot tell what is real from what is imagined. The main feature of this disorder is the ...
March 1, 2022
Living Through Dark Times
The Covid-19 pandemic led to a prolonged exposure to stress. As a consequence, researchers showed an increased interest in measuring social and community uneasiness in order to psychologically support the population. This inc...
Feb. 22, 2022
The Need for Power and Control
There is a downside to being in control when it involves trying to control other people, because other people don't want to be controlled by you any more than you want to be controlled by other people. In therapy, we often he...
Feb. 15, 2022
The Inner Child: Aggression, Tantrums and Trauma
Destructive behavior takes various forms: from subtle self-sabotage and self-defeating patterns to passive hostility to severe self-destructive symptoms, violent aggression and, sometimes, evil deeds. Commonly, destructive be...
Feb. 8, 2022
A Life of Regret
Regret is a negative emotion that occurs when a person believes his or her past actions or behaviors, if changed, may have achieved a better outcome. Regret is often closely associated with feelings of guilt and shame. We oft...
Feb. 1, 2022
Trust: Our Deepest Need
Being vulnerable with each other can also be a mutual endeavor, and it doesn't just involve revealing parts of yourself. It can also involve a joint effort toward something rewarding — an adventurous experience on a vacation,...
Jan. 25, 2022
Psychopath Stalkers
Stalking is defined as repeated and unwanted attention, harassment, contact, or any other behavior directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear. In 2006, psychologist Brian Spitzberg at San ...
Jan. 18, 2022
Bonding Through Laughter
Humor, the capacity to express or perceive what's funny, is both a source of entertainment and a means of coping with difficult or awkward situations and stressful events. Although it provokes laughter, humor can be serious b...
Jan. 11, 2022
Gender Identity: Mind My Pronouns
Gender is related to but distinctly different from sex; it is rooted in culture, not biology. The APA (2012) defines gender as the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological ...
Jan. 4, 2022
Marrying a Divorcee
A divorcee is not a supernatural being who needs to be kept at bay and never considered for marriage. Nevertheless, there are a few problems in marrying a divorcee that needs to be taken into account before you plunge into a ...
Dec. 28, 2021
The Resentful Vigina: Sexual Warfare
t has become increasingly clear to me that at the basis of most divorces are problems of sexual connection. Two people may think that they are fighting about the kids or the in-laws or about whether to renovate the kitchen, b...
Dec. 21, 2021
Toxic Family Members
Some lucky people are born into families they adore spending time with—their loving mutual bonds make holidays and multi-generational vacations a drama-free joy. But for others, simply seeing an incoming call from a parent tr...
Dec. 14, 2021
Healing a Broken Heart
It’s normal for us to need time to ruminate and go over a romantic break-up in minute detail when we feel like we were the one who was dumped. Break-ups can definitely qualify as traumatic events and telling and re-telling th...
Dec. 7, 2021
Mangina: The Death of the Male
For as long as America has been a country, the straight white American man has been king of the hill. But as society changes and culture evolves, the ground beneath that hill is growing shaky. Economically, physically and emo...
Nov. 30, 2021
The Cost of Loneliness
Loneliness is often defined as the distressing feeling generated by a lack of meaningful, intimate, and reciprocal interactions. One might describe it as emotional isolation. Exacerbated by its gross under-recognition, loneli...
Nov. 23, 2021
Why People Delay Happiness
There are two paths we can take in any given situation: one is the path of avoiding pain in the moment, and the other is the more difficult path of delaying pleasure for a bigger purpose. Our cultural norms encourage us to se...
Nov. 16, 2021
How Do Know I Am Depressed
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is more than simply feeling sad, experiencing grief, or being super drained of energy. Those feelings are totally valid, but like most feelings, they’ll eventually pass. MDD is an often-debilit...
Nov. 9, 2021
Emerging from Narcissistic Parents
When it comes to narcissism, there is a spectrum of severity. While many people have narcissistic traits, some people have personalities that are highly narcissistic. Others have full blown narcissistic personality disorder. ...