02
July
2022
Seeking professional help from a psychologist can be a marker of health and functionality. It requires great courage to ask for help. Even though you know the psychologist has specialized training and has heard all sorts of stories, they are still an actual person that you'll be talking with, not a therapy machine. Initially at core they are a stranger listening to your intimate and...
26
June
2022
When we were fifteen years old (sophomore in high school) how much did we really know about who we would become at age forty. Did we have the capacity to accurately forecast twenty-five years ahead? Did we really know what our forty year old self would be like in this world? How many young kids know what is important to an adult in...
13
June
2022
When is enough enough? When can we allow ourselves the freedom to not embrace and cuddle the personal, familial, and societal pressures to have more and be more? What begins as acknowledged and accepted cultural expectation quickly morphs into zealous compulsion and later - empty oppression. When can we boldly live out the principle that less is more.
Many of us have heard the...
30
May
2022
What is the formula that we are told? Study hard in high school and go to college. Find a good series of upwardly mobile jobs and save ample money for the future. Develop a network of healthy friendships and build a loving relationship with someone you aspire to live your life with. Buy a house and become part of your local community. These are just...
25
March
2021
My work as a life coach and clinical psychologist is to help people make various changes in their life. Changes in any area of life. Maybe losing weight, improving a relationship, securing a new job, getting into graduate school, or experiencing an improved emotional and spiritual life.
After talking with thousands of people I’ve been an observer of who makes changes and who does...
13
March
2021
I might be the luckiest man in all of California. But things often look different from the outside. I have been asked many dozens of times by concerned friends and curious clinical psychology patients and coaching clients how I manage to listen to people’s problems all day long and not take it all home. “How do you survive,” they ask. I playfully tell these uninformed...
01
March
2021
There was once an innocent time in my life when I believed there were people in the world who were so psychologically and spiritually healthy they were almost perfect. Then I began a career providing many thousands of hours of therapy to many hundreds of high functioning, educated, professional people. I discovered we are all broken. Various wounds, mistakes, deficits, and distorted beliefs. Everyone. And...
27
December
2020
I have hundreds of conversations with people each year. While the people and the exact details change - the overall themes are universal. In essence, it’s the same conversations over and over.
The above picture (created by my son Jack at my request) represents what I call the boundary map. I talk about boundaries so often that I needed a...
26
December
2020
I am married to Camille - the most intellectually diverse person that I have ever met. Her passion has no limits. She was recently reading the classic Italian masterpiece The Divine Comedy completed in 1320 by Dante. I came home for lunch and for 15 minutes Camille regaled me with appreciation and insights she was...
18
December
2020
I am a man on a journey. I have an extensive professional life as a clinical and forensic psychologist. But the next leg on the journey involves my work as an author, life coach, and blogger.
So I recently read Michael Hyatt’s excellent book, Platform: Get Noticed in a NoisyWorld. Hyatt references various well...